Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable trilogy, featuring Split and Glass.

The promising commercial and critical reception for Unbreakable earned the movie high praise as one of M. Night Shyamalan’s best works and an early example of a successful superhero movie that was released in a pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe era. However, there is also a deeper history of Unbreakable, especially in of Samuel L. Jackson, whose character’s legacy affected the movies that came after. Interestingly, the Unbreakable movie had a similar plot point to the French film Amélie, which was released just one year later, and this similarity caused a worrying problem for Amélie’s writer and director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Amélie & Unbreakable Both Released Close Together & Shared The Same Character Idea

Copying Concepts Is A Worry In The Film Industry

According to Amélie’s DVD commentary, the movie’s writer and director had already written a character with glass-like bones before he had seen Unbreakable. Jeunet comments that “When I saw Unbreakable, I was a little bit sad because it was the same idea and it was exactly the same time.” This was, of course, in reference to how Samuel L. Jackson’s Unbreakable character Elijah Price had glass-like bones, much like Amélie’s Raymond Dufayel (Serge Merlin). The fact the two films were released within one year of each other obviously made Jeunet worried that people might think Amélie was copying Unbreakable.

However, Jeunet goes on to say, “On the other hand, I am such a big fan of The Sixth Sense. I was very proud because I love M. Night Shyamalan.” Despite the characters having the same condition, Unbreakable’s Elijah and Amélie’s Raymond are very different people for a number of reasons, and the movies were in completely different genres. Therefore, no one really cared that the two films featured similar characters, especially as Amélie became known as one of the best French movies that everyone should watch, earning its place as a high-profile movie internationally, just like Shyamalan’s Unbreakable.

Amélie & Unbreakable Use Their Glass-Like Characters In Different Ways

Elijah Wants To Destroy What Raymond Wants To Create

Amélie and Unbreakable use their glass-like characters in different ways, which inform the narrative of their respective films. Samuel L. Jackson’s character is far from good in Unbreakable, as, despite his fragile condition, Elijah is an avid manipulator, using his intelligence to make up for what he lacks in physical strength to become a supervillain. Elijah’s fragility drives him to seek out superhumans that are “unbreakable,” and this mission causes him to develop an unhealthy fixation on superheroes and a skewed outlook on the world, eventually landing him in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane due to his crimes.

In contrast, Amélie’s Raymond Dufayel is a quiet character who uses his solitude to reflect and paint the world outside. Rather than manipulating the main character, like Elijah does in Unbreakable, Raymond’s understanding of loneliness due to his condition emphasizes to Amélie the importance of connection and taking risks, as he cannot do the same. The deeper messages of Amélie made the foreign language movie a box office hit in the US, and its themes show a distinct contrast to Unbreakable’s superhero concept. However, you can understand why Jean-Pierre Jeunet was slightly worried people might think he was copying Unbreakable.