David Dunn (Unbreakable character)
| David Dunn | |
|---|---|
| Unbreakable character | |
| First appearance | Unbreakable (2000) |
| Last appearance | Split (2016) |
| Created by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Portrayed by | Bruce Willis |
| Information | |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Security guard |
| Relatives | Joseph Dunn (son) |
David Dunn is a fictional character and the main protagonist in the Unbreakable franchise, portrayed by American actor Bruce Willis. Dunn is a former college football prodigy, who, in Unbreakable, is a security guard with supernatural abilities.
When M. Night Shyamalan conceived the idea for Unbreakable, the outline had a comic book's traditional three-part structure (the superhero's "birth", his struggles against general evil-doers, and the hero's ultimate battle against the "archenemy"). However, he found the origin story most interesting, and chose to write Unbreakable as one.
Willis became attached while shooting The Sixth Sense, also directed by Shyamalan.
Once upon a time, David Dunn was a football prodigy sought out by professional teams, but in later life, he finds himself in a dying marriage with his college sweetheart, Audrey, much to the distress of their son Joseph, and working as security guard at a football stadium. As he returns home from an unsuccessful job interview in New York City, David's train crashes, killing the other 131 passengers, while he is the only survivor, sustaining no injuries.
Unbreakable was first released in November 2000. In the film, Dunn is a security guard who discovers he has supernatural abilities, with superhuman levels of strength, stamina, and invulnerability, as well as an extrasensory ability to see the crimes people have committed by touching them. Throughout the film, he is encouraged by Elijah Price, also known as "Mr. Glass" (Samuel L. Jackson) to become a superhero. Price, whose bones break easily because of a disease, develops a theory that if there is an extreme frailty there must be an "unbreakable" human in existence as well and revealed in the ending, sets out committing mass murders through manufactured disasters in order to find such a being. As various people bump into him, he senses the crimes they perpetrated, such as theft and rape, and finds one he can act on: a sadistic janitor who invaded a family home, killed the parents and is holding the children captive. David follows the janitor to the victims' house and frees the children, but the janitor ambushes him and pushes him off a balcony into a swimming pool. David nearly drowns (since he cannot swim), but the children rescue him. He then attacks the janitor from behind and strangles him to death while once more remaining uninjured. That night, he and Audrey reconcile. The following morning, he secretly shows a newspaper article on the anonymous heroic act, featuring a sketch of David in his rain poncho, to his son, who recognizes the hero as his father. At the end of the film, Dunn turns in Price to authorities, Price is arrested and convicted of murder and terrorism and committed to an institution for the criminally insane.
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