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.
One more critique. Please.
I let many questionable things go in movies until they build to a critical mass that I can no longer ignore (unless they’re in a personally beloved franchise, like just about any Star Trek film.)
But here is the biggest questionable plot point in ANY popular movie: how is it that the Rebellion’s money-shot was supposed to a perfectly aimed torpodo blast from a X-wing into an exhaust port where the torpodeos are supposed to bend into an immediate 90 degree turn?
It wasn’t The Force. The plan was always that the torpedos would do this. And yet this is in many ways the Biggest Film of all Time.
Sigh.
It is fun, I’ll give it that! The type of fun that I just went with it, even though I questioned several rather important aspects of the movie while I watched it. Like Bron continuing to welcome Blanc even after Brand showed up (hey, I just now noticed all the B names! I wonder why Johnson did this?) Brand impersonating her sister and sleuthing around so well. I mean, what a plot convenience for Detective Blanc! And everyone surviving the explosion. As well as Blanc being so certain that Brand would follow his last advice so stunningly!
I didn’t mind being deceived by Johnson, but on reflection you and a handful of other critics who have dated to dislike this film, are right. It’s cynical and it’s lazy.
You have the journal plus the identical twin, both making this plot resolution way too easy. Why didn’t Bron destroy the napkin immediately? Why was even it plausible that he would have saved it and that Blanc & Brand would need to find it?
So… Entertaining, yes. Vastly moreso than Last Jedi.
Well written, no.
Thanks! I felt something was off with the movie when it cut to a ridiculously long flashback to explain what was going on. My English major might not have been that profitable, but it did tell me what lazy writing looks like. I enjoyed the film for what it was, mostly because I agree with you about the current slump in good comedies or upbeat mysteries. This movie is fun for one forgettable Friday night, but not particularly rewatchable due to the issues you rightly pointed out. Sorry you’re getting so much flack for pointing out writing errors so basic that they would have been obvious to most critics 40 years ago.
I’d be very curious on where English majors fall on the quality of writing vs. everyone else lol.
Appreciate the kind words! I enjoy the conversation and discussion. Most of the flack has been good discussion. Especially in the comments here. Some of the stuff on Twitter was outrageous. Like someone said the opening paragraph was riddled with errors. I asked them to describe three. Their response? “You really need me to point it out?” Like, come on lol.
How could Miles not know that she had a twin sister? Impossible. With him having to know there should have been some type of scene or storyline around that
Uh. He DID know that Andi had a twin sister. He even knew that it was Helen the moment she showed up for the trip, because by that point Andi was dead. Because he killed her. You know, the central plot element of the entire movie?
Did you even watch it?
When Blanc introduces Helen to everyone at the big reveal there’s a shot of Miles looking surprised. Up until that point, he probably thought Andi simply survived the poisoning and was there for reasons he wasn’t completely sure of yet. Which makes your sarcastic e-mail and username pretty funny.
So your assumption is Miles assumed that Andi was only NEARLY fatally poisoned and, without alerting the authorities or getting any medical care (remember that her death was immediate, instant celebrity news the moment the press found out about it — good luck going to a hospital for a stomach pump without the press finding out), dragged her almost-corpse body onto a plane? Do you think a near-fatal poisoning is something you just sleep off overnight?
Even if your theory actually made sense, it’s weird for you to treat your assumption (“despite seeing Andi drop dead in front of him, Miles assumed she survived”) as So Obvious and to treat mine (“he knew Andi was dead so he would’ve guessed it was Helen”) as Clearly Wrong.
Also even if your theory is right, it doesn’t change the fact that Miles would’ve known about Andi having a twin sister either way. Matt’s criticism remains ridiculous.
Wait, no, this is even stupider than I initially thought.
If Andi had survived she could’ve just gone to police and testified that Miles tried to kill her. The reason Helen couldn’t accuse Miles is that she had no proof, only speculation.
Amazing what thinking about something for ten seconds can do.
I just thought about it for 10 seconds. What proof did Andi have?
The reason for the tone of my comment is because of the tone of your comment, plus the fact that you made your username (Attention to Detail) an insult to the person you were responding to and made up a fake e-mail address to further add insult (watchthemoviefirstpleaseandthankyou). I’m not treating my assumption as So Obvious. I’m pointing out the irony of you being so condescending when there was a detail that maybe you yourself missed.
My point was that the movie included a reaction shot of Miles looking shocked when Andi was revealed as Helen. It’s not a very subtle movie. If Miles knew, then I’d assume the reaction shot and resulting dialogue would be different. But since Miles never said he knew, and we have the shocked shot, then I can only assume Johnson’s goal was to show Miles didn’t know it was Helen. That he thought it was Andi.
I’m not assuming anything about why that is. But it would seem he’s bewildered by Andi surviving and unsure how it happened. Maybe she had private care doctors. Maybe she didn’t alert authorities because she was plotting something herself. Maybe he’s confused by how she could recover so quickly.
Obviously I don’t think a near-fatal poisoning is something you sleep off overnight. But could Miles believe that? Sure. Or he’s confused because he also wouldn’t expect Andi to be out and about within the couple weeks that it’s been.
It’s a really weird thing. Given how close they were for so long…you’d think he’d have seen a picture? Something. I guess you could chalk it up to him being an idiot? But the movie doesn’t really present him as an idiot? It presents him as someone who is really, really, really good at manipulating people and events. You could argue Andi and Helen had a distant relationship? But then why wasn’t that emphasized a bit more? Sigh.
It’s not a “really weird thing,” it’s just bad criticism. You’re ignoring the obvious (Miles knew Andi had a twin sister), inventing a terrible explanation (“They were distant, despite everything else the movie tells us”) and then SIIIIIIIGHING that your terrible explanation is terrible.
You’re ignoring the fact that nowhere in the movie does Miles acknowledging knowing Andi had a twin sister. So it’s not obvious. Also, none of Miles’s reactions to finding out about Helen support that he knew about Helen. As I said before, the one shot of him reacting to the information is shock. Which is actual evidence that he didn’t know or at least wasn’t thinking about it as a potentiality. I wasn’t sighing about my potential explanation. I was sighing about the situation as a whole. Just like I’m going to sigh about this conversation lol. Sigh.
May I perhaps be the first one to agree with you 100%. At the moment “Elon” (groan) burnt the evidence, I was instantly annoyed. The entire premise of the film was as it “evidentially” proposed itself to be, STUPID!
That is how I found this article. By searching for “Glass Onion ending stupid”. The casting of Edward Norton immediately gave away the ending as the obvious killer. All the glass breaking without a single injury took me out of the film immediately. She was running all over the glass or crystal without any care of slipping and causing herself serious harm. Pure nonsense.
How saying the word “courage” could possibly imply, cause destruction made ZERO sense.
And the moment she threw Klear into the fire, without a single care for her own safety or that of the people on the property was beyond ridiculous. I must say I hated this movie.
Looper was mediocre at best. Last Jedi was even worse than Episode I which is an impossible feat. However I quite enjoyed Knives Out, making me believe Rian Johnson was perhaps a decent story teller.
I watched 3 whodunnit films in a row today as a treat. The Pale Blue Eye, which was a fantastic story. Damn the critics, Harry Melling’s portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe alone is worth viewing this film.
See How They Run, which I thought was going to be the one I wouldn’t enjoy. Turned out to actually be what Glass Onion was supposed to be.
Hey Shannon! Appreciate the comment. Yeah, it’s one of those things where the details are just kind of infuriating. If someone is the kind of person who just says “It’s a movie” then it might not bother them so much. But given how grounded Knives Out was, I expect details to matter. Glass Onion was more like a Saturday morning cartoon.
I need to see the other two movies! I guess I’m one day away from Pale Blue Eye.
Stupid and self obsessed.
I gave up watching after 20 minutes. My wife, who is made of sterner stuff, lasted an hour before she too gave it away.
Not worth two hours of your life.
Also, they keep name dropping and making Hollywood references which were just so cringe-worthy…
I think banking on Miles being held responsible for the destruction of the Mona Lisa makes perfect sense. Remember, France loaned it to him on the condition that it would be kept secure inside its protective equipment. Miles made the decision to install an easy-to-use override — one that’s abused repeatedly at the party, as you can hear the security equipment re-triggering every few seconds. He chose to put it at risk despite his contractual obligation to protect it.
It doesn’t matter that Helen started the fire or hit the override. The painting would’ve survived if Miles hadn’t chosen to violate the conditions under which it was lent to him. That’s true whether anyone vouches for Helen or not.
It’s also safe to assume that the explosion and destruction of the Mona Lisa would trigger a full investigation by the Greek/French government, revealing the use of Klear as a power source. The damage wouldn’t be consistent with simple arson or even a bomb. Obviously, once the friends are willing to testify, it’s all over on that front, too.
Thematically, I took the destruction of the painting as “sometimes you have to accept there will be collateral damage when attempting to break a corrupt system.” It’s a shame, and a loss, but the movie opens with Miles trying to sneak an untested fuel on a manned flight. He murders those who stand in his way AND he is willing to risk the lives of people who have nothing to do with him. Stripping him of his power is saving lives. If it costs something beautiful to achieve that, so be it.
Also it says “no one should be so rich and so removed from consequence that they can buy and imperil whatever they want, be it human lives or art” Don’t blame Helen, blame Miles for treating a national treasure like his personal plaything. (Or blame capitalism for allowing Miles to do so.)
(I wonder if burning the Mona Lisa might have been partially inspired by the art collector who intentionally burned a work of art by Frida Kahlo in a bid to make an NFT based on it more valuable. )
I disagree with most of your review, but while a lot of your points are more subjective (the nature of tension, the role of knowledge in a mystery) and open to debate, the Mona Lisa thing seems extremely clear-cut to me. He agreed to keep it safe and he failed. He should’ve been able to protect it from Helen, a random woman with no relevant skills and no premeditated plan, but his violation of the contract caused him to fail. It’s silly to think the French government might not hold him responsible after that.
Oh, right, I meant to add about the role of COVID:
I’m pretty sure there were two main reasons to set the movie during the pandemic:
1) It makes it plausible that France would loan Miles the Mona Lisa, with the Louvre being closed during the lockdown.
2) It explains how the characters, in particular how a politician campaigning for the Senate, could all reasonably jet off to a private island on zero notice. All these characters would be working from home anyway, so theoretically they could continue their work/campaign from the island as needed.
It’s a bit contrived, but it’s definitely not “pointless” like you say.
And to add to the Mona Lisa stuff: it’s not just that the Mona Lisa was destroyed while in Miles’s guardianship, it’s that it was destroyed in a Klear-related disaster. There’s no way the destruction of the Mona Lisa wouldn’t be investigated; which means there’s no way the use of Klear to power the Glass Onion wouldn’t be exposed; which means the first thing the public learns about Klear is that it will make your house explode and that it cost the world the Mona Lisa. It’s not just Miles’s reputation that’s ruined in the explosion, it’s Klear’s as well. And that’s why the others turn on Miles.
With Klear’s reputation already ruined, Lionel and Claire have lost their jobs and their reputation (having gone all-in on Klear); Miles can no longer save Birdie from her child labor scandal; Duke and Whiskey can’t ride Miles’s coattails on Alpha News. Previously, Miles had been able to buy their silence, but all that changes with Miles and Klear both doomed to be held responsible for the loss of the Mona Lisa.
So no, I don’t think your point about “Miles not being held responsible” and Helen “not having the buy-in of the others” makes any sense. At that point, the others have absolutely nothing to gain from defending Miles, but could potentially salvage something from helping to take him down. Did you think they raised their hands at the end because they all suddenly developed a conscience? No. They realized Helen had won and self-servingly switched teams.
Hey again!
When I say “pointless” I’m referring to larger implications of the choice. Did it play into the theme? Did it affect character arcs? Is the movie saying anything about the topic?
Sure, it can be used to explain the Mona Lisa loan. But it’s not necessary for that. You could just say “I wanted it for a week and wrote them a check they couldn’t refuse.” It’s a little more ridiculous but also a stronger demonstration of Bron’s power. He doesn’t need a plausible reason. He has that level of “I want it, I get it” money and influence.
And the characters go to the island every year. The characters have never had an issue going before. The only potential complication, as you noted, is Claire being in the midst of the senate run. But she’s been the governor of Connecticut. That didn’t stop her before. It being COVID times isn’t meaningful to her ability to go to the island. She could just say, “I’m taking a few days away from the campaign to spend with my family” then clandestinely head to the island.
This is usually he litmus test if something is a story is “pointless” or not. If you can turn it into a variable and swap it out for something else and the rest of the story is primarily unaffected, then it’s pretty pointless. If you remove the COVID aspect from Glass Onion, nothing meaningful to the story changes. It doesn’t limit anyone. It doesn’t impact anything. It’s used as a throwaway justification for the Mona Lisa. That’s all.
—
Do I think they raised their hands at the end because they all suddenly developed a conscience? I think Johnson wanted it to be a bit of both. The characters are self-serving but mostly portrayed as victims of Bron who don’t think they have a way out and want to escape. There’s a bit of a “we should have done the right thing before and stood by our friend, so this time we’ll get it right.” Rather than a purely transactional “This is better for me” scenario.
And I don’t disagree with your assessment of how things could go. My point is that in reality, consequences don’t come about the way we’d expect. Look at Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. A country shot down a passenger plane and killed everyone on board, 298 people. What happened is pretty well documented, but because the responsible party has continuously said “Nope. We didn’t do it,” nothing meaningful happened to anyone in the government, and they played no role in bringing the soldiers who fired on the plane to justice.
Similar thing happened with January 6th. The least powerful people got in trouble and faced legal consequences. But people in the government or with connections to government who had some role in the events? Nothing. But at the time when information first started coming out, it seemed like the consequences would be enormous.
So why if a politician can get re-elected after participating in an attempted coup of our government should I expect Miles Bron to simply and assuredly go gentle into that good night? Everything that’s happened in the real world over the last 20 years just reinforces the fact that people with a lot of power don’t often face consequences.
That’s why I would have liked for Glass Onion to actually demonstrate those consequences. Rather than leave them up to us to accept.
Hey, Soaring! Thanks for the comment.
We’ve had so many huge events happen where the top people who should be held responsible aren’t. I just have a hard time buying into the idea that it would happen here, given how much power Miles has. Misinformation, disinformation, rabid fans, still having billions of dollars at his disposal——all of these things could protect him. We’re also having to accept that the friends would still be willing to testify. Which, maybe. But there’s still time for Miles to win them back. Or get rid of them.
I don’t think the French government might not hold him responsible after that. It’s absolutely a possibility. I’m just saying given what we’ve seen of the world in the last 20 years, it’s not unrealistic to think he manages to escape major consequences. Miles Born as a character got to where he’s at through networking and manipulation and bending the rules. That’s suddenly over? He has no cards left up his sleeve? The implication of a happy ending, especially with the details that we have, just feels silly to me.
I guess it comes down to a glass half empty vs glass half full perspective. Which says more about the viewer than the movie. You’re someone who can safely assume that events would play out in a just way. And that’s great! And it seems I’m someone who is a bit more cynical about it all.
Also, your point about Helen being a random woman with no relevant skills and no premeditated plan is a description that…kind of…supports my review haha. (Said more jokingly than seriously).
Hope the new year is starting well for you!
I agree, I hated this movie.
I feel like they set up this “mystery” then throw any sort of random misdirection and because it *Happened in the past!! but we didn’t show you yet!!* the movie acts like its a big reveal. There’s no real solving to be done by the audience because they could just make up any arbitrary past event for some crazy story.
Initially they glamorize the whole billionaire lifestyle and act like he’s amazing. The movie doesn’t instead address actual billionaire issues like resource hoarding and monopolies. The “justice” we get is that the billionaire has fake friends, and supposedly he will be caught for two murders. Yet they show nothing about him actually being convicted which is extremely unsatisfying.
And the reason his fake friends turn on him? Because the one character destroys the mona lisa. Something that should be enjoyed by everyone but because the billionaire was in possession of it or something we are supposed to feel like he got what he deserved… For murdering two people. He gets to have a famous art piece destroyed. It made no sense. It’s like saying because this man is so rich its worth it for humanity to destroy some cool thing we have just to get at him.
If at the very end Janelle Monae pulled out the gun and capped edward norton’s character in the face it would have been a much better movie.
> It’s like saying because this man is so rich its worth it for humanity to destroy some cool thing we have just to get at him.
Miles was the one who put the Mona Lisa in danger by installing the easy override on its security system. What’s it’s actually saying, in my opinion, is that no one should be so wealthy that they can imperil beautiful, important things just to stoke their own ego.
Sure, but Helen still made the decision. And Johnson still thought it was an important choice for her to make. That the painting was worth the sacrifice. We can definitely blame Bron for his role in things. But he wasn’t the active destroyer of the work. His ego brought about the scenario, but you shouldn’t dismiss the reasoning of the person who took the action.
Hey hey! Yeah, part of the fun of a mystery is trying to work through what happened. When the actually proves impossible because the movie hid all the relevant information…it just doesn’t feel good. At least for me. It wasn’t some well done thing that kept me guessing. It was just impossible to figure out.
Yeah, all the big reveals and thoughts just left me going “That’s not enough.”
There’s a ton of things you can figure out, though? I’m not sure how to square you saying it was “impossible” to figure out with all the other comments saying it was “so obvious.” It definitely BECOMES obvious once you realize Miles wasn’t the intended target, but that’s not what the comments are saying. I don’t blame anyone for not picking up on the misdirection, but I also don’t think it’s trivial to see through it. I don’t feel like either assessment is fair.
The movie gave you tons of relevant information. You can figure out SOMETHING is weird with Andi immediately based on how differently she looks, acts and dresses in the first scene where you see the Puzzle Box being destroyed. You can see, right on camera, Miles handing Duke his glass. Duke had mentioned his pineapple allergy (albeit translated into Alpha Male speak). You can see Miles pocketing Duke’s phone. You can see Miles walking around with Duke’s gun awkwardly tucked under his shirt after the hug, and later you can see, on-camera, Miles dropping Duke’s gun in the ice bucket. During the black out, you can even see Miles carrying Duke’s gun around! None of that is “impossible” to notice!
There are things you can’t necessarily guess before they’re revealed (it would be a leap to assume Andi was dead and being impersonated by her twin sister, unless I missed something), but that’s okay: not every reveal in a mystery is supposed to be something you were supposed to have already figured out beforehand. Instead, the new information forces you to recontextualize what you DO know and see if you’re clever enough to rethink the conclusions you had come to so far.
I’m pretty sure the ONLY reason I, personally, was able to figure out what was going on was because of the repeated word “pancaked,” and how Miles cut off Duke’s story the first time the word was used: suggesting Duke was about to reveal something incriminating without realizing it, and Miles had to stop him. Now Duke knows that Miles is trying to cover up being on that road at that time and has a reason to be suspicious of him. Likewise, Miles knows that Duke knows he’s trying to cover it up, and has a motive for wanting to silence Duke. From there I got suspicious, and from there I was able to see through the misdirection.
If you missed that (didn’t notice Duke’s reaction to being cut off with a lie; didn’t notice the repeated word; didn’t think the repeated word was meaningful, etc.), that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there or that it was “impossible” to figure out.
And there’s tons of clues like that! I’m sure there’s plenty I’m still missing, having only seen it once. It’s only “impossible” if you miss the clues… almost like it was a mystery or something.
You complain about the characters not acting “”genuine,”” but… my dude, it’s a murder mystery. Characters are going to have ulterior motives, hidden information they’re acting around, false narratives they’re trying to push. Oh no, instead of all the characters being honest, you have to work out who’s lying about what and why in a mystery?? How terrible. What “lazy writing”, to have deception and intrigue in a mystery story.
I thought that criticism was bad, is what I’m saying. Bad criticism. I’ll say so genuinely since it would “lazy writing” and “impossible” to figure out what I mean otherwise, I guess.
Totally agree with your review.
The thing I kept thinking for the first hour or so was “What’s the mystery?”
Typically, mystery stories open with a crime (like in Knives Out and pretty much every other mystery), but not here. We sit through so much cringey humour before any sort of mystery appears.
If it opened with Andi’s death and then Helen going to Blanc for help, that’s the beginnings of a mystery!
Hey, Matt! Right? I get Johnson wanting to do something different and subvert the structure a bit. But I just hated it lol. Not that it can’t work. I just don’t think how he went about it was satisfying.
I saw the movie last night and it was just flat out dumb. The characters were absurd, but not funny absurd, just unrealistically over the top… dumb. The plot was kindergarten simple but made convoluted I presume just to match with the Dance Dance Revolution cacophony of all the characters running around clucking stupidity.
If you cut out all the dipshit-sophomoric-vapid-moronic scenes that pretend to be wry and cheeky you are left with probably a few minutes of a 70s Bond film.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film and thought it might have actually killed brain cells watching it.
Yeah, very caricature-y. The whole thing with the boxes and everyone calling one another and solving the puzzle together by adding unique bits of information was so…dumb. Like…dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmb. Sigh.
I agree with all of your points. I saw the movie two days ago and I am still frustrated with it.
Great idea, great cast. Filmed well and there is a great story there; somewhere. It just didn’t come together right. So sad. Lots of holes, unneeded information. The perspective thing was a big issue for me as well. The character and events just seemed so unrealistic to me that the movie didn’t flow well at all. (No epipen, no cellphone when the lights go out, noone seems to have any injuries after the explosion)
I wrote a “whodunit” once and I had to change the ending…. I had to change the “who”. Well that made it a disaster like this movie. I wrote a new ending, then had to insert information throughout to justify the new ending. You CANT reverse engineer a “whodunit” story….. never works. Really makes me think that’s what happen here, because this is how the review of mine played out.
Lastly, I want to ask about the journal. Do we really think that a paper bound journal stopped a bullet? I mean, maybe, but that is where it got completely silly to me. Please let me know if I missed something.
Hey, J! Thanks for the comment. And yeah, I get that. I’m a novelist, too. And there’s something that feels very inorganic about how it all comes together.
The journal thing is cliche and, yeah, a bit hard to accept. It’s just startling because the first Knives Out was so…patient and grounded? And this one feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon. I get wanting to have more fun with it. It just struck me as more reckless than fun.
Do you have a favorite whodunit film?
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).
SUCKED
Succinct review.
I fully agree with your assessment.
I will go a step further and add that I didn’t find it much fun. The portrayal of the super rich ego maniac influencers and their puppet master was too on the nose, such that anyone could’ve created the characters and their dialogue (including me). Nothing clever here, just the obvious.
I did not care about Helen because the story did a horrible job of making me feel anything for her murdered sister, something that should’ve been fairly easy to accomplish. It didn’t help any that I guessed who the guilty party was as soon as Batista died, even though I didn’t know what murder the detective was actually trying to solve yet. The movie was a mess.
I am truly surprised at how many people are raving positively about this film and how critics are being eviscerated for pointing out its obvious flaws.
I’m also amazed at how many people loved it enough to defend it so ferociously. I guess it’s a lot of Johnson fans from The Last Jedi? He’s gained a bit of a smaller Snyder-like following due to the wars people have fought over TLJ. And then of course Knives Out being such a hit.
And, yeah, I also thought the characters were a bit phoned in. Like the actors were doing as much as they could to make them unique, but there was still a generic quality about the whole thing.