Split Unbreakable Glass

I am very new to the community of fan editing and this is the first full edit that I have sat down and watched in earnest. I am a big fan of the Shyamalan’s original trilogy and have seen all of the films multiple times, so I was very excited to see what Wraith was able to do with them.

Audio/Video Quality – 10

Everything in the AV department was overall great. The cuts between the different films blended smoothly and if I had not seen the originals, I doubt I would have been able to pick out which scenes were from which film easily. No complaints here.

Visual Editing – 10

This is one area where I was thoroughly impressed. I won’t go into any spoilers, but there were a few scenes where I actually paused and went back to rewatch something that was changed from the original. These edits were done so seamlessly that a new viewer would never know that the scene had been altered at all. Fantastic work.

Audio Editing – 9

I watched this on my bedroom tv streaming from my home plex server, so I can’t speak too much on the fine details of the audio editing. What I can say is that I was not constantly fighting the volume controls because of audio balancing where I couldn’t hear the actors like I often deal with when watching plenty of films. Nothing in this category broke my immersion at all, and that is a good thing.

Narrative – 8

The new narrative structure kept things fresh and had me engaged the entire time. This cut is 3 hours and 30 minutes long, but it did not feel that long when watching. The new narrative feels like Glass was the main shell of the edit with scenes from Unbreakable and Split mixed in so that the viewer has a complete understanding of the story. For the most part, I did not miss any of the scenes that were completely cut from the movies and their removal contributed to keeping the forward momentum going. I think the only time that I was given pause on the narrative is during some of the Split scenes where there are three girls and then eventually one of the girls disappears without explanation until later in the film. A minor nitpick and not a massive deal imo. Scenes from previous films were spliced into certain scenes from Glass that added a new sense of emotional impact and gravitas that the original version was completely lacking. The improvements on the portions of Glass were easily my biggest takeaway from this edit.

Enjoyment - 9

Overall, I had a fantastic time watching this edit and seeing what Wraith was able to accomplish by mixing these three films together. I don’t think it stands as a replacement for the original trilogy, but as a companion to them. When I want to rewatch the whole story in one sitting or just don’t feel like watching the three originals, I’ll have this one to go back to.
I would 100% recommend this edit to anyone who enjoyed the original films and would like to experience this story in a new way. You are certainly in for some moments that will make you see things a new way and smile.

Took me far too long to get to this! And I'm sorry I couldn't have seen it sooner. Great to have finally watched it though.


Video/audio quality - 8

So I know that I opted for the smaller file option (for time and space reasons), so the rating bears that in mind, but I was quite surprised by how heavy the artifacting was throughout. If I was to be completely honest, I would give this a 6 overall for video quality, but I felt like I should give the benefit of the doubt, knowing that a higher quality version was available.

Glass generally looked good enough, but Split had visible artifacting throughout and whenever we cut to footage from Unbreakable it looked very blocky. Obviously, Glass is the newer film, but the stark contrast made me wonder if all the films had HD sources or if Unbreakable was maybe SD. I'm sure the bigger file looks better, but I'm curious as to whether there's still a noticeable drop between the different films or not.


Visual editing - 9

Wraith has done some superb work here. The title sequence and credits look great, and there are some really creative edits to help marry the content of the three films together. My only real gripe here is that there were several instances (usually during transitions or establishing shots) where the framerate would drop noticeably. I wasn't sure if this was a stylistic choice, or if it was from trying to stretch some shots for the sake of pacing, but to me it didn't look good and took me out of the edit.

The contrast between some of the scenes in terms of grading was also quite different and I felt some more consistency could have been brought there.


Audio editing - 8

Again, the vast majority here is fantastic work, but I do have some gripes:

- I really hate to mention this first thing, as I know the editor has taken a lot of time to rerender in order to fix pops, but sadly it still seems to be an issue. I noticed several throughout. If I was to take a guess... Maybe 10-15 give or take? Most pretty subtle, but a few were loud.
- Audio balance is not always consistent throughout. Some dialogue is very quiet, other times quite loud. I typically assumed this was the different film mixes, but there were one or two occasions where the dialogue levels jumped up mid-scene and I had to turn the volume down, which made me wonder if there was some selective normalisation? An example would be the hair brushing scene.
- Additionally, while the rescoring is generally well done I did find it just slightly over dominant at points. I'm nitpicking here. It's not by a long way, but enough for me to think "ah, this must be rescoring", and at times this also made the dialogue a little hard to make out.
- During what is normally the opening scene of Split, there is a moment where Anna Taylor Joy says "I'm just gonna take the bus" and the dialogue is out of sync with her lips.


Narrative - 7

On the whole, this functions well. It's a highly enjoyable edit that (for the most part) I think is safe to say you could watch as a stranger to the trilogy and still follow. That being said, some elements were a little confusing and in some cases created a lack of continuity:

- During the hairbrush scene we are suddenly with 2 girls instead of 3. There's no context for where the third girl has gone.
- It seems highly convenient and random for there to be a piece of paper ready for Joy's character that says "say Kevin Wendel Crumb!". I would personally remove the paper from the equation and look at placing a shot of a folder on the computer screen with his name when she is looking through the vlogs.
- During the first standoff in Glass between Bruce and the Beast, the Beast throws a table and there is a brief shot of it hitting someone who doesn't appear to be in this edit. It's pretty jarring as it's unclear what's going on.
- The twist with Mr Glass is now reserved for a key moment during Glass. It's well executed, though I do think by holding it back it actually loses some weight, as it's treated as a brief flashback and not the main focus. It also means we go a long time not really understanding why Mr Glass has been confined and treated the way he is.
- While the ending to Glass has been improved and I feel like it is less expository (to my memory) I'm disappointed more wasn't done to foreshadow the secret organisation. We see enough flashes of wrists with the tattoo that I feel like one could be used in one of Bruce's intuition flashes somewhere... There must be a way in a non-linear edit such as this to give it some degree of setup.

A note on the length: I have no issues with a 3.5 hour edit (we've all seen LOTR, right?). It's all about how it's paced. Wraith does a good job here, but unfortunately, it still feels a bit episodic, with the first half heavily weighted towards Split. There are too many long gaps where we are only on the Split narrative, only to have a short deviation to something from Unbreakable. I think there could be more of Glass's setup added in earlier as well.

Additionally, I found the chapter names confusing initially and only caught on partway through that they were chapters rather than references to which character we were following. To have a character's name as the heading but not actually focus consistently on that character threw me off a bit.

One final very small thing... Not really narrative but for some reason we have the "the following fanedit is.." source warning right at the end of the edit as well as at the start. It's a bit odd, given that the edit has been and gone. A very tiny thing, but it doesn't really make sense to have it at the end since there is no edit to follow the warning like it says.


Enjoyment - 8

I really enjoyed watching this and there were several moments where I was able to appreciate the amount of work Wraith had put in to achieve his narrative slant. I have to admit I liked the second half more, and I think this was mainly because it is mostly the film Glass, and that narrative flowed a lot smoother than the preceding jumping back and forth. But even during that segment, significant trims have been made to the film to help it flow better and keep the runtime from being too overbearing.

Finally, I apologise for not being able to give specific time codes. My computer is broken and so I watched this on a guest's laptop (HDMI to TV) with a couple of people - so no opportunity to check back on the file. I also don't feel right constantly pausing a film when others are watching with me. Hopefully some of what I've gathered from memory is of use though.

Thank you, Wraith, for your work and for allowing me to watch this. I'm sorry to be the first review that's a little less positive than most! I hope it isn't a discouragement though. While I personally think a bit more could be done here, I still think this is a great edit overall and I really admire the work you've put in.

Riveting and Unrelenting!

As someone who has watched all three films multiple times, I was stunned at how fresh, intriguing and mesmerizing this fan edit turned out. I was fully engaged from minute one (btw GREAT OPENING CREDITS!!!!) and the movie never let go. To me, it did not feel remotely like 3 hours. I was shocked when I looked at the time when the movie ended. A testament to Wraith's editing skills and masterfully crafted new narrative. Brilliant stuff!

If I had to nitpick, there were four minor moments where I went "hhhmmmmm....?" -- one, the placement of the SPLIT post-credit scene stands out visually as David looks completely different (fully bald, no beard) from the rest of the movie; two, David follows Hedwig, but the next scene he is in conversation with The Beast, it felt like something was missing; three. the intercutting from David using his touch ability in the past and on the street I think could have benefited from some underlying unifying music, and four, the most minor of all, Dr. Fletcher is entirely removed from the movie but we do see an old woman's dead body where Casey has been held prisoner... it just feels like an odd unexplained moment. Though I do not know how it could be resolved other than maybe with additional zoom and cropping?

Technically the edit was perfect to my eye and ear, and I must stress again, the new storyline was engrossing, filled with tension and mystery. An amazing achievement!

Highly recommended!!!

Another great and monumental work by Wraith. I would not go into the edit technicalities because, as always, they are top notch. The opening credits are a work of art.

Regarding narrative, I must say I've watched the alternative more recent edit by Wraith and preferred that. This older edit follows more closely the original narrative of Split/Glass, with a strong focus on secondary characters (the mother, the son, the kidnapped girl), whereas the newer edit mostly removed them to focus on the main characters' psyche and self-discovery. I found the latter to be more in line with the Unbreakable narrative, which I preferred. I also found the newer edit more original because it is also more divergent with the last two movies' tone, which I think has a lot of merit. This is the only reason to rate this edit a sightly below the newer one. Probably, if I've watched them in cronological order, I would have rated both as a 10 : )

Anyway both edits complement each other quite well and use a significant amount of different footage so watching both in any order is highly recommended!

I'd highly recommend this edit; it completely transformed my enjoyment of these films. It was obvious how much love and time Wraith put into the pacing and story structure. The flow overall was fantastic, and the finale felt far more earned this time around.

My scores on the visual elements came down to a couple nitpicks:
- There are a couple of subtle audio pops.
- The visuals are great; as a matter of personal taste, though, I think the title convention and fade to black transitions are a tad overdone. Once the titles become more like chapter titles, they work brilliantly. I understand the idea behind the fades...I just don't think it was as effective as other transitions could've been. I just would have made a few different choices as far as that's concerned.

But honestly, those things are a reach. I really loved this. WATCH IT!