– A Knives Out Mystery –
Rian Johnson, you’ve done it again.
The man’s had an interesting career hasn’t he? He directed some low-key films, and then went on to direct two episodes of Breaking Bad widely considered to be the best of the series! He made a name for himself with Looper, and then really made a name for himself when Disney gave him millions to write and direct Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a movie that pleased the heck out of people who don’t care about writing. To the people who do care about writing, it became clear that while Rian has a flair for cinematography and direction, he needs to be kept far far away from the script because the man just doesn’t know what he’s doing. By going out of his way to subvert the fuck out of everything people cared about, the fanbase was permanently splintered and Star Wars hasn’t been viable as a film IP since.
His next film outing was Knives Out, a whodunnit movie that I thought was pretty alright for the most part. It was straightforward and very well-paced for the story it wanted to tell.
Which brings us here to its standalone sequel.
This movie has had some…interesting discourse surrounding it. This is a movie that is unique in that it’s called extremely dumb by both fans and detractors alike. Apparently the film has a built-in shield against criticism, because trying to analyze the plot and the events taking place means “you’ve missed the point” somehow. The title is a reference to something that appears complex, when in actuality you can see right through it if you know not to look so hard.
Well Rian, your movie isn’t safe from me. I don’t care if it’s a glass onion or a glass cantaloupe; overanalyzing is what I do, and this movie is gonna get torn a new one, same as the rest.
So what say we peel back the “lay’uhs” of Glass Onion? (and try not to cry on our way to the center)
PLOT BREAKDOWN
ACT I (Miles Bron and the Disruptors)
We open on a suburban household, where a package is being delivered to…AGATHA HARKNESS?? Looks like she’s causing more trouble and she’s masquerading as a politician named Clair. Agatha receives a massive box and the delivery person is wearing a mask, dating the story to lockdown in 2020.
That’s…a choice.
She goes back in and hurriedly prepares for a CNN broadcast from home. We learn via broadcast that Agatha’s political campaign is being backed by the CEO of a tech giant called Alpha. The CEO’s name is Miles Bron, and he’s the one who delivered the box, the contents of which are currently unknown.
A Mystery Box, one might call it.
We then cut to a man who apparently works for Alpha. His name is Lionel, and he’s in a science-y place surrounded by science equipment. But in case you couldn’t figure it out on your own, he’s currently in a Zoom call with some people who outright tell him he’s something of a scientist himself.
Thanks, movie.
The board expresses frustration with Miles’ wacky ideas, including a new one to ferry a volatile substance on manned flight. Lionel tells him that Miles is insane, but he’s also a genius. He, uh, faxes Lionel all his ideas, and he points out that some of them are hits, including one that just says “Child = NFT,” which eventually became a cryptocurrency app that was so killer it paid for the building they’re in.
Sorry, what? Cryptocurrencies are complicated enough that most adults don’t understand them. And you made a killing off selling them to children? Are they using their parents’ credit cards or what? And how the hell does the owner of a tech giant communicate exclusively through fax machines in the 21st century?
Don’t start with me now, movie, please, we’re not even five minutes in.
Anyway, the point is that Miles is kind of a oddball. I get an impression he’s supposed to be Elon Musk, but I’m not sure cause this movie is just too subtle about it. But Lionel has received a mystery box from him too.
We then cut to a house party…during lockdown. In the middle of it is Birdie, an airheaded fashionista who looks so thoroughly bored with her life. She summons her long-suffering handler Peg, who brings her her own mystery box from Elon. We learn that while Birdie wants to believe she “tells it how it is”, in reality she just talks without thinking about what she’s saying.
Birdie is really stupid. Like Patrick Star levels of stupid. And the film will beat that into you every chance it gets.
She’s holding a party during the pandemic, saying it’s okay cause “everyone is inside her pod,” and she’s apparently put her foot in her mouth so many times that she isn’t allowed on Twitter until the current media cycle is over. She recently got cancelled for saying “Jewy” without realizing it was a slur. She says, “Everything is so woke these days, it’s out of control.”
Agatha calls the other two and they have a three-way video call to figure out their boxes. It’s implied that they get packages like this from Elon yearly.
We cut to Drax the Destroyer making an apology video in his house. He’s apparently got banned off Twitch after talking about the “breastification of America,” and so he and his girlfriend Whiskey reassure on camera that they “love boobs” (???)
Drax is interrupted by his mom, and he goes to tell her that he’s busy right now, only for her to slap him right in the face! He stares down at the floor and meekly apologizes to her.
Get it? He’s a red-pilled Twitch streamer who’s actually not as alpha as he pretends to be!
If all this seems like really a heavy-handed way of characterizing these people, then congratulations, you’re clearly a better writer than Rian Johnson.
Drax has a box too, so he quickly joins the group call to try and figure it out. Eventually they piece together that the box is opened by solving a series of puzzles.
First is a tiny chess board that requires them to mate in one move (I wonder if Birdie needed someone to do that part for her?). This triggers what looks to be a tic-tac-toe board, but actually represents a code in Morse. Drax’s mom solves a couple, despite the box not being in her damn sight line, but whatever. The real offending part is the final puzzle, which is a tune playing from a music box. They have trouble figuring it out, with Birdie trying to Shazam it, which wouldn’t be a bad idea except she’s talking to her fucking lamp. But then the writers bail them out. Some guy from Birdie’s party just fucking shows up, tells them what song it is, who composed it, and that it’s a specially-written tune that layers on top of itself or something, and then fucks right off! A fucking MUSIC EXPERT arrives exactly when these people would need one and gives them the exact information they need to finish the puzzle.
WHAT THE HELL.
So the boxes open up to reveal an invitation. Elon has invited everyone to a weekend getaway at his house (the titular Glass Onion) on his private island, where a murder mystery game will take place. Everyone starts losing their shit, hyped and celebrating.
We then cut a woman standing in a dark garage with a box of her own. In what’s probably my favorite scene in the movie, she stares at it blankly before grabbing a hammer, breaking the shit out of it, and taking the invitation inside.
I’m not just being facetious when I say this is my favorite scene. It’s the only time someone is characterized through their actions instead of just outright telling us who they are. From this but, we can easily gather that she’s not a fan of Elon and doesn’t have patience for his eccentricities. The hammer is ironically the closest thing we’ll get to subtlety in this film.
That said, what she does is kinda dumb in retrospect, as are a lot of things…But we’ll get to that!
We move on to famous detective Benoit Blanc, chilling in his bathtub playing Among Us with four of his senior citizen friends. He’s currently the imposter, but seeing that he seems to have no idea what the gist of the game is, he just stands around until the others find him out.
Blanc says he doesn’t quite understand the game, since “simple” games like this and Clue are his “Achilles’ heel.”
Huh?? If you’re the world’s greatest detective, a game like Among Us should be a cakewalk. The folks you’re on Skype with should be sighing in exasperation cause they’d lose to you again and again. I’m not even sure if Blanc just doesn’t get how to play the game or if he’s really saying it’s so simple it’s beyond his comprehension. Neither make any sense. Among Us (and Clue for that matter) is a simple game for anyone to learn, but can be quite layered in actual gameplay. No two sessions are alike, and there are levels of interrogation, deception, and subterfuge that go into the game.
I know I’ve talked a lot of shit already, but believe it or not, this is the good part of the movie. It’s mostly setup so we can’t fuck anything up too badly just yet.
Blanc says he’s tired of sitting at home doing nothing. He needs a challenge. A hunt. A good, hard case. Just then, coincidentally, someone calls for him and tells him he has a box waiting for him.
We cut the dock, where all the invitees arrive with face masks. Blanc is the first to arrive and Birdie (who’s wearing a useless mesh mask) seems to take an instant liking to him. Drax and Whisky show up firing guns into the air. He says, “the disruptors have assembled!” Because this is just the kind of thing right-wingers do, of course. They just fire guns whenever they can for no reason. They wouldn’t understand or be conscious of gun safety regulations or anything like that.
Everyone seems confused that Blanc is here, but figure it must be part of the game. Something else that’ll make no sense later.
But at that moment, Ethan fucking Hawke pops out of a black SUV, and tells everyone to remove their masks. He fires…something into their throats that apparently negates the need for masks on the island, and nobody questions this. Drax just asks if it has pineapple, since he’s allergic. Scratch that, Blanc questions it but Ethan Hawke just says “you’re good” without explaining anything. I cannot believe everyone is just okay with this guy firing some bullshit into their throats without asking what it is, what it does, or if he even has any relation to Elon or the game. It’s writing I can only describe as incomprehensible. The only reason Rian’s done this is so that the film doesn’t need to account for COVID or masks for the rest of the runtime, but you didn’t need to set your film in 2020 to begin with. You contrived a solution to a writing limitation that you created for yourself. It’s just weird, man.
Rian, did you only include COVID so you make a reference to Among Us? And sweatpants? (Oh wait we’re not there yet)
So just before they head out, the weird girl with the hammer from before comes out of a taxi, and eveyone stares at her like they’ve seen a ghost. Birdie greets the girl (her name is Andi) and then mutters, “Holy shit.”
Blanc asks Lionel about Andi on the boat, and Lionel explains that she started Alpha together with Elon, only they had a falling out and he booted her out of the company. It’s a total mystery why she’s here.
Anyway, they arrive at the island, and Elon (who is played by Edward Norton) greets his friends with open arms. Whiskey hugs him just a little too long, though, and Drax tries not too notice. Elon is momentarily stunned to see Blanc, but even more so to see Andi, who coldy stares at him without saying anything.
Also apparently all the staff is gone but there’s a guy named Derol staying on the island. He has no relevance to the murder mystery game or the plot of this film. He’s not even a red herring. “Why is he even here then?” you may ask. Well, because Rian Johnson thought it would be cute to include a nothing character who serves no purpose. Bloody genius, that man.
The group of friends head out, and Andi introduces herself to Blanc, saying her first words since she appeared. This seems innocuous but it’s another thing that will make no sense in retrospect, so try to hold onto it.
Elon has given everyone cool sci-fi wristbands that light up and indicate what rooms they’ll be staying in. The rooms are based on the chakras he associates them with. This is also not important. He tells everyone to take some R and R, and then the fun can begin. But first, Elon needs to have a word with Blanc…
The two head up to his office, and Elon asks why Blanc is here when he didn’t invite him. Blanc, confused, tells Elon he received a box, just like everyone else. Five were sent out, yet six guests arrived (not including plus-ones like Whiskey and Peg). They conclude that someone might have reset the box and given it to him. That’s a bit odd. But Elon decides “what the heck” and decides to keep the detective as part of the mystery fun. Elon tells Blanc that his mystery is “next level.”
So Elon, who’s planning a murder mystery party, is totally chill with having a world-famous detective he didn’t invite take part. Apparently he isn’t concerned about him ruining said mystery, and if you think this doesn’t make sense now, HOO BOY.
So everyone is at the pool and Drax, in case you forgot he’s a right-wing gamer alpha chud, keeps his gun in his speedo and fires it into the air for no reason.
Ughhhhhhh…
Peg tells Birdie she needs to talk to Elon (who’s still blatantly flirting with Whiskey) about something the script remains vague about. Birdie reminisces a time where she was a high-profile model and Elon was just a nobody, saying she “preferred it” when he was just “a little thing in her hand.”
Okay.
The camera pans over and we Andi is just here! She remarks that she hasn’t seen the group of friends since “the trial,” a topic that seems to make everyone uncomfortable.
Hmmm…
They go to relax in another room, where a fax machine spits out another message for Elon. We learn that Elon doesn’t use phones, instead he has fax machines in various parts of the world for him to receive messages with. He said he likes them cause they’re just “so analog.”
What the fuck is this, Rian.
You’re telling me that this owner of a gigantic tech company doesn’t use cell phones? Fuckin’ really? How does someone who doesn’t know the difference between analog and digital make it this far? Did no one ever in his life tell him the difference? He has fax machines in parts of the world that just spit out any message he receives? Even messages with sensitive information? Isn’t that a massive security breach? How the hell does he send information to others? How does he keep in touch with anyone?
I know it might sound silly to get this hung up on the fax machine thing, and believe me, I wish the stupidity of this was contained to this scene, but the truth is this stupid shit is going to fuck up a very significant part of the movie later and we will get to it.
Blanc asks what’s the reason this group of people are friends, a legitimate question to ask since they have next to nothing in common and have had no chemistry with one another in all their screentime. They’re basically friends because the film tells us they are. But Elon explains that they’re all “disruptors,” being people who shake up the status quo in some way. And I want you to follow me here, because the reason he gives for why these people are ‘disruptors’ are hilarious.
Birdie is disruptive because “she says what everyone is thinking but no one has the nerve to say.” I mean it sounds more like she just says stupid things, but sure. I get the idea. That’s not all though. Birdie was a high-profile model, on top of the world until she decided to dress as Beyonce for Halloween.
Beyonce, sweetie, I’m so sorry.
Anyway, Birdie pretty much got cancelled into oblivion, until she crafted designer sweatpants during the pandemic, which made her a killing, and put her back on the map. She “disrupted her own disruption”, as Elon puts it.
Right. So Birdie’s street cred as a disruptor comes from being a model who says too much, getting cancelled and fucking her career, and then un-fucking her career by coming up with the revolutionary idea of…designer sweatpants. I know they were really popular during lockdown and everything, but the film gives no reason for why these sweatpants were so much profitable than anyone else’s.
Agatha “blew up conventional politics,” whatever the fuck that means, and Lionel “pushed science past its comfort zone,” another vague and conspicuously tame point of praise.
But the best has to be Drax, who was apparently the first gamer to reach a thousand followers on Twitch, and invented the word “influencer.”
Holy fucking shit!
Even if we accept as true that he’s the first gamer ever to make a million Twitch followers, how exactly is that disruptive? Isn’t he using Twitch for…exactly what it’s intended? I’d argue this is the opposite of disruptive. You do know what Twitch is, don’t you Rian? And, uh, was reaching a million followers before or after Drax got in trouble for being a red-piller? Is this a new thing he’s doing or was he always like this?
Elon finishes by saying that once you break past an “infraction point”, you need to find it in yourself to keep breaking more and bigger things, even when others call you crazy or tell you to stop. Because no one wants you to break the system itself.
You, uh, having a little vent about the people who accused you of ruining Star Wars there, Rian?
Andi arrives, and having heard this (She says the cringe line, “that was some real red-pill stuff Miles”), goes on a scathing rant about how the real thing everyone has in common is that they benefit from Elon’s wealth, seeing as how he’s bailed them out of tight spots in some way or another. She says they’re all hanging on to Elon’s “golden titties” (Elon covers his chest after she says this…okay that got a giggle out of me) and would betray a friend to protect their own self-interests. He funded Agatha’s political career, invested in Birdie’s sweatpants, and Lionel works for the guy. All things we could’ve inferred on our own but we can’t have any room to misinterpret these charicatures. Look, I get that not every character needs to be super fleshed-out, especially in a murder mystery. One-note characters are practically a staple of the genre. But you do not need to spend so much time telling us about one-note characters if you’re not gonna go beyond that.
But I’ve saved the funniest call-out for last. And again, it’s Drax. Apparently he got banned from Twitch (again, before or after the million-viewer following??) and Elon apparently “set him up at YouTube” and promoted his stream.
What the FUCK does this mean? Are you telling me that Elon made Drax a bloody YouTube account? Rian, I’m serious now. Do you know what YouTube is? It’s not some TV program you just ask for a slot in. You don’t call and say “Hey, Mr. YouTube? Can you give my buddy Drax a spot on your platform? I got the money for it.” Making an account is really easy. And free.
🤓 “You know what, Ibrahim? You’re being so disengenuous right now. Andi clearly means Elon used his money to make Drax a big-time YouTuber.”
Okay, but how? Did he pay for ads or some shit? If Drax was already a big-time Twitch streamer then shouldn’t YouTube have been a shoe-in for him? What did he need Elon’s help for? Let’s be generous and say that Elon promoted his stream on whatever rich-people platform he uses to get it off the ground. If the real-life Elon Musk did that for my podcast (Haters Without a Cause, check it out) it would gain traction for about a week before slowly sinking back into obscurity, wouldn’t it?
After this, Andi storms off. Elon’s reaction amounts to “Oh no! Anyway…” and he leaves for his villa. Elsewhere, Agatha meets up with Lionel and says something is “off” about Andi, afraid and wondering what exactly she’s playing at here.
Elsewhere, Peg catches up with Elon and begs him not to make Birdie make some statement to the press. All we know right now is that it has something to do with Bangladesh, and it’ll tank Birdie once and for all, with Peg along with her. Elon insists she says it, most likely to cover his own ass.
We see Blanc hanging out behind a butt statue listening on all this. We then follow him to the garden where he tries to have a smoke, only for a robotic voice to start yelling at him that this is a smokeless area. He throws the cigarette into the pool which prompts another robotic voice to start yelling at him. He awkwardly runs away.
Not quite getting the vibe that this is a shrwed and clever detective, here. This feels like a bumbling comedy sequence from Mr. Bean.
He then stalks Drax, who’s out for a jog. Drax stops by a window and sees Elon getting down and dirty with Whiskey. The two are having sex in broad daylight with the windows open, but don’t notice Drax looking in on them. I guess he really can turn invisible.
Dinnertime arrives, and our gang enjoys some drinks, courtesy of Elon, who knows exactly what everyone likes. Blanc tries some hot sauce, noting that it “has a kick to it.” Elon namedrops Jeremy Renner. It’s his hot sauce, and Elon lets Blanc keep some. Blanc puts the hot sauce…in his pocket. He doesn’t put it aside, or in his room. He puts the bottle of hot sauce in his pocket. Remember this.
Everyone’s attention turns to a copy of the Mona Lisa Elon has in the center of the room. Agatha asks why he has a copy of the Mona Lisa raw-dogging the air in the living room like this, and Elon tells her that it isn’t a copy.
I want you to follow me here because I’ve put up with a lot of this movie’s bullshit thus far, but this is pretty much the point where I lost my suspension of disbelief.
Elon has the honest-to-God original painting of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa because the Louvre (which Elon pronounces the way someone who’s never left their house would) closed on account of the pandemic and “French needed money.” Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently the Louvre is responsible for so much of France’s economy, that closing it for a few weeks at most has put the country in such dire straits that they’d be desparate enough to loan one of…no fuck that, the most famous painting in the world to some guy’s villa on a remote island. As if India would rent out the Taj Mahal as an Airbnb to someone if they paid them enough money.
Strike one.
The protection on the painting is a glass covering. Yes, glass. And not vibranium glass, either. From what I understand, the painting remains exposed, but at the tiniest sound, a glass panel shhhks into place in front of the painting. No really, that’s it. As Elon explains, even a phone dinging can provoke the panel to cover the painting. France sold its most prized possession next to the bloody Eiffel Tower to someone, and their security measures amount to a fucking Minecraft-style piston that intermittently puts a pane of glass in front of it. If someone were to shoot the painting, the panel would not go up in time, and it wouldn’t make a difference if it did (Indeed a gunshot goes off in this very movie and it takes the shield a good five seconds to go up!) It’s the most useless security measure ever. As a bonus, this isn’t even consistent throughout the movie, because the panel pretty much goes up and down whenever it wants.
Strike two.
But! Elon, apparently unbeknowest to his insurers, has hidden an override button in a small figurine. This lets him open the glass pane whenever he wants and admire the painting without the obstructive…glass in the way.
Aaaaaand strike three. You lost me.
Just write a comedy or a movie for children at this point, Rian. There is no way in fresh hell France would sell (or even rent) the Mona fucking Lisa to some rich hoo-hah from America, and leave it with him unsupervised with nothing but glass protecting it. And the insurers, contractors, and business people he had to talk to would never let him keep an override key anywhere, with or without their knowledge. Whoever he had to talk to to get it installed would have notified France straight away. He has no doubt breached his agreement with them by doing this. But I promised you guys a full breakdown so let’s move on.
Elon explains that the Mona Lisa is so awesome and cool and special and seeing the painting for the first time as a kid was a huge inspiration to him. He always said he wanted to be a part of something “mentioned in the same breath as the Mona Lisa.” For some reason, Blanc, the certified detective, has to ask what this means, and Birdie, the certified dumbass, has to start explaining to him. Then Agatha cuts her off and asks Elon why it’s raw-dogging the air in the living room like this…again. And instead of asking her if she has brain damage because he just got done explaining why, Elon gives a completely different answer this time. It’s like a dialogue tree in a video-game. He says to everyone in the room that this is where he wants to reveal he latest creation. He pulls out a tiny white crystal and shows it everyone (No, this is not meth…and it’s not mercury fulminate, either. But worry not, Breaking Bad fans, the reference will be very apt at the climax of this movie). It’s actually solid hydrogen that he calls Klear (“with a K”). He tosses it to Blanc and explains that it’s his vision for the fuel of the future: clean, affordable, and efficient. He says it’s gonna be powering everyone’s homes by the end of the year.
Lionel sets his drink down and firmly tells Elon no the fuck it is not, because the fuel still needs to be tested if it’s safe or even viable. He says he and Agatha are not gonna be responsible for letting this potentially dangerous substance out into the world. But Elon reveals to everyone’s shock that the entire Glass Onion, the building they’re standing in, is powered by Klear, everything from the lighting to his stupid fax machine.
Lionel starts to nope out of the room cause he’s interested in not dying tonight, but Elon stops him. The murder mystery is about to begin. Notably, he doesn’t take the Klear sample back from Blanc, even though it’s an untested product in addition to being an Alpha-protected IP that isn’t public yet.
Okay then.
So Elon starts explaining the rules for the weekend. He’s going to “die”, and the goal is to find out who did it, how, and why. The mystery will be really, really hard, but they can talk to him at any point and ask him questions. Blanc is the only one who seems eager to get started. For some reason, Blanc asks what the prize will be and everyone acts like he’s being a presumptuous asshole when it’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask, but whatever. The game begins, and Blanc…spoils the entire thing. Elon stole a diamond family heirloom off Birdie, and so Birdie kills Elon using a remote device to set off a crossbow elsewhere in the room.
The evidence Blanc presents is really funny. He goes on that Birdie is seated in a way that “triangulates” her perfectly between the crossbow and Blanc (even though Birdie could have sat anywhere at the table and that would be true), the crossbow is branded Jayhawk which…connects to Birdie Jay’s name(???), the hedges in the garden spell out B (I guess figuring it would stand for Birdie and not Bron??), Birdie’s room represents the sacral chakra, which is associated with guilt, and finally, that Elon is wearing a necklace which is apparently out of place for someone to wear on an island.
Wow.
Despite this orgy of shaky evidence, Blanc turns out to be exactly right, giddily laying it all out with a “Am I doing it right?” face, and Elon storms out of the room because he’s killed the vibe. Blanc follows Elon up the stairs, still talking excitedly before Elon finally gives him a “what the fuck” for ruining the mystery he (hired someone to) work so hard on. I told you letting the detective on the island was bad idea, but what can I say? You get what you fucking deserve. Blanc suddenly gets serious and tells Elon he did what he did to save him. Every one of the people he’s invited to this remote island has reason to hate him, and the context of the murder mystery is the perfect opportunity for one of them to kill him for real. He likens the whole thing to “putting a loaded gun on the table and turning off the lights.” We take the time, again, to go over every single motive everyone would have because this movie thinks you’re stupid.
- Lionel’s reputation will be destroyed if he doesn’t go along with the Klear-manned rocket
- Agatha will lose Elon’s support in the upcoming election to her opponent
- Birdie’s sweatpants are produced in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and Elon wants her to take the fall so he doesn’t go down with her as her main investor
- Elon literally slept with Drax’s girlfriend
We then see the “famous napkin” in a frame on the wall. This napkin is apparently where the concept of Alpha all began, way back in the group’s younger days at the Glass Onion bar they all hung out in. We can talk about what’s on the napkin later, when it becomes more relevant to the story.
We’re back with our group downstairs, and nobody really wants to be here now, what with the whole Klear debacle and the murder mystery ending before it really began. Drax’s phone is blowing up because every few seconds he gets a Google alert, and the movie makes a point of showing the shield for the Mona Lisa thudding into place every time it happens. Makes you wonder how the noise from people talking (or shouting) doesn’t cause the shield to go up, but hey, writing is hard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Drax has a Google alert for everything from things related to his work, to general interests. Lionel asks why he has notifications for the word “MOVIE.”
Drax’s reasoning for this? He likes movies. That’s it. It feels like a human having a conversation with an alien. This is why stupid people need to be written smartly, not stupidly, as unintuitive as that sounds. If you’re into movies, you would set up notifications for posts about the latest movies, articles about movies, genres, etc. Not just the word “movie.” And anyway, if Drax is so into movies why does he have so many unread notifications? Why hasn’t his phone dinged even once before now? This is a setup too, by the way. Just keep in mind that every time someone suddenly does some inhumanly dumb in this movie, it’s a setup for something even dumber that will happen later.
So Andi enters the room, and Agatha decides to finally address the uncomfortable topic everyone’s been trying to avoid. Drunk and pissed off, she yells at Andi that yes, they stuck with Elon over her, and it should be obvious why at this point. I feel like we had this conversation already, when Andi accused the group of being willing to sell out a friend out for money with her “golden titties” speech, but the movie needs to generate it again. Andi rants some more about how they took everything from her, it’s unfair, etc. before finishing by saying she wants the truth. Drax just walks up to her and tells her the truth is that they’re all playing the same game. They won, and she lost. End of story. Andi sullenly walks out of the room.
Elon comes back and tries to get the party bumping. Drax gets some exciting news on his Google alerts. His channel is doing numbers! He goes to Elon and says “This changes things right? Numbers like this, maybe we can talk Alpha News?” and Elon is like “Yeah, sure man!” and gives Drax a big ‘ol hug. The party continues and everyone watches Birdie dance.
I want you to pay attention to this next bit cause even though the movie doesn’t want us to notice this right now, it’s going to be important to know exactly what happens here very soon.
Elon casually sits down next to Drax and blithely passes his drink to him. Bear in mind that everyone’s names are on the glasses, and Drax has his own drink already, but he takes Elon’s anyway and they all raise their glasses in toast. They drink, and Drax’s falls over and fucking dies!
Everyone starts losing their shit, and Lionel goes to call the police. Agatha, upon finding out one of her friends of at least a decade is now dead, starts panicking over how badly could affect her political career. I’d also like to point out that they all give up on trying to save Drax’s life really quickly. He chokes for quite a bit, they give him some chest pumps, and then go “Welp. Guess he’s dead.” The only person who gives a convincing reaction of care for Drax is Whiskey…something that I kinda like. Blanc concludes that this must have been a murder, that someone must have put something in Drax’s drink.
And then he proceeds to not check the drink.
Lionel then informs the group that police cannot reach the island because Elon’s “dumbass Banksy” dock is set to low-tide height and thus isn’t bouyant enough to settle at. Because as I’m sure you all know, it’s impossible for anybody to arrive on shore without stopping at a dock. What? Hmm? Police helicopters? Nope, those don’t exist either. Of course, the police arriving would end the movie, so it has to be so they have no other feasible way of accessing the island, even though it belongs to fucking Elon Musk and a murder has just taken place.
So Elon notices that the drink Drax drunk from has his own name on it, and deduces that whoever put the bad jujubies in the drink meant to kill him. We get a quick flashback to the shot of the drink from before and I need to pause here because this is the first major instance of the film blatantly lying about what happens. This time, the shot is Drax picking up Elon’s cup on his own accord, rather than Elon passing it to him, like we noted earlier. The thing is, when watching this movie, the shot happens so quickly and you’d have no idea to check for that, so it’s very easy to miss. But in my breakdown, I can pause whenever I want and talk to you guys about anything. It’s a pretty neat power! The film is counting on you not having noticed that Drax was handed the drink, and if you didn’t, you’d likely believe that this is the true version of what happened. It’s not like you’d be inclined to rewind and check (and that’s only even an option if you watched on Netflix and not in the theater). But if you somehow did notice that Elon handed Drax the drink, then you’d know this is a total fabrication (and I’m positive you aren’t supposed to notice but you could then piece together that Elon himself is the perpetrator, something we’re not supposed to know yet).
The best-faith interpretation of this scene is that Elon is an unreliable narrator and we’re seeing what he wants us to believe went down. And stories like this, like Hoodwinked! or Rashomon, can be pretty clever. If that’s the kind of story we were watching up to this point, this would be fine. But it hasn’t been.
There’s an easy fix for this: have Elon simply tell everyone Drax picked up his drink, instead of showing us the new shot. This way, you can keep up the deception for first-time viewers, and instead of alienating the more observant folks in the audience, you can give them the satisfaction of knowing he’s lying through his teeth. The thing to understand is that as a viewer, you’re pretty much primed to believe whatever the movie shows you, and as far as we’re aware at this point, everything we’ve seen has been the objective truth. You’d have no reason to think that this new flashback isn’t what really happened. But even if you did start to suspect foul play from the movie, it would only call into question everything we’ve seen up to this point. How much of any of it has been real? It’s not clever writing, it’s cheap writing. Shit like this only fucks with your immersion. Rian Johnson is banking on you not having a photographic memory so he can show you something any reasonable person would believe, then turn around later to say “Ha! Sucker! You actually believed me!” You can twist the story any way you like by doing this. This might sound silly to get hung up on, but Drax’s death is major plot point. It’s probably the second worst place in the story for the audience to be confused.
But the first worst place is yet to come.
So Blanc decides to silence Drax’s phone cause the dinging is starting to get annoying, only they can’t find it. It’s another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but if you pay attention you’ll notice Drax’s phone is actually in Elon’s back pocket. It’s literally poking out. Meaning Elon took Drax’s phone…for some reason. Elon is panicked at this point because he believes someone in the room tried to kill him so he’s running about the room with Drax’s phone in his pocket. Why the hell did he take it?? If it dings even once, everyone’s going to notice that the sound is coming from Elon and not Drax, which is going to make Elon look extremely guilty.
So of course it doesn’t.
Missing also is Drax’s gun, something Lionel notices instead of Blanc, after which Blanc is like “aww fiddlesticks, when did his gun disappear?” Seriously, what kind of world-famous detective is Benoit Blanc anyway?? What happened to the guy from Knives Out? Remember when he noticed the blood on the shoelace? In this movie, he doesn’t just miss all the things that would be cool to see a detective spot, he misses everything. Someone’s just been murdered from tampering with a drink and he forgoes investigating said drink. On top of that, he’s slow to notice that the two objects Drax was shown to be most attached to are conspicuously gone. But hang on, how on earth would Drax not notice his gun is missing? The eventual reveal is that Elon took it off him with some sleight-of-hand trick, and Drax just didn’t notice an entire pound (at least) being removed from his midsection. You’ve beat me over the head with the idea that this crazy right-winger loves his gun more than anything, to the point that he keeps it literally attached at the hip at all times, but somehow didn’t notice that it left his person at some point during the night? Even better is that Elon is currently keeping the gun in the small of his back to conceal it, and at one point he stands back-to-back, butt-to-butt with Blanc, and Blanc doesn’t notice the outline of either the phone or the gun.
Fuck off, movie.
But then, as if it were possible, Elon starts panicking even more because he set up the murder mystery so the lights would go off at 10PM for dramatic effect, and they do. At this point, Whiskey runs into the room with a spear gun (I forgot to mention Drax packed a spear gun) and yells out loud that Andi is Drax’s killer and she just saw her ransacking her and Drax’s room. Elon nopes right out of the room, even though he’d be safer with the group. In fact, the entire group scrambles at the news that Andi is the killer, leaving Peg alone. Really great going there, guys. So everyone is running around the place, and Blanc spots Andi, only he calls her Helen for some reason. He tells her Drax is dead, and just as he starts to tell her that there’s one last piece of information only she can provide, we see a mysterious gunman (or gunwoman) raises Drax’s gun…and shoot Andi/Helen right in the chest!
Holy shit man!
…is what I would say if I believed this important character who’s had such little screentime so far was actually dead.
At the sound of the gunshot, everyone converges onto the scene where Andi/Helen is on the ground (apparently) bleeding out. No one even tries to asses the body or try to rescusitate Andi. Scratch that, Agatha almost steps up but Blanc cuts her off saying, “she’s not going anywhere,” which is a weird thing to say about a dead woman but whatever. He shepherd everyone inside and tells Peg to call the police.
“But Ibrahim, I thought the police couldn’t make it to the island!”
Well yes, but that was when there was only one murder, which is hardly an emergency. Now there’s been two, so Blanc orders that the police can “beach if they have to, banksy be damned.” Because now that’s a possibility. It just couldn’t be done before.
So everyone stands at attention, waiting for Blanc to explain the crazy events of the night. Blanc says he can peel back the lay’uhs, and take it to a point, but only one person can reveal who killed Cassandra Brand.
At which point we switch to a completely different movie.
ACT II (And Now For Something Completely Different)
*sigh*
So then.
At this point we’re about halfway through the movie, and the real murder mystery has only just begun. You might wonder what comes next. Well, the pacing of the film is going to grind to a complete halt because it’s now time to explain the movie. Yes, the next forty minutes will be spent explaining the movie. We’re going back to way before the events of the film even began because everything is about to be recontexualized to follow the big twist.
What is the big twist?
Well, Andi isn’t actually Andi. Andi is dead, and we’ve been following her much more alive, secret twin sister, Helen.
Jesus fucking Christ.
So because Rian Johnson writes plot twists as well as he writes murder mysteries, the movie is now going to justify why this twist is meaningful…after the twist. You might think something like this would require some setup, some moments you could look back on and be like “Ohhh that explains why that happened that way.” But nope. Instead Rian pulls something out of his ass that you never could have predicted or seen coming, even if you paused every individual frame, and presents it as some clever “twist” on what we already know. The reality is he’s actually told us to forget everything we already know because it’s going to become irrelevant. The movie really starts here.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Steven Universe actually did this better. As vague as the hints are that Rose is Pink Diamond, they at least imply that Rose had secrets, even if it’s not clear what they were. It’s still handled extremely poorly, and it damages the entire show. But you can predict it. With this film, we have no reason to assume that “Andi” isn’t who she says she is. We had no idea that there even was a twin sister until Rian told us. In a good movie, the fun would be looking back and seeing how we were tricked. Going back in this one would show us that yeah, we were tricked, but it’s because Rian basically cheated with a combination of selective editing, missing scenes, and outright altering shots like he did with the drink scene.
A good mystery should be laid out like a puzzle for us to solve. Viewers should be able to put some pieces together until the final picture is revealed. You don’t have to give us all the pieces, but you gotta give us some! Instead Rian Johnson keeps them locked away in the box, before telling you you had the wrong set the entire time.
The movie starts to get really wonky here, cause we’re going to see the same events from before but in a new light. So for this next portion of the breakdown, I’m gonna go over all the events in chronological order, not the order the film presents them. And since we’re basically gonna go over all the events again, I’m gonna skimp on most of the details and try to give you all the most important ones. Because unlike Rian Johnson, I don’t hate my own audience.
So here’s how it all happened.
Elon and Andi co-founded Alpha, after conceptualizing the idea together at the “Glass Onion” bar all those years ago. It turns out the disruptor group were actually all Andi’s posse before they all met Elon. And sure, Elon might have helped them out but Andi saw the potential in all of them. Not sure what potential she saw in Drax since he’s describes as a “nerd playing video-game tournaments” at this point, but whatever. Maybe she saw a future career for him as a right-leaning Twitch streamer. But we’re at the point again where I’m not sure Rian Johnson has any idea what a social media is. The way it goes is that Elon got Agatha elected locally, Lionel published, Birdie a show for her designs, and Drax “set up on Twitch.”
Ughhhhhhh…
Rian! Twitch is a website where people stream, especially for video-games! There isn’t much bureaucracy to setting up an account. It’s free, and anyone can do it! You don’t need to apply or get approval or whatever the fuck you think requires the help of a future billionaire to accomplish! Jesus Christ!
But anyway, if this is before the point Elon hit the big time with Alpha, how did he have the influence and resources to do all those other things anyway? I don’t know, guys. And the script doesn’t know, either.
By the way, all this information is being presented to Blanc from Helen. Helen knows all this because she has her sister’s diary, which apparently contains every single account of her life. Keep this in mind.
So Andi wrote down the initial ideas for Alpha on the famous napkin, and those ideas would go on to make her and Elon billionaires. Things were going pretty well until Elon became obsessed with putting Klear out into the world. Andi opposed it because of how volatile it is, saying it would “blow up the world.” She threatened to walk and take half the company with her if he didn’t drop it. Then things take a turn for the truly bizarre. Helen says that Elon “worked the contract so she was cut out of the company completely.”
Hey, Rian? What the fuck does this mean?
Andi threatened to take half the company and so Elon is able to boot her out of the entire company? How is Elon able to “work the contract” of giant corporation to remove one of the co-founders from said corporation? Is there no clause preventing this kind of breach? Is there no board of directors to handle cases of abuse of power like this? I thought Elon was supposed to be really dumb? So why is he the guy who knows how to pull this kind of shit off, while the (ostensibly) smarter Andi signs something like this without reading it or having a lawyer look at it? What the fuck?
So Andi goes on to sue Elon over this, except, get this, the case was apparently built on “intellectual ownership of the company’s founding idea,” those being on the napkin. Meaning. That the legal disupute for ownership of this tech corporation. Is predicated on the contents.
Of a napkin.
Who.
Wrote.
This.
I’ll be real with you guys, I do not the first thing about corporate law, and this is giving me a headache. I’m picturing an actual lawyer losing their mind watching this. I’m very certain that this is not how it works, but you know what? Fine. Andi shows the court the napkin she scribbled on, she wins the case. Right?
Wrong! Andi didn’t actually keep the napkin. So she sued and built a case around the ownership of…something she doesn’t own.
Ugggghhhhhhh…
This is fucking abuse. Why are you making this so difficult, Rian? Why do you hate us so?
So on the day of court, all the disruptors (or shitheads, as Helen calls them every chance she gets…actually I like that name better) are called on as witnesses and lie saying Elon is the one who wrote on the napkin. I really feel like there should be no case if you have no physical evidence (but then, there should be no case at all anyway) but whatever. Elon wins the case, and he fabricates his own version of the napkin to corroborate this story.
I guess now’s a good a time as any to talk about what’s on the napkin. I want you guys to take a good look because it is actually incomprehensible. I’ll show the original (left) as well as Elon’s (right).
This barely looks like the starting concept for a lemonade stand, let alone a giant tech organization. But at least there’s the neat detail of Elon’s looking like it was scribbled together from memory. Moving right along, Andi trashes her room in a rage, and in doing so just so happens to discovers the real napkin hiding inside of a book. Then she puts it in a lil red envelope, takes a selfie with the envelope, and emails it to all the shitheads saying this:
So I guess Andi thinks this is enough for her to win the case, even though possession of the napkin means jack shit now, and instead of taking this to the corporate lawyers, the courts, or even Elon, she’s bragging to the shitheads, and only the shitheads, that she has the one piece of evidence she needs to destroy them unless they admit to lying in court.
This character is so fucking smart, you guys.
So to the surprise of no one, the shitheads notify Elon post-haste (via fucking fax machine of course) and apparently were all in the area because they arrive at Andi’s house within an hour of each other.
Holy shit.
But it turns out, they all arrived too late because Elon got to her first! Somehow.
He put sleeping pills in her tea, and left her in her car with the engine running. There better be a damn fine explanation for how Elon, of all people, got the jump on Andi like this when she’s so smart. Well luckily for us, the movie gives us one!
“She was clever enough not to fear Miles. No, she did not see the real threat, the obvious threat, until it was too late.”
That’s right, guys! The idea that the guy Andi just threatened to take down would want her out of the picture was so obvious, Andi was too smart to see it! Just like how if you asked an expert mathematician what 2 + 2 is, they’d freeze up and collapse! Fuck you, film!
And then there’s the utter insanity of Elon choosing to kill Andi in the first place. Why the fuck would he commit murder if all he needed was the envelope? Why not drug Andi and stop there? Just steal the envelope, destroy it, and leave before she wakes back up. Holy fuck.
Elon’s stupidity in regards to the envelope doesn’t end here, but we’ll get to that.
Here’s the cliffnotes of what happens after this:
- Elon makes his escape and nearly sideswipes Drax on his way to Andi’s house.
- Two days later, Helen gets the call from the coroner that her sister has apparently committed suicide.
- Helen inspects Andi’s house and finds no note, or any indication that she intended to commit suicide. Instead she accesses her email and finds the message sent to the shitheads.
Pause here, cause this script has got some boo-boos right about now…again.
At this point, the news of Andi’s death hasn’t been made public yet, meaning the only people who know are Elon, Helen, Blanc, and the police (supposedly). And I’m sorry, but there’s no world where the death of the co-founder of Apple or Tesla or Amazon or whatever does not make public news within the hour, let alone two days. If the coroners have told Helen, than they’ve more than likely told someone important enough would make this public. At the very least, they’ve told other family members, who would have told someone important enough to make this public. This movie is full of baloney.
The most we get is Blanc saying he’ll “pull some strings” to hold off the news hounds. How? You aren’t going to stop journalists from reporting things, you buffoon, that’s their job. Trying to keep them from reporting this story, is itself a story. What the fuck?
Secondly, there’s the issue of how on earth Helen is able to access Andi’s email without a password. In fairness to Rian, this is a kind of no-win situation. If it’s this easy to access, then the authorities should have discovered the email and called in the shitheads as murder suspects. If it’s too difficult to access, then Helen is shit-out-of-luck here with no leads. I almost feel for Rian, but it was his choice to introduce a secret twin halfway through the film so this is a rod he’s made for his own back. He cheaped out on the writing here (again) by saying Helen just happened to be able to get into her sister’s email before the authorities, who just happened to miss it, as well as the dozens of fingerprints Elon would’ve left behind at the crime scene.
Stellar.
Speaking of lucky coincidences, Helen chose the perfect day to check out Andi’s house because that’s when she receives the mystery box inviting Andi over the murder mystery weekend getaway. This leads us to the scene we saw in the beginning with her smashing the box.
Which brings us back to Elon. What were you thinking buddy? You just got away with murder, my dude. Why would you invite the woman whose life you destroyed to your island, even if she wasn’t dead?
🤓 “But Ibrahim, Miles is doing this to cover his tracks!”
Doesn’t that make him more suspicious given what he did?
“Hey, lady whose life I ruined and just recently vowed to take down my empire, wanna come to my private island for a murder mystery? Oh, wait she’s dead? Oh…heh heh. Strange…”
🤓 “But Ibrahim, Miles must’ve sent out the invitation before he murdered Andi!”
He’d still cancel the delivery. Especially if he was interested in covering his tracks.
🤓 “But Ibrahim, Miles is stupid!”
Yeah…I guess you got me there.
So Helen hops on Google and looks up “world’s greatest detective” to find Blanc (I’m not being funny, she actually does this to find him), and apparently found his address this way(?) so she goes to his house and asks him to go to the island and find out who did dun killed her sister. Then we get an interesting piece of dialogue. Blanc says he’s “not Batman.” He can gather evidence and present it to the authorities but that’s where his jurisdiction ends.
Huh? What is Blanc trying to say here? By saying he isn’t Batman, is he saying he doesn’t beat up/kill people? Why does he think someone would ask that of a detective? Does he realize he has more in common with most versions of Batman? Does he consider this an annoying restriction he was to work in? What is this supposed to say about him?
I know this seems weird to get hung up on, but given his final act in this movie, I’d say these are questions worth asking. We’ll put a pin in out for now, I guess.
So because Andi’s death isn’t in the news yet (miraculously), Blanc gets the idea that Helen disguise herself as her sister and go the island to do some snooping and put pressure on the shitheads. Helen asks to make sure this is safe, and Blanc suddenly remembers that he’s proposing that she go to a private island with five potential murderers, so he tells her he’s not a bodyguard and starts to backpedal. But then she asks “Do you really think we could get this son of a bitch?” and then that concern is thrown out the window.
Okay, then.
So Helen dyes her hair like Andi’s and wears her clothes. Good start, but she still needs to act like Andi. So how does she get by without tipping everyone off that she isn’t her sister? Well, remember Andi’s diary from earlier? Helen’s been studying it, and apparently it has everything she needs to act like, talk like, and pretty much make her indistinguishable from Andi.
Oh sorry my bad, she listens to her TED talks too.
Are you serious right now? Your excuse for why Helen is able to act just like Andi is because she’s been reading her diary? Really? It’s not like the diary is useless, mind you, but the most that’s going to be in that diary is an account of Andi’s experiences, thoughts, and feelings. It’s not a damn template to mold you into her! Fuck off, movie!
So what follows is pretty much the events of the film, but exclusively from Helen’s perspective. We get a bunch of familiar scenes and some new ones. You know, stuff that would’ve been interesting to see the first time around as setup for the big twist? They arrive on the island, and Blanc, anticipating that Miles will wonder what the fuck he’s doing here, just tells Helen to “snoop.”
I feel like you should be doing the snooping, since you’re the detective of this pairing, but whatever.
But hey! This brings us to one of the biggest mindfucks as a result of this twist! I ask again, why in the hell would Miles allow Blanc anywhere near the island…along with the woman he just killed? I don’t know about you guys, but if the woman I murdered showed up on my private island with a famous detective, I’d want both of them off post-haste. In fact, if I were any of the disruptors, I’d be panicking right now. But no one brings this up as a massive red flag! We’re forced to watch again as Blanc is just allowed to stay for the murder mystery, even though he has no invite. And everyone just acts like Andi was on sabbatical or some shit, including Elon who acts like everything’s
So Helen meets up with Whiskey and they have a cute lil girl chat. Whiskey hands her some kombucha (Jared Leto’s hard kombucha…I don’t know why this movie keeps awkwardly name-dropping all these B-list celebrities like this) and tells her that Miles is “complicated”, conceding that what he did to her was still shitty and she’s sorry for her.
Hey, one of them is actually human!
She then goes on about how obnoxious Drax is, especially when he’s with his friends, particularly because he just treats her like arm candy. Helen asks why she puts up with him, and Whiskey tells her that she’s only piggybacking off Drax as a way of expediting the process of building her own brand.
Lady, what the fuck? I know the way your boyfriend treats you is shitty and everything, but you’re using him just as much as he’s using you! You aren’t any better! Do you genuinely expect us to sympathize with Whiskey here, movie?
On that note though, I need to point out for those who haven’t seen the movie that Whiskey is hot. Like, stupidly distracting levels of hot. To the point where I’m wondering why she needs to attach herself to Drax to make a name for herself in the first place. I’m positive she could make it bigger than he ever could if she recorded herself making breakfast.
Moving on…
Helen makes her way by the pool and overhears Agatha have a super secret conversation with Lionel. They both confess that they signed off on Klear despite knowing it’ll kill their respective reputations. They’re just not characters at this point, are they? They’re really just extensions of Elon. Agatha did it presumably because she wants Elon to support her rather than her opposition. But like, you’re going to lose all support from your political base with this move. I don’t know how this is preferable to Elon supporting your competitor instead? Your choices here are maybe lose the election, or definitely lose the election (plus blow up the world, if Andi is to be believed). Lionel confesses that he signed off on Klear being aboard the manned mission, and his staff don’t know yet.
You can’t be serious, Rian.
We’ve broken this movie like 17 times over by now. How in the hell do Lionel’s staff not know who signed off on the manned mission? Weren’t they the ones stressing at the beginning of this film for Lionel not to do this exact thing? How would they not be the first to know? What is actually happening right now? What’s more is Lionel confirmed that Andi was 100% correct about Klear being explosive. Putting it in household pipes results in a massive gas leakage. Meaning that he, knowingly, has potentially sent a crew of spacemen to their deaths.
And uh, let’s be honest here, if both Lionel and Andi have figured this out about Klear, there are others who know this is an explosive. This would not make it past the concept stage, yet this movie almost implies it’s only a matter of time before every home is powered by Klear. And Elon is just that cartoonishly evil/greedy/stupid that he would push for this.
Just…no, Rian.
So Helen plants a voice recorder for Birdie of all people, and she and Blanc then speculate some more on who could have did done do’d the thing, with Helen noticeably loose from the Kombucha, which it turns out is about 9% alcohol. We then see the beginning of the “golden titties” speech, now with the added context that Helen was feeling instigative as a result of being slightly drunk. She seemed pretty well put-together the first time but that’s the magic of filmmaking for you. We get an entirely new scene as well where she confronts Agatha over the trial and the email. Agatha rants to “Andi” that they all called and visited her house, only to receive no response from her, Drax in particular almost getting into an accident on the way (it was Elon speeding from the scene of the crime). Helen spots an opportunity to get information out of this confrontation, and asks Agatha what she would have told her had she answered. Agatha doesn’t reply and storms off.
Helen regroups with Blanc at a gym to discuss her findings. I don’t see the need to give the play-by-play here since this information will be irrelevant soon and I already told you guys Miles is the killer, but the bigger point here is they’re discussing this with a fitness training of Serena Williams on the wall.
“Why is that relevant Ibrahim?”
Well because the video is not a video at all. It turns out the Serena Williams (or an advanced AI meant to act like her) is on video call with the gym, and these two are discussing a murder right in front of her. What happens if Miles or any of the shitheads decide to waltz into the gym at any point? What if she notifies any of them remotely? No doubt she’d be collecting video and audio for health and safety purposes. “Serena Williams is onto you” is a sentence I never thought I’d type out, but here we are.
Anyway, we’re back to the scene where Drax witnesses Elon and Whiskey having the big sex, only now we see that Drax put Whiskey up to it. It’s all a ploy to get Elon to get him on Alpha News. Except Elon doesn’t go for it because he can’t have a redpill weirdo on his news channel. Poor Drax has to hear this while he watches his woman sleep with another man for nothing. He also hears a branch snap! Blanc and Helen are on the scene this time, witnessing Drax’s witnessing. As seen in the comparison image above, they weren’t there before. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were airbrushed out or if they just recorded the scene twice. The branch snap wasn’t even audible the first time we saw this. But that’s the magic of filmmaking for you. Good work, Rian!
Helen then retrieves her phone so she and Blanc can listen to whatever the audio record has picked up. It’s a private conversation between Birdie and Peg. Birdie, defeated, says that she’s going to take full responsibility for what she did. Peg, apparently unaware of what she really did, says they can save this. They’ll lie and deny and cover it up like they always do.
Then she finds out.
Birdie pulls out her secret phone(!!!!) and hands it to Peg. It’s an email thread between her sweatpants contractor and herself. The contractor has told her that she needs to be advised because the Bangladesh factory she wants to produce the pants in is one of the most notorious sweatshops in the world. Birdie has replied, “sounds perfect, thanks!” with her memoji dabbing.
Peg is gutted…but then it dawns on her slowly.
Birdie Jay thought that sweatshops are where sweatpants are produced.
You’re probably wondering what I have to say about this. Maybe you’re expecting me to throw out some swears, type in all caps about how ridiculous it is that Rian Johnson thinks that any human being in this position could possibly be this stupid. But for once, I have nothing. I watched this movie three times and I have nothing to say about this scene. When I saw it for the first time, I had to pause. I stared blankly at my screen for a good minute or two, wondering if this movie really was just a massive troll and I was the biggest loser for taking it even remotely seriously. I thought, perhaps, maybe the fans of this movie are right. This is just a glass onion and I’m the real idiot for trying to engage with it.
But then I grit my teeth and said no. I was going to see the rest of this movie out. I wasn’t going to let Rian “I like when people don’t like my movies” Johnson fucking win like that. So I threw this stupid scene out of my consciousness, unpaused, and carried on.
Anyway this scene is really stupid. Let us carry on.
We’re back with Helen and Blanc, who have erroneously concluded that 1) whoever killed Andi kept the envelope intact to show Elon what they did to protect him and that 2) the envelope is here on the island.
What. The actual. Fuck.
Why in the goddamn hell would the killer not destroy the envelope? If we’re actually supposed to believe that the shitheads are such kissasses that they would really wanted to show off for Elon that badly, why couldn’t they just send him a video of them burning it? He already knows the danger the envelope presents, he got a damn fax about it. They all know the danger the envelope presents. Destroying it should have been priority one. It should’ve come well before murdering Andi, for fuck’s sake. All you would need to do is shoot Elon a text (for fuck’s sake I keep forgetting this useless tool doesn’t use a phone) Sorry, shoot Elon a FAX saying “it’s taken care of.” THAT’S IT.
But even if we ignore all that and accept that none of the shitheads would destroy the envelope, why are you both so certain that the envelope is on the island? The island that he invited ANDI to?? That thing should be kept under lock and key in a safe deposit box, far away from anyone that would care. Not to mention that this is at least a week since the murder of Andi, so why would the killer not only keep the envelope but bring it to his private island? Are you insane? Do you want to get caught? Was the person who wrote this on drugs?
Good lord, another prime brain-hurty moment.
Soon enough, we’re back to drinks at the party and Helen’s little stand-off with Agatha and Drax (the part where she says she wants the truth and they call her a loser scrub who needs to get good). Helen was acting out on purpose so she’d have an excuse to leave and snoop in everyone’s rooms, going off the completely baseless assumption that the killer not only didn’t destroy the envelope, but brought it on the trip, and kept it somewhere in their rooms. According to Blanc, this is the only possibility because an envelope is impossible to keep on your person, never mind handbags and purses. Those don’t exist.
Whatever the hell you want, movie.
Helen goes about thrashing everyone’s rooms in search of the envelope, going off Blanc’s instructions not to be concerned with being neat(???), and after Hurricane Helen blows through Agatha, Birdie, and Lionel’s rooms, she checks her phone to see a shit-ton of notifications from friends and loved ones offering condolences for Andi’s death. She gets these all at once because I guess now it would make public news that one of the most influential people in this world died. Several days ago. For Christ’s sake.
Happening concurrently is the party where Elon dazzles everyone into staring at Birdie’s dress while he does the switcheroo with Drax’s drink.
I guess now we should talk about why Elon killed Drax to begin with.
So Drax’s Google alert that was apparently about his channel blowing up was actually an alert telling him that Andi’s death is now public. Drax knows for a fact Elon did it because he almost flattened him on the road while he was speeding away from the crime. So Drax was surreptitiously blackmailing Elon into putting him on AlphaNews, lest he tells everyone the truth.
Dude is fighting tooth and nail to get onto this news program, holy fuck.
So this prompted Elon to slip pineapple juice (which, if you remember, Drax is allergic to) into his drink. And I guess Drax is chill about accepting a drink from someone he just threatened and knows is capable of murder. And he doesn’t carry an epipen with him even though the allergic reaction was strong enough to kill him. In Whiskey’s words, “he can’t even have a drop.”
Back to Helen, there’s one room left for her to run through: Drax’s. She’s rummaging about when she’s spotted by none other than Whiskey.
Uh, oh.
But Whiskey is too shocked to ask why Helen is her room because she’s fresh from finding out Drax has been killed. She stammers that she “left Drax” because she couldn’t bear it anymore and that he didn’t deserve this. She can’t mention that Drax is dead, of course, because then we wouldn’t have our good ol’ fashioned, run-of-the-mill, standard comedic misunderstanding. So instead Helen interprets this as her having just broken up with Drax, as per her suggestion, and says forcefully in a “fuck that guy” kinda way that he did deserve it, she’s not sorry for him, and Whiskey’s better off without him. This of course makes Helen look like the psycho that killed him so Whiskey starts going after her with the SPEAR GUN that Drax brought with them (There’s your payoff for that bit). It’s also at this moment that the lights go off.
So both women are screaming their heads off, and Helen just runs out into the courtyard where she meets up with Blanc. They conclude (for no good reason) that the envelope must be inside the Glass Onion. But before they can make a real plan, Helen is shot in the chest by Elon with Drax’s gun.
What the fuck is even happening?
It makes no sense at all for Elon to kill Helen if he killed Drax already. Walk with me for a bit because this is gonna be confusing to go through.
Let’s recap:
– Drax gets a Google alert about Andi’s apparent suicide
– He shakes down Elon for this because he knows what actually happened
– Elon kills Drax to cover his tracks
Mmhmm, yes, that floor is indeed made out of floor. Now, if Elon has killed the only person who knows for a fact Andi did not suicide herself, then why does he go try to kill Andi a second time? At this point, Elon has won. He got what he wanted from Andi, and got away with murdering her. Really, he should be overjoyed that she’s still alive. It’s better for him that she is, since if “Andi” decides to take this to court, he can just cover himself like last time. After all, the police already failed to point the email or the many fingerprints he would’ve left in Andi’s house back to him. By trying to kill her for real, he’s just asking to be implicated.
Now, this only relies on Elon believing this woman is Andi (which his reaction to finding out the truth implies he does). But if he understands this isn’t Andi, then still doesn’t make sense. The scenario has just changed to Elon trying to kill some woman who looks like Andi…because he can? It’s not like Helen knows any more than Andi does. She can’t be more of a threat than Andi ever was, so why put her blood on your hands? Why not kill the detective she’s with, who has a better chance of getting you in trouble?
🤓 “But Ibrahim, if Miles lets Andi/Helen live, she can tell everyone that Andi was murdered!”
Well sure, but even if Helen continues the act (which she can’t), that would make “Andi” out to look even more of a crazy, bitter ex-CEO that no one should take seriously in the eyes of the public. Faking your own death to implicate the person you just lost a legal battle with isn’t a good look. And if Helen makes the report herself, she’s still a woman with no evidence up against a billionaire with people willing back him up. So no luck there.
🤓 “But Ibrahim, Miles is stup—”
Shut the fuck up.
Anyway, Helen fucking survives getting shot because, get this, the fucking notebook protected her from the bullet. I could go on about how notebooks aren’t fucking bulletproof, and how even if this one is for some reason, it’s still lucky as fuck that Helen is shot in the one place that wouldn’t kill her, but with everything else going on in this clown movie, I almost don’t care.
You’re gonna love this next part though.
Blanc realizes he can get everyone to think Helen is dead and use that as cover for her to get into the Glass Onion. To sell the idea, Blanc pulls out the Jeremy Renner HOT SAUCE from earlier, and pours some on Andi to use as fake blood.
I want to impart to you guys a lesson when watching media. When something happens in the plot or a character does something that is so incomprehensible you have no idea why it’s just happened, there is always a motive. Ask yourself, “What does this allow to happen?” And that’s pretty much your answer.
You guys remember earlier when Blanc showed mild interest in the hot sauce, Elon said he could have it, and Blanc pocketed it for no reason? What does this allow to happen? Well, the writers were looking out for Blanc because they knew he’d need to use it as fake blood in this scene!
Thank you, writers!
So Helen lays down pretending to be dead, and Blanc ushers everyone inside. There’s a tiny bit of tension where Helen has some hot sauce almost running into his nose. Luckily, Helen waits for the exact moment no one is in her sightline to get up, and no one glances back even once.
ACT III (Hindenberg)
So now we’re finally caught up to where the movie paused to explain itself to us. We can finally move forward in the story now that we have all the context. But the nonsense isn’t over yet!
So as Helen scours the Glass Onion, Blanc explains to the rest of shitheads what I already told you: Elon is the killer, he stole Duke’s gun and phone (somehow), he swapped the drinks, etc. And he’s went about everything in the dumbest ways possible because, in Blanc’s own words, “Miles Bron is an idiot.” And he’s right. Miles is an unoriginal hack who’s hardly planned any of this out. He never made the mystery boxes. He stole the “turn off the lights and shoot” idea from Blanc. He didn’t even write the plot for the murder mystery party. But Blanc doesn’t have room to talk here. The excuse master detective Benoit Blanc gives for taking so long to figure it out? It was so stupid, he was too smart to see it.
Yes, they’re pulling this shit again. For fuck’s sake.
Though we get what’s probably my favorite exchange in this entire film, if only because of how applicable it is to the entire experience.
[Blanc]: It’s so dumb!
[Birdie]: It’s so dumb it’s brilliant…
[Blanc]: NO! It’s just dumb!
Blanc directs everyone’s attention to Helen, who is not dead and has found the envelope. Everyone freaks out at the sight of the girl who’s apparently died twice, including Birdie who shrieks “WHAT IS REALITY??”
This will land for you, or it won’t. I thought it was funny.
Lionel, thankfully, points out how fucking stupid it is that Elon kept the envelope after everything, and Elon can only stare vacantly in response and make a vague “I ‘unno” gesture, in case you haven’t gotten it yet.
Speaking of the napkin, Helen shows everyone the proof she needs to destroy Elon for good. Elon actually raises a good point by saying that there’s no way to prove this napkin isn’t just a copy of his, and Helen counters that this is authentic since it has the Glass Onion bar’s watermark on the bottom. I’m not sure why she thinks this is what will seal the deal, since Elon’s doesn’t have the watermark and his is currently accepted publicly as the real thing. And this watermark looks like something anybody can vinyl print on any old napkin.
But let’s just accept that this is indeed how it works, and that this napkin is the single key to victory over Elon. You’d think Helen would be wearing this napkin as a second skin. She’d keep it tucked away in her pocket or her purse, right? She certainly wouldn’t be waving it out in the open. It’s imperative that she doesn’t lose this napkin.
You would think.
Instead, she dangles it in front of Elon, talking about how she’s got him right where she wants him. And Elon, who’s about four steps away from Helen, activates Sneak 100 to shadowstep right up to her, and ignites the napkin from underneath with his lighter.
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you yanking my chain? I don’t know if I can even explain to you guys how idiotic everyone is in this scene but let’s give it a shot.
- Blanc just stands there like an idiot while Helen stands in a room full of morally-bankrupt people who, by his own admission, have every reason to want her dead and the napkin disappeared.
- Helen waves the single piece of evidence needed to get justice for her sister in front of the man who killed her, his accomplices, and a detective who already said he can’t guarantee her safety. I guess she’s assuming he doesn’t still have a loaded fucking gun. And she somehow doesn’t notice Elon walking toward her and making a move to incinerate the napkin.
- Elon, instead of just yanking the napkin out of her hand, decides to go through the trouble of pulling the lighter out of his pocket, and perfectly aligning with the napkin to burn it. And none of the shitheads make a move on the napkin, either.
- And finally, just a bonus, the napkin itself catches fire and disintegrates like it’s been doused in fucking gasoline.
What the fuck is happening. WHO WROTE THIS.
So Helen pleads with the other shitheads not to cover for Elon this time. To say what really happened. But they all clam up and hang their heads in shame. They’re still holding onto his golden titties. Helen berates them all, saying “You’ll lie for a lie, but you won’t lie for the truth,” which made no sense to me because she was pleading for them to…tell the truth. But whatever.
Helen goes up to Blanc for something, anything, but Blanc just apologizes and says there’s nothing more he can do…except offer her “some courage, and a reminder for why her sister walked away in the first place.” He hands her her drink…and the small piece of Klear Elon gave him earlier.
Remember when Elon tossed it to Blanc and didn’t take it back even though it’s a piece of untested, dangerous product? What does it allow to happen?
We’re about to find out.
Helen downs her drink and, in a quiet rage, begins smashing every expensive ornament inside the building, for catharsis I guess. Elon just looks on smugly because these are all likely insured. Soon enough, the shitheads start cheering her on and they even join in, because I guess they all hate Elon too. Even Peg joins in even though she’s not part of the shithead group and has no real connection to any of this! I choose to believe she’s just done with everything at this point, much like I am. It culminates in Helen destroying a glass piano that might have belonged to Liberace and the wine table centerpiece, which finally seems to bug Elon. She snatches his lighter and lights the whole thing on fire.
Damn, girl!
But Helen shows no signs of slowing down. She starts grabbing random pieces of furniture, clothes, anything that will burn and tossing them into the fire. Elon finally puts his foot down and tells Helen to stop, and “walk away.” At this point, Helen pulls out the Klear sample, and goes full Heisenberg. She tosses it into the fire, which is then eaten up by the air vent and causes the Glass Onion to explode.
The explosion looks like this:
I’d like to remind you all that everybody is aware how dangerous Klear is. The whole reason Andi left the company was because the material is highly volatile and could explode people’s homes “like the Hindenberg”, as Agatha put it.
Which means there’s no other interpretation for this scene:
Helen just tried to kill everyone and herself because she’s mad the bad guy won.
Yes, our supposed “heroine” just tried to nuke everyone as part of a tantrum. I can understand smashing Elon’s stuff for her own catharsis, but the movie treats this like a crowning moment of awesome for her!
And Blanc? He’s chilling out having a smoke, far away from all of this (with Derol…who’s also happy to watch the explosion?) You guys starting to see why his “I’m not Batman” comment rubbed me the wrong way? The guy practically encouraged Helen to do this, and then left to a place he could safely watch from. And there was no reason for him to expect anyone to survive. He’s complicit in all of their deaths.
These two may be our protagonists, but they’re not the good guys by any stretch.
And you’re not gonna fucking believe this (cause you shouldn’t), but everyone, Helen and all the shitheads, SURVIVE. They all survive the fucking explosion I just showed you guys. Seriously, scroll back up and look at it again. Everything is on fire, debris is flying everywhere, and the building was made of fucking glass. They all should have died from the shrapnel alone. Instead, everyone is just mildly bruised. Are we playing by video-game cutscene logic or what??
Fuck the fuck off, movie.
But it’s still not over. Helen and Elon arise from the rubble. Slowly their eyes make their way to good ol’ Mona Lisa, who’s safe behind her glass cover (yeah, okay). Helen knows what she must do. In perfect slow-motion, she starts sprinting, dodges the shitheads, makes a beeline for the painting…activates the override button…and lets the painting burn.
Helen Brand. Takes the honest-to-God original painting. Of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. And exposes it to flame. Without hesitation.
What…the…fuck?
What am I watching at this point? The climax of this movie is our protagonist making it her mission to destroy the most famous painting in the world. Why? To make Miles cry? Do you understand that that painting has meaning to many, many people besides him? Do you understand what that painting means to the world at large? Do you comprehend that this is the one thing you’ve destroyed that isn’t replacable? What the hell is wrong with you, Helen?
So everyone stumbles out of the building and sits out on the steps, and Miles has a little tantrum of his ow,n talking about how Helen’s “accomplished nothing.” And, outside of destroying the Mona fucking Lisa, he’s right. Everything on the villa is more than likely insured, and if I know a thing or two about insurance payouts, Miles is just gonna end up richer than he ever was.
But not as rich as Helen’s epic response.
[Helen]: Your fuel of the future just barbecued the world’s most famous painting, dumbass. Congratulations on the public launch of Klear and the end of Miles Bron.
Uhh…Helen? You’re not serious, are you? It’s your word against his. He’s come out on top before when he was lying, and now all he has to do is tell the truth, which is that you started the fire and you exposed the Mona Lisa to flames. You’re going down for arson and attempted murder at best. The shitheads deciding they’re going to stop lying to protect Miles doesn’t mean much, either. All they’d be doing is confessing that they did commit perjury before.
Basically, all of you fuckers are going to jail 💀
Helen then remarks that Elon will finally get what he wanted: to be remembered in the same breath as the Mona Lisa. She has no idea how right she is. She’s just made a martyr of Elon. He’ll be remembered as the man who desperately tried to save Mona in her final moments from the psychopathic bitch Helen.
Blanc just looks on like another mystery solved (as if he did anything besides enable the murder-suicide of seven people), and Helen comes over and sits next to him, quiet and reflective, no doubt satisfied now that she’s made her sister’s killer more rich and famous than ever, immortalizing him in history after she’s destroyed the world’s most famous painting while trying to kill herself and all of her sister’s former friends.
I’m sure it’s just what Andi would have wanted.
SUMMATION
What the fuck even happened here? You had one job, Rian. Write a simple whodunnit mystery. You had a simple premise and characters with easy-to-understand personalities and motives. It was all there, but no. You had to try to be clever and complicate the fuck out of everything. Let’s just try to wrap this up quickly.
WORLD
Not a whole lot to say about the world, other than the fact that it’s Earth circa 2020, during the height of the COVID lockdowns. Except that aspect of the story gets yeeted out of the script in a heartbeat because this world has COVID-curing gumdrops you can just shoot into people’s throats. And that’s not all you can accomplish if you’re rich. You can make it in the tech industry without using a phone, you can greenlight an alternative fuel source and send it to production even after your team of scientists tell you it’s too dangerous, you can commission a villa on an island with a dock that can’t float, and you can rent the Mona fucking Lisa from France and they’ll not only give it you, but allow you keep it behind a single pane of glass with an override button.
The CEO/founder of said tech company can die and no one will find out for days on end, the world’s greatest detective apparently has enough influence to delay that passing of information, and you can find him and his home address by searching him on fucking Google. Speaking of the world’s greatest detective, he can be found in his home, bored and without work because he’s apparently solved all crime.
Oh, and Twitch and YouTube are apparently platforms you can’t even create accounts for, let alone make it big, without the help of Elon Musk.
World: 5/10
PLOT
We’re dealing with plot spaghetti here. And in a murder mystery, that’s a skill issue. We spend about 20-30 minutes setting up characters who don’t go beyond a couple of traits (And I do mean literally just two each), and nobody actually dies until the second act, because the murder mystery party marketed to be central to the story is deconstructed in like a minute. And just when you think we might actually get to solving a mystery, the movie pauses to explain it all over again in service of a cheap twist nobody could have seen coming because Rian doesn’t want us to know until this point. The “secret twin” trope is already a cliche, but with a little more care in terms of setting it up, we could have had a much more engaging first act filled with hints that something isn’t quite right with “Andi.” Upon rewatch, you can collect all the little details you missed the first time around, giving you that “Aha!” moment. Instead this movie does that process backwards; it has its twist, and spends the next hour or so justifying it by showing us shit we never got to see. You don’t even get any rewatch bonuses because material is hidden or straight-up edited to keep you from knowing.
The reaction you’re going for with a big game-changing twist should be “Ohhhh that makes so much sense now!” not “Oh…okay then” followed by “Wait, what the fuck?“
We spend so little time with these characters in the moment because the movie spends so much time explaining how everything came to be. As a result, there’s a weird sensation where the movie strangely feels like it’s rushed and it’s dragging on at the same time. I couldn’t even lay it out here for you guys without getting a headache because for a movie that claims to be simple beyond its layers of complexity, it is absurdly convoluted. Just giving you the information in a way that’s coherent requires more work than anything the fictional detective does in this movie.
Plot elements are introduced only to be discarded. The film taking place in 2020 pretty much provides a built-in for the killer to walk around in a socially-acceptable mask, but we throw that out as quickly as possible. Every character has a wristband meant to act as keys to their room, one for each of the seven in association with the seven chakras (even though Blanc makes eight but he gets one too). So Helen will have to steal some in order to snoop their rooms, right? Nope. She walks in and out with no trouble and this never even comes up again.
You also get some transparent, basic-bitch plot convenience because the story comes to a grinding halt if anything works out organically. Blanc pockets his some hot sauce he doesn’t even particularly like. Why? Because the script needs to provide him with fake blood later. The police can’t arrive on the island. Why? Because the dock is a piece of shit. Never mind that a man is dead and the dock isn’t your only means of entry, and that when another person is killed you make it just fine. The writer’s hand literally descends from heaven to move these pieces on the board exactly where they need to go. Plenty of plot armor to go around too, especially for Helen, who gets shot and exploded back-to-back with no harm done. Not even her makeup is tarnished.
Plot: 3/10
CHARACTER
Let’s talk about our Disruptors. They’re a group of “friends” in the sense that they’re mutually connected to the same person. Perhaps this is the point but I get the feeling we’re supposed to believe these guys are actually buddies with history together. You’d never know the way one of them dies and everyone’s reaction amounts to mild shock before almost forgetting about Duke entirely. Whiskey is the only character I could believe cared deeply for him. Speaking of Whiskey, the film tries to humanize her by telling us she’s a victim of a shallow relationship with Duke, neglectful of the fact that she’s arguably worse by using his platform to create her own. The rest are all more-or-less interchangeable outside of their individual quirks, some of which the film hammers in to the point where it almost becomes parody (Birdie). Again, having characters this shallow isn’t a problem in itself but the movie teases individual motives they may have to kill Miles. Any interest in this dies the minute we find out they’re all inextricably tied to him; Miles is in it to protect himself and they’re in it to protect him. There’s not much to them after that. They’re all terrible people and if the goal was to make me come around to them in the end because they decide to tell the truth, then they’ve failed on that front. The damage is done. Claire still signed off on Klear knowing it’ll destroy whatever political base she has. Lionel still sent Klear on a manned mission knowing it’s a bomb. All they’ve done with their final decision is ensure their collective imprisonment, and I don’t even think they realize that. It is very telling that the only one I could relate to was Peg and her numb frustration with the stupidity of everyone around her.
Now for our Elon Musk stand-in, Miles Bron, the owner of the biggest tech giant in this world despite not knowing what “analog” is and owning no cell phone to speak of. I suppose we’re meant to believe he made his way to the top through underhanded means such as trickery and knowing the right people. He’s a grifter and there’s reference in the movie to support this, but this would suggest he has some level of cunning. After all, he caught Andi off-guard, managing to drug her all by himself, and he swiftly disposes of Drax quickly through quick thinking and a sleight-of-hand gambit. Though this is at odds with his characterization in the film as a “brainless jackass.” And the references to this man’s idiocy are comically numerous. His business partner threatened him with a key piece of evidence, and his recourse was to kill her, but not the piece of evidence. He does this without communicating with any of his posse so that he drives recklessly to and from the scene of the crime in his distinctively-colored car, almost hitting Duke on the way back. He then lets onto his private island a guest he didn’t invite and a guest he had no reason to invite whether or not she was dead, without questioning how the woman he killed himself is standing in the flesh, or what the master detective is doing here with her. His allowance of Blanc is particularly frustrating because as a detective, having around for a fun murder mystery game is just unfair, anyway. Yet Miles just allows both of these people free reign of the villa without any known surveillance outside of Serena fucking Williams. Then, after seemingly committing the perfect crime with Andi’s death being ruled as suicide, he tries to kill her twin sister for…what exactly? The movie is trying to make a point that Elon really is just a big dumb-dumb, and I get it, but it makes it really hard to take this conflict seriously. If he’s so stupid, how has he been able to pull the wool over so many of our supposed “smart” characters? What is this meant to say about them? Miles Bron is a lesson on how you need to be very careful when you’re writing characters who are supposed to be stupid. It’s not an excuse for a character to just do whatever the plot needs them to.
So what about our protagonist, Helen? Well, she wants justice for her sister so she Googles the world’s greatest detective to help get her the answers she needs. She’s refreshing in her characterization as someone who doesn’t tolerate the Disruptors’ nonsense and cuts the bullshit. Though we have the benefit of thinking she’s Andi, she’s seemingly more perceptive and a better judge of character than her sister ever was. She’s probably the only character I believe to be as smart as the movie wants me to believe. She definitely gets more leeway from me for her fuckups while snooping because she isn’t expected to know better, unlike a certain detective. And she shows strong initiative to go to the island at all, even knowing it could be dangerous. Honestly, she’s one of the stronger characters in the movie.
And then it all blows up in the third act like the Hindenberg.
Helen finds the napkin, the only piece of physical evidence for her case according to this movie, and shows it to the man who fucking shot her. She does in a room with five murder suspects who have a shared interest in making sure the napkin never sees the light of the day. And what does she do when she loses her evidence? She goes rage room on everything in the estate. An understandable catharsis, but she doesn’t stop and it culminates in her using the very product her sister died trying to keep out of peoples homes to level the building. While herself and six other people are inside the building.
And if this bizarre attempt at a murder-suicide wasn’t enough, she decides to let burn a cultural landmark simply because it will make someone else feel bad. She wanted revenge on one man, and decided to take it out on the entire world. Her intelligence and superior sense of morality are all reversed in one fell swoop. It’s the fastest character assassination I’ve seen in a while.
She needs to go to prison. And she needs a cell right next to Benoit Blanc. Jesus Christ, where to begin? The detective who could intimidate an entire room with his unconventional wisdom and uncanny ability to get to truth to arrive at his feet. The one who relentlessly pursued the Thronbey case by himself, and had no qualms about calling out the family’s deplorable treatment of Marta. The man who sussed out Marta’s involvement from the beginning by detecting a single drop of blood on her shoe.
He’s nowhere to be found in this movie.
Glass Onion would have you believe Blanc earned his title as the world’s greatest detective on a technicality because there’s no one else to compete. The man brings along with him on his big case a woman he admits he can’t protect and having her wander around about the island doing his job with no supervision and six potential murderers on the loose. He does this while having no real plan other than scare them into giving the info he wants…somehow. Everyone in Knives Out had to speak because there was ongoing police investigation. But none of the iconic interrogation scenes from that film are to be found here, and why would they be? What’s the pressure for any of the Disruptors to speak to Blanc while they’re on vacation? The only reason he’s here is because he guesses, based on nothing, that the killer is on the island and the napkin is as well. While the detective work he does in the fake murder mystery sounds really impressive, it falls apart when you realize most of his summation is based on flimsy guesswork and he just got lucky. He then fails to notice that the guy who carries his gun everywhere on his front-facing holster and can’t stay off his phone is suddenly missing both items. He determines the cause of death is tampering with a drink, and proceeds to ignore said drink. He has a chat with the woman he’s conspiring with under the only operating lights on the compound with six people who, in his own words, have reason to wish the woman harm, wandering around in the dark. And most damning, the man who left no suspects off the table in the Thronbey case, leaves a prime suspect off the table because he’s too stupid to be suspicious of. He also just stands around and lets Helen parade the napkin around while six people who have a vested interest in destroying it, one of which he knows is capable of murder, are in the same room.
And those are just in relation to his competence as a detective.
According to this movie, Blanc sees the fact that he can’t exact justice on his own as something to lament. He at least sees it as a limitation he’s bound to. But he’s more than happy to let others get justice in however way they see fit…even if it means killing them all. While he comfortably watches from afar.
He’s assassinated in this movie, as well.
Character: 2/10
THEMES
There’s the theme of rich people being vapid, shallow, morally bankrupt, and generally undeserving of their positions in life. All well and good, except our relatable, not-as-rich protagonists were both written to be psychopaths, so the film almost portrays rich people sympathetically.
There’s a theme of “disruption” in the movie, i.e. making a statement by breaking things past the point people are comfortable with. So what does the Disruptor group consist of? A politician who dishonestly uses progressivism to boost herself, a scientist too spineless to stand up for his beliefs, a streamer and a fashion designer who both spout regressive beliefs because they think everything is too “woke” now, advocating for an older status quo, and two capitalists gaining wealth through innovation in tech. Hardly what I’d call disruption since these are mostly just benign rich people things, but perhaps this is the point. They’re only “disruptors” in name only. And you can make a case for Miles, ousting Andi from the company when she tried to maintain control in the face of his own disruption. But I think the real champion of this idea is supposed to be Helen. With the destruction of their only piece of physical evidence (it really isn’t, but according to the movie it is) and a group of people willing to commit perjury, she fails to get justice the ethical way. But she earns her vindication through a less orthodox and more disruptive way. She destroys Miles’ belongings, taking it further and larger in scale, until she breaks the one thing no wants her too. She destroys the Glass Onion itself, and follows this by destroying an important piece of cultural heritage, all to frame Miles for the idiotic murderer he is. And she even gets the Disruptors to side with her. She’s earned justice through disruption.
Sounds really neat on paper, doesn’t it?
This is where we get to ideas versus execution, because in actuality, Helen sets off a bomb that should have killed everyone in the building. Disruptive is a word you could use to describe this, but if the events played out realistically, what would be the statement being made? “If I can’t get justice, no one can”? Failing that, Helen destroys a priceless item simply because Miles said it was important to him. I get that the Mona Lisa is supposed to represent “the one thing no one wants you to break”, but maybe it’s important to consider why nobody would want it broken. The painting’s significance is far greater than its influence on Miles. It is a cornerstone of art itself. To destroy something like that to get back at one man, is not “disruption of the status quo”, it’s true psychopathy. And it’s not going to hurt Miles one bit because his property is insured and he’ll be remembered as the man who tried to save Mona. In other words, Helen got the opposite of justice for Andi.
But the rich man cried, so I guess it was all worth it. We made him hurt.
Sound familiar? It’s the exact kind of moral myopia seen in Rian’s previous work. In The Last Jedi, two characters destroy an afluent casino planet, setting free many animals in captivity and getting back at the evil rich people…all while ignoring the children still in slavery who will have to clean all the damages in addition to receiving whippings and punishments, the fact that everything is insured even without slave labor, the suffering and damage caused to the innocents on the planet, and the fact that all the animals will have no idea how to live in the wild and will inevitably be recaptured. “We won because we broke the bad guy’s toys” when the only ones you’ve hurt are the workers who fix it all.
Between Star Wars and the ending of this movie, at this point I’m actually starting to think Rian Johnson just gets off on destroying beloved works of art.
Now for the titular “Glass Onion”, the idea that something may look complicated until you realize you can see right through it. That it’s all so much simpler than you might think.
Well, as I went over, we have a script that’s just as complex as it appears, if not more, so we’re not off to a great start. But I suppose Miles fits this bill. He’s someone who appears to be an eccentric genius but is actually quite stupid and doesn’t come up with any good ideas of his own. It puts him beneath the suspicion of both Andi and Blanc. But the truth is that Miles is selectively intelligent. There are key moments that show him to be a master at manipulation and underhanded play. After all, he, entirely through legal means, took Andi, considered to be the real brains behind Alpha, out of her own company. I’ll say the characterization of Miles is one of the better examples of the Glass Onion theme., since we’re mostly consistent in proving him to be a simpleton. But there are some bumps here and there in terms of execution, and the plot is not doing the idea any favors.
And yet, this comes up regularly as a defense for many of the dumb things in the script. You aren’t meant to point these out as problems because the story is dumb by design. You’re simply looking for complexity where there isn’t any, just like Blanc.
I have a question then: If everything the movie does right is a point in its favor, and everything it gets wrong is also a point in its favor because being stupid is the whole point, what can the movie possibly fail at? What does a “bad” version of Glass Onion look like?
Themes: 4/10
OVERALL
Glass Onion is actually like an onion in a way. The more lay’uhs you peel back, the more you want to cry. The movie is one brain-hurty moment after another, and if you try to pay attention to anything that’s happening you’ll just give yourself a headache, which is pretty much antithetical to a mystery. Knives Out isn’t flawless but it is coherent. The plot has its own complications but it’s downright straightforward compared to this mess. This is just as much a whodunnit as it is a romantic fucking comedy. And the fact that “it’s dumb on purpose” is used as a credible defense for this film shows that we’re pretty much in the piss era of movies.
A mystery you aren’t meant to think about. What a subversion. Rian Johnson, you’ve done it again.
Overall Assessment: 4/10
PERSONAL
I almost scrapped this breakdown. At the time of publish, this has been four months in the making, the longest I’ve taken so far. And I think it’s because l watched this movie without prior attachment to the Benoit Blanc mystery franchise. I just wanted a fun mystery to unwind with since Knives Out was well-received and this was a standalone sequel. I remember getting frustrated enough with the story to start writing but I couldn’t find the fire to finish. It wasn’t until I watched the predecessor and enjoyed it as much as I did that I got more and more vindictive towards this one. What on earth went wrong? Why did Rian go so far out of his way to subvert the genre that he took away what makes it so engaging for so many? It was interesting to compare the two films on my own terms.
Glass Onion is a competently shot movie. Its color-grading and costume design makes it easy on the eyes, and the casting is great. Even the writing doesn’t piss me off in the way, say, Multiverse of Madness does. But as a fan if the genre I feel like I’ve been strung along.
Personal Rating: 5/10
Ibrahim Noir 
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