Unbreakable (film)

David Dunn is a college football stadium security guard and former star quarterback who boards Eastrail 177, which suddenly speeds up, derails and crashes. As his son Joseph watches news coverage of a train crash, he realizes that it's the train David was on. David wakes up at the hospital, everyone shocked that he survived, uninjured.

After a memorial service for the victims, David finds a note on his car windshield asking how long he has been ill and inviting him to "Limited Edition", an art gallery operated by comic book expert, Elijah Price. David realizes that he has indeed never been ill, with a single exception, and goes with Joseph to meet Elijah, who suffers from brittle bone disease. Elijah explains his theory that his own physical frailty must be matched by someone on the other end of the spectrum who cannot be "broken". David is unsettled and leaves when Elijah admits that he believes superheroes are real, but later finds he can bench press 350 pounds, well above his expectations. Joseph idolizes his father, believing him to be a superhero, although David maintains that he is an ordinary man.

David challenges Elijah's theory with an incident from his childhood when he almost drowned later and contracted pneumonia. Elijah suggests that this is merely his weakness, as David recalls the car accident that ended his athletic career, in which he had been unharmed and ripped off the car door with his bare hands to rescue his girlfriend, Audrey. He feigned injury from the crash to quit football because Audrey disliked the violence of the sport.

Under Elijah's influence, David realizes that his "intuition" for picking out dangerous people during security checks is actually extrasensory perception. Consciously honing this ability, David discovers that touch contact with people brings him visions of criminal acts they have committed. As people bump into him in a crowd, he senses the crimes they have perpetrated such as theft, assault, and rape. He finds one criminal he can confront: a sadistic janitor who has invaded a family home, killed the father, and is now holding his wife and two children captive. David, wearing a raincoat as a disguise, follows the janitor to the victims' house and frees the children. The janitor pushes him into a swimming pool where he nearly drowns, but is rescued by the children. David strangles the janitor to death, but not before the janitor kills the mother. The next morning, David shows Joseph a newspaper article featuring a sketch of the anonymous hero, whom Joseph recognizes as his father, and he tearfully promises to keep his secret.

David meets Elijah's elderly mother, who explains the difference between villains who fight heroes with physical strength and those who use their intelligence. Elijah asks David to shake his hand to celebrate his rescue, which reveals that Elijah was responsible for numerous high-profile "accidents,” including David's train crash, in an effort to find someone who fits his idea of a superhero. An emotional Elijah tells a horrified David, "Now that we know who you are, I know who I am", indicating that he sees himself as an archvillain and David's nemesis. He adopts his childhood nickname, "Mr. Glass," as his supervillain moniker. David reports Elijah's crimes to the police, and Elijah is confined to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.

• Bruce Willis as David Dunn, a former football player with superhuman strength who sees the crimes of those whom he touches
  • Davis Duffield as 20-year-old David
• Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price/Mr. Glass, a comic book theorist, and deranged terrorist with brittle bone disease
  • Johnny Hiram Jamison as 13-year-old Elijah
• Robin Wright as Audrey Dunn, David's wife and a physical therapist
  • Laura Regan as 20-year-old Audrey
• Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph Dunn, David's son who believes his father is a superhero
• Charlayne Woodard as Mrs. Price, Elijah's mother
• Eamonn Walker as Dr. Mathison
• Leslie Stefanson as Kelly
• Michaelia Carroll as Babysitter
• Whitney Sugarman as Physical Therapist
• Bostin Christopher as Comic Book Clerk
• Elizabeth Lawrence as School Nurse
• Chance Kelly as Orange Suit Man
• Michael Kelly as Dr. Dubin
• Joey Hazinsky as Five-Year-Old Boy
• Dianne Cotten Murphy as Woman Walking By

Writer, director, and producer M. Night Shyamalan makes an appearance as Stadium Drug Dealer. He reprises this role in the 2016 and 2019 films Split, and Glass, which both credit him as surveillance security guard Jai who in Glass jokingly says he used to do shady stuff in the stadium back in his youth.

In October 2018, Shyamalan confirmed a fan theory that "Five-Year-Old Boy" and "Woman Walking By", who bump into David Dunn outside a stadium, are younger versions of Kevin Wendell Crumb and Penelope Crumb from Split, confirmed in the 2019 film Glass.[13]

When M. Night Shyamalan conceived the idea for Unbreakable, the outline had a comic book's traditional three-part structure (the superhero's "birth", his struggles against general evil-doers, and the hero's ultimate battle against the "archenemy"). Finding the birth section most interesting, he decided to write Unbreakable as an origin story. During the filming of The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan had already approached Bruce Willis for the lead role of David Dunn.[14] With Willis and Samuel L. Jackson specifically in mind for the two leading characters, Shyamalan began to write Unbreakable as a spec script[15] during post-production on The Sixth Sense.[16] Jackson recalled meeting Willis in a casino in Casablanca while he was on vacation prior to Unbreakable's production; Willis told Jackson that he had just finished filming for Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense and told Jackson about the new script that was written for both of them.[17]

With the financial and critical success of The Sixth Sense in August 1999, Shyamalan gave Walt Disney Studios a first-look deal for Unbreakable. In return, Disney purchased Shyamalan's screenplay at a "spec script record" for $5 million. He was also given another $5 million to direct. Disney decided to release Unbreakable under their Touchstone Pictures banner. It also helped Shyamalan establish his own production company, Blinding Edge Pictures.[18] Julianne Moore was cast as Audrey, David's wife, in January 2000,[19] but dropped out in March 2000, to take on the role of Clarice Starling in Hannibal. Robin Wright Penn was cast in her place.[20] Principal photography began on April 25, 2000 and ended that July. The majority of filming took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the film's setting.[21]

Shyamalan and cinematographer Eduardo Serra chose several camera angles to simulate the look of a comic book panel. Various visual narrative motifs were also applied. Several scenes relating to the Mr. Glass character involve glass. As a newborn, he is primarily seen reflected in mirrors, and as a young child, he is seen reflected in a blank TV screen. When he leaves his calling card on the windshield of David Dunn's car, he is reflected in a glass frame in his art gallery. Jackson requested his walking stick be made of glass to make his character more menacing. Using purple as Mr. Glass' color to David Dunn's green was also Jackson's idea.[22] Mr. Glass' wig was modeled after Afro-American statesman Frederick Douglass.[14] As he does in his other films, Shyamalan makes a cameo appearance; he plays a man David suspects of dealing drugs inside the stadium.

Shyamalan said that he wanted to market Unbreakable as a comic book movie, but Disney—which had not yet bought Marvel Comics—preferred to advertise it as a supernatural thriller like The Sixth Sense.[23] More than 15 minutes of footage was deleted during post-production of Unbreakable. These scenes are available on the DVD release.[24]

Willis and Jackson had previously worked together on Die Hard with a Vengeance, Pulp Fiction, and Loaded Weapon 1.

James Newton Howard was approached by Shyamalan to work on Unbreakable immediately after scoring The Sixth Sense. "He sat there and storyboarded the whole movie for me", Howard said. "I've never had a director do that for me."[25] Shyamalan wanted a "singularity" tone for the music. "He wanted something that was very different, very distinctive, that immediately evoked the movie when people heard it,"[25] Howard explained. Howard and Shyamalan chose to simplify the score, and minimized the number of instruments (strings, trumpets and piano), with limited orchestrations. It was recorded at AIR Studios Lyndhurst Hall, a converted church in London. "You could have recorded the same music in a studio in Los Angeles, and it would have been great, but there is something about the sound of that church studio," Howard remarked. "It's definitely more misterioso."[25]

Filmmaker and comic book writer Kevin Smith felt Unbreakable was briefly similar to a comic book titled Mage: The Hero Discovered, written and illustrated by Matt Wagner.[26]

As in comic books, the main characters have their identified color schemes and aliases. David's are green and "Security" or "Hero", while Elijah's are purple and "Mr. Glass". The colors show up in their clothes, the wallpaper and bed sheets in their houses, Elijah's note to David, and various personal items.[14] The people whose bad deeds are sensed by David are identified by an article of clothing in a single bright color (red, orange), to contrast them with the dark and dreary color scheme typical of the rest of the movie (but not of most comic books). Several scenes also depict characters through reflections or doorways, as if framing them in a picture similar to comic books.[14]

After the film's release, rumors of possible sequels began circulating in different interviews and in film fansites. In 2000, Bruce Willis was quoted as hoping for an Unbreakable trilogy.[44] In December 2000, Shyamalan denied rumors he wrote Unbreakable as the first installment of a trilogy, saying he was not even thinking about it.[44] In August 2001, Shyamalan stated that, because of successful DVD sales, he had approached Touchstone Pictures about an Unbreakable sequel, an idea Shyamalan said the studio originally turned down because of the film's disappointing box office performance.[45] In a September 2008 article, Shyamalan and Samuel L. Jackson said there was some discussion of a sequel when the film was being made, but that it mostly died with the disappointing box office. Jackson said he was still interested in a sequel but Shyamalan was non-committal.[46] In February 2010, Willis said that Shyamalan was "still thinking about doing the fight movie between me and Sam that we were going to do", and stated that as long as Jackson was able to participate he would be "up for it".[47]

• 2000 in film
• List of American superhero films
• List of films featuring home invasions
• Superhero film
• List of sole survivors of aviation accidents and incidents

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