Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson, November 23, 2022) Movie • Page 22

As someone who didn’t really love Knives Out, this was a lot more fun and campy.

 

Agree that it’s a big step down from the first, which I haven’t watched in a while, but I don’t remember it being as goofy as Glass Onion.

I really hate the ending. “this clean energy we made is actually insanely explosive, but really it will only blow up some of your windows and won’t hurt a single person inside the home” and the idea that Benoit would give it to Helen to potentially suicide bomb herself is very weird.

All that said Craig is a blast to watch in this role and I’m still excited for the next one.

 

loved this a whole fuckin lot but never saw knives out

 

thought it was great not to see her typecast like usual tbh

 

also I mean I’m not a scientist or chemist but obviously movie dramatization aside the explosion and wreckage thereafter didn’t seem THAT absurd, I mean the space they were in was large enough and (they made a point to specifically mention this earlier” it was flowing through the piping of the structure so yeah it blew out the windows since it was coming from within the walls, the room they were in was tall you notice how it blew out through the onion so it stands to reason the piping was running through the structure at an elevation higher than the ground level. now obviously the entire building would eventually collapse and crush them if they just took their sweet time like they did but also it’s not like a cramped apartment fire where if you don’t make it out in two minutes you’re screwed, i dunno that falls under nitpicking and some obvious suspension of disbelief you gotta have when watching any sort of movie anyway, just imo


edit: also thought the Mona Lisa going down in flames and it’s destruction ultimately being what will bring Miles down was just some really well done beautiful poetry. maybe I’m simple minded and easy to please but I clapped and yelled out loud, I dunno reading this thread kind of makes me feel like I might be an idiot for thinking all of this was brilliant

 

You're not an idiot lol. It worked for you and thats great.

Curious what you'd think of knives out since you've seen this one first.

 

Found Miles' alt

 

Good call on that, yeah. I still thought she did great

 

it’s true

 

My thoughts are it's not as good a mystery as the first one, but then that was going to be difficult. Knives Out was real lightning in a bottle stuff and the kind of film that is incredibly difficult to make a sequel to. Rian still managed to play with expectations and pull off a genre shift midway through in a way that feels fresh, helped by Janelle Monae's exceptional performance.

Honestly, writing a highly anticipated whodunnit where the twist is that it's actually dumb? Pretty funny as a meta twist, though I can see why not everyone liked it. [Last Jedi reference goes here]

I do think that the first half drags a little, partly to preserve the clever trick of switching things up at the exact halfway point, and therefore whether you enjoy it or not is going to partly depend on your tolerance for the satire. I personally think the satire is, if anything, more on point that in the original film - I saw a comment on Twitter that Duke is a more realised version of the "mastuhbatin' Nazi" which was essentially a throwaway gag, and Miles Bron is just fantastic whether you read him as a parody of Elon Musk or not. I did feel they could have done more with Kathryn Hahn but that's just because I love Kathryn Hahn. Kate Hudson was fantastic, and Madelyn Cline and Jessica Henwick were great as their respective foils.

My only thought, again possibly relating to the halfway point plot switch, is the secondary mystery gets kind of skipped over, in that once we get the replay of the scenes from Helen's perspective, we almost immediately go into the summing up part which is intercut with retrieving the envelope. Which is done to preserve the Mona Lisa bit as the climax of the film but just skews the setup / payoff ratio a bit.

Anyway 4 stars and they should keep making these as long as Rian keeps coming up with ideas. Biggest complaint - I hate that I didn't get the Helen/Cassandra reference until I was reading TVTropes after.

P.S. There's an Ouroboros snake in one of the rooms - that must be a Looper reference.

 

Agree with pretty much all of that. Honestly, I didn’t think the mystery in the first was super clever. I just loved the cast’s chemistry and the character work. So this mystery not hitting 100% wasn’t as big of a deal.

But it will always suck that Reed Hastings is a moron that didn’t expand this out and let it play in theaters for longer.

 

I think I’d like a Benoit Blanc mystery that’s tighter instead of bigger.

 

For some reason I was thinking the deal at Netflix was for 3 sequels but now I keep seeing only 2??

 

2 sequels, 3 movies total

 

I loved this but do understand how parts of it didn’t work for people. I love that both put such a clear lens on the way women of color (and in this one, Black women specifically) are so thrown around and fucked over by the world. Only issue with both movies is that I wish the killer was less obvious. Which I guess is a pretty big deal, but the journey to get there is so impactful to me in both movies that I can cut it some slack. Also thought the score was phenomenal

 

Somehow even more self-satisfied than the first film.

 

Bautista is legitimately a good actor.

 

Someone alluded to this, but my biggest caveat in the film was the comeuppance at the end because even though it wrecked Edward Norton's character, it let everyone else off. The rest of his squad was only willing to turn him in when leaching off of him wouldn't benefit them anymore and shows they really learned nothing and were awful people themselves.

It was just a bit unsatisfying to me to have awful people being awful as the solution to another awful person. I'm sure that's part of the irony, I guess I just preferred how Knives Out took no prisoners by the end.

 

I mean they are giving up on what seems to be their sole bankroller, so that’s not nothing

 

I actually thought this was really great, I love how it feels similar in theme to Knives Out but also does so much different that it doesn't feel like it's copying the first one at ALL. Beautifully shot and the cast is great too

Honestly would put it right up there with the first one. Not quite as good but only a small step down

 

I kind of assumed that was the point. They weren’t doing the right thing, they were doing what would make them look better in the end.

 

It never says that anyone besides Whiskey, who is cool and my friend, is doing it for moral reasons
they were probably always like Miles is such a stupid pretentious dick, but they needed his money and influence, and they were like dude come on not cool, also smashing glass statues is fun