Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery might be one of the worst written movies I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong. The cast goes for it. Janelle Monáe crushes it. And there’s some breezy, fun filmmaking. I’m sure there are many people who will watch Glass Onion and be entertained for 139 minutes then move on with their lives. But I’m not one of them. I was angry. And now Glass Onion will haunt me for the rest of my days.
And I hate to say that. I remember when Looper came out, I was proclaiming Rian Johnson as this tremendous talent to look out for. Looper was interesting, patient, dynamic, daring. Then I absolutely loathed Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But Knives Out! That was redemption. Even though it’s a completely different genre than Looper, the original Knives Out was, I think, as cutting edge. It had that same craftsmanship to it. Which had me making excuses about Last Jedi and ready to re-embrace Rian Johnson as a filmmaker I’m a fan of.
Now, here we are. Glass Onion. What the hell.
[Author note: It’s December 27th and this article has received more attention than I ever expected. Whether you agree or disagree with what follows, I appreciate you taking the time to read it. Have a great end of 2022 and start of 2023!]
Cast
- Benoit Blanc – Daniel Craig
- Miles Bron – Edward Norton
- Helen Brand/Andi – Janelle Monáe
- Birdie Jay – Kate Hudson
- Peg – Jessica Henwick
- Lionel Toussaint – Leslie Odom Jr.
- Claire Debella – Kathryn Hahn
- Duke Cody – Dave Bautista
- Whiskey – Madelyn Cline
- Writer – Rian Johnson
- Director – Rian Johnson
It’s just dumb
SPOILERS AHEAD
Nearing the end of Glass Onion, Benoit Blanc delivers his big speech where he reveals who killed Duke. Exasperated by Miles Bron, Blanc calls out how dumb this whole thing is. To which Bridie Jay says, “It’s so dumb, it’s brilliant!” Blanc shouts back, “No, it’s just dumb.”
Think about that for a second. What did Blanc just call dumb? Not Miles Bron. It’s the whole situation. All the events of the movie we’ve been watching. The world’s greatest detective has gathered the details, assessed the people involved, and his judgment of the situation is that it’s f***ing stupid.
And, look, to be fair, there is a reason things are so dumb. Thematically, Glass Onion is showing how terrible people gain power. Each of the “best friends” are wearing golden handcuffs and only nice to Miles because he’s made their careers. In a way, it’s a Trumpian tale. Where someone rises to the top and others just go along with everything the leader does because if they speak up they’re cut out. Ultimately, the film shows how the inversion is true. The cronies actually have more power than they think. If they were to just raise their hands and do the right thing, wouldn’t everything be better?
The concept is fine. It could make for a great movie. It’s just the execution that’s so stupid Johnson himself has dialogue pointing to how stupid it is.
The flashback
If you spend any time learning how to write, one thing that comes up is perspective. Whose perspective is the story written from? That leads to discussion of first- and third-person narration. First-person narration being the “I” and third-person being the “he/she/they”. If you go with first-person, you’re locked into what that character knows. If you go third-person, there’s a spectrum. You can have third-person limited, where the scope of the writing is still restricted by what the perspective character has, is, and will experience. Or there’s third-person omniscient, where the perspective is completely unrestricted.
Say two characters are at lunch, having a conversation. In first-person, you’d described the lunch from only one perspective. In limited-third, the same would happen, but with some wiggle room. In omniscient-third, you can reveal the thoughts of both characters, the server, the family at a nearby table, and the spider tucked in the upper corner of a window. Perspective informs audience expectation.
The thing about the first Knives Out is that Marta (Ana de Armas) was the perspective character. With some exceptions, the audience pretty much knew what she knew. So even though a lot of information was withheld from us, that was because the POV character hadn’t been part of those events or hadn’t told Blanc about those events. That allowed Blanc to be this secondary protagonist who maintained a degree of mystery and could be ahead of the viewer in terms of information without it feeling like a trick.
With Glass Onion, there is no Marta. Blanc is our perspective character. For the first hour, we’re made to think “Boy, this is mysterious.” It seems like Johnson has created an intricately layered plot locked behind character perspective (like Sixth Sense or Get Out or Shutter Island). We don’t think Blanc has more information than us because barely any information has been revealed. But it turns out Johnson hadn’t built an intricately layered plot. Instead, he used the most basic and lazy trick in the book: withholding information for no good reason whatsoever.
The first reveal in Glass Onion is that Benoit didn’t receive an invitation like everyone else, the way the movie made it seem. It turns out he met with Helen Brand, learned everything about Miles and the rest of the group, learned about Andi’s death, then hatched a plan to have Helen play Andi and help figure out who on the island was the murderer. Instead of the audience experiencing this chronologically with Blanc, it’s cut out then shown to us as exposition in the middle of the film.
That does a couple things. Neither good.
First, it renders the movie’s first hour pointless. It’s sold to us one way, but none of that was true. Blanc’s confusion? Not real. Andi’s interactions with her former friends? Not real. Compare that to Get Out. There’s a similar structure—how characters behave in the first hour isn’t true to their actual motivations. Chris thinks he’s going to meet Rose’s family and it’s just a normal thing. But Rose’s parents are actually part of a cult that transfers the consciousness of rich old White people into the bodies of young Black people. They’re setting Chris up. When we finally realize what’s going on, there’s a sense of betrayal that’s in-line with what our perspective character’s feeling. Chris didn’t know more than us. He’s as flummoxed as we are. If at the very end of the movie it cut to the beginning and showed us Chris did a Google search and read rumors about the family so knew the entire time and went there with the express purpose of defeating them…that would be a slap in the face of what we’d experienced together as audience and point-of-view character.
It’s the same thing with Fight Club. We’re locked into Edward Norton’s perspective. So when it’s revealed he and Brad Pitt are both Tyler Durden, it’s not a trick. Norton didn’t know, so we didn’t know. But when you go back and re-watch the film, you can see all the ways the director, David Fincher, toyed with our perspective and built to the reveal. It means the story up to the reveal is still genuine because the character was acting true to what they knew. Same for Shutter Island and Prisoners and Scream and Hereditary and Annihilation and Parasite and Primal Fear and Psycho.
With Glass Onion, our main perspective character was performing. And we didn’t know because the movie refused to let us know. That would work better if our perspective character was, say, Birdie Jay. Or all the “best friends” like at the start of the movie. We wouldn’t be privy to Blanc’s perspective so the withholding of information would be fair. Just like in Knives Out. But since Glass Onion ditches the friend group as perspective characters and locks into Blanc, the skipping over of info is cheap. And makes watching the first hour stupid because nothing that happens is genuine. The friends were all performing. Blanc was performing. “Andi” was performing. There’s no genuine perspective until we’re 75% through Glass Onion. It robs subsequent viewings of tension.
The second issue is that exposition sucks. I mean, it can work. Especially if it’s genuine character perspective. The opening tour of Jurassic Park. Neo’s introduction to fighting in the Matrix in The Matrix. But exposition that’s merely forced backstory or a big reveal of previous actions we weren’t shown—that’s almost always lazy writing and should come chronologically.
Here’s an example. Imagine a story where Jesse and Jamie are at a fancy dinner. Jesse goes to the bathroom and is gone for so long that Jamie gets mad and leaves. Jamie is our sole perspective character. Hours later, Jesse finally comes home and explains to Jamie that they had gone to the bathroom to practice their proposal speech one last time. But accidentally dropped the ring and it fell down a drain in the floor. They were so embarrassed and didn’t know what to do and sat on the floor, crying for 30 minutes, before a plumber showed up and could get the ring out. It took another 30 minutes and they just didn’t know what to say. Jamie is angry but touched and says “I do” and they kiss and that’s the end.
Now imagine that story playing out chronologically. Jesse and Jamie are at a fancy dinner. Jesse goes to the bathroom. We see Jesse practice the proposal speech. Then drop the ring. We cut to Jamie waiting. We cut to Jesse freaking out. Cut to Jamie getting mad. Cut to Jesse calling plumbers, too embarrassed to ask someone at the restaurant for help. Cut to Jamie calling, texting. Cut to Jesse shamefully ignoring the calls. Cut to Jamie leaving. There’s so much more tension. As the viewer, it kills you to know what Jesse hoped to accomplish versus how things went. It kills you to see Jamie getting angry when you know they were about to have this marvelous surprise.
This gets back to something Hitchock talked about regarding tension. If you watch a scene where two people talk at a restaurant for five minutes then a bomb goes off, it’s boring for 5 minutes and shocking for an instant. If you watch a scene where someone plants a bomb under a table, then two characters show up and talk for five minutes, you’re wondering the entire time if the bomb will go off. It makes the conversation much more dynamic.
If Glass Onion had just played out chronologically and we saw Helen show up at Blanc’s place and Blanc agree to the case and everything played out in order, then the whole movie is so much better. We get to be part of the case and unraveling character motivations. We get to enjoy Blanc’s performance. But, alas, we got the lazy choice instead. The one that ignores the importance of the audience-protagonist relationship and ignores the pitfalls of exposition.
The journals and other lazy choices
When writing this story, Rian Johnson had the issue of Helen pulling off being Andi. Like, okay, yes, identical twins exist. So the whole “looks like Andi” thing is handled. But what about behavior? These are Andi’s former best friends. They know her better than almost anyone. How do you pull that off? You could just have Andi not talk a lot. But eventually someone will try and talk with her, right? These people spent a decade together. How does Helen, who didn’t know any of them, hold her own?
There are a lot of interesting ways to handle that. Especially if the audience knows it’s Helen and not Andi and she’s trying to improv. Her failures could be funny. Her successes could be awesome. It can be a nice subplot. Kind of like Jamie Foxx in the movie Collateral. Instead, Glass Onion takes a shortcut and tells us Andi was a dedicated journaler and journaled every day of her life, so Helen just read a bunch of the journals. That’s it. Don’t worry about it.
It’s similar to how they handle COVID. Since the film is set in 2020, people should be wearing masks and keeping a distance and worried about close contact. But Miles has someone spray something into everyone’s mouth. No explanation. Just like that, they’re vaccinated or protected or something. And that’s it. It’s never brought up again. Honestly, there’s no reason to even have COVID be in the movie if they’re just going to write it off like that. Maybe you go that route if you come back to it as part of the “Miles is actually an idiot” reveal and it turns out the spray did nothing. On top of all the annoying stuff Miles says and does, he may have given them all COVID. That’s a payoff on the subplot. As is, the COVID inclusion is just a pointless inclusion that adds nothing and goes nowhere.
Glass Onion is lazy choice after lazy choice.
If Andi was really that dedicated of a journaler, then wouldn’t she have journals about the founding of Alpha? If the whole court case came down to who came up with the idea, wouldn’t the journals have carried some kind of weight? Sure, maybe I should assume “no” and give Glass Onion the benefit of the doubt. But the writing in Glass Onion is so bad there’s no reason for me to give it the benefit of the doubt. If a napkin would have been enough to win the case, then surely the journals would have done something?
[Author’s note: Removed a paragraph talking about what happened to the gun. I saw the movie in theaters and forgot about the one, brief shot of the gun falling at the scene where Miles fired on Andi (at the 1:08:00 mark). Now that Glass Onion‘s on Netflix, I re-checked. So my initial complaint was invalid. -1 to me. +1 to Johnson.]
My last complaint is the whole burning of the Mona Lisa. Helen destroys it because it means Klear and Miles will be forever associated with the loss of the world’s most famous painting. That’s the idea, anyway. On the one hand, it’s a painting. What’s the value of one painting versus bringing down an evil jerk who could harm millions of people? You could argue it’s worth the sacrifice. On the other hand, who knows. At that point, Helen didn’t have the buy-in of Birdie Jay, Claire, Lionel, or Whiskey. If they all still sided with Miles, then no one would ever know Klear caused the fire. They could just blame the whole thing on Helen. Even with that group turning on Miles, who’s to say what will happen? Johnson doesn’t actually show us the aftermath of the story. Call me cynical, but our current media and political climate is such that accountability isn’t guaranteed. For Helen to bank on the destruction of the Mona Lisa to be enough to ruin Miles…eh. I don’t see it.
That moment made me think less of Helen. And I loved Helen. And the fact that Blanc just leaves her in a room with someone who just murdered two people…it made me think less of Blanc too.
I went into Glass Onion with a lot of hope, but I found it impossible to enjoy. It’s an indulgent, lazy mess.
Brief update:
It’s been a month since I saw the Glass Onion in theaters and wrote this article. My opinion on the film hasn’t changed all that much. Now that it’s out on Netflix, it’s been fun watching everyone debate. Not just the quality of the movie but the quality of this article. One thing I do want to say: I appreciate Glass Onion being fun. It’s such a rare thing these days. So much of the last decade has been heavy or negative movies that cater to the glass-half-empty side of the human psyche. Comedies have fallen off. Marvel movies are pretty much the closest thing modern cinema has to comedy. And that’s sad.
Regardless of my views on Glass Onion‘s overall quality, I’m happy it’s fun and that so many have had fun watching it. Sometimes that’s all someone needs. If it was enough for you, great. It wasn’t for me. But I’m just one person with a website. As angry as I was/am at Glass Onion, I’m still hopeful for the next one.
Hi Chris, very informative review. I am still surprised there are people who appreciated the script, it is the weakest link. People who enjoy this genre can see right through the lazy and tedious writing. The more the movie went on, the more incredulous the story became. I just finished the movie to see it make some sense, but it never materialised. Felt like time wasted. Thanks
Hi Chris, very informative review. I am still surprised there are people who appreciated the script, it is the weakest link. People who enjoy this genre can see right through the lazy and tedious writing. The more the movie went on, the more incredulous the story became. I just finished the movie to see how some sense, but it never materialised. Felt like time wasted. Thanks
Agree with everything you wrote – lazy and indulgent are the very words I would use to describe it. The dialogue and constant expositions dumps were terrible – how do people see it as clever? The only thing I would add is that it also looked quite cheap in comparison to the first film. The design choices, even the cinematography – it was obvious they were trying to punch above their weight on Netflix money when they should have simplified and focused more on the story. All in all, I thought it was pretty awful, not at all fun, and I’m boggled by the high reviews. Thanks for being one of the few dissenters.
Brilliant review. There are hundreds of lazy reviews of this movie. This is not one of them.
P.S. A top search for this movie 24 hrs after its Netflix release is, “How does Glass Onion end?” – lots of people ditching it midway.
Thanks, Dannielle. What’s kind of wild is that it’s a growing trend that people see a movie trailer or have interest in a movie but would rather just read the ending than watch it. There are some sites that just specialize in detailed synopses for that reason.
The perspective switch halfway through the film isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a twist to recontextualize the earlier half of the film. The actual mystery is separated in a way that the split to Helen doesn’t impact it at all, as we spend the first half trying to figure out who might want to kill Miles and only once the flashback happens do we learn that we are actually trying to figure out who would defend Miles. The evidence you have just spent an hour gathering as a murder motive becomes a motive to protect Miles the instant we learn they are selfish monster people who will screw over anyone for their careers.
The film is way more fun for having this twist as opposed to just having it start off with 0
There was really never a need to justify their ability of Helen is impersonate her sister because the people there started to point out she isn’t acting right, they notice she is behaving weirdly, but this can and is brushed off as we all just fucked her over so she will be a bit testy.
Don’t get me wrong some of the information was a bit too vague like the pineapple juice clue but I found myself being able to follow the clues the film left and realize what was happening, the drink that killed Duke was made by Miles and brought straight over and killed him instantly. You can even see Duke’s phone poking out of Miles’s back pocket, a thing the film has told us he doesn’t have a personal one. Since a who dunnit film really should be judged by the ability to being an interesting and entertaining mystery that gives you a chance to solve it I’d say it does a good job.
Connor! One of the things I’ve been noticing is that it seems fans of the whodunnit in general tend to be a bit more forgiving/accepting. I can appreciate what you’re pointing out and like the concept, especially since I’m very into structural stuff like that. It’s just one of those things where I find the quality of the scenes themselves to be pretty lacking. I’m a fan of recontextualizing. I just don’t think how Johnson went about it could be better.
Re: Helen. Definitely can be brushed off as her just being screwed over and the awkwardness.
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
The smashing of the statues was just dumb, overly long, and overdue. The explosion of the house. Dumb.
The security in the ML was a Wilhelm scream without the payoff of the system killing someone.
I enjoyed the movie, but it was no (pick any title with Out in the title including the Sean Connery movie).
So many stupid parts to the movie. Did anyone actually find Dave Bautista’s lines remotely funny? No mystery whatsoever, it was obviously Ed Norton the whole time. The first movie had such a great cast with each role written to be part of the web…Glass Onion was more concerned about Elon Musk/Bezos overtones, which fell flat and were unfunny.
Yeah, the amount of red herrings didn’t really strike me as satisfying? Like I can appreciate what they’re doing, but it feels a bit empty. Just done for the sake of throwing the viewer off. Which is some of the issues Westworld had in season 2. Or Game of Thrones when they went past the books and it was up to the awful writing of the showrunners.
I felt like the movie spent too much time winking at the audience. Rian John’s seemed very impressed with his meta cleverness. I was less impressed. I also felt Miles was smart or stupid as a plot convenience. Johnson is not my jam.
Valid points throughout, but I ended up enjoying the movie quite a lot.
One of the things I loved about Knives Out was how the narrative structure was itself a twist on the whodunnit genre. We’re lead to believe Marta’s side of things as true, which turns the film into more of a thriller in the second act before coming back around into a classic mystery once again at the end.
For Glass Onion, that subversion existed for me by watching the film progress from a classic mystery to a social commentary by parodying not just the Elon Musks of the world but the murder mystery genre itself. The shifting perspectives, the twist on twist on twist, the plethora of celebrity cameos, the incredibly over-the-top set pieces, the titular theme of a false complexity, and even Hollywood’s need for sequels to raise the stakes all felt a part of the criticism Rian Johnson was pointing fingers at. Blending that into a traditional murder-mystery was where I saw and appreciated the craft side of his work. I could see it viewed as lazy for all those thoughts and ideas to be swept under a rug of portraying everything ironically, but to me nothing in the film suggested he was trying to be nuanced or subtle to begin with.
Thanks for a thoughtful review! Cheers!
Jesse! Thank you for the thoughts! And, yeah, that’s what I’m torn about. There’s a lot of very cool ideas in the movie. I’m a fan of the talking points. Just not the scene by scene execution. And I do think there’s something to be said about the concept of the “glass onion” and what that allows Johnson to kind of get away with. But that also feels a bit of a crutch to me.
Since we get so few mysteries, there is just something nice about the experience though.
Did you re-read your review before posting it? The first two paragraphs are such a snaking mess I couldn’t read past them.
I feel like to critique someone’s writing you should at least be semi-competent in it yourself.
Yo, Jack. I did re-read before posting! Re-read them again after seeing this and they’re still fine to me. Entropy listed my last novel as one of the best novels of 2020-2021, so I believe I’m semi-competent. But I can appreciate it not being a style you like or even respect.
In the first paragraph, I establish my main stance on the film’s writing but step back to give praise to several aspects beyond the writing and allow for the fact that there are people who will enjoy the film. And the second paragraph is my relationship with Rian Johnson’s filmography. It’s a pretty basic introduction. Everything flows and is set up. Can you give an example of what you mean by “snaking mess”?
I feel like this article was overwritten in a way, I don’t think its accurate at all….after viewing the movie itself.
Hey, RJ! Would love to hear more thoughts. What jumped out to you as the most inaccurate?
Agree with every word.
Thanks, Cole!
I should add, I believe the ending is one of the prime examples of how dissappointing the writing is because clearly (at least to me) the audience is meant to view Helen as an ethical character amongst the glut of selfish celebrity. I did enjoy the film from the POV of fun, entertainment and the quirky Blanc, but it had too many plot holes and much of what the characters did didn’t make sense, so you are left with this sense of cognitive dissonance. Due to the poor structure and writing as you say.
100%
Initially I was ok with this film after seeing it and I really do love the Blanc character. Then not long after that I began to feel let down by owing to the writing and structural issues you mention. I really did not like the Mona Lisa burning. I thought it was lazy and dubious. What kind of person burns the most treasured and priceless painting in the world, denying humanity of this treasure, for a revenge that is not even certain? That made me like Helen less and questions her ethics. It made me feel she was hardly better than the others. She took her revenge by hurting others apart from Miles. She burnt the effing Mona Lisa! She was, in the end, no Martha . With all that pretty unsubtle focus on the security of the painting, as you say, I was convinced that there would be a final reveal, along the lines of Blanc having previously removed the real painting and replaced it with a poster. Then he and Helen would restore the real Mona Lisa to the world once Miles was in jail for the murder of Cassandra. Helen didn’t need to burn the Mona Lisa to get Miles, he was going to hail for murder and Klear was never going to get off the ground. Destroying the Mona Lisa was just selfish and and vindicastive, making her no better than any of the other abhorrent characters really.
Hey, Jem! EXACTLY! The Mona Lisa burning is just careless and selfish and unnecessary. Imagine if all of that really happened. I guess those celebrities could all lie and say it was Miles’s fault. But then it’s just the same cycle. Otherwise, they say Miles was wrong but then Helen is also identified as the one who specifically made sure the Mona Lisa burned. The internet would eat her alive.
The film uses Norton’s apparent “stupidity” very conveniently. When they have to push aside a bad plot element or plot hole, they remind the audience that “Hey, he’s a goner! “. I just felt that to be too contrived. I just think none of the things mentioned in the movie add up. A few being:
1. The news of Andi’s death and how Norton and Batista look completely unfazed by a supposed “Andi” who was in the room with them a few minutes ago. Even if let’s say Norton knew it was Helen all along, and that Duke also caught up with the act, there is no exposition or even a remote look of surprise when Duke reads the news about Andis death.
2. And Norton’s supposed “stupidity” is too jarring and underwhelmingly portrayed that it makes no sense. He can concoct a plan to poison her, and make her death look like an apparent suicide, that it even fools the cops; he can amass all his riches and push Andi out of the business; he can secretly plan Duke’s death by poisoning him with pineapple, but he is just too stupid to put two and two together when he sees Andi walking in with the world’s greatest detective? The filmmakers are caught in a unique paradox here. If Norton’s character knew that it was Helen all along and that Benoit Blanc is behind his tailcoats for the murder of Andi, then he is not as stupid as they claim him to be. If he has not caught up on this little trick, then that’s just bad writing.
3. And that whole explosion thing makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
I just felt the movie to be really badly written at some places and really well written in others. Like I think Rian Johnson had a great story here somewhere, but he just had to sacrifice a lot of sense and logic to get this thing to work.
Hey, Shanks. Was nodding along as I read all of that. And very much agree with the final sentiments. Imagining what the best version of this film could have been is pretty exciting. Which makes the reality of what we got that much more frustrating.
2. Miles didn’t stay to watch Andi die; he doesn’t know for sure he did. He also doesn’t know that Helen smashed up the box, so when Benoit says he received one anonymously he assumes that Andi is doing something weird and overcomplicated that he can totally handle.
1. …but like, it’s not *that* weird to learn she did in fact die. They knew Andi for years, they knew she had an identical twin. I don’t entirely want to accept your recollection that Miles and Duke “look completely unfazed” but these people are all liars and Duke is a professional actor (freelance).
3. I think “hydrogen burns” is a sufficient scientific explanation for an explosion in a movie. Within the movie it is very thoroughly established that Klear will destroy things.
Hi Chris, I agree with everything you say. It is an enjoyable and charming film. This is why many people chose to ignore the points you make here.
I thought there are some clues here and there, Andi was very disconnected with the other, they talk about a court case that took place in the past but we are not told what actually happened until the end.
I might be wrong ( maybe I don’t remember correctly ) but when “Andi” received the box she had blond bob cut hair but after the reveal we know that her hair wouldn’t have been like that at the time she received the box.
Both Katherine Hahn and Dave Bautista tries to visit Andi not long ago as they freak out because of what Andi did ( no spoilers ). They don’t even mention this event and don’t ask Andi why she didn’t answer her door when They saw her in Greece.
It might sound like nitpicking but these are important points. What you said about withholding the information from the audience and lazy writing are correct. Instead of unveiling backstory bit by bit during the first hour, we, the audience, are bombarded with an entire backstory, on top of that we find out Hellen and Blanc are actually performing the whole time. At least something but something should have been revealed to us earlier in the film.
One might think it has a clever plot but when you don’t present the clues ( I mean real clues, not the Ionian Sea and Aegean Sea thing, that is not even a clue, There are some Greek island in the Ionian sea ), even a young and the restless episode would look clever. Spoilers, When Andi got shot though the two way mirror, I knew who the killers was.
I like the film by the way. Great cameos, good satire and charming cast. I would watch that again. However, I don’t think it is as well crafted as Knives Out.
Mutlu
Thanks Mutlu! I may not remember correctly either, but I think we just see “Andi” in the garage and she definitely had her normal hair then*. And the first we see of the bob is when she arrives at the pier.
But, yeah, there’s so much to just kind of pick apart. If someone doesn’t care about any of those things and just wants the ride—it’s perfect. But if you want just like…a little more effort…lol.
Edit: I did not remember correctly. She does not have her normal hair. -1 me. +1 Rian.
> They don’t even mention this event and don’t ask Andi why she didn’t answer her door when They saw her in Greece.
They do; they follow her away from the pool when she’s drunk and end up in an argument. It’s a major scene.
Brand’s hair is wrapped in a towel in the first scene.
You’re just mad because of the Kanye Jesus mural and we all know it! Jk but the twist worked for me and I really enjoy this film. Also we should give Netflix a little love for actually putting this in the theater! I hope they do this for most of their future releases. Keep up the good work even though this one made me sad.
P.S. I loved TLJ even though I denounce the sequel trilogy as a whole.
Hey, Roman! I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed the mural haha. I’m glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, I think Johnson is just one of those polarizing artists where if it clicks for you, it clicks. And if it doesn’t, boy does it not lol.
I’m okay with the withholding of information because Blanc is characterized as someone who at any point could know more about the situation than anyone else (exemplified in the scene where he spoils Miles’ dinner party mystery). He’s just as mysterious as the other characters in that his true motives are often a mystery.
Hey Jeremy! I can appreciate that. I would argue that the dinner party mystery spoiler is an example of Blanc’s prowess done right. We’ve been with him the whole time (so we think), so when he solves the puzzle through context clues that everyone else had, it’s cool. Kind of like watching an episode of Sherlock. It’s just when his being ahead of us relies on the movie simply not showing us a bunch of stuff simply because it would “spoil” the mystery…that’s when I have issues.
I was actually quite excited to see how Blanc would solve the mystery when “Andi” was “dead”. It felt like a great way to pull the resources right from the all knowing detective’s grasp, and leave him stranded with no answers!
But then that turned out to be fake anyway, so it was once again East from him to figure everything out. Missed mini “All Hope Is Lost” story beat
I disagree with your take, but I also found the movie pretty aimless for the first hour waiting for the murder mystery to set in motion so I understand not liking the film. However I really enjoyed how the movie twisted in on itself in the second half, and all the slight of hand hidden stuff in the first half. This might just be where our tastes differ because you found no value in the withholding of information and retconning of the first hour, but to me it did what every good mystery should and made the first hour retroactively a lot more interesting once you know what’s being hidden from you; that’s the most fun part of most mysteries and I think this franchise is just gonna be dumb-fun but original takes on murder mysteries that twist the genre while still satisfying what you want to see in a murder mystery.
I think that the second half does feel contrived once it’s showing you all the scenes we’ve already seen again with the added context, and it keeps so much from the audience that it doesn’t lay out a clear narrative arc. But I think in hindsight it’s abundantly clear who the Marta of this movie and that is a clear arc, and one I found particularly satisfying in the end.
The reason the characters in the script call it dumb, is the same reason as the titular motif, this story though told confusingly and extremely layered isn’t very layered at all, you look at it and you see right through it. It’s practically a hit piece on Elon Musk, and the reveal ultimately being that he is the villain is not subtle or surprising. The movie plays the billionaire as the piece of shit murderer and then you get the satisfaction of watching his whole world fall apart and the wronged party righted, it’s basically a revenge story once you know who the central POV is. Hope you give it another chance and you feel differently because I thought this was a blast once it got going.
Yo, Ryan! I agree with you that it’s awesome when a movie can decontextualize what we already saw. That’s what I was trying to get at with the Fight Club example. Or, say, Shutter Island. Once you know the info, you can go back and really understand more of what’s happening. I just think how Glass Onion went about it is the worst way as it’s the most hollow. I don’t think re-watching the first hour tells you all that much more because the whole thing was falsely presented. Rather than being honestly presented but the viewer just not understanding the key dynamics.
Helen is definitely the Marta of Glass Onion! Agreed. My point wasn’t that Glass Onion didn’t have a Marta in terms of character. It was just the function of the “perspective” character and Marta being that moreso than Blanc. Wherein Glass Onion it’s Blanc as the perspective character moreso than Helen.
And, you’re right about what the characters called things dumb. I tried to acknowledge the thematics that make that a reasonable thing to say. But I also just found it hilarious and accurate.
You’re also right about it being a revenge story! And the satisfaction that comes with that. There are a lot of great ideas in Glass Onion. I just think the actual scene by scene execution is so poorly handled. A good version of Glass Onion would be one of my favorite movies of the year. But I’m glad you enjoyed it!
What are some of your favorite mysteries?
I wanted to add on to this Ryan by saying that the first Knives Out an a similarly predictable villain. I mean his name was ‘Ransom’ for God’s sake. I enjoyed this movie a bit more than the first but Chris raised some very good points. The COVID stuff annoyed me quite a bit as well.
Appreciate the additions, Cameron! In hindsight, “Ransom” was a pretty good wink to the audience lol.
The twisty stuff didn’t exasperste me just on pronciple, if the jokes had all landed. But a point about whether emphasizing covid was ‘pointless’ — it has to be 2020 plus covid shutdowns to explain how the Mona Lisa could go on vacation for the weekend: museums are closed!
Ah, yeah, the Mona Lisa being there would be the COVID payoff. What a weird thing to find a way to justify lol.
Yeah. The first knives out wasn’t challenging as a mystery. It seemed obvious that the angry yelling young guy played by Captain America was the murderer. But it was a pleasant ride.
Spending time with these okay characters in this bog beautiful house was very pleasant.
In Glass Onion theres just nothing. The characters are all loathsome so thays unpleasant. The setting isn’t as charming. And whereas the mystery wad obvious on the first oje, here the story was just bizarre nonsense where the characters behaved in ways that were so odd that they were distracting and frustrating.
The movie wants us to believe that some of the characters were smart but they all make dumb choices.
Blanc shows up to the island of a murderer and lets him spray a fluid into his mouth and then asks what it is after??
He leaves a double murderer in a room with a woman he brought their under his protection after she’d been shot by him? Hust his bringing her there seemed grossly irresponsible and uncaring. But once he’s there he objectively fails her repeatedly.
Helen decides that after destroying the Mons Lisa its a good idea to turn her back on a man who already tried to kill her, and not only that, decides that destroying the Mona Lisa is a fitting revenge fir the murder of her sister and her friend?
The Mona Lisa isn’t in a sliding automatic protective glass shield in the Louvre. Why would it have an automatic moving shield? Draws attention to itself in a bad way.
Perhaps most egregious, The name of Janelle Monae’s character is said a few times and it sounds almost exactly like Sandra Bland, the woman who was almost definitely murdered by police in a cell after getting pulled over for no real reason. Johnson wants to say something big and meaningful about a horrible thing but he just doesn’t have s**t to tell us. He reminds us of this painful thing seemingly just to try to make a point but there isn’t one and this is the movie’s lowest thing it does.
White director performatively invokes murdered black persons name to make his movie have meaning and fails because he has nothing meaningful to say about it.
Also why were all those people ever friends? How?
And after the survivors realize that their friend killed two of their other friends why aren’t they afraid for their own lives?
Seeing cheap glass prop art getting smashed made them realize murdering is wrong? And so they start saying theyre going to out their murderer friend? On his private island? He already killed two of them, whats to stop him from killing the rest of them?
At no point could i accept what i was seeing. Almost none of the choices or reactions in the movie were at all natural or believable. Absolutely nothing i saw on screen made sense.
I was just nodding in agreement the whole time I was reading this.