M. Night Shyamalan Discusses Glass’ Climax and Ending (SPOILERS)

M. Night Shyamalan spoke with Coming Soon for a new interview discussing the climax and ending of Glass. Highlights (including, obviously, spoilers) are below:

On what kind of resistance he got from Universal and Disney over killing the main characters: “You know, not a ton. Like, a hope that we could keep going, if we wanted to keep going. But that was never the intention. The intention was to have the format of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” where the main character seemingly is vanquished, and yet the spirit is unleashed. You feel the bittersweetness of it all, but yet their contribution to the world, to the story and to the members in the story is profound and goes on. So that format of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was earth shattering to me. To me, that’s a paradigm shift. That’s a surprise.”

On the deaths not being in vain: “No, not at all. I’m huge on the bittersweetness of things.”

On whether he thinks Elijah is redeemed by the reveal of the anti-superhero group: “Yeah, I do. The audience as well really roots for him. I mean, you see even the carnival scene, it’s all sympathy. And he has a weird, weird mentality of it. He has a little bit of anger towards those that are normal, and if he was in therapy he would admit that. But the idea is also that he’s going crazy a little bit because he’s like, “Maybe I’m making this up. The world didn’t play out the way I thought. David didn’t unleash the whole world and everything’s the same as it was and how could it be that there’s only three of us?” He’s starting to doubt. You root for a person like that.”