No matter what you think of M. Night Shyamalan as a filmmaker, the one thing you can't deny is the man has ambition. Do you know how talented you have to be when your first film ("The Sixth Sense") gets a Best Picture nomination and is frequently brought up in the conversation of the greatest twist endings to any movie? The big carpet pull is basically Shyamalan's brand by now. He shoots for the stars, and even if the film itself doesn't quite work ("Old"), or it's a flat-out disaster ("The Happening"), at least you know you're getting a major studio release that comes from a singular vision.
Of his 14-film oeuvre, "Unbreakable" is one of Shyamalan's greatest, if not the best, and my personal favorite. As a mythic subversion of how we view comic book superheroes, it's truly unlike anything we've seen within the subgenre. And as a general superhero movie, it's undoubtedly one of the greatest to ever do it. James Newton Howard's score is god-tier composing work. "Unbreakable" carries the same subtle weight and dread of "The Sixth Sense," with a shaken man grappling with his mortality, and the extent of which it can transform him into something greater.
We all now know that the ending to Shamaylan's 2017 film "Split" confirms that the film takes place within the same universe as "Unbreakable," which ultimately led to the royal rumble of "Glass." But despite the bigger universe stuff at hand, "Unbreakable" still stands as an excellent deconstruction of the modern superhero not only because of Shyamalan's empathetic precision to detail, but because of the man who's inspired him since the beginning of his career: Bruce Willis.