“Umbraree” is a Shyamalan movie! Throw away your preconceptions and believe in what you're seeing now! ※note! Contains spoilers.

“Episode 0” depicts the birth of an American comic book hero

According to Shyamalan himself, who has spoken in DVD bonus footage and in numerous interviews, the initial idea for Umbraree was to extract only the ``birth'' parts of American comic book heroes and make them into a single movie. Ta. Rather than the climax where the hero engages in flashy action with the villain, he was more interested in the stage in which the hero comes to know and accept the fact that he is a hero.

His attempts to translate elements of American comics into movies can be seen throughout his works. For example, the name of the main character played by Bruce Willis is David Dunn, but American comic book characters often have an alliterative pattern in which the first letter has the same consonant sound (though not necessarily the same alphabet). Clark Kent (Superman), Peter Parker (Spider-Man), Bruce Banner (Hulk), and Wade Wilson (Deadpool) are just a few. Shyamalan applied the same formula to Casey Cooke, the heroine of Split .

In terms of visuals, frame-within-frame compositions, where another screen is inserted into the screen, are frequently used. Shyamalan was particular about structuring the entire film as a single American comic book, and the frames within frames also serve as the panel divisions of an American comic book.

"Umbraree" (c) Photofest / Getty Images

Furthermore, the symbolism of color-coding David Dunn in green and Elijah, also known as Mr. Glass, in purple is in line with American comic book expressions. Purple is the theme color of the popular "Batman" villain, the Joker, but according to actor Samuel L. Jackson's testimony, he chose purple because it was Jackson's favorite color . (He sometimes explains on Twitter the reason for the color purple as ``representing loyalty and great power.'')

By the way, the theme color of Kevin, also known as the Beast, who appears in ``Split'' and ``Mr. Glass'' is yellow. In ``Umbraree,'' the cover of the American comic book that Elijah's mother presents to Elijah as a boy depicts a hero wearing a green costume fighting a yellow half-man, half-beast Monster called ``Jaggaro.'' . If we follow the philosophy of this trilogy, it seems safe to assume that this illustration foreshadowed a future in which David and Kevin would later meet each other.

"Split" preview

This is a little off-topic, but what Shyamalan had in mind other than American comics was "The Twilight Zone" (most of Shyamalan's films can be said to be "Twilight Zone"-like, but that aside). ``The Twilight Zone'' is a TV series that depicts mystical episodes with strong science fiction and horror themes in one episode, and Shyamalan aimed for a movie that would take two hours to depict each 30-minute episode.

Shyamalan dutifully declares at the beginning of the film that he was inspired by "The Twilight Zone." At the beginning of the movie, in the scene where Elijah is born, the first person whose name is called is a doctor named "Matheson." This name was inspired by Spielberg's " Clash! It is a homage to Richard Matheson, the original author of ``The Twilight Zone'' (1971), who also wrote many screenplays for ``The Twilight Zone.''

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