Split Unbreakable Glass

I can't say I'm a big fan of the trilogy this edit is based on, but it definitely had some neat ideas. Overall, I enjoyed this edit, but it's not without flaws. 3.5 hours is a lot to ask of your audience. I think this story could have been cut down even more - not every scene felt vital to me. The video quality was top notch, but I wasn't a fan of the constant fade transitions where a straight cut felt like it would have been fine. The audio is a nice 5.1 mix - most of the time. There are spots, namely at about 43, 56, 1:23, 1:43 and 2:43 minutes (there were others), where the audio clearly shifts from a 5.1 mix to an expanded stereo mix with 2 channels being sent to all 5. I have to assume this is from deleted scenes, which are usually a 2.0 source, being inserted into the 5.1 timeline and the editing software converting to 5.1, but I can't be sure. As other have said, there are occasional audio pops, I noted a fairly obvious one at about 2:06. Considering the amount of work that went into this, these audio issues really should have been corrected before release.

That said, from someone who wasn't a big fan of the originals, I enjoyed this edit. Very much recommended for fans of the originals and non-fans might get a kick out of it too.

Unbreakable is one of my favorite films of all time. I also enjoyed Split and (even) Glass too!

In this fanmix of the trilogy, Wraith makes the tough but necessary choices on cuts for this narrative. And it works well.

Superb VFX work for the opening and closing glass shards. Also great VFX for several visual transitions.

A lot of top notch, above the call of duty video transition work is apparent, including where Elijah was getting the laser treatment transitioning to the flash of the train. And the transition from David back to Elijah's eye. Excellent job of maintaining the original transition style there. Wraith has a great eye.

Nice cut away from David's weight lifting scene ending with the line "what else can we use?" Now that I see it cut this way, I realize that's where M Knight could have easily ended the scene. Again, such a good eye, Wraith. When we see the paint buckets added on later in a flashback it now feels necessary and with purpose, rather than a drawn out scene.

Not a big deal but cutting the beginning of David's weight lifting session makes the scene maybe a tad confusing when David suddenly asks out of the blue, "how much did you take off?"

The scene with David passing Joseph the newspaper articles loses much it's dramatic power with the way the scenes have to jump around in this version (a necessary compromise). But then again, the way this edit is cut and scored, the fight between David and the Beast outside the asylum gains more emotional resonance.

For me the most awful parts of Glass to endure were when the characters start narrating what is presently happening but in comic book terms like, "the enemy becomes the ally." This is just my personal preference as I'm highly adverse to expository. Some or most of these cringy (for me) Glass moments remain in this cut. Others may like them.

****** SPOILER ALERT ******
....
Scroll further down if you don't want to read comments about the end:

The way Wraith ends everything is now more dramatically effective by no longer having family members be an active part of releasing video footage to the public. The moment is now more about resolving the story of the Mastermind. Superb!
...
...
...

END OF SPOILER
******
There were some sporadic framerate issues (random frame skips, one example at 1:13:36). This can happen for different reasons but usually when a video file such as an mkv is converted to mp4 with a tool that incorrectly flags the framerate as variable. The resulting output in an NLE unfortunately will have random, jerky frame skips throughout.

Multiple parts where slow motion was used had a noticeable drop in framerate (without apparent motion smoothing applied), indicative of fanedited material.

There were several very noticeable audio and video editing issues in this cut, a few jarring. Below are the main issues which affected scoring:

dozens of tiny clicks/pops throughout during when audio clips are not faded in the NLE (very audible through headphones but not so much on a tv/external speakers) examples 13s 29s 2m15s 14m56s, 16m49s... recurring until the end

43:16 - 43:21 color grade of the scene changes abruptly
1:10:00 sudden audio jump, makes the video cut seem very edited
1:18:42 the music track added back in here at the comic shop isn't matched up perfectly with itself (noticeably goes off tempo with a double drum hit at the merge point)
1:33:12 very noticeable visual cut to remove McAvoy dialogue, even with the short insert in between, McAvoy is suddenly in a completely different stance and much closer to Casey
1:42:12 audio glitch: Loud computer noise cuts out then back in.
2:03:59 very noticeable audio gap, approaching but not quite jarring
2:06:16 high pitched, JARRING audio glitch
3:24:31 The last words of Dr Glass' ending VO speech are completely garbled underneath the music. : (

Note: the video quality itself is decent and watchable, but there is a moderate amount of blocking artifacts in many scenes in the dark or flat background areas of the picture. Although the audio bitrate is on the very low end for 6 channels, the audio quality is still usually perceptually high overall, but with ever so slight occasional high end muddiness.

Overall, this cut is worth watching alone for Wraith's beautiful and thoughtful job with all the re-scoring choices. Thank you Wraith for the insane amount of thought and heart you put into this project. I did thoroughly enjoy it as an alternate viewing experience. Nothing personal on the audio score; see below for the reasoning. And I can certainly update the score based on any future revisions I learn about.

For reference here's my general rating explanations:

Best in Class / Perfect (or nearly so) = 10
Excellent = 9
Good = 8
Decent / Above Average = 7
Fair / Slightly Above Average = 6
Slightly Below Average = 5
Below Average = 4
Poor = 3
Bad = 2
It really can't get worse = 1

And because I gave a lower score on Audio Editing below is my own personal guideline to explain how I reached the score:

Audio Editing incl. Musical Score
Three or more instances of jarring issues such as very rough transitions, complete loss of sound, or major audio syncing errors = 1
One or two instances of jarring issues or five or more instances of minor issues such as clicks, low audio; or added music masks the dialogue = 4
Four or less instances of minor issues, noticeable but not jarring, added music fits the mood but has minor volume issues = 6
One or two instances of minor issues, nearly seamless, added music improves the scene(s) and blends well = 8
Completely seamless, no mistakes, professional. Must include audio restoration or compelling changes to musical score = 10

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.