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 shocked at how well-reviewed this movie is. Agree with just about every single one of your points. But it’s a movie for the lowest common denominator – people that don’t know, don’t care, and don’t understand the lazy shortcuts Johnson took. Having Blanc as the first-person perspective without letting the audience know what he knows is one of the laziest examples of writing I can recall. And yet I don’t see a single review other than this one calling this out. But I suppose well-acted, beautiful set design, and terrible writing is enough for “universal acclaim” on Metacritic now.
I do think the Mona Lisa thing could have worked WITHOUT the whole Klear angle. As you point out, it’s so flimsy, and the way Helen lays it out to Miles on the steps at the end with such confidence is laughable. Why not just have her explain it AFTER the friends take her side?? I do think she’s entitled to a moment of selfishness without losing her integrity/ethics, and it would have played better if it was equivalent to burning his Rosebud (although it probably should have been something inexpensive and sentimental–rather than priceless and sentimental–if that was the case).
> Think about that for a second. What did Blanc just call dumb? Not Miles Bron.
…yes he is, though? He’s realizing that Miles Bron had no plan, no foresight, no cunning gambit. He made a bunch of rash decisions, managed to coast for a while on the confusion, then got caught. The only reason he almost got away with anything was his pre-existing leverage over nearly everyone there. He’s calling Bron stupid for committing murder on impulse and just hoping he could tie up loose ends as they arose.
> 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.
That… is not what the film shows. That is not the concept of the movie. If that’s your takeaway, I don’t think you understood the plot well enough to reasonably critique the film.
> If they all still sided with Miles, then no one would ever know Klear caused the fire.
You don’t think the French government would demand an investigation? You think he’d be able to sweep the destruction of the most famous painting in the world under the rug? This just seems like you’re ignoring the extremely obvious intent of the movie and then treating it like a plot hole, which isn’t at all fair. It’s not a good faith criticism.
I don’t think the characters coming to the conclusion that Miles won’t be able to prevent an investigation and deciding to jump ship is in any way unreasonable. Even if you think Miles would be able to wriggle out of it, all that matters to the scene is whether or not the characters involved think he would be able to wriggle out of it. If they _think_ he won’t be able to avoid the scandal, then it makes sense for them to betray him. This doesn’t seem like a good faith criticism.
> As is, the COVID inclusion is just a pointless inclusion that adds nothing and goes nowhere.
Adds nothing? It explains why the Louvre would be willing to loan out the Mona Lisa. Goes nowhere? It doesn’t need to go any further than “why would the Louvre be willing to loan out its most famous attraction,” it’s like one minute of screentime. Were you not paying attention during that part?
I genuinely do not understand what your problem is here. Yeah, it’s a tiny bit contrived, but so what? There needed to be a reason for the Louvre to loan out the Mona Lisa, and “the museum is closed for COVID” is about as good a reason as you’re going to get. I’m not sure how you could’ve missed this. It genuinely seems like you’re just inventing problems for the sake of validating your opinions about the movie, to the point where it blinds you to the obvious.
Same with your rant about how the movie handles unrevealed information differently than what you were expecting. Yes, the movie breaks some of the rules of traditional mystery movies like Knives Out. Yes, perhaps that makes it less of a straight-up Mystery For the Audience To Solve movie and more of a mystery/comedy/thriller. It wasn’t pointless or lazy, just different.
You may not have liked it, and that’s fine, but you try really hard to make it seem like having undisclosed information about a perspective character is an objective failure of the writing, rather than a risky move that you feel didn’t pay off, but a lot of people enjoyed. I personally really enjoyed just how much is exposed on-screen that’s easy to miss on a first viewing, but leaps out at you when watched a second time (Miles swapping the drinks, Miles having the gun, Benoit shouting “HELEN!” before the reveal, etc.)
Also, the really long, rambling examples (like the couple at dinner) are really, really weak writing. If you can’t explain what you mean without several paragraphs spent constructing a contrived example where your opinion is obviously correct, then using that to imply there is an Objectively Correct approach to storytelling, you’ve gone wrong somewhere.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not liking Glass Onion; but between your fundamental oversights and misunderstandings, your long, banal examples, your weird hang-ups and your need to launder your opinion by inventing Objective Errors, this is definitely one of the worst attempts at a review of anything I’ve ever read.
This is going to haunt me:
> If they were to just raise their hands and do the right thing, wouldn’t everything be better?
I am embarrassed on your behalf. I pray that you only made this utterly illiterate mistake because you were too angry at the twist to attempt a good faith reading of the second half of the movie.
Didn’t like the movie. I liked the character dynamics of Knives Out. The characters in Glass Onion are all over the place. The premise that they didn’t really like each other made me not like them. 10 strangers packed in a box. I found Helen annoying and the twin replacement contrived and unbelievable. I didn’t care who was the killer. When it was finally revealed, after being told it was obvious this whole time (a “glass onion), I felt like nothing was accomplished. I didn’t even feel stupid, because I had given up guessing. I was just bored.
How about the lady you just killed showing up and there’s no private conversation between the two of you? “Like, hey baby, how are you? You were so out of it last time we met… How are you feeling?” That would have helped to cement the feeling of a successful deception. Instead the most obvious problem is left floating there in the air, then revealed later in the film, which causes the film’s premise to collapse. If I had sent a threatening email AND ended up drugged by the person I was threatening, I would be extremely suspicious and cautious. It doesn’t make any sense that she’d show up and not say anything. Where is her handgun? Nothing in the film makes it make sense.
It’s a stupid movie pretending to be smart, just like The Last Jedi.
Honestly, I do disagree with you a lot, but largely understand it to be a difference of opinion. However, the movie does acknowledge the differences between Helen and Andi.
1. Clair suspects something’s up with her, which happens the first time that Helen as Andi spoke at length for the first time in the movie to one of Andi’s former friends.
2. When she does make a conscious effort to talk, and not influenced by alcohol in doing so, she talks to Whiskey, who doesn’t know her enough to recognize the differences.
2. She becomes more talkative as she grows more drunk. This is exhibited in her confrontations with the group. Yet, in that situation, when Helen as Andi storms off, Duke says “now there’s the Andi I know.” Implying that even Duke could sense that there was something amiss.
3. Helen talks about how Andi and her would practice ‘rich bitch’ accent, and Helen clarified (or implied) that she was practicing that accent, emphasized by the second meetup between Blanc and her. For example, she had been studying her sister’s TED talks regularly to better mimic her manner of speech and knowledge.
4. Blanc and Helen planned for her to avoid conversation whenever possible. Birdie, for example, tries to engage her in conversation, and Helen as Andi gives her the cold shoulder.
Now, it’s clear you thought it’d be better if we knew she was faking, but to suggest that the film didn’t address the differences and complications doesn’t line up with the dialogue and story.
Hey hey! Appreciate the counter points. Honestly, it’s nice to have someone push back in a way that’s actually…good. That doesn’t happen as much as I wished it would. I think you’re right in pointing out that the movie does make an effort to establish some aspect of differences/complications/suspicion about Helen as Andi. But I don’t think I suggested anywhere in the piece that the movie didn’t address the differences? Just that what we got was subpar. I ran back through the piece, albeit briefly, and didn’t see anything like “The movie never addressed people being suspicious of the differences.” Moreso just that how it handled the whole thing was uninteresting.
I typed in google that this movie was awful and got your review.
You put way more effort into the review than this movie deserved.
Uggh. I cannot explain how they got this cast to act in such a poorly scripted movie.
Woeful
Unfunny
Trite
I don’t get it.
Me either.
Your final paragraph (not the update) is most salient. Are we to believe, that the happy ending actually came to pass?
The friend group, all of whom have proven themselves to be narcissistic and willing to lie, can raise their hands on the stairs and say they’ll rat out Miles, but that requires them to *admit* to a federal, freaking crime (perjury) with real consequences. All of them will be ruined.
This was a good takedown of the movie. So lazy, and so bad. But, worth noting that it’s not a terrible movie standing alone. It’s a 2.5/3-star movie on its own. But compared to its predecessor, it’s just bad.
Right? It’s insane to just leave it at “The audience should assume everything works out!”
I hated the scene where Miles’s ‘friends’ turn against him. Felt like the movie tried to play it off as the only thing they’d lose for being honest people is the financial support of Miles. But obviously this is not true. All of them will be going to jail for falsely testyfing. If you think about this it is absolutely unlikely that the ‘friends’ would turn on Miles. Maybe I could buy it if it’s just about the money but not like this.
Yeah, they’d lose everything. Not just their careers but probably their freedom.
I hate the nonsense napkin too. App>Manpower/Risk+Crypto scalability? Seems like a business plan from the Step Brother minds of Prestige Worldwide. The weight put on that being the steal-able key to the success of the business was the dumbest piece of writing ever.
Oh man, haha. I watched in theaters so couldn’t really read the napkin. I never thought to actually see how good or bad it was.
Hey, Chris. Just wanted to let you know I really enjoyed reading your review. It was like a breath of fresh air. I left the film fuming with anger due to all these plot holes and could basically only find praise online (92% positive RT score!). I really wanted to like it too, since I was a huge fan of the Knives Out! original movie.
There were a lot of lazy decisions taken with the script and this film doesn’t hold a candle to Knives Out. What struck me as the most glaring issue with the script is that none of the “Disruptors” have anything to gain by siding with Helen. In fact, they have everything to lose, since they have already lied in court to protect Norton’s character. So, the ending of the mystery doesn’t really make sense, as they would have had all the incentive in the world to either murder/silence Blanc and Helen or to put the blame of the fire on them.
In addition, something you’ve said really resonated with me. Thematically, there could be a great movie about “cronies rebelling against the master”, so, something “Trumpian” about that. A good, intelligent movie could come out of that theme.
Again, I’m really happy I found this page and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts. I’m already subscribed to the newsletter. Hugs from Brazil!
Thanks, Matheus!
I guess with the Disruptors, it’s that none of them like Norton. So I could imagine if they’re all that sick of him that they’d take the opportunity to try and get rid of him. But it’s still flimsy, because, as you said, they have more to gain. And it could be the very next day all of them realize that lol.
Thanks for subscribing and the kind words! Hopefully you’ve continued to enjoy the content!
I actually think that this demonstrates a basic flaw in RJ’s thinking. I get that he loves to subvert expectations. But this runs right into Chesterton’s Fence. There is a *reason* why certain expectations hold, and why certain forms are used in storytelling.
This is not to say that there is no possibility that a subversion can be excellent – but it must be done with extreme care. It must understand and respect the reasons why the expectations are there in the first place, even while avoiding them to achieve a greater result.
In a murder mystery, the expectation is that the plot is like a puzzle – all the pieces are there, in plain sight, but it may not be obvious initially what is important and what is tangential, and how it actually fits together. But the unspoken covenant is that *you have all the information you need to solve the case, if you can make the right connections*. Implied in this is two things: 1) once you see the solution, you can see how it all fit together perfectly from the start, and 2) everything is explicable – people are acting in accordance with their character, no magical deus ex machina appears at the end, etc.
Here we have a case where the pieces were -not- in plain sight for most of the movie; some are, but critical ones are missing, so you don’t get any real chance to try to work it out yourself. Further more, deus ex machina abound, such as the journal and the identical twin, both of which are simply unfair contrivances that allow characters to act in a sort of god-mode that should not have been available to them.
He did subvert expectations in form, yes, but in such a way as to defeat that which makes the form interesting to begin with.
RJ did something similar when he tried to defy expectations for SW:TLJ. By turning Luke Skywalker into a coward who tries to murder his own padawan, he subverted the Campbellian Hero’s Journey that Luke had in the original trilogy, even while making the character act differently than he actually would have done. He then systematically removed any interest in Rey’s own quest for identity, which might have touched off her own Hero’s Journey, but instead left her as a Mary-Sue shell of a character. He did not understand the form of the Star Wars universe – a mythology and a morality play – and instead just tried to subvert all the archetypes.
I think Johnson is a smart guy who thinks of himself as a smarter guy than he actually is. He is capable of making good, interesting movies. But he is filled with hubris, and believes that his “clever” contrivances can substitute for the actual demands of the kind of story he is telling.
I agree with basically all of this, but you left out the thing that most annoyed me and that was Johnson clearly showing Miles handing Duke his glass in such a clunky way that it drew attention to it. At that moment I knew the next scene would determine whether Miles was the killer based on his reaction. If he said “someone is trying to kill me because I handed Duke my glass!” then that (potentially) let’s him off the hook, but if he acted like he didn’t realize the drink was actually his then all suspecion should shift to him. But Johnson’s choice of having Miles actively lie and then actually show a replay that didn’t match what we just saw was even worse because it removed all doubt that Miles murdered Duke. I suppose Johnson was gambling that most wouldn’t have seen Miles hand the cup to Duke, but to anyone who did catch that the reveal of the killer was effectively spoiled at that moment. It was annoying.
That being said, I did think it was a *fun* movie and annoying plot aside I enjoyed it (up until the last 20 minutes which soured me on literally every character) but I expected such a better mystery from Johnson.
I enjoyed this movie until the reveal of “who done it”. Miles has Helen’s sister (Andi) murder because of a simple napkin? That has got to be the stupidest reason for murder. The moment Andi threatened him with revealing the letter, he should have immediately set out to bury Andi under legal fees and work on disproving the authenticity of the napkin with his lawyers. It didn’t matter how colorful the napkin was, without anyone to testify in her stead, Miles could have accused her of fabricating evident and attacked her publicly as bitter and money hungry. A good smear campaign and thousands of dollars in counter lawsuits could have hurt her more than death. The napkin saying “Glass Onion” at the bottom doesn’t make it any more real or fake than the other. It’s a flimsy assertation of the truth at best.
And the ending, If Miles is smart, Helen is in for one hella of a lawsuit for destruction of personal property. In a real-life scenario, no one on that island would admit to perjury and destroy their careers. Helen will forever be seen as the face that destroyed the Mona Lisa.