| “ | Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you are here. That's... just an awful feeling. I almost gave up hope. There were so many times I questioned myself. But I found you...so many sacrifices, just to find you. Now that we know who you are, I know who I am. I'm not a mistake! It all makes sense. In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain's going to be? He's the exact opposite of the hero, and most times they're friends like you and me. I should've known way back when. You know why, David? Because of the kids. They called me Mr. Glass. | „ |
| ~ Elijah Price's speech to David Dunn and revealing his true colors |
Elijah Price, also known as Mr. Glass, is the hidden main antagonist of the 2000 superhero thriller film Unbreakable.
He was portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson who also played Richmond Valentine and Jules Winfield.
Personality
Elijah was a very convoluted man. He was highly intelligent, being a very daring and analytical strategist and capable of manipulating people very easily. Although he was not using a secondary persona as most villains do, as he enthralled and persuaded them with his genuine personality. Elijah was, however, extremely obsessive and possessed an unhealthy capacity for focus, becoming monomaniacally obsessed with finding his own antithesis, to the point that he would take the sociopathic route of murdering innocent people and destroying public transportation to achieve his goals. Elijah is fully delusional, and blatantly believes that the chaos he caused was necessary to get what he wanted. Elijah was obsessed with comic-book trivia, conceptions and details, which led to him believing that there was a polar opposite to him out there somewhere. He confessed that he suffered from an intense inferiority complex and delusions of dysfunctionality, confessing that he believed that the scariest thing of all was to not know what his purpose in the world was.
Biography
He was born with Type I Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a rare disease in which bones break easily. He was relentlessly mocked as a child by other children, who callously labelled him as 'Mr. Glass' on account of his intense frailty. Drawing on what he has read in comic books - hardback books would have probably heavily damaged his frame due to their weight - during his many hospital stays, Price theorizes that if he is frail at one extreme, then perhaps there is someone strong at the opposite extreme - this became an obsession that clung to him for the rest of his life. Price optimistically deduced that, though he was extremely frail, he had developed a sharp intellect and a formidable cunning streak. He confessed in later life that, in his obsession with finding his own antithesis, there were so many times he doubted that he would succeed, only making him increasingly insane and a fully-fledged monomaniac.
Present Day
Meeting David and Convicing David that He is a Superhero
David attends an exhibition at Elijah's comic book art gallery and meets Elijah's mother (Charlayne Woodard) ,then ,he meets Elijah and he is succsees to convince David that he is a superhero beacuse he is the only survivor in the train crash.
Elijah's Reveal as The Villain and as Healthy Man and Ending of the Story
After talking with Elijah in the back room of his studio, David shakes his hand and discovers to his horror that Elijah had orchestrated many of the fatal disasters he mentioned throughout the movie, causing hundreds of deaths, the last being David's train accident. Elijah insists the deaths were justified as a means to find David. He explains that his purpose in life is to be the archvillain to David's hero, even going so far as to suggest that his childhood moniker, "Mr. Glass," should have alerted him to the fact that he was always a villain. The final captions reveal that David led police to Elijah, who was committed to an institution for the criminally insane.
Trivia
- Elijah Price is considered - alongside John Doe, Kylo Ren and General Zod - to be one of the greatest delusional villains in fictional history