M. Night Shyamalan Reflects on Its Pioneering Role in Superhero Cinema
In an interview with Variety on the sidelines of the promotion of his new film “Trap”, M. Night Shyamalan recalls how the American studio was reluctant to promote his big film “Unbreakable” as a superhero film…
“It’s one of the masterpieces of our time!” said, always euphoric and enthusiastic when it comes to talking about cinema, a certain Quentin Tarantino, in an interview given a few years ago to Sky Movies. What film was he talking about? Unbreakable, a great film by M. Night Shyamalan, released in 2000.
“Unbreakable contains the best performance ever delivered by Bruce Willis, I think he is absolutely brilliant in this film. Unbreakable, which is a brilliant reinterpretation of the Superman mythology, is one of the masterpieces of our time” said QT
We can’t blame him. The film took the superhero genre on its head and dared to take the realism card, appropriating the codes of comic books to tell the intertwined destinies of two men, a vigilante (Bruce Willis) and his nemesis (Samuel L. Jackson).
“Nobody’s going to see a superhero movie!”
Despite the $672 million collected at the box office for its Sixth Sense, also with Bruce Willis, and its six Oscar nominations, which could have assured it a certain peace of mind, the studio was particularly cautious about promoting Unbreakable as a superhero movie. He actually wanted to promote it as a horror thriller. This is what the director recalled in an interview with Varietywhile promoting his new film, Trap.
“If you deny what it is because you’re afraid it’s different, then you’re robbing it of all its power. They were like, ‘We’ve had one of the greatest movies of all time and the same two people are making another movie. Let’s make it feel like that movie.’ Unlike Unbreakable was, which was the beginning of a whole different genre. They didn’t realize it because they were too afraid to say the word ‘comics.’
He adds: “They said no one would go see a comic book movie!” People said, “That wasn’t scary!” But who said that [Incassable] was going to be scary? And so, [j’ai appris] a really interesting lesson that if I want to be the purveyor of original stories, I have to have partners who understand that we’re going to reinvent ourselves every time. […]”.
If Bryan Singer’s X-Men had the scoop of being released a few months earlier, Unbreakable followed in its wake. These two works largely began to popularize superhero films in Hollywood. It was not until 2002 that Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man would further smash the box office and cause the genre to explode in popularity.
