Unbreakable: What honestly might be my favorite superhero movie.
When you watch a superhero film one would probably expect a lot of epic fights grand scales, bright and vibrant costumes and just all around a grand and epic story. That would be fair given how these films have played out over roughly the past 20 years or so. The thing that I love the most about Unbreakable as a film is the fact that this film is very much not that. Unbreakable is a quiet, slow burn film with a low scale story about a man coming to realize that he may not be like everyone else and what to do with that realization. It’s a film that goes against the genre conventions of a superhero film and the kicker of it all is the fact that it did this really before the genre really existed at least in the current form we know it as today. Even when it comes to the main character David Dunn, a lot of the times in the genre you see an epic hero or badass character that’s going to come in kick ass and save the day and well that’s not really David.
David Dunn is just a guy, a family man working as a security guard at a football stadium in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. His marriage is on the rocks and slowly heading toward divorce, At the beginning of the film he is on a train heading back to Philadelphia from New York where David went for a job interview. the train collides with another and derails killing everyone on board both trains with the exception of one person: David Dunn who emerges from the crash not only alive but without a scratch on him, he is miraculously unharmed. this combined with Dunn getting a note left on his car that asks him if he can ever remember getting sick begins his journey of discovery.
At the center of that journey is Elijah Price, a man who couldn’t be more opposite of David Dunn in every way, he has a condition that makes his bones incredibly brittle and very easy to break as we find out over the course of the film as he helps David realize his potential and how their maybe more to both of them than meets the eye and how their destinies maybe more entwined than they’ll ever know.
I could honestly go on and on forever about this movie and the trilogy it spawned but I don’t want to get too into the weeds on this films as I don’t want to spoil it for those that haven’t seen it but I do plan on covering both Split and Glass at somepoint thought it may not be right now. anyway I love this movie and if you haven’t seen it and anything I’ve said about it interests you please feel free to check it out and let me know what you think about it.
Until next time I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.
-Zach.