Movies: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

[RandV]

I really enjoyed it. This whodunit format is a much better avenue for Johnson to employ his intended misdirection and and subversion of expectations. The only issue is once the movie unveils the central motive underlying everything

Spoiler

It is, ironically as Blanc himself says, very obvious who the killer is. And it's almost cheeky to have it be that obvious and disappointing with how the big reveal unfolds as a crushing disappointment to Blanc who was looking for a challenging mystery to solve. There's a playfulness to what Johnson was going for with Blanc hilariously solving the murder mystery game 5 seconds after Miles says it started. But for me, watching the movie unfold i honestly thought it would have been more compelling if one of the suspects at least had some hidden reason to want both Miles and Andi dead. But thats just a personal thing, I thought it was a smart twist on a stupidly easy murder.

What wasn't smart was twofold. Blanc goes to all the trouble to fool the island's invitees and the host by faking Andi with her twin to catch the real killer. They both obviously had a tape recorder with them. Why not have the tape recorder with one of them and provoke a clear confession out of miles? The napkin being burned shouldn't have been as big a deal as it was. Then the alternative is also stupid for the sake of an explosive dismantling of Miles but Blanc basically hands Helen a bomb to strike back at Miles. Something that could have killed literally everyone in the house. It was pretty dumb that everyone survived to begin with but Blanc is supposed to solve murders not help someone commit revenge killings. In real life if that explosion had been worse, Blanc would be on the hook for prison time for sure. And last there's a little suspension of disbelief with them confronting Miles when they knew he still had a gun and they were trapped on an island with no escape. With Ransom in the first movie they knew they caught him unaware and unarmed.

But those aren't heavy criticisms just things that struck me as not the best writing decisions. Still a great follow up. Strong performances all around, Johnson's capacity for criticizing the affluent is still amusing without being too over the top or overt. And the most important part that came from Knives Out, I still want more Benoit Blanc murder mysteries if Johnson is willing to make them. We need more movies that aren't action CGI fests that can contend with modern blockbuster cinema, especially ones that make the audience think. Some questionable writing decisions with the finale in a movie that was perfect up to that point but really good stuff otherwise. 8/10.

In the end I rather liked it. With the finale it was a bit silly and stretches believeability if you think about it for more than a few seconds, but the most important part is it was fun.

I saw Death on the Nile a little while back, a big production and I believe second one for Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot character. It was fine I guess, but contrasting "Knive's Out" to the classic Sherlock Holmes archetype I feel like it's 'subversion' of the genre works out quite well, and we're much better off with it than if it was trying to be another ultra clever Sherlock Holmes knock off.

I suppose for people actually into the genre they're there to try to ponder out who dunit along the way, but for a non-genre fan sitting down for a 2 hour movie I like it how it is here.

 

[Speyer]

Did not like this movie. The Mystery was pretty weak, basically being just an Agatha Christie setup but executed poorly. Usually in this type of scenario the detective and the viewer have to know the same information at the same time for the conclusion to be satisfactory. There are also a lot of plotholes like the villian holding on to the blackmail envelope wich is causally "explained" by the villian being "stupid".

On a thematic point of view this whole critique of the tech and influencer world is arbitrary at best. Bron is obviously a mix between Trump, Musk, Thiel and Elizabeth Holmes and the movie is not subtle about it. His napkin scheme wich makes him rich in the movie is so ridiculously simplistic I had to laugh out loud after seeing it. The movie makes fun of the "blue pill movement" through the Andrew Tate type character that Bautista plays. But it indulges itself in a conspiracy narrative that stupid people with privileges are taking over our societies. And women and people of color are basically just victims in this process that are exploited by the toxic and stupid (white) men in power.

Rian Johnson continues to be one of the most overrated directors working today.

 

[RandV]

Did not like this movie. The Mystery was pretty weak, basically being just an Agatha Christie setup but executed poorly. Usually in this type of scenario the detective and the viewer have to know the same information at the same time for the conclusion to be satisfactory. There are also a lot of plotholes like the villian holding on to the blackmail envelope wich is causally "explained" by the villian being "stupid".

Yes that is the point I was making. It has the appearance of being a classic murder mystery with the lead character being an archetypal Sherlock Holmes, but the actual point of the movie is Rian Johnson doing his 'subvert audience expectations' thing. If the tech billionaire got murdered and you spent 2 hours watching Daniel Craig unravelling a complex 'who dunnit', then it would just be another Agatha Christie story.

Love it or hate it, but that's the point here. Personally I hated it when Johnson applied this to Star Wars, but am liking it with the murder mystery.

 

[Speyer]

Yes that is the point I was making. It has the appearance of being a classic murder mystery with the lead character being an archetypal Sherlock Holmes, but the actual point of the movie is Rian Johnson doing his 'subvert audience expectations' thing. If the tech billionaire got murdered and you spent 2 hours watching Daniel Craig unravelling a complex 'who dunnit', then it would just be another Agatha Christie story.

Love it or hate it, but that's the point here. Personally I hated it when Johnson applied this to Star Wars, but am liking it with the murder mystery.

I usually don't get it when people are poiniting out that a movie or book is "subverting audience expectations" like this is already a huge sign of quality by itself. You could say the same thing about Tommy Wiseaus The Room but that doesn't make it a good movie aside from the unintentional humour. Its also not like the Craig Character didn't funcion in a smilar way in Knives out already as far as I remember.

Glass Onion is also not that surprising or original at all. Shortly after the big twist in the middle its pretty clear how its going to play out.

 

[beowulf]

I liked it, not as much as the first but still was a good movie. Loved the social commentary and that it is getting some Musk fans into a tizzy even if Johnson said it was luck that it was apropos as he wrote the screenplay before Musk ever talked about buying twitter etc.

Some great cameos snuck in to the movie from Ethan Hawke to Angela Lansbury and Yo-Yo Ma. Also liked the marketing like the fake listing on Zillow for the Island for $450M, Netflix’s 'Glass Onion' compound listed on Zillow for $450 million

 

[bobholly39]

It was pretty enjoyable to watch, but i definitely preferred the first one.

Did he even solve anything, in the end?

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Johnson with another quality film. He just doesn't seem to miss.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Johnson with another quality film. He just doesn't seem to miss*

*outside of the Star Wars universe

 

[Hivemind]

Didn't like this one was much as Knives Out. Knives Out was less focused on Blanc, and gave us a character to identify with from pretty much the very start. The first half of Glass Onion had Blanc as the de-facto protagonist and focused on him Sherlock Holmes'-ing things, before they finally gave us someone else to root for. The easily hateable cast of characters is part of what makes both movies work, but you have to give the audience someone to identify with as well, and Blanc as that protagonist just feels a lot more cliche and unappealing.

Further still, even if I agree with some of the cultural criticisms, they felt rather low-brow and on-the-nose. They're also going to date the movie very quickly going forwards. Making fun of the alt-right troll in Knives Out was one of the more hilarious aspects, but those jokes were relatively minor and self-contained, not a central plot element nor were they dragged out for as long.

Also we can understand a checkov's gun without the audience being reminded of it every single time a phone rings or person claps.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

*outside of the Star Wars universe

Not for me!

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

People are getting all hung up on the idea of "subversion" when I'd argue that what this is is ... a straight-up, classic, locked-room mystery. All the misdirection that occurs isn't subversion, it's what makes stories like this stories like this. It's an essential ingredient. TRUE subversion would, at least to me, involve stripping the mystery from the story. But that doesn't sound very fun.

I don't think Johnson does anything radical or new. But he clearly knows the genre and plays within it very well. His punchy dialogue and modern sensibilities may make it FEEL different (new? radical? subverted?) but a lot of the motivations and machinations are all straight from the classics. There are plenty of Agatha Christie stories where the body doesn't appear until 1/3 to 1/2 through story and plenty where the person you think is going to be the victim actually isn't, for example.

As for the political/social commentary, again, that's also long been part of the genre. Christie's novels and adaptations are almost exclusively set among the elite and engaging with clashes between folks of different social strata. Now there are plenty of times in her tales where the striver or the person of lower standing is ultimately the villain so perhaps because Johnson's chips are clearly on the underdog's side that is being seen as "subversion" but Christie wrote jeeeeze 100+ such stories, Johnson's written 2. Christie wrote COUNTLESS rich privileged morons as well. Again, I'd say it's almost a staple of the genre.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

People are getting all hung up on the idea of "subversion" when I'd argue that what this is is ... a straight-up, classic, locked-room mystery. All the misdirection that occurs isn't subversion, it's what makes stories like this stories like this.

Thank you, I didn't want to quote myself...

Feels like too many hurt Star Wars fans feel the need to redeem themselves for not liking what he did to their precious, while pointing out that they still love a little subversion (as long as it's not).

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Thank you, I didn't want to quote myself...

Feels like too many hurt Star Wars fans feel the need to redeem themselves for not liking what he did to their precious, while pointing out that they still love a little subversion (as long as it's not).

Not just here (and nothing personal to folks here) but I've been following similar discussions on Twitter, in podcasts and even with humans I know in real life and I just want to be like ... do you even really like mysteries?

And Johnson himself is a loaded topic who makes it hard to parse genuine thought and criticism from lingering bitterness on past projects

 

[Hierso]

I didn't care for it much, Knives out was much better.

Spoiler

The whole plotline with the twin sister taking over her dead sisters life was not that great.