It’s clickbait because it asserts something surprising and extreme about a movie that is generally considered to be very good, and then the article can’t really back the title up, let alone its even more extreme yet wishy-washy claim that the movie “might be” one of the worst movies the author has ever seen (talk about bad writing — that should be either “is one of the worst” or “might be the worst”).
The article maaaybe identifies one or two minor flaws, but mostly demonstrates that the author didn’t understand the movie. The word “fugue” is not mentioned in the review, for one of the many big misses.
It reads to me like garden variety clickbait of the “Beatles didn’t have a single good song” or “the internet has done no good” variety.
> It’s clickbait because it asserts something surprising and extreme about a movie that is generally considered to be very good
"Bad writing" is not suprising or extreme, just an opinion. And "very good" is subjective — we're talking about movies here, i.e. art. This isn't a review of programming languages where there's an objective reality of pros and cons to consider.
I haven't seen Glass Onion, but I saw Knives Out and while it was a decent film, I think comparing it to the Beatles or the Internet is a bit silly. It sounds like you really enjoyed the film and are just annoyed that someone else didn't.
I'll just chime in to say I liked it. I see the author's point about a somewhat lazy plot device, but I didn't really think about that until now. Maybe I'm lacking context - to me it's a Netflix movie and in the top 5% easily of what's on there. It was an entertaining movie that had lots of funny parts. What else do you want? The critics long winded explanations, often requiring analogies, of what was inconsistent, seem like he had to think too hard to find something to criticize
Ugh- I thought that when it said spoilers ahead, it would be just the movie being reviewed in the article, which I don’t plan on seeing. Then there were spoilers for other movies (Get Out) that I intend to watch sometime.
Honestly, if you're reading an article about movie X, then IMHO it is reasonable to assume that any spoiler warnings would be specific to movie X. If an article is going to spoil movies A, B, and C as well, then the spoiler warning text should make note of that.
I think that it's fair to be upset that a newly released movie was spoiled for you. I think it's silly to expect that nobody will ever talk about the details of a movie that hasn't been in theaters for half a decade.
I don’t think it upset me really- more so surprised. Still feels like it was just released recently, but I suppose time perception is funny that way.
Interesting discussion on movie discussion etiquette though. I never really considered how much time is “long enough” to get into a movie’s plot details.
That wasn't his point. His point was that spoilers for a movie that's 5+ years old don't need to be alerted. I agree, because it would make movie discussion somewhat exhausting if it were otherwise.
Is this here because Miles Bron is an anagram for Elon is Mr B? "It’s practically a hit piece on Elon Musk" yeah duh, author must be a real smart one. Don't usually see movie reviews here otherwise. I thought it was pretty good, quite funny at times, fun mystery. I liked first one better but by no means was it bad.
The character has an obsession with repeating a single letter in his company names/products and big sources of changing the world are rockets, cars, and a news site. He also is clearly into crypto (if you look at the background).
I admit that I have also wondered whether there is any allusion to Elon, mainly because he is a notorious eccentric CEO.
Nevertheless, I have been amused by this movie much more than I assume that most of its viewers have been, because Miles Bron, more than resembling what I know about Elon, had an uncanny resemblance to the CEO of a startup where I have worked some years ago.
The resemblance was complete, in behavior, in speech, in the dyslexic words invented continuously, in the content of the fax messages with product feature suggestions (though my CEO used e-mail, not fax).
So I wonder how many such CEOs exist and whether the script writer has completely made up the Miles Bron character or he has indeed used a real-life CEO as inspiration.
It's absolutely wild to see people on this forum of all places saying they can't relate to the characters' social interactions. Thanks for a laugh even after the film is over, Rian.
Still reading it, but to the first point about the starting hour.
Yo-Yo ma sets up the flashbacks, and the structure of the movie as a fugue.
A melody thats played upon and expanded.
The first reveal that the writer says 'renders the movies first hour pointless..' is an example of that. Benoits seeming fawning of Miles, 'inadvertant' needling of his intelligence (childish puzzles) are shown to be part of Blancs own deceit.
And in fact all, the flashbacks extend information you already knew, Duke, Whisky and, Miles, for example. That's the smart thing about these dumb murders, its in the composition itself, and not the characters, or the plot driving it.
I had a whale of time watching it, and loved the mundanity of the crimes and the fact it was just dumb people in this rich persons playworld.
Glass Onion takes the well-worn detective genre and creates some genuinely surprising moments by "cheating" a little with what it shows the audience.
This article says it should have played it straight. I think that would have made for a more standard, boring movie. But whatever, that's just opinion.
But I think it is silly to call it bad writing. Bad implies that the writer didn't have command of their craft. It is clearly all very deliberate and designed to create something surprising in a genre where that is very difficult. Like it or hate it, at least it tried something instead of just being another remake of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Was One".
No, that was my point. The movie was very good for what it was, and the article’s complaints are almost all based on the author making incorrect assumptions about the movie’s intent and then complaining that the writing did not meet their incorrect assumptions.
It’s fine to dislike the movie; about 7% of critics and moviegoers do, according to rotten tomatoes. But at least have the grace to understand it.
In some occasions 7% of critics do have correct assumptions, being able to see through the catchy hooks, and this is one of those cases. This movie is expected to continue the original story as a proper sequel, but it is something completely different — it simply does not match the expectations. It is very easy to understand this movie, because it is flat and unimaginative junk that does not leave any space for intellectual discussion, so trivial are the ideas, the plot and the dialogues in it. In the end, of course, it is a matter of taste, so let‘s not throw the words like „grace“ in this conversation — they are reserved for more important things.
I’m very sorry the movie made you that angry. I hope it’s one of those things you can see again in a few years and enjoy in a new light. I was like that with Steve Martin’s The Jerk: hated it, thought it was banal, came to appreciate it years later.
You may or may not be right about the ideas in Glass Onion being trivial, but how blind must the author of this clickbait review have been to not even notice that literally Yo-Yo Ma, literally playing himself, literally sets up the movie’s structure and explains why it plays out the way it does, in one of the first scenes? You can think that’s dumb, but you can’t ignore it when writing a critique!
This supposed revelation of “bad writing” is just clickbait from someone who didn’t understand the (yes, blatant! yes, arguably trivial!) structure the movie was exploring.
Shouldn't a murder mystery show what really happened? Instead of faking it to hide who did it, only to be revealed at the end with the real video footage?
What's the point? Might as well just make it an action movie.
It did show what really happened, it's only in the flashback when the character lies about it that it shows something else, but if you rewatch it you'll see everything happen in the background.
> creates some genuinely surprising moments by "cheating" a little
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I know this much: you can't cheat.
If you do, and you keep some fundamental fact hidden until the last minute, or if you use some kind of magic, or if the murderer was a complete outsider, or if the victim died by accident and nobody's guilty, or, God forbid! if it turns out the victim isn't actually dead, or it was all a dream... then the audience gets angry. Sometimes very angry. That may be what happened here.
To paraphrase Walter Sobchak, this isn't 'Nam. There are rules to writing detective stories.
In the 1920s, Ronald Knox came up with a list of "Ten Commandments" of Detective Fiction listing what wasn't fair cheating [1], getting at this exact point. So codifying what is and isn't fair cheating in detective stories is nearly as old as the genre.
I'm 100% sure Rian Johnson was aware of these rules as the writer. I'd say Glass Onion technically violates 2 of them, but only for the first hour of the movie. Then you get let in on the cheating before the main climax of the movie.
The movie doesn’t “cheat” as far as I can tell. What it does is withhold details from what the camera shows the audience. This could be upsetting if you felt there was some implied promise that the camera PoV was showing you the entire story, but there isn’t.
Again, I haven't seen the movie -- but that does sound a little like cheating to me; the implied assumption is that it should be possible for the audience to come up with a valid theory on their own; if it's not possible because some essential piece of the puzzle is missing, then it is cheating.
It was very obvious from the moment Benoit Blanc reveals the nature of his invitation to the island that some essential element of the story was being withheld.
By that criterion, a lot of detective fiction cheats. Someone else mentioned Agatha Christie's Murder of the Orient Express. And Then There Was One/Ten Little Indians probably qualifies too and I'm sure there are many others from Christie and others.
Sherlock Holmes always does. Poor Watson, encumbered by reality like the audience, can't see the clues that suddenly appear only to Holmes just in time to announce the "obvious" truth.
I think you should maybe watch the movie before weighing in on whether or not it was "cheating", because it's a bit more subtle than is implied. It sounds like you've already formed your opinion though, which is a shame because it's maybe better to go into a fun movie like this with an open mind and no expectations.
The only way I can see people getting angry at the film is if they go into it with a set of checkboxes they want to tick, or want to solve the crime along with (or ahead of!) the main character. But then at that point they're sort of setting themselves up to be angry.
I was careful to speak in general terms. I am absolutely not expressing an opinion about that movie at all.
I saw and enjoyed the first installment of Knives Out. I don't have a beef with the filmmaker, or the series, or the actors, or the genre.
I'm just saying that detective fiction in general should follow a certain formula and if you stray too far away from it, most of the time, it doesn't turn into a wonderful new recipe but simply fails. In general.
Is it the case for this film in particular? I have no idea!
So with your typical Agatha Christie flick, you must catch some subtle clue(s), make your bet, and then feel clever about it because some dimwits that didn't pay attention or just aren't as smart didn't figure it out.
Spare me the pat on the back. Or oh! the plot twist. That's not what makes a movie, although it certainly can break it.
We may strongly disagree here, but I think "cheating" is an essential part of great movie making.
A good movie is all about telling a great story in an immersive way. If the director "cheats" her way through that story, be it for budgetary reasons or even to just move the story forward in a way that grips you, well, more power to her.
Dunno, I felt let down. Mysteries reward those paying close attention, everyone builds their pet theory on what happened "The butler did it!" and plays along being a detective. But instead the movie shows you what didn't happen, like grabbing a poisoned drink, and only later shows what really happened, being handed a poisoned drink.
The original scene showed what did happen: the drink being handed rather than picked up. You can see it right before the 59’ mark. The drink being picked up was only shown in the later “memory” and was immediately pointed out to be a false memory.
It would be interesting to watch an edit played in chronological order.
A similar response was made to Passengers[1], where if it is NOT made chronologically, the director could have an opportunity to push the theme entirely close to a horror genre.
Interesting. Passengers also had at least one fairly nonsensical effect scene and some plot points that just didn't make sense. But, yeah, with some fairly modest changes it could IMO have been a notably better film. For me, it's definitely in the category of films that are frustratingly close to having all of the ingredients but doesn't pull them together properly.
The Circle is another one. If ever a film called out for a satirical take on its source material, it was that one.
The film wasn't perfect but these complaints are not very compelling to me. The cheat of "what you thought you saw wasn't what you saw" is kind of a lazy cheat but it is very common in detective and heist films. The point about whether the sister who journaled everything wouldn't have journaled about creating the software is a good one and the conceit of the twin being able to fool the friends is also a good point but is also a tried and true cliche.
> The point about whether the sister who journaled everything wouldn't have journaled about creating the software
Where does it say she didn't journal about the software? And - imagining said entry - even if you could prove the date the entry was written, it's still just hearsay against the testimony of 4 others.
When JM showed up in the island, Miles should’ve had a reaction to her presence. The cheat is worsened when the movie doesn’t ever tell us how he reacted, even after the fact. IMO it qualifies as a giant plot hole.
I should’ve been more clear. He may have reacted in his face, but it’s never addressed, even in a private moment. Given the potential realm of implications to her presence, he just… carried on. Same as he planned. And I’d argue her presence, plus the addition of an investigator… can’t reasonably be ignored, or dismissed. Which, in the story, it seems to have been.
Given that our PoV character are Blanc and Brand, when would we have seen any substantial reaction? To what end? (Bron doesn't want the other people there to think he killed her, who would he even talk to?)
"Why isn't he playing 5D chess?" has the same answer in the movie as it often does in the real world: He's actually just not that smart. This becomes especially clear after his reaction to Blanc pointing out he's basically set himself up to get murdered by any one of them.
Well, having as the point of your mystery that the main antagonist being dumb is putting the dunk ahead of the audience, but as a metaphorical response: if you’re throwing a drug fueled rager and your mom shows up with a cop, it’s definitely not the time to snort another line.
iirc it's extremely authoritarian. "Listen to your betters without question, for they know better than you. You do not need to understand their reasoning." We follow our heroes through an adventure and then our expectations are subverted when we learn their insubordinate adventure was bad and we're bad for rooting for them. Sorta flies in the face of everything people liked about star wars before it.
I didn't love the sequel trilogy--though it was better than the prequels. (Although truth be told, the Phantom Menace and Jar-jar in particular so poisoned the well for the prequels that I think otherwise #2 and #3 would have been looked on more favorably. See also Machete order.)
The Last Jedi is literally the only movie in the series to propose that a pseudo-religious order of wise men with a side obsession concerning blood lineages may not be the best way to structure a political movement.
"A side obsession concerning blood lineages"? My dude, they're not even allowed to have families. There are no blood lineages.
Also the prequel trilogy made a good case for the ineptitude of the Jedi order, they allow themselves to be manipulated into fighting a war orchestrated by a sith Lord and overlook several red flags coming from anakin.
I mean, the conclusion from the entire series is that the jedi were not a force for good and anakin really did bring about a needed balance in the force.
It was a slap in the face to everyone who loved the original trilogy. Luke went from being the idealistic young man who saw the good in vader and established a new generation of Jedi to being a bitter old man who fucked it all up by trying to murder his nephew because he had a bad dream.
It honestly felt like it was made by people who had a legitimate contempt for the franchise.
Also had several plot holes, poor fight choreography, and dumb dialogue. Plus the whole tone of it was off, like when the movie seemingly ends on a positive note after the entire resistance is wiped out.
The Last Jedi was completely disjointed from the previous movie, introduced "fuel" as a plot device that hadn't been even mentioned in the 7 previous movies, gave us the Mary Poppins Princess Leia, had a weird and heavy handed side quest in a casino planet that ultimately had no impact on the plot, killed Snoke without giving the audience some form of closure as to who he was, had BB-8 pilot an AT-ST as an ex-machina, had Rose prevent Finn from sacrificing himself, gave Luke depression (which is ok) but handled it as a throwaway joke, and finally had him drink green milk from some alien cow teat.
That's just from the top of my head, but I do loath The Last Jedi.
It also gave us hyperspace suicide weapons that could destroy any ship, and then declined to explain why this amazing technique was not a tactic we’ve ever seen before or since.
Especially in a universe where droids can easily pilot ships and in fact one half of the Clone War, which was biggest war we know of in the setting was an entire droid army.
The other half was Clones which arguably could have been treated as just as disposable as the droids and also been effective suicide pilots.
It's funny that the one single time on the entire series when things loose in deep space behave like if they weren't falling somewhere is the one people keep complaining about.
Anyway, the last 3 movies has a really great storyline that was completely destroyed by any other aspect you can pick. So the things people choose to complain are quite arbitrary. But this one is funny.
I don’t know how you can claim they had a great storyline when it is very clear the writers were making it up as they went. Say what you will about the prequels, at least there is a clear story arc connecting events from the first with the third.
The last Jedi was pretty tough. Magic flying leia, the racing animal subplot that had no impact on the main plot whatsoever. The entire resistance hinging on one guy who is totally stopped so that his girlfriend can give him a kiss.
It was a weird fever dream of a movie even for a franchise that brought us a giant space slug gangster and a backwards talking green puppet
7-9 were better than 1-3, but last jedi was undoubtedly the worst of the new trilogy
Ten minutes into that movie when Leia somehow comes back to in deep space I was ready to walk out of the theatre.
It’s not an ‘overreaction’ to see The Last Jedi as a fundamentally awful film, it’s just the knee-jerk reaction most people I know who have seen it have gotten.
Whether you’re a Star Wars fan or not; ‘The Last Jedi’ is just a clear-as-day not-good film. But when you do actually take the time to analyze it and compare it to the original trilogy; it’s borderline unbelievable just how God-awful it really is.
I also never understood the idea that they hadn’t just kept the same director for the three films. 7/8/9 feels less like a trilogy than a disjointed mess of films imitating far better films.
I’m geniunely wondering what the audience is supposed to get from all the 2020 references (Covid, Among Us, Zoom, Twitch), and the barrage of celebrity name-drops. I feel like the film was written for some specific Twitter subculture Rian Johnson is a part of, and maybe they find all the references hilarious.
The mystery is dull, the dialogue obnoxious, the jokes unfunny, and the camera has that patented ugly digital Netflix look.
By the time the movie picks up about an hour in, I had long stopped caring. It’s a shame because I enjoyed the first one. It’s a shocking drop in quality.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie, but it’s almost a completely different style and tone. Sequels tend to play it safe and try to redo the original, but Johnson instead tried to make a completely different film.
I’m wondering if Netflix gave him much greater creative freedom, and if the original movie would have been much worse without studio notes.
I thought it was nice to see a movie set in 2020 that actually reflected the way many of us lived in 2020, if only for the first portion. Most film/TV made that year went out of its way to simulate normal living conditions (typically by “bubbling” the cast and using a lot of testing.)
They did a great job making the contemporary things at least work in the service of the story.
COVID allows a shortcut to describing each character. The detective is depressed and bored. Birdie ignores lockdown restrictions and throws massive parties. The scientist is alone in his lab working the whole time. Duke built a home studio and spent his life online, etc. And Miles has a cure/vaccine for COVID but only uses it for his personal benefit. He never even shares it with his "friends" until they will be around him.
Among Us is supposed to show that the detective is bad at lying and sneaking around. This is later proven false, but it builds the expectation it goes against in the future.
Zoom and similar software is a good way to have characters talk to each other. A decade ago the same scene would have happened with everyone using a cellphone and the viewer at home getting the same view.
Meanwhile Twitch as a way that someone can become a famous influencer just seems about correct. Would you rather they just had a blog?
As a writer, you can choose to convey character and plot points in many different ways. You don’t have to use things that are considered “hip” at the time of writing. It seems to me that Johnson’s foremost concern was having all those elements in the film, after which he reverse engineered some of the character and plot points you’re talking about.
You don't have to have anything in a movie. The question isn't "why include hip things", the question is "were those hip things just tacked in". They weren't. They served a purpose.
You could replace them with some generic thing, I suppose. But how would that make the movie better?
Meanwhile, if you eliminate them, the story gets worse. Unlike most product placements, which are at best removable background and at worse make the movie worse.
Meanwhile, I imagine Zoom arose naturally to solve the speakerphone but still need to see characters issue. I'm guessing Among Us was added because someone on the set played it and thought it would add something, and Twitch seems like the best real-life example of someplace that you would expect a modern tech mogul to help someone set up a streaming channel. Far from being tacked in, those seem like the best possible solutions to those problems.
And COVID is a fact now. You could release a movie in NYC in 2003 with the Twin Towers still in them, but I don't think people would claim you were being "hip" removing them. They would say you seem out of touch for leaving them in. Even if the story was set in "indefinite past time when they still could have existed"
I don’t know if they were tacked on, exactly, but they seemed to be the purpose rather than a tool.
If you showed the NYC skyline in 2003, you’d have to go out of your way to show the Twin Towers. Edward Norton saying how “pando” changed things, on the other hand, is going out of your way in the opposite direction.
I feel like the early-00s equivalent of this movie would be the CGI dancing baby on Ally McBeal (“justified” by the character’s ticking biological clock), except almost every scene would have one such meme or topical reference.
The majority of skyline shots are stock images. In 2003 it was a choice for which you showed.
Were they obviously added because they were recent things and not timeless, yes. But I don't see how ignoring recent events would have been good either. Instead, if you're trying to write how out of touch tech billionaires are to the current world, you have to show the current world.
How do you even have a character like Duke divorced from the current environment?
That’s actually a good point. I suppose the film might have some nostalgia appeal for specific groups of people decades from now. I suspect I’m going to dislike it even more, though.
[spoiler warning]
Just watched the movie yesterday evening and I was also quite disappointed, some of the choices did seem cheap, the twin, the book stopping the bullet, the "punishment" of Miles by the destruction of the Mona Lisa. I think that the movie had some potential, but after the twin reveal everything started going south.
BTW I thought the punishment was very good writing. As long as he's rich, all will lie to protect him. Once the source of his money - which is he reputation of Klear - is destroyed, all of them stop lieing to cover for him. I thought it highlighted their hypocrisy exceptionally well.
I guess it would have been more precise for me to say she became "a villain". Still I think that purposeful destruction of priceless art is worse than negligence, however horrible that negligence was (and it was horrible).
You raise two interesting questions for me:
1) how reckless with a treasure of humanity can person A be and still not be at fault if person B does the actual physical destruction (IE if I placed the magna carta on someones seat and didn't tell them when they were about to sit down, and they tore it when sitting, I would be at fault, yes?)
2) how dangerous does a person need to be before destroying a treasure of humanity is a valid way to avert disaster (I want to come up with an example involving the terra cotta army but my coffees still kicking in)
[spoilers]
I don't know if this is intended as a feature of the film, but it's clearly not the real Mona Lisa. That showed paper burning; the Mona Lisa is painted on wooden boards.
I was sorta expecting that they would point out that Miles was himself taken in by the Louvre, and given a museum shop print. But it doesn't work with the film's final gag, so I guess it's just an error.
Ah, well. I don't take mystery movies too seriously for just that reason. It was fun and I enjoyed it.
I think part of the point of the movie was that EVERY character was a psychopath who prioritized their own interests over what would be true or best, and that scene shows that she’s not exempt from that
[spoilers] I like the interpretation, but I wish this were highlighted a bit more, imo the movie seems to suggest that the twin will pay no consequences for her act but only the bad guy.
We are seriously in the dark ages of writing right now. It’s not that good books, movies and tv shows aren’t being made, but most of the top tier a list stuff is just astoundingly awful and amateurish. It’s like these industries are trying to make hot garbage now and only occasionally goof up and accidentally end up with a good story.
The problem's that all these big franchise movies can be terrible but still set new ticket sales records. Audiences aren't showing up to watch the new JJ Abrams or Rian Johnson movie, they're showing up to see the new Star Wars movie. Even if it gets bad reviews everybody still wants to see what happens next with Luke and the gang. Then movie pulls in record ticket sales and the studio execs think that means it's a success so they reward the same writers and directors with more movie contracts.
I think its easy to dislike a movie that you're angry at. I really like this movie, and I'm sure that's a large part of why I was able to engage with it. Kind of a commentary on politics and society too, eh?
johnson seems to be hyper self aware of what he is doing and i’m here for it!
In a way its a similar debate to the one on SW VIII where he was going too meta on the nature of the force which caught a whole bunch of fans off guard.
I'd really really love to know what happened on the inside with this movie and the 7/8/9 trilogy. Rian Johnson is extremely detail oriented and the movie we got was mostly soup.
I too was disappointed with "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery."
My first struggle with the movie is that it breaks the first rule of a good mystery story in that you need the audience to have enough information that they can plausibly solve the crime themselves. Glass Onion only provides information when it becomes relevant to move the plot along. You could have never known certain things, you could have never even guessed at them because the information did not exist right up until it was needed in the story.This happens repeatedly. Midway through there is a plot twist that you could have never guessed or seen coming and that pretty much ends any sense of suspense or intrigue.
I also don't care about any of the people in the story as people or characters nor do I find any of their relationships convincing. It seems implausible that any of them would have ever been friends. Close your eyes and imagine these people hanging out at a bar together and you can't. How did they interact? What was their friendship like? You never see it and so the weight of the strain of the existing relationship isn't ever fully felt. The characters in a "Knives Out" were caricatures too, but they were family, not friends. Everyone knows that strain. Everyone can relate to that relationship dynamic. You don't get to choose family. Friends tend to match each other to some extent. Give them some kind of connection. They are all trivia nerds and were a trivia team. Anything.
With all that said, I want to rewatch "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." I want to see how much was visible in scene. How much could I have technically figured out. It is an interesting movie, I am just not sure it is a very good one.
Airplane! was a complete spoof of a then popular genre from beginning to end. Glass Onion isn't really like that but it does play around with some detective movie tropes.
That's a good description. I didn't like it as much as the original but, like you, I actually want to rewatch it now to better appreciate the whole thing.
Certainly it's not a bad movie. I'm just not sure it really hangs together at the end of the day.
>the first rule of a good mystery story in that you need the audience to have enough information that they can plausibly solve the crime themselves
I feel like I disliked Murder on the Orient Express more for that exact rule.
But I do feel like Glass Onion does in fact deliver to some degree in that aspect. In the first part of the movie when you're lead to believe that it's about the murder of Miles, they do establish motives in order to have the viewers thinking of who it could be. And after the mid-twist that the focus shifts to the true murder mystery, there is a profound lack of good hints because it's not any one of the fingered suspects. If you watch the movie and think to yourself "Who would benefit the most from this murder?", all fingers point at the true suspect.
My biggest problem with the Glass Onion is the peashooter gun.
From the very beginning you should have been asking how Benoit received the box. There were only a few people who could have given it to him, and one was shown destroying hers beyond repair.
I did and in fact I guessed correctly, but it was just a guess. I still couldn’t have really know why or to what end. And it didn’t help me anticipate the plot twist.
We really enjoyed it, loved the twists and turns. Without spoiling it, the seen with Benoit and the iPad and crossbow was amazing on many different levels. Someone else mentioned Star Wars The Last Jedi, and that was my favorite of the sequel trilogy (although not without flaws!), so I think I just really enjoy the director. Some people don't, which is fair, whereas I find JJ Abrams to be dull and uninspired and utterly lacking in depth, the complete opposite of Rian's work.
The film missed a couple of beats for me, so it isn't perfect by any means (neither was Last Jedi!), but it was really entertaining and clever.
Also disliked the movie for similar but also different reasons.
The first is the political layer on top of the film. Miles is obviously supposed to be Elon - "everyone thinks is genius but is an idiot" and the Twitch guy is supposed to be Joe Rogan who "got banned on Twitch for touting Rhino pills" (referencing the ivermectin that CNN [in which Jake Tapper has a cameo in the film] called a horse dewormer).
Kind of ruined the movie for me because it felt a bit of a collection of character hit pieces.
Another issue is the whole ending seemed poorly written. As the OP mentions it seems weird that Helen/Andi would be left alone with Miles.
Also why wouldn't Miles, with all his wealth and resources not be able to hide how the Mona Lisa was destroyed?
It’s pretty amusing because “Elon Musk is kind of dim-witted” is a much more popular characterization after his Twitter takeover saga, but this was made before.
The film was released a little while back, why are there suddenly a bunch of exaggerated opinions like this being published right now? Ben Shapiro was also complaining about it on Twitter, and there have been a handful of others.
I personally enjoyed it, not quite as much as I enjoyed the original and I imagine there are people who didn't particularly like it. That's totally fine, everyone has different tastes, but I find it hard to believe these people truly hated the movie as much as they claim. It feels a bit performative.
I think the only thing missing from the movie is that they should have established that Andi had a sister, and maybe allude to the fact she has a twin or very similar looking sister.
I think the twist was good actually, and you see why Miles was so shocked that Andi shows up to the party. That would have made the first hour of the movie more interesting.
I think there are a few hints - for example, the mythical Cassandra and Helen were also (non-mutual) twins, and putting a "Cassandra" and "Helen" on a Greek island (and maybe also in some sense "Paris") you're definitely being primed to think in that direction. I would need to watch it again to see if there's something more blatant as she shows up.
My nitpick is that Peg felt mostly extraneous - the main plot beat conversation with Peg could've been a conversation with Birdie directly. (And Derol is already present as the extraneous-for-the-sake-of-it element.)
Rian Johnson based the central character on Elon
(amongst other billionaires), but admits that the portrayal turned out to be closer to Musk than he intended:
I feel bad for Rian Johnson, since before the whole Twitter fiasco, it was more plausible for idiot tech billionaire to not be a Musk wearing a mask. But with how badly the Twitter purchase went down after the Glass Onion was written, it's hard to watch it without thinking of Musk.
It makes more sense if you view it through a political lens where everything is justified based on the evil of Brons. So anything bad flows from him so mistakes of others could be forgiven.
Destroying the Mona Lisa is worth it because it punishes Brons.
The movie had some high points and I thought it was fun, but the story had many flaws. I think it’s best not to overthink it too much.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadThe article maaaybe identifies one or two minor flaws, but mostly demonstrates that the author didn’t understand the movie. The word “fugue” is not mentioned in the review, for one of the many big misses.
It reads to me like garden variety clickbait of the “Beatles didn’t have a single good song” or “the internet has done no good” variety.
"Bad writing" is not suprising or extreme, just an opinion. And "very good" is subjective — we're talking about movies here, i.e. art. This isn't a review of programming languages where there's an objective reality of pros and cons to consider.
I haven't seen Glass Onion, but I saw Knives Out and while it was a decent film, I think comparing it to the Beatles or the Internet is a bit silly. It sounds like you really enjoyed the film and are just annoyed that someone else didn't.
Also, Darth Vader is Luke's father, Snape kills Dumbledore, and Bruce Willis is dead the whole movie.
Honestly, if you're reading an article about movie X, then IMHO it is reasonable to assume that any spoiler warnings would be specific to movie X. If an article is going to spoil movies A, B, and C as well, then the spoiler warning text should make note of that.
Interesting discussion on movie discussion etiquette though. I never really considered how much time is “long enough” to get into a movie’s plot details.
It's not a far leap.
Nevertheless, I have been amused by this movie much more than I assume that most of its viewers have been, because Miles Bron, more than resembling what I know about Elon, had an uncanny resemblance to the CEO of a startup where I have worked some years ago.
The resemblance was complete, in behavior, in speech, in the dyslexic words invented continuously, in the content of the fax messages with product feature suggestions (though my CEO used e-mail, not fax).
So I wonder how many such CEOs exist and whether the script writer has completely made up the Miles Bron character or he has indeed used a real-life CEO as inspiration.
Yo-Yo ma sets up the flashbacks, and the structure of the movie as a fugue. A melody thats played upon and expanded.
The first reveal that the writer says 'renders the movies first hour pointless..' is an example of that. Benoits seeming fawning of Miles, 'inadvertant' needling of his intelligence (childish puzzles) are shown to be part of Blancs own deceit.
And in fact all, the flashbacks extend information you already knew, Duke, Whisky and, Miles, for example. That's the smart thing about these dumb murders, its in the composition itself, and not the characters, or the plot driving it.
I had a whale of time watching it, and loved the mundanity of the crimes and the fact it was just dumb people in this rich persons playworld.
This article says it should have played it straight. I think that would have made for a more standard, boring movie. But whatever, that's just opinion.
But I think it is silly to call it bad writing. Bad implies that the writer didn't have command of their craft. It is clearly all very deliberate and designed to create something surprising in a genre where that is very difficult. Like it or hate it, at least it tried something instead of just being another remake of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Was One".
It’s fine to dislike the movie; about 7% of critics and moviegoers do, according to rotten tomatoes. But at least have the grace to understand it.
You may or may not be right about the ideas in Glass Onion being trivial, but how blind must the author of this clickbait review have been to not even notice that literally Yo-Yo Ma, literally playing himself, literally sets up the movie’s structure and explains why it plays out the way it does, in one of the first scenes? You can think that’s dumb, but you can’t ignore it when writing a critique!
This supposed revelation of “bad writing” is just clickbait from someone who didn’t understand the (yes, blatant! yes, arguably trivial!) structure the movie was exploring.
What's the point? Might as well just make it an action movie.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I know this much: you can't cheat.
If you do, and you keep some fundamental fact hidden until the last minute, or if you use some kind of magic, or if the murderer was a complete outsider, or if the victim died by accident and nobody's guilty, or, God forbid! if it turns out the victim isn't actually dead, or it was all a dream... then the audience gets angry. Sometimes very angry. That may be what happened here.
To paraphrase Walter Sobchak, this isn't 'Nam. There are rules to writing detective stories.
I'm 100% sure Rian Johnson was aware of these rules as the writer. I'd say Glass Onion technically violates 2 of them, but only for the first hour of the movie. Then you get let in on the cheating before the main climax of the movie.
[1] https://agathachristie.fandom.com/wiki/The_%E2%80%9CRules%E2...
But the movie showed fake video to hide what really happened. Only at the end did they show the real video.
Sherlock Holmes always does. Poor Watson, encumbered by reality like the audience, can't see the clues that suddenly appear only to Holmes just in time to announce the "obvious" truth.
The only way I can see people getting angry at the film is if they go into it with a set of checkboxes they want to tick, or want to solve the crime along with (or ahead of!) the main character. But then at that point they're sort of setting themselves up to be angry.
I saw and enjoyed the first installment of Knives Out. I don't have a beef with the filmmaker, or the series, or the actors, or the genre.
I'm just saying that detective fiction in general should follow a certain formula and if you stray too far away from it, most of the time, it doesn't turn into a wonderful new recipe but simply fails. In general.
Is it the case for this film in particular? I have no idea!
Spare me the pat on the back. Or oh! the plot twist. That's not what makes a movie, although it certainly can break it.
We may strongly disagree here, but I think "cheating" is an essential part of great movie making.
A good movie is all about telling a great story in an immersive way. If the director "cheats" her way through that story, be it for budgetary reasons or even to just move the story forward in a way that grips you, well, more power to her.
Seems just lazy and lame.
A similar response was made to Passengers[1], where if it is NOT made chronologically, the director could have an opportunity to push the theme entirely close to a horror genre.
1. https://youtu.be/Gksxu-yeWcU
Don't know about that. I've heard that if you watch Memento in chronological order, it is very uninteresting.
The Circle is another one. If ever a film called out for a satirical take on its source material, it was that one.
Where does it say she didn't journal about the software? And - imagining said entry - even if you could prove the date the entry was written, it's still just hearsay against the testimony of 4 others.
The shot lingers on literally the same facial expression when she arrives on the island as when he first sees her again after he shoots her.
"Why isn't he playing 5D chess?" has the same answer in the movie as it often does in the real world: He's actually just not that smart. This becomes especially clear after his reaction to Blanc pointing out he's basically set himself up to get murdered by any one of them.
Then this person has not seen very many movies.
> And now Glass Onion will haunt me for the rest of my days.
I don't care too much for this superlative, unduly passionate style of pop culture critique even if it is a joke.
I enjoy reading negative critique of movies I like, as long as it shows understanding that reasonable people can disagree. This is not that.
The entire Jedi thread throughout all of Star Wars is like that. An over 20-year old essay by David Brin goes into this at length. https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/starwars1.html
I didn't love the sequel trilogy--though it was better than the prequels. (Although truth be told, the Phantom Menace and Jar-jar in particular so poisoned the well for the prequels that I think otherwise #2 and #3 would have been looked on more favorably. See also Machete order.)
Also the prequel trilogy made a good case for the ineptitude of the Jedi order, they allow themselves to be manipulated into fighting a war orchestrated by a sith Lord and overlook several red flags coming from anakin.
It honestly felt like it was made by people who had a legitimate contempt for the franchise.
Also had several plot holes, poor fight choreography, and dumb dialogue. Plus the whole tone of it was off, like when the movie seemingly ends on a positive note after the entire resistance is wiped out.
That's just from the top of my head, but I do loath The Last Jedi.
The other half was Clones which arguably could have been treated as just as disposable as the droids and also been effective suicide pilots.
It's funny that the one single time on the entire series when things loose in deep space behave like if they weren't falling somewhere is the one people keep complaining about.
Anyway, the last 3 movies has a really great storyline that was completely destroyed by any other aspect you can pick. So the things people choose to complain are quite arbitrary. But this one is funny.
It was a weird fever dream of a movie even for a franchise that brought us a giant space slug gangster and a backwards talking green puppet
7-9 were better than 1-3, but last jedi was undoubtedly the worst of the new trilogy
It’s ok to hate it despise art and even pop art.
Ten minutes into that movie when Leia somehow comes back to in deep space I was ready to walk out of the theatre.
It’s not an ‘overreaction’ to see The Last Jedi as a fundamentally awful film, it’s just the knee-jerk reaction most people I know who have seen it have gotten.
Whether you’re a Star Wars fan or not; ‘The Last Jedi’ is just a clear-as-day not-good film. But when you do actually take the time to analyze it and compare it to the original trilogy; it’s borderline unbelievable just how God-awful it really is.
I also never understood the idea that they hadn’t just kept the same director for the three films. 7/8/9 feels less like a trilogy than a disjointed mess of films imitating far better films.
The mystery is dull, the dialogue obnoxious, the jokes unfunny, and the camera has that patented ugly digital Netflix look.
By the time the movie picks up about an hour in, I had long stopped caring. It’s a shame because I enjoyed the first one. It’s a shocking drop in quality.
I’m wondering if Netflix gave him much greater creative freedom, and if the original movie would have been much worse without studio notes.
And I’m not sure why the year even matters for the plot.
COVID allows a shortcut to describing each character. The detective is depressed and bored. Birdie ignores lockdown restrictions and throws massive parties. The scientist is alone in his lab working the whole time. Duke built a home studio and spent his life online, etc. And Miles has a cure/vaccine for COVID but only uses it for his personal benefit. He never even shares it with his "friends" until they will be around him.
Among Us is supposed to show that the detective is bad at lying and sneaking around. This is later proven false, but it builds the expectation it goes against in the future.
Zoom and similar software is a good way to have characters talk to each other. A decade ago the same scene would have happened with everyone using a cellphone and the viewer at home getting the same view.
Meanwhile Twitch as a way that someone can become a famous influencer just seems about correct. Would you rather they just had a blog?
You could replace them with some generic thing, I suppose. But how would that make the movie better?
Meanwhile, if you eliminate them, the story gets worse. Unlike most product placements, which are at best removable background and at worse make the movie worse.
Meanwhile, I imagine Zoom arose naturally to solve the speakerphone but still need to see characters issue. I'm guessing Among Us was added because someone on the set played it and thought it would add something, and Twitch seems like the best real-life example of someplace that you would expect a modern tech mogul to help someone set up a streaming channel. Far from being tacked in, those seem like the best possible solutions to those problems.
And COVID is a fact now. You could release a movie in NYC in 2003 with the Twin Towers still in them, but I don't think people would claim you were being "hip" removing them. They would say you seem out of touch for leaving them in. Even if the story was set in "indefinite past time when they still could have existed"
If you showed the NYC skyline in 2003, you’d have to go out of your way to show the Twin Towers. Edward Norton saying how “pando” changed things, on the other hand, is going out of your way in the opposite direction.
I feel like the early-00s equivalent of this movie would be the CGI dancing baby on Ally McBeal (“justified” by the character’s ticking biological clock), except almost every scene would have one such meme or topical reference.
Were they obviously added because they were recent things and not timeless, yes. But I don't see how ignoring recent events would have been good either. Instead, if you're trying to write how out of touch tech billionaires are to the current world, you have to show the current world.
How do you even have a character like Duke divorced from the current environment?
Today's mystery, tomorrow's "beach blanket?" Haven't seen it, but if it's campy enough, it could have staying power.
Edit: added warning
BTW I thought the punishment was very good writing. As long as he's rich, all will lie to protect him. Once the source of his money - which is he reputation of Klear - is destroyed, all of them stop lieing to cover for him. I thought it highlighted their hypocrisy exceptionally well.
Or launch an unsafe product for the general public?
I was sorta expecting that they would point out that Miles was himself taken in by the Louvre, and given a museum shop print. But it doesn't work with the film's final gag, so I guess it's just an error.
Ah, well. I don't take mystery movies too seriously for just that reason. It was fun and I enjoyed it.
- the first act was not so slow and boring, failing to actually introduce the characters - the finale was not so dumb...
At first I felt a little bored. At the end I was disappointed. Only the middle of the movie was kinda fun.
Janelle Monae smashes open a mystery box with a hammer, which is direct commentary on JJ Abrams Mystery Box writing.
This movie is very very well written. Nearly every detail is paid off.
Reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot
My first struggle with the movie is that it breaks the first rule of a good mystery story in that you need the audience to have enough information that they can plausibly solve the crime themselves. Glass Onion only provides information when it becomes relevant to move the plot along. You could have never known certain things, you could have never even guessed at them because the information did not exist right up until it was needed in the story.This happens repeatedly. Midway through there is a plot twist that you could have never guessed or seen coming and that pretty much ends any sense of suspense or intrigue.
I also don't care about any of the people in the story as people or characters nor do I find any of their relationships convincing. It seems implausible that any of them would have ever been friends. Close your eyes and imagine these people hanging out at a bar together and you can't. How did they interact? What was their friendship like? You never see it and so the weight of the strain of the existing relationship isn't ever fully felt. The characters in a "Knives Out" were caricatures too, but they were family, not friends. Everyone knows that strain. Everyone can relate to that relationship dynamic. You don't get to choose family. Friends tend to match each other to some extent. Give them some kind of connection. They are all trivia nerds and were a trivia team. Anything.
With all that said, I want to rewatch "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." I want to see how much was visible in scene. How much could I have technically figured out. It is an interesting movie, I am just not sure it is a very good one.
Certainly it's not a bad movie. I'm just not sure it really hangs together at the end of the day.
I feel like I disliked Murder on the Orient Express more for that exact rule.
But I do feel like Glass Onion does in fact deliver to some degree in that aspect. In the first part of the movie when you're lead to believe that it's about the murder of Miles, they do establish motives in order to have the viewers thinking of who it could be. And after the mid-twist that the focus shifts to the true murder mystery, there is a profound lack of good hints because it's not any one of the fingered suspects. If you watch the movie and think to yourself "Who would benefit the most from this murder?", all fingers point at the true suspect.
My biggest problem with the Glass Onion is the peashooter gun.
The film missed a couple of beats for me, so it isn't perfect by any means (neither was Last Jedi!), but it was really entertaining and clever.
The first is the political layer on top of the film. Miles is obviously supposed to be Elon - "everyone thinks is genius but is an idiot" and the Twitch guy is supposed to be Joe Rogan who "got banned on Twitch for touting Rhino pills" (referencing the ivermectin that CNN [in which Jake Tapper has a cameo in the film] called a horse dewormer).
Kind of ruined the movie for me because it felt a bit of a collection of character hit pieces.
Another issue is the whole ending seemed poorly written. As the OP mentions it seems weird that Helen/Andi would be left alone with Miles.
Also why wouldn't Miles, with all his wealth and resources not be able to hide how the Mona Lisa was destroyed?
I personally enjoyed it, not quite as much as I enjoyed the original and I imagine there are people who didn't particularly like it. That's totally fine, everyone has different tastes, but I find it hard to believe these people truly hated the movie as much as they claim. It feels a bit performative.
I think the twist was good actually, and you see why Miles was so shocked that Andi shows up to the party. That would have made the first hour of the movie more interesting.
My nitpick is that Peg felt mostly extraneous - the main plot beat conversation with Peg could've been a conversation with Birdie directly. (And Derol is already present as the extraneous-for-the-sake-of-it element.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/12/26/glass-onio...
Destroying the Mona Lisa is worth it because it punishes Brons.
The movie had some high points and I thought it was fun, but the story had many flaws. I think it’s best not to overthink it too much.