Split Unbreakable Glass

Unbreakable, Split, and Glass have great ideas but they suffer from scenes that drag, over explanations and awkward pauses to the point that each one of them can be reduced significantly, but there is a wonderful story to tell, it is almost like these films request a fan edit. It would be a challenge however to keep the heart and soul of those movies by editing them.

Thus we get 2 fan edits - SUG and UGS and you will get more enjoyment from these films by watching one of these fan edits/
But which one to pick

SUG (This Edit) has the superior narrative but UGS is more enjoyable and better edited.

SUG tells the story from each character's perspective a good idea but the scenes from Unbreakable can't match those of Split and Glass, also this would be a long edit in order to save all the important emotional character moments 3.5 hours long which still makes the film drag not to mention there are scenes with obvious cut.

It's good but it could be better, also the opening is fantastic.

If you like slow-paced and character-focused stories also you don't mind the awkward transitions this is the edit for you.

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 ******
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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!
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END OF SPOILER
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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

(MAJOR SPOILERS!)


Eastrail 177 trilogy...god what a glorious mess.

Unbreakable. An amazing story about belief and doubt. Ultimately ending in triumph.

Split. A...questionable story/connection about belief and doubt. Ending in...a triumph for the hordes and arguably for Casey.

Glass. It's a half-amazing Half atrocious story about belief and doubt. Unfortunately ending on a tragic but hopeful note.

If you see it as a whole. It feels like one giant mess. Split is a point of connection between Unbreakable and Glass. And Glass feels more like a Split sequel than being a bit of both. Making everyone question why they brought David Dunn from the first place just to- kill him OFF IN A FREAKING PUDDLE-

But the idea it proposes is extremely unique. Especially considering it as a superhero trilogy. The trilogy explores the reason why we cling to faith, and how it sometimes could change the destination of our lives forever. The ending in my opinion was partially brilliant as well. The idea of all three of these movies simply being origin stories…is interesting and brilliant!

So I’ve wondered.

-Is there any way to tie these movies into one narrative structure?-

And....this fan edit, I thought, could be a key to that answer.

Made by Wraith. Split Unbreakable Glass.



Audio/Video Quality.

First of all, How can I describe it?... Oh yeah.

The visual looks like an amazing cake that I want to go and swallow the entire thing. Enough said. Like I never expected this great of a conversion from the actual movie format to the copied format (If that's even the tactic Wraith used.)

I was worried that Unbreakable’s old frame would distract me from being with clearly new frames of Split and Glass. But considering Unbreakable is supposed to be a form of a flashback...it kinda helped the experience as well!

There is ONLY ONE FLAW. (HOW IS THAT EVEN-)

Is at the scene where Mr. Glass and the Beast have a conversation in the surgery room. The aspect ratio increases a little bit…(2:51:00)? Except for that, it is pretty much perfect. Bravo man. Bravo.



Visual Editing

A crucial part of every movie. If the editing is bad. If the editing cannot convey the story in a good way- it becomes another bad movie. And the editing of this film....had some misses...AND MANY HITS!

Let’s get the flaws out of the way first shall we? The weakest scenes for me:

1. Casey’s stand against the Beast intercut with her flashback to the uncle. (1:36:21~1:37:00)
2. 1:44:44~1:54:00

I get the reason why they are edited the way they were....but it didn’t work for me.

Both of them are the turning point for the characters….and maybe it distracted me a little bit by having a continuous intersection with the past and the future.

For Casey’s case. In this intense scene- when it suddenly starts cutting to a shot of her head on the wall- An reversed footage of Casey with a shotgun took me out of the scene.

For David’s case. It starts with the deleted scene of Glass unexpectedly melded together with the ending scene of Split. Still stock image of the city….and two music playing at once. David’s coffee scene does not match the continuity. And it gets worse with tense scenes of David searching for the Horde, getting distracted by the triumphant tone of the Unbreakable’s climax. To me at least. They didn't work at all.

This was when I thought. Yikes- is this where this edit starts to decline?

Okay then.

LET'S GET INTO SCENES I DID LIKE!

ELIJAH PRICE. (0:03:40~0:14:25)
DAVID DUNN (0:24:26~0:38:00)
THE HORDE (0:38:01~0:47:17)
Mr. GLASS (0:47:18~0:57:00)
Pretty much every single moment since the Dr. ELLIE STAPLE chapter began (1:58:00~3:25:10)

For ELIJAH’s case. What a perfect introduction to his character man….beginning with the opening of Unbreakable. The Audience gains the information that his bone is very weak. Connecting to the scene where Ms. Elijah introduces the biggest part of his character -being a mistake.- Before the audience can wonder how it would feel to live like him. Boom. Straight cut to the amusement park scene, and after the end of the scene, cut to another Unbreakable scene. Mwah. The connection between these scenes is his broken arm. Implying that this poor soul had gone through those circumstances over and over again. And it is flawless. And ending the introduction with showing how his obsession with comics started! By a mere 11 minutes, I was invested in ELIJAH’s character. Bravo.

For DAVID’s case. Another great introduction to the character. Establishing shot to audio of David’s opening of the mailbox (Just amazing). He is all alone. Seems sad. And with Audry’s introduction. It delivers a very natural connection to the past A.K.A training scene. At first, I was worried that his characteristics would be skipped (except for that slight glimpse of his desires for new love and giving a funny look at a little girl). However, everything snapped into me as David mentioned the concept of -Sadness in the morning.- (0:37:17~0:37:35) Then it hit me. Oh, God. Wraith just excellently summarized his character in one sentence. And rest of the implications were simply a build-up to this reveal. Yet again. Bravo.

For HORDE’s case. I was skeptical about including Split in the beginning. Because I liked the Unbreakable plot line but not this plotline. Till this part...at least. Sets up Hedwig and shows Casey’s potential as a survivor. After Casey fails to convince Hedwig….it shows the flashback sequence to his uncle. And I’ve noticed, whenever the threat of being killed was getting closer and closer….the flashback scene revealed more and more as well. Amazing way of slowly revealing how fucked up her childhood was and a great symbolism of a -Beast- coming to get her. And cutting straight to Patrica’s sandwich scene. Great. Keep the tension going! The tension rises to its top….as Dennis mentions the -Beast.- The drawing of the Beast. Slow fade out. Me saying genuine -Oh shit.- Yet again. Bravo.

For Mr. GLASS’s case. It plays out like a normal stadium scene in Unbreakable with a minor change of David seeing the gun rather than just feeling it. Honestly...I thought that was not a good choice. Keeping it subtle could’ve been nice…..then the stair scene. It does not reveal the presence of a silver gun. HECK YEAH. Much more interesting now! Now the sense of doubt seeps into my mind- was the gun there? Or was David just imagining he had a gun. Is he mad? Just- BRAVO!

For the Third Act’s case. It feels like Glass. But more tightly paced. It has so many chapters I adore it’s hard to choose….so many great moments. Like when Joseph is leaving the facility, flashback to the train crash on the news. And having a gun scene of Unbreakable during the conversation scene. Keeping it tense once more. Keeping the deleted scene of ELIJAH’s secret smile at Ms. ELIJAH shows he DOES have a plan! Keeping the TENSION! And...the trinity was my absolute favorite out of all the chapters. It at least to me felt like a thematic climax. The literal battle between our protagonist’s belief and Staple’s doubt. Unraveling some of the mysteries. The scene is mostly the same as Glass’s original version...but now it feels more powerful. And love the inclusion of the scene -Action Comics 1- and cutting straight into David’s interrogation. Brilliant. And the chapter Mastermind….again feels like an answer to the battle that was throughout the entire film. Yes. They are real. But it came at a great cause. Adding more moral complexity to the battle! And when it shows the time DAVID lifted multiple paints at the metal door break down scene….just visually implies David’s thought. -Just think of a time I lifted a paint….I can do this.- BRAVO BRAVO BRAVO!


Audio Editing

It was pretty good...for the most part. There were several occasions when two pieces of music converged together creating this weird mixture of emotions- especially at David’s coffee shop scene.

But mostly it was pretty great!



Narrative

Do you know how satisfying it feels to finish a puzzle? This movie’s narrative felt like solving a puzzle. Solving pieces of thematic puzzles sprinkled throughout the Eastrail 177 trilogy- and piecing all of them back together.

The first act introduces us to three different yet common characters. First ELIJAH. Then KEVIN. Lastly DAVID. All of them have a common trait of being broken internally. And these orders of the introduction seem pretty intentional for me. By placing ELIJAH’s tragic story first it hooks us in the story emotionally. Now we are somewhat emotional because it uses the chance to quickly introduce another character and introduces the tone of the film, which is a thriller of course. And all of them culminate with DAVID’s chapter, introducing the idea of the story. -How can they no longer feel sadness after waking up?- Mr. Glass. Or the film suggests that the belief in superpower is the answer to it. But two seeds of doubt keep the audience away from completely buying into the concept. One. Elijah not seeing a silver gun, logically making us not believe this superpower nonsense. Two. Horde’s horrible actions SUMMON these -superhuman abilities,- morally making us deny this concept of the superpower.

Brilliant placements of the scenes.

The second act now breaks the ice and introduces YES THEY DO HAVE SUPERPOWER. But quickly asks another question…is that truly a good thing? The reason for BEAST’s usage of powers first is to plant another seed of moral doubt and skepticism. Then showing the after effect, Casey’s awakening pushes the idea -No! Superpowers can help! It brings good out of people!- And it continues with David’s usage of power. Two ideas. Two ideas of how this power is used are introduced. Now. They fight. Brilliant. Showing off two different ways of coping mechanism duking it out to the death….then.

As soon as the GLASS part. Which is chapter Dr. ELLIE STAPLE starts. In my opinion. We just stepped into a third act. Where these beliefs are tested by Dr. Staple. With dozens….DOZENS of seeds of doubts thrown at the audiences like a time bomb. My brain was so….so twisted at this section. EVEN IF I KNEW THEY ARE SUPERHEROES.

The ending….could’ve been better. But I like it ends on an ambiguous note. Because the twist of Mr. GLASS’s true plan wasn’t shoved down our throat like the movie….we can think about the ending. Did their powers get revealed to the world? Or is it another fantasy of Mr. GLASS? Is it the truth? Or another coping mechanism to fight the impending sadness of death. Planting the seeds of doubt. To the very end.




Enjoyment

Considering it is 3 hours and 30 minutes of content.

It sure did feel like 2 hours!

I did feel a little sleepy at the ending fight- but that was probably due to it being like midnight.

So yeah. I did enjoy it!


CONCLUSION

I’m going to end this long review with a one-sentence review I wrote for my watch movie list.

Wraith’s Eastrail 177 (Split Unbreakable Glass Fan Edit)-
7~7.5/10
Flawed in many ways….but an impressive storytelling about belief. And how they can change in many ways…good or evil….but at least there will be more people believing in themselves. Too late now.

Thanks for reading!

And Wraith!

You were spectacular.

REJOICEEEEE! Fan editors are more evolved…..Rejoice.

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.