The main character in Shyamalan’s Unbreakable discovers over the course of the film that he’s:
Invulnerable to physical damage or illness of any kind.
Able to summon super strength (with great effort) for the task at hand. If he needs to bench press every weight he has, he can. Same goes for ripping a car door off its hinges.
Limited psychic power - able to see flashes of peoples’ crimes by coming into contact with them.
Along with these powers come two compulsions. The first is a desire for secrecy or a drive to separate yourself from others. The second is a drive to keep people safe.
His weakness is water. If he drinks too much too fast, he feels like he’ll choke. He can drown as well.
So imagine that you discover that you possess these powers, weaknesses, and impulses. Unlike most superhero powers, you can detect crime. Do you fight it? Do you do so in the Spider-Man or Batman sense where you leave the guilty tied up for the police with plenty of evidence at hand? Would you kill if circumstances forced your hand - like in the film? In the film, he uses this psychic skill and quickly sees a rape, shoplifting, and nightmarish home invasion that includes murder, rape (likely) and kidnapping. Would seeing so many crimes so often be a curse or burden for you?
Your personality drives you toward secrecy, but how secret would you be? Would you go into law enforcement (if you’re young enough for a career change) - using your powers secretly - like playing off your psychic visions as tips from criminal informants? Or would you go out as a disguised or costumed hero or vigilante?
Would you keep any ill-gotten cash you’d encounter to finance this life?
Yep, I’d go the full on costumed vigilante route and help as many people as I could. I guess I’d move to a large city to be near more crimes, and I’d have to set up a secret lair someplace. Probably in an old, abandoned factory.
No, I wouldn’t always leave the villains lying around for the police to scoop up and then put back out on the streets like Spider-Man (cough pussy cough). If I stopped a crime, and I felt the perp deserved to be killed, well…with great power comes the ability to decide life or death. I doubt I’d go as far as The Punisher, gunning down every criminal in town. Somewhere between him and Dexter.
Hell yes I’d keep any ill-gotten cash. In fact, my first hit would probably have to be some low level gun runner, so I could ammo up for future gigs. Plus, I gotta be able to afford that secret hideout, and you know, being a vigilante doesn’t exactly come with a pension.
Yeah, I’ve fantasized about this some.
Nothing. And if I could get rid of the psychometry without losing the nigh-invulnerability, I’d do so. Maybe even if I had to lose the invulnerability.
I’m mostly just playing devil’s advocate here, but I don’t really agree with this assertion. Bruce Willis’ character is this way, but I don’t think that necessarily is a result of his superpowers. I think that some people are naturally sociable or hateful, and those people would likely do very different things with superpowers than someone who is naturally secretive and/or altruistic.
To answer the OP, though (and I love this movie, so I find this a topic worthy of discussion!), I mostly share the traits in the quote above. I’m an EOD tech, a military job that is notable in that it is almost exclusively about protecting others, and I have no close friends to speak of except for my wife and family. I’d like to think that I would actively use my superpowers to right wrongs where I could. I don’t think I’d be above killing someone, but then I’ve never done that so I don’t know how killing a person would affect me. And yes, I’d want a costume. Who wouldn’t want a costume?!?!
Would my powers become a burden to me? Depends on how deviant something has to be before it pings on my bad-things radar, but I’d say almost certainly. Imagine meeting your girlfriend/fiancee’s parents for the first time and, upon shaking hands with him, finding out that your future father-in-law did something horrible to her when she was young. I didn’t meet my FIL until my wedding weekend. How do you deal with that situation? What if it’s something more benign, say, a coworker stealing a pack of gum from the office’s snack bar? What can you do, morally, with the strength to crush skulls to someone who steals a $.25 pack of gum?
Interesting thoughts, BomTek. I’ve ascribed those two character compulsions to his powers rather than his personality because both the drive to protect the innocent and maintaining a secret identity to protect those close to you are such huge super hero tropes. David Dunn, in the course of living his normal life, has neglected the secret identity trope and his family life suffers for it. Once this super hero trope is fulfilled in the climax of the film, he is able to stop distancing himself from his wife and son, in my view.
Where do you see Dunn’s family suffering for his neglect of a secret identity? Other than ripping open the door to save the Robin Wright character after the car crash, he never does anything heroic except for the one night he saves the little girls from the home invader (and fails to save their mother).
I don’t count surviving the train crash as heroic. It’s too passive.
He can’t get close to his family. He’s on the train because he’s planning to move to a different city. His wife has to ask them on their give-it-a-second-chance date if he “knowingly keeps Joseph and me at a distance?”. When he has to go to his son’s school, because his son got in trouble and requested that they only contact his father, David is out of his element with the old nurse. He says “Audrey handles that type of stuff.” The nurse asks, “What stuff is that.” To which he answers, “Joseph stuff.” And in Willis’ performance here you can see that he feels that is wrong as the words leave his mouth. So David Dunn is distanced and uninvolved with his family. Not a bad man, just distanced.
After he performs his heroic act in the climax of the film - while shrouded in his very cape-esque poncho and hood - he returns home and there is an important and symbolic shot of him hanging up the poncho. After secretly venturing out into the lion’s den in disguise to perform highly heroic acts and meet out justice, he returns to his loved ones, and stepped out of that disguise so he can literally be with them. The next shot is David carrying his wife up to the separate bed he’d been sleeping in. The next morning, the scene is an idealistic family breakfast, signifying his return to a caring family man. His reunification with his wife had a sexual element (implied - they reunite in bed and she previously asks if there was another woman in his life). Here, at breakfast, his moment with his son is based around his sharing of his secret identity when he slides his the morning paper that details the heroics of a mysterious hero. This is how he engages his son. It is also important to note that he quickly puts a finger to his lips in the shush motion when his son reacts. He neatly signals that his secret identity is *their *secret and not Joseph’s mother’s.
So, where the *secret *heroics had been missing from his life prior to his fully becoming the hero, his family life suffered. Once he achieved his super heroic obligations in all their trappings and tropes, he could allow himself to have a healthy family life. In a way, David’s family life was a barometer for his unfulfilled destiny.
