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.
I’m not a fan of the genre, but to put it simply, it was all over the top nonsense, with really bad acting.
That so many people enjoy this , is testimony to our degeneration as a culture
Counterpoint re Mona Lisa in this thread
https://x.com/KaylaAncrum/status/1608154669829992449
The Mona Lisa he had was a fake and Blanc knew that.
Thank you for writing this article out, I feel like I’m going crazy reading these rave reviews about Glass Onion. With all the hype leading up to its release, I was hoping it was at least somewhat comparable in quality to the first movie. It doesn’t hold a candle to Knives Out. I thought that the first reveal (the twin, Blanc knowingly arriving except not being invited) was where the movie started going downhill. Initially, we’re introduced to this quirky cast of characters and motives, and it immediately goes into overexplaining the backstory and cringe-inducing dialogue. Why does everyone flip the bird so often???? And why are there SO many pop-culture/product references???? Can we not do that every 10 minutes to show that it’s 2020??? Is product shilling a Netflix thing? And can I say that the Southern accent was one of the things I hated the most about the film???? Janelle Monae is a decent actress, the accent was fucking grating. I agree with your points about the plot holes and the awkward writing. It was nowhere near as clever or interesting as the first. The cameos, while funny at first (Yo Yo Ma was a fun one), got quite heavy-handed near the end.
I’m not sure I would call some of the choices Johnson makes “bad” writing, per se. It’s certainly a choice, but it’s not incompetent. The structure of the first half, for example, is very deliberate. He even has Yo-yo Ma spell it out for us, in his description of a fugue as a musical piece where in a musical theme is layered on top of itself to create something with more depth.
And, I kind of like that idea. Certainly, when I was watching the movie, I definitely was wondering when the murder would happen. The pacing felt a bit slow, but I can appreciate the joke, where it’s set up so that the audience spends an hour wandering when the murder will happen, only to reveal that the real murder had already happened. I came to appreciate that.
My only real gripe with the movie is that it tries to have two climaxes, and of those two climaxes, the denouement of the mystery is the lesser of them. It just takes the wind out of your sails, and the catharsis of Helen breaking everything doesn’t quite make up for it.
I mean, I love the disruptor parallel. I love the sheer audacity of burning the Mona Lisa, and I love the fact that burning a painting is so much more audacious than any number of murders. It’s just not the climax of a whodunit, though, and that’s the only thing I don’t really like about the movie. (Even then, I can still see some defense of the choice, but maybe not any that reframe it well enough that I love it)
In any case, I did really like Glass Onion. It’s certainly not the masterpiece that Knives Out was, but that was always going to be an extremely difficult film to top. I think Glass Onion loses out in that it had to follow up such a great movie, but I still envision a future where we have a whole series of Benoit Blanc mysteries, each trying a different concept, and I think Glass Onion will fit very snuggly into such a collection.
I would argue that using Yo-Yo Ma to explain the fugue to explain the layering is…kind of bad writing lol. But, yeah, I agree that the idea that the murder already happened is a cool one. I think I like most of the ideas in this movie. It’s just the actual execution I’m not a fan of.
And yes, very much agreed with “just not the climax of a whodunit” issue. Tonally, it felt a bit all over the place. Some will argue that Johnson was opening up the whodunit genre and playing with the form. But I just don’t think it really feels good? Clearly, he’s capable. Knives Out was so patient. This strikes me as either coming out rushed or just a bit too eager to subvert expectation?
Glad you enjoyed it still though!
Re: “whodunnit fans” being more forgiving of plot issues/writing etc. – The chief problem of this film for this “who dunnit” fan is that it is quite obvious who the killer is (or who it most likely should be due to motive – most directly threatened say – , opportunity, means, etc.”). Not that it couldn’t have been one of he “friends” but the audience’s first thought given the info presented shoudl have been – oh yeah Miles of course.
IMHO the worst who dunnit films are those where it is blindingly obvious who is the most likely to be the murderer and then the plot spends loads of time with the protagonists oblivious to this fact. The only save in this situation is if it turns out the obvious villain did not ultimately commit the crime (see Agatha Christie). If this character, as in this movie, is in fact the killer this puts the movie/story in the “very bad who dunnit” category by this fact alone.
Many people seem to think this is a shot at Elon Musk – if so that didn’t work at all. The guy who created Starlink and kept the Ukrainians able to fight in the early stages of the Russian invasion has no resemblance to Miles.
HOWEVER – while the whole thing was written and filmed before the Sam Bankman Fried fraud was exposed it could be a very good metaphor for SBF who does appear at a distance as a completely stupid, shallow person who coopted tons of prominent people by outright greed and extremely shallow virtue signaling.
One last note – its a sign of our diminished times that the hero destroys the Mona Lisa and the “friends” supposedly redeem themselves by LYING about seeing evidence etc. to topple Miles. That is a perfect encapsulation of elite ethics and depth of character (as in none of either). To see the films and books of earlier eras where being educated meant some level of mastery of classic literature and art (mainly the western canon but also of coarse great art of from China, India, Persia, etc.) renders the RJ oeuvre as basically trash regardless of whether it entertains or not.. Just my 2 cents..
Hey, Jeff! You had me nodding my head in agreement. I think stories that have fairly obvious binary results become pretty hard to enjoy. Personally. Like if the first scene of a movie establishes someone has a overbearing parent, then you know the story is going to pretty much boil down to: do they overcome the parent or not? That can still become compelling. But it’s also very prone to feeling dragged out and anti-climactic. Something like Whiplash keeps me on the edge of my seat despite being pretty binary. While Everything Everywhere All At Once had long stretches where I was just kind of bored because the only thing really happening is delaying the mother-daughter catharsis. When it finally arrives, it’s powerful. But it’s a lot of throat clearing to get there.
Yeah, and the morality of Glass Onion was just kind of bonkers. On the one hand, it’s a sign of how much confidence Blanc had in Helen that he left her with everyone. Someone could argue his expert instincts let him know that she would be okay. Like he had assessed the situation and knew nothing bad would happen to her. Except Miles already shot her. It just feels a bit…arrogant? Irresponsible? To assume nothing else would or could go wrong. Such a weird call.
this movie was also insultingly lefty throughout. really obnoxious how lefty directors try to foist their politics in overt ways like this
It’s lefty to make fun of idiot CEOs? News to me
No, it’s lefty to make the rich white guy the villain (again) and the minority female the protagonist (again). In this case, she’s the *real* genius. The white woman who says it like it is is a stand-in for Trump or his supporters, probably, and her whining about having to wear her (mesh) mask is obviously a swipe at people (“anti-science Trumptards”) who don’t want to wear useless masks. The gym bro who is sexist because he believes men and women are made differently (only bigots have ever believed that throughout history!) and still lives with his mom because he’s actually a loser is a lefty swipe, akin to a conservative writing a purple-haired Starbucks “barista” who tweets from their iPhone about how much they hate capitalism and they should be paid more…as they’re on their 5th break of the day because they’re exhausted from the emotional work of having to explain CRT in a TikTok video they made. The idea that rich people are all scammers who don’t care about humanity and will do whatever it takes to “make it”.
Have you not seen the original? Where it literally ends with the brown immigrant looking down on the white people who are all terrible, but she’s so pure she can’t even tell a lie without puking?
Also, he wasn’t much of an “idiot CEO”. He was part of making the company successful in the first place. He surrounded himself with intelligent people who were able to invent a super-cure for COVID. He actually *did* use his brains to build his friends’ careers so that they would owe him and support him in his own dreams. More bad writing by Johnson. He’s suuuuch and idiot when convenient, but actually not an idiot, also when convenient.
Convenient. You know, like you conveniently ignoring all of the lefty propaganda in this movie and pretending the only point that could possibly be lefty is “making fun of idiot CEOs”.
I think the problem is that Knives Out and Glass Onion aren’t really in the same genre. Knives Out is a classic murder mystery in the style of, say, The Long Goodbye– whereas Glass Onion is an out-and-out farce, more in line with something like Murder By Death or Clue, and when your intention is to be farcical, you can be a lot looser with structure and logic. I guess the difficulty is in that Glass Onion wasn’t marketed as a farce, and it’s not common for two movies set in the same universe to be of significantly different genre. Having said that, I think taken as a farce, Glass Onion succeeds wonderfully.
That’s a great point. The tonal difference was something that stood out to me. This wanted to be seen as more fun. And it arguably is? At least in terms of energy level. Taken as a farce, I still don’t think it succeeds. But I’d probably brush off a few more things I’m still unwilling to brush off. Regardless, I’m glad you found a frame through which to enjoy it!
I wish I had read this review before I wasted 2 hours of my life on that crap.
Maybe the review would have been so harsh it sparked your interest and caused you to watch the movie?
Thank you. I’ve been waiting for someone else to make these points. I think every who likes it was too busy laughing at all the stupid pop culture references.
Appreciate that! Sometimes just having some laughs or a character you really like can be enough. I know I’ve loved my fair share of movies other people really hated just because something hit right for me. But this was not one of those times lol.
Full disclosure, I was linked to this review by Ben Shapiro, a man whose intellectual integrity is basically non-existent. I walked into this reading prepared to disagree and dismiss. But I was not able to. Kudos to not only your writing acumen in expressing and elucidating your points, but also to the way you compose yourself in your comments. I love seeing critics who are, themselves, open to criticism.
(Also, apologies in advance for the length of my reply. Your comments really got me thinking.)
All that said, I love your review. It’s an excellent analysis and interpretation of the themes and how they don’t quite land. I was having a similar issue with the movie after watching it last night, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Your review elucidated my exact issues in perfect clarity, so thank you.
I think the movie was trying to do something that is EXTREMELY difficult to do well, and shockingly easy to do badly. It was trying to tell a simple story in a complex way. I think it did a better job than most in this regard, largely due to the fact that it was doing so consciously. Most people who do this concept poorly don’t do so intentionally. They just think they have a complex and brilliant idea, when in truth they just have a confusing and stupid one.
My favorite thing to do with a movie that I don’t quite like is to see if I can find a way to “fix” it. I love storytelling, and want everything I see and read to be the best version of itself that it can be.
The first thing I would change about the narrative is to not have Blanc be in on the “big lie”. He doesn’t know that Andi isn’t Andi. His invitation *seems* legitimate, and is. It was actually a conspiracy by Bron’s “puzzle guy” and “mystery writer” to see if they could outwit the great Benoit Blanc. They made an extra box and sent it to him without Bron ever knowing. Benoit, assuming more forethought and subterfuge than is actually present on the island, still purports the “reconstruction” angle, since he assumes that Bron has a better handle on his affairs than he actually does.
Andi’s death is yet unknown because Helen discovered her sister’s body and concocted her own “revenge plot” instead of alerting the authorities. This lets us keep events largely as they already are, but maintains the purity of Blanc’s subjective PoV. He gets to discover that Helen is just as dumb as the rest of the cast, but at least her stupidity was in service to a more legitimate cause than the others. All you would need to change is…
…the entire second half of the movie…
Hey, at least you’d be able to preserve and repurpose a lot of the principle footage?
Add a scene where Helen, buckling under the pressure of her own insane plan, turns to Blanc for help. Then you get your exposition and the two can start to work together from that point forward, with not quite enough time to actually put something intelligent together before things go totally sideways.
That brings me to the pivotal scene of the movie. Giving Johnson an infinite amount of benefit of doubt, I could make an argument that the film’s poor structure was an intentional metacommentary on how “the only way to make a bad idea seem brilliant is to lie to your audience”. All the pieces are there for that theme to be present. They’re just never quite capitalized on. And it’s SO CLOSE! All that would have been needed was to alter Blanc’s “detective speech” a bit.
– – – – –
BLANC: You construct all of this–all of this petty, preposterous pretense–not to do something big, like cover up a murder or control a billion-dollar business, but so that you can merely disguise yourselves as being more clever than you actually are!
You go along with this moron’s extravagantly inane ideas. Not because you trust in his brilliance, but because having to admit that you were wrong to trust him in the first place is harder than continuing to pretend that he’s so much smarter than he actually is!
At least Miss Brand here had the decency to only put on such a deception as a means to avenge herself upon her sister’s murderer. You all just do it for… pride? Vanity? Or is it stupidity for it’s own sake?
I am accustomed to people lying to me. I am, after all, a detective. But to lie for something so petty, so small, and so vain…
I am earnestly speechless. You all may continue your absurd drama to your hearts’ content. I, myself, will retire to the beach and await the police. At least there I will have the solace of knowing that I will be keeping somewhat sensible company.
– – – – –
It’s not a perfect rewrite. I think it needs a couple of interjections in there to break up the monotony of the speech, but I think that it drives to the point of “something stupid pretending to be smart” much more succinctly when the only smart character calls it quits before it literally explodes into something destructively stupid. It’s also reincorporates Andi being the only smart one among the group, since she ALSO backed down before things got that out of hand.
I also hate a lot of the writing tropes that Johnson lambastes in this script. The “glass onion” metaphor is a fantastic rebuttal of Abrams’s “mystery box” (the greatest plague on modern storytelling). I would just write my script to more directly attack that storytelling style without relying on that same tactic to generate suspense.
I literally woke up and checked our stat counter, saw the site was like 5x it’s normal amount, saw most of the traffic was from Twitter, opened Twitter, and my jaw dropped. I disagree with Ben on pretty much 98% of everything. So to have him cite my article and find alignment there was surprising. If I were in your position, I would also be dubious.
Re: best versions. I like to do the same thing! If you check out the other two “bad writing” articles I did, I actually do a lot of “This is how this would be better.” I didn’t here because I was so exhausted by it lol. So it was fun to read your version of events.
I think the film’s major flaw is that despite it positioning Miles as an idiot…he still networked all those people into positions of power. The film makes him far more capable than I think it actually wants him to be? Yes, Andi had the idea for the company. But Miles still seemed to bring some value. It wasn’t by sheer stupid dumb luck he reached the point he reached. That leaves me completely uncertain as to what happens next. Will this be his downfall? Or is he manipulative enough to find a way through it?
So my re-write would be an additional act. I think we need to see the consequence of the island. What happens when everyone is back home? That’s the challenge. Do the “friends” still stay disloyal? What happens when they try and do the right thing? Does Blanc hold any sway in the court of public opinion? What happens when Bron blames Helen for the burning of the Mona Lisa? How does she handle the public scrutiny? All of that is, to me, where the actual story is. The movie we got should be the first hour. Not a full 2 hours. Because it doesn’t really conclude anything. It’s just the end of a drawn out chapter. Sigh. Now I’m starting to get ramped up all over again lol.
Appreciate your thoughts! And the kind of pitch perfect Blanc speech.
I also can’t stop thinking about this movie. It compels me.
I think a huge part of that compulsion is that it comes SO CLOSE to saying so many things, but then falls just short of all of them. The more I think about it, though, I start to wonder if that’s intentional?
You bring up a good example of this. Miles was shown as being quite “socially intelligent”. He remembers peoples’ favorite drinks. He gives good speeches and commands whatever room he’s in. He knows how to put on a good show and to add a whole lot of style to not a lot of substance. He “sells the sizzle, not the steak”. That needed to be highlighted just a little bit more. Show a bit more of him making connections that the others just can’t. Really cement that his networking and sales pitches are impeccable, then remind us of just how bad all of his “ideas” are in comparison.
Then, instead of simply writing him off as too stupid to care about, Blanc could have noted his strengths before listing his many weaknesses. “Oh, sure, he spins a delightful yarn about this and that. But how many of you truly–deep in your hearts–believe in anything this man has to say?” or something. Have him make the shitheads, and us, come face to face with the truth of what we call “genius”, simply because it has an appealing wrapper. Call bullshit on the modern ad-driven zeitgeist.
And then you can address the real issue: that we assume that people who are good at one thing are also good at everything associated with that one thing. We already see this with Blanc and “stupid things”. He’s a brilliant observational mind, but simple inductive reasoning utterly baffles him because of how irrational it is. He just can’t wrap his head around it, much to the surprise of everyone around him. It’s the same with everyone else in that room. They are good–really good in some cases–at one or two things, but they want to be doing things well outside of that wheelhouse. They all want to be renaissance men, to catch that next hit of clout, but they’re very ill-suited for those things.
Which brings me back to what I said at the top. The movie is in the exact same boat. It has the potential for some really powerful themes, but in trying to chase them all it delivers on none of them. It’s structural failures are in keeping with one of its themes. That’s what makes me wonder how intentional it all is. I mean, it’s probably not intentional AT ALL, but it could be!
Which brings me to another potential theme:
I was reading through some of the other comments on here, and I noticed a complaint that I hadn’t really thought about until it was brought up: the Mona Lisa. Why destroy something so beautiful and precious for something as small as revenge? It only further cements Helen as being just as much of a “shithead” as the others, and kind of strengthens my resolve that Blanc should have washed his hands of the entire affair instead of encouraging such needlessly destructive behavior. He knew about the override switch on the safety glass. He knew the hydrogen fuel would blow up in spectacular fashion. He had to be able to put together that encouraging Helen to use the stuff would put the most priceless piece of human-made artwork into mortal danger. I can’t expect anyone of culture to see that as a “necessary sacrifice”, just to humble an impulsive and conceited billionaire.
If Blanc walks away from the inanity and leaves the idiots to their idiocy, then the Mona Lisa becomes a powerful metaphor for “something beautiful and precious”, be it a work of art, a natural wonder, or even a noble ideal. Then your controlling idea can become something like “when powerful idiots are left to their own devices, they destroy beautiful things.” It can become a parable for climate change, or political radicalization, or the erosion of internet neutrality, or so many other things that effect our modern world.
And the best part is that Blanc still is not blameless, because he didn’t even try to stop them! As I said before, he knew that a priceless work of art was in the room with these people. He had to know that they were not to be trusted with its safety. So now you have a subtheme of negligence by the intelligent and capable enabling the destruction. “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” and all that rot. Now you’re really saying something with your characters and imagery and scenery!
And then, after something glorious is ruined, the whole thing goes up, leaving the fates of those within the maelstrom unknown. Because, as a parable, it doesn’t have a definite ending. There is no cathartic closure when those who should be responsible abdicate that responsibility to vainglorious idiots. There should be a sense of dissatisfaction as the audience sits with Blanc on the beach before the credits roll. You could even etch that dissatisfaction into Daniel Craig’s features as he tries to enjoy a cigar, but just can’t. He is used to his stories tying up nicely, and this one absolutely did not. And he can’t shake the feeling that he should have done something to change that.
But that might be a little TOO on the nose. I’m kinda spitballing. Either way, thanks for the conversation. I LOOOOVE talking about this kind of stuff because it keeps me from having to put my money where my mouth is and write my own stories.
What really upset me is that the film spreads misinformation about hydrogen for no good reason. The entire thing feels like propaganda cooked up by the oil lobby idk
I didn’t even know that!
I agree wholeheartedly with you, with he exception of your comments regarding Trump. They show a mainstream stance devoid of a deeper analysis. And you didn’t need to mix politics with a film analysis. Trump is a detestable person, but unlike Obama, he didn’t bomb Yemen like a hypocrite for a straight eight years at the rate of three bombs per hour. He didn’t destroy Libya like Clinton and Obama did, and he didn’t pay terrorist mercenaries to bring them from annihilated Iraq into Syria with a 1 billion yearly budget for six years prior to the most devastating war in recent history just to weaken Iran, Russia and China. Trump, instead, stopped the war in Syria and removed troops from Afghanistan, and didn’t start any war, something no US president has done for decades. When presidents after presidents cause the death of millions of people, including women and children and countless civilians, please don’t attack the only one that hasn’t done this. Give him at least credit where it’s owed. If you want to be a political analyst, maybe learn history, maybe recognize that the US is a rogue terrorist country that has invaded more than 70 countries that did nothing to them in 70 years, killing millions in the process – and maybe recognize that this was all done by plutocrats to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. And since you’re a film buff, maybe realize that Hollywood plays along with countless propaganda movies to aid in those illegal wars and massive wealth concentration.
Now, about the movie:
– Blanc is not pronounced Blank. It’s Blan. The c is silent. Here’s another example of self-centered Hollywood unable to hire a French-speaking native to verify how to pronounce a word in another language, appropriating it in the neocolonialist tradition. That was my first annoyance with the film.
– Blanc’s accent is insufferable. It’s thick in the bad sense of that word. It weighs and burdens the ear, adds nothing to the story, is never funny, slows down the pace of the actor who is pronouncing every syllable way too clearly and slowly to be natural. It’s a film-long annoyance.
– the yelling of that dumb blonde: how many times did she have to yell like a cliché from the 50s? Hollywood loves women yelling, filling space with useless content. Here it was supposed to be a running gag – it was never funny.
– Dave Bautista is a terrible actor. His presence alone degrades the film.
– Why do they need to hire Hugh Grant and Ethan Hawke for short appearances? These people can’t be generous enough to let lesser known actors play these roles? Everything has to go the the same people, all the time?
– Why couldn’t the police reach the island right after Duke’s death? No helicopter could have flown there?
– The film is boring, horribly structured, takes the audience for imbeciles (one of the first rules an author must never do), has an overdose of shortcuts, uses special effects to fill its humongous void (like 90% of Hollywood’s films), does not have a single memorable quote, brings you to an island without making you feel on an island (thus, making the island prop useless), turns crime into a failed comedy which is an annoyance in itself, has zero depth, explains too much instead of allowing us to deduce and think, etc.
I scored it a 2 out of 10. What an immense failure. What an insult to the public and how sad I am that so many think it’s good writing or even entertaining. It’s none of that.
I dunno. I thought that “Pieseshite dock” was pretty funny. It’s an early clue that the common people who deal with this guy all know he’s an absolute idiot, but rich enough to make up for it.
I agree 💯 with your review, Chris. It felt like Rian was assigned homework he didn’t want to do. The characters were boring so much so that when they “bonded and chose to do the right thing” – I couldn’t have cared less. Then there’s the Mona Lisa inclusion that probably should have just stayed a sticky note on Rian’s laptop during development. Then there’s the Willy-Wonka-rock-candy-super-fuel thing that turns the compound “into the Hindenburg” when ignited, except it doesn’t, because the humans are fine minus some swipes of soot across their brows. Then there’s the younger brother of the Dude roaming about the film’s background for noooooooo reason. I could keep going with the roasting of Rian, but I’ll stop, because, ultimately, I’m just bummed I found the movie to be so disappointing 😔.
Yeah, the bonding was the beat that was supposed to happen. But it wasn’t something I necessarily cared about. Or believed the film had earned. I almost feel like I’d need another 30 minutes of the characters returning home and having individual moments of awakening that led to them doing the right thing. That’s also asking way too much lol. But it did feel like Johnson maybe bit off more than he could chew. And instead of scaling the story down, he just dumbed it down.
They didn’t just “choose to do the right thing.” They realized Miles could no longer offer them anything to buy their silence. They chose to do the only practical thing.
Lionel and Claire had gone all-in on Klear, which is now doomed for its role in the destruction of the Mona Lisa. Birdie can’t rely on Miles to bail her out of her child labor scandal. Whiskey can’t ride Miles’s coattails to fame on Alpha News.
Klear and Miles are finished. Helen has won. The others didn’t switch just to “do the right thing,” they switched because they had no reason not to switch to the winning team. Side with the lying asshole and murderer who turned his house into the Hindenburg, or maybe salvage something of their reputations by being part of the group that exposed him and took him down? It’s not a hard choice.
I feel like you took the words out of my mouth with this review. I loved Knives Out so much; the bits of humor here and there, the well developed characters, and as you described, the way the tension was built up so that we gathered bits of information along the way while not having everything just explained in one scene. I was super disappointed watching Glass Onion because aside from everything you mentioned, there was really no mystery to be solved. It was really “just dumb”. But even if that was supposed to be the message, it’s not satisfying enough to justify making an entire film around that. We all know these characters and their tropes too well. We know very well how idiots climb to power off the backs of good and honest people, and this movie was just a lazy way of displaying that. I felt it was just so obvious the entire time. I wasn’t left trying to solve the mystery myself, and I hated how I felt robbed of that experience when, halfway through, we are shown most of the underlying facts and drama in such a flat and direct way. It was hard for me to even finish the movie after that. I felt that the motives assigned to each of the “best friends” were pretty weak when compared with Miles’, so it was obvious that he was the one who killed Andi. There also weren’t enough factual layers to make the story unfold in an interesting way. I really feel like they wasted this amazing cast on such a simple movie.
That’s very well expressed. From discussions/arguments I’ve been having with people, it seems fans of the mystery genre have been more forgiving, feeling like Glass Onion is in-line with their expectations. “Whodunnits manipulate information. This manipulated information. What’s the big deal?” The counter I’ve been workshopping is comparing it to deus ex machina. It used to be really common and accepted for some deus ex machina to wrap up a story. The protagonist seems in an impossible situation. Boom! Some miraculous thing happens and saves the day just in the nick of time. By today’s standards, a deus ex machina is like high school level writing. You’re expected to know better and do better. The Hero’s Journey is kind of having a similar comeuppance. Obviously both things can work. Context matters. As does the quality and inventiveness of the rest of the work. With Glass Onion, whodunnits do do similar things. I just don’t think that means it’s okay.
A good mystery can “manipulate information”, but it cannot do so from the subjective perspective of the guy who isn’t so easily fooled. This is why Holmes has Watson, and why Martha was so excellent in “Knives Out”. Hiding and manipulating information is fine, but you do so by carefully limiting the perspective of the chain of events.
The real crime Glass Onion commits to the mystery genre is in obscuring Blanc’s own motives. Mystery stories are already quite obtuse by design, and they encourage the audience to “play along”. Giving that audience an unreliable narrator is… well, it’s basically cheating. By compromising Blanc’s subjective PoV, the movie completely undermines its central character’s credibility as a proxy for the audience. Instead of playing along with Blanc, we find out that we’re playing against him and that he cheats. There are ways to do this well, but that usually involves a face-heel turn and the development of a new sympathetic PoV character as the old one becomes antagonistic to the audience. Glass Onion does not do this. It essentially expects us to play against Blanc, but also still root for him to win.
Your thoughts throughout have been very satisfying to read. I usually feel so alone in discussing nuance like this haha.
I was bracing myself for a deep plot. After Knives Out, I went down that hole of wondering if Marta was the real mastermind, or the grandpa, or just Ransom. Now that I see Glass Onion and how… dull it is, I don’t think Knives Out was intended to be that great either. I feel disappointed. I wish I had not held high expectations. My boyfriend was telling me how this director is known to be complex or something.
I think you can still believe in Knives Out. It’s more like Johnson was so aware of the rabbit holes that he wanted to go the opposite direction. Instead of being layered, he wanted the glass onion. Something a lot more simplistic. It’s a bold choice and I think a really interesting concept. It’s just the execution I really disagree with.
Johnson’s big breakout movie, Looper, had a good amount of complexity. Then The Last Jedi is one of the most contentious movies of the 21st century. So Johnson is very polarizing.