Unbreakable (2000)

Unbreakable is a 2000 American superhero thriller film written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robin Wright. In Unbreakable, David Dunn (Willis) survives a train crash with no injuries, leading to the realization that he harbors superhuman abilities. As he begins to grapple with this discovery, he comes to the attention of disabled comic book store owner Elijah Price (Jackson), who manipulates David to understand him.

Shyamalan organized the narrative of Unbreakable to parallel a comic book's traditional three-part story structure. After settling on the origin story, Shyamalan wrote the screenplay as a speculative screenplay with Willis already set to star in the film and Jackson in mind to portray Elijah Price. Filming began in April 2000 and was completed in July.

Unbreakable was released on November 22, 2000. It received generally positive reviews, with praise for Shyamalan's direction, screenplay, its aesthetics, the performances, the emotional weight of the story, cinematography, and the score by James Newton Howard. The film has subsequently gained a strong cult following. A realistic vision of the superhero genre, it is regarded by many as one of Shyamalan's best films and one of the best superhero films. In 2011, Time listed it as one of the top ten superhero films of all time, ranking it number four. Quentin Tarantino also included it on his list of the top 20 films released from 1992 to 2009.

After years of development on a follow-up film, a thematic sequel, Split, with Willis reprising his role as David Dunn in a cameo role, was released in January 2017. After the financial and critical success of Split, Shyamalan immediately began working on a third film, titled Glass, which was released January 18, 2019, thus making Unbreakable the first installment in the Unbreakable film series.