Review: Glass Onion
i'm once again asking if rian johnson movies are good
Two years ago, when Knives Out was released, I wrote a Medium piece where I asked myself the question Are Rian Johnson Movies Good? Now, the next Rian Johnson film is out. Mostly my feelings are the same as two years ago. Rian Johnson tries to make movies that are accessible while challenging their audiences. This one is not quite as strong as the first, but I’m still a Rian Johnson supporter.
Glass Onion is a sequel to Knives Out, working in the same form and genre. Like Knives Out, it pretends to be a murder mystery while being a social satire. Using murder mystery pacing and structure, Rian Johnson gets plenty of chances to show us his characters that each represent aspects of “our political climate”. Detective Benoit Blanc navigates a world of gross and evil wealthy individuals, assisted by a pure and noble individual who has been wronged by them. It’s a creative take on the form and the murder mystery structure keeps it compelling to all viewers.
Knives Out had a clear sense of its identity as a satire of 2016 Thanksgiving dinner table politics. Coming out in 2019, it had some safe distance from its subject matter and was a fairly even-handed satire. Knives Out 2 sets itself in May 2020, as the pandemic quarantine heights wind down. It has a little pandemic satire, such as a character wearing a fishnet face mask, characters throwing large parties with their “pod”, overly strict and invasive testing procedures. But it’s more a satire on Elon Musk.
It’s not literally Elon Musk, but it’s pretty close. Central character Miles Bron is a billionaire tech executive with a variety of ventures: cars, news, internet, energy, and more. He’s a little more hippie than Elon Musk, but the comparison is obvious. The film takes place as Miles invites his friends to his Greek private island. His friends include a governor who’s “throwing grenades into Washington politics”, a Joe Rogan masculinity coach Twitch streamer who also lives with his mom, a scientist who works at his company, and a model who’s been repeatedly canceled for problematic tweets. All of these are called out for “hanging on to Miles’ golden tit”, using his power to keep afloat their own failing lives.
Miles is poorly spoken, doesn’t know science, and is out of touch with reality. His island is full of excess: he ships his personal car to the island despite it not having any roads, he has a glass dock that floods and becomes unusable at high tide, and he hires celebrities to do small chores for him. Before the plot of the movie, he murdered his cofounder Cassandra Brand, who was the true brains behind his company. He delusionally believes that his pioneered energy technology could cleanly power the world, but in reality it’s unsafe and catches fire. Cassandra attempted to stop him, so he had to stop her.
Using another murder mystery trope, Cassandra’s twin sister Helen disguises as her and comes to the island. Miles can’t reveal that he knows she’s dead without revealing that he was the killer. Helen is the movie’s noble core, aided by Benoit Blanc, the world’s greatest detective. Together they solve the mystery and catch Miles. Miles’s false miracle energy technology is used by Helen to burn his mansion, including the actual Mona Lisa which he has on loan from the closed-due-to-pandemic Louvre. Miles is exposed for murder and his tech empire collapses.
The satire was less sharp this time around, because this one is played safer. Rian Johnson has less distance to his satirized time period and doesn’t mock either side pandemic culture war beyond flagrant missteps. His Elon Musk billionaire character is comically evil, completely unsympathetic, so it doesn’t register as a pointed satire on the real human, who’s more complex than that. Rian Johnson clearly hates the word “disruptor”; the group of rich friends calls themselves “the disruptors”, which is mocked by noble hero Helen as a meaningless term. The prior Knives Out film was centered around a family, so it made sense that they all knew each other, but here, the disruptors are united as a former friend group that all made it big in various ways on the back of their billionaire friend. It doesn’t quite make literal sense as such a diverse group, and the characters aren’t quite as strong or memorable as the first one. Again, the satire is dialed up a bit from last time in a way that makes the characters not believable or pointedly satirized. The Joe Rogan character is also a failson who lives with his mom, no chance that he’s cool. The governor character is made apolitical, used to point out the power that Miles wields in the government, not as a meaningful satire of either side. Some of the jokes were funny, but I found the satire not as strong.
We once again get Rian Johnson’s unique morality. One example: the model who repeatedly has been canceled calls herself a “truth teller” and noble Helen replies that “it’s dangerous to call speaking without thought speaking truth”. Whatever you say about Rian Johnson, he cares. I don’t agree with all of his moral vision but he has one and I find it endearing how openly he wears it on his sleeve.
Glass Onion is not that challenging of a film. My sister fell asleep for thirty minutes in the middle of the movie, but the plot conveniently spends about ten minutes re-explaining some of the linear story, once it reveals that Cassandra is being impersonated by her twin sister Helen. For those ten minutes it felt like I was catching her up on what she missed. It was nice but movies that aspire to be something “actually good” can’t let you fall asleep for thirty minutes.
But that’s sort of what movies are nowadays right? This is a Netflix release. People fall asleep on their couch while watching, people are microwaving pizza rolls, people are playing puzzle games on their phone and looking up at the screen when they hear a loud noise. It remains perplexing to me how The Last Jedi, made by Rian Johnson in a very similar style, is incomprehensible to much of its audience and ignited a still-burning Star Wars nerd culture war. But that’s my own thing, no one else needs to care about Star Wars. It’s okay if the satire is a little obvious and takes easy shots. This is a nice movie to watch over the holidays with your family. I hope Rian Johnson keeps making movies like Glass Onion. He could do it a little bit better, but I want him to do it again.