My Thoughts on "Glass Onion 🧅"
Note:
This was originally written on Sunday January 8, 2023, and it was posted on DeviantART on Monday January 9, 2023. I watched Glass Onion 🧅, just one day after I watched Knives Out 🗡️. As you'll see by this review, I had substantially more to say about Glass Onion 🧅 than I did Knives Out 🗡️, though I still kept it short. I'm just waiting to see what Rian Johnson has in store for us in the third movie. I wonder what he'll title the third movie, or what the third movie will about, and who will be in it. But, I am confident that the third movie will just as new and unique from its predecessor as Glass Onion 🧅 was from Knives Out 🗡️. Because, while Glass Onion 🧅 is a whodunit just like Knives Out 🗡️, it is a pretty different movie.
It's in a different location, it has vastly different characters, it has a different kind of mystery, and it has a different theme and message to it. Knives Out 🗡️ sort of tackled the issues of classism, immigration, and racism. While, Glass Onion 🧅 tackled the issue of billionaire phonies masquerading as geniuses, and putting people's lives at risk for the sake of profit 🤑 and for the sake of legacy while other rich idiots cheer them on or tolerate it without speaking up. Okay, both movies were essentially about rich people being stupid, self-centered, entitled pricks, but they do it very different ways. Even the structure of Glass Onion 🧅 is different from Knives Out 🗡️. Knives Out 🗡️ had a more traditional three act structure, whereas this movie has a two act structure. And within that two act structure, you're essentially seeing two sides of the same coin. You're seeing the same exact events play out twice, but from different perspectives. We learn more about what happened in the first act in the second act.
I'm only saying this because I don't think I actually talk about the movie's relatively unconventional two-act structure in the review. Of course, the two-act structure is not a new thing. Rian Johnson didn't just come up with it in this movie. There been plenty of other movies that used a two-act structure. One that comes to mind is the fourth and final Evangelion Rebuild movie, Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time, that movie had a two-act structure. You had the first act, which pretty much took place entirely in that village, Village-3, and then you have the second act, which is a huge climax that takes place in both Antarctica 🇦🇶 and that weird Anti-Universe place that Shinji and Gendo both dive into, and have their father and son talk which ends up resolving the main conflict and saving the entire world.
The Matrix Revolutions also sort of has a two-act structure as well. You have the first act, which is all about Neo being trapped inside Mobil Ave., that virtual train station created and run by a program called the Trainman that the Merovingian uses to smuggle programs in and outside the Matrix to escape the various reboots that have taken place. Morpheus and Trinity try to get him out, with the help of the Oracle's program bodyguard, Seraph of course. And then, when they do finally confront the Merovingian, and force him to free Neo, Neo reunites with Trinity and Morpheus, and Neo talks to the Oracle for the last time.
Then you get to the second act, which is basically just one big climax. You have the battle inside Zion, you have Morpheus and Niobe trying to fly back to Zion, you have Neo and Trinity flying to the Machine City, they get to the Machine City and Trinity dies. Then Neo meets the presumed leader of the Machines, Deus Ex Machina, and makes a deal with him to let him go back inside the Matrix to confront Smith in exchange for ending the war against the humans.
Deus Ex Machina agrees to the deal, and jacks Neo into the Matrix to destroy Smith once and for all, who has taken over the entire Matrix, and turned everyone in it, human and program, into clones of himself, like a computer virus. Except for the Merovingian apparently because he wasn't actually absorbed by Smith according to the lore. He just escaped, probably through Mobil Ave.. Neo and Smith fight for a while, and then Neo just accepts his fate and lets Smith infect him, and turn him into a Smith clone, which allows Deus Ex Machina to insert what I can only assume is an antivirus software into the Matrix, which destroys Smith and all of his clones since he's basically a computer virus at this point in the storyline.
Though apparently not completely since he comes back in The Matrix Resurrections, albeit with a different body, voice, and personality. Neo dies both from being converted into a Smith clone, and from being used as a Trojan horse for Deus Ex Machina to install the antivirus software to destroy Smith, in what can only be described as a "Christ-like demise." Neo is after all, Computer Kung Fu Jesus. The Matrix is rebooted, and the truce between the humans and the Machines is put into effect, ending the war, and bringing about a new, but tenuous era of peace.
I know I just explained the entire plot of The Matrix Revolutions, so if you've never seen that movie, and you're reading this, I apologize. But, it's 20 year old movie, so if you haven't seen the movie by now, that's kind of on you. Anyway, I think Revolutions' two-act structure is mostly the result of it being the second part of a two-part movie, and being the finale to the then trilogy. This was a trilogy until Resurrections came along, and turned it into a tetralogy. It is better think of The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions as one movie split into two parts, rather than as two separate movies.
This perspective makes all the more sense when you consider the fact that those two movies were released the same year, 2003, just six months apart. Along with a myriad of Matrix tie-in material such as the anime anthology film, The Animatrix, which serves to expand the Matrix lore, tell the backstory of certain characters of The Matrix, and tell stories within the world of The Matrix that they couldn't really do in the main films, and the video game, Enter the Matrix, which takes place during and in-between the events of both Reloaded and Revolutions with live action cutscenes written and directed by the Wachowskis themselves and performed by the actors from the films, as well as a bunch of Matrix comic books, which also expand the lore and tell stories that the movies never could. 2003 truly was The Year of the Matrix. It also makes sense when you consider the fact that other two-part movies, like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows also have this quality about them. Where the second part essentially has a two-act structure, and the second act is one big finale.
I'm sure you get my point by now. The second-act structure is not a new thing. There are plenty of movies that have two-act structures, especially two-part movies, or movies that are the end of long-running saga. Glass Onion 🧅 is the only example that I can think of where the two-act structure was used on a stand alone movie. Yes, I know Glass Onion 🧅 is a sequel, but the story really has nothing to do with the first movie, it just has the same protagonist and is also a murder mystery, and it's pretty stand alone and self-contained. The two-act structure is just way less common than the three-act structure, which is the more common and preferred method of storytelling for a motion picture. My only guess for why Rian Johnson chose to go with a two-act structure for this movie is that he wanted to set it apart from Knives Out 🗡️, and tell a different kind of story and have a different kind of mystery that unfolds in a different way than Knives Out 🗡️.
That brings me to another interesting tidbit about this movie that I didn't mention in the review. The full title of the movie is Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 🧅🗡️, but Rian Johnson didn't want to call it that. He wanted the movie to just be called Glass Onion 🧅, but Netflix insisted on him adding that stupid A Knives Out Mystery 🗡️ subtitle, just so that people will know that it is indeed a sequel to Knives Out 🗡️. I blame Disney for starting that ridiculous trend of adding a subtitle to a sequel, prequel, or spin-off that says something like "A __Story," or some variation of it. It started with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, then continued with Solo: A Star Wars Story, and it just expanded from there as other studios adopted this same practice of titling their sequels, prequels, and spin-off movies.
You had Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, you had Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, you had Spiral: From the Book of Saw, and you have Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. It's really dumb, and I wish franchises would stop doing this. I understand why Rian Johnson just wanted to call this movie, Glass Onion 🧅 and nothing else. I mean, all of those Hercule Poirot movies by Kenneth Branagh all have different titles, and don't feel the need to add subtitles like A Hercule Poirot Mystery or An Agatha Christie Mystery just to let you know that this is a Hercule Poirot movie and an Agatha Christie adaptation. They're just called Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and A Haunting in Venice. So, why can't any of these Benoit Blanc movies do the same?
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Well, I finally got around to watching Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 🧅🗡️ (or just Glass Onion 🧅 as it's called in the movie itself) and it was fantastic. It was really good. I liked it just as much as first one, if not a bit more. That's how you do a sequel. Now, granted, I was spoiled a bit on the twist because I watched a lot of reaction videos to this movie before head. So, I kind of knew a general sense of what the plot was, and what the answer to the mystery was. But, even though, I did know the general answer, I still enjoyed this movie a lot, partially because there were a lot of things that those reaction videos left out, mostly for copyright reasons.
So, there were still some surprises for me, and I got greater context to certain things. But, I do have a feeling that I would've enjoyed this movie even more if I had gone into it completely blind, not watching any reaction videos, or watching any film essays, or movie reviews or anything like that. And that's the way that I recommend you going into this movie, go into it as blind as you can.
Avoid spoilers as much as you can. In fact, that pretty much applies to the first one and all whodunit movies. The first time is the always the charm because once you watch it, you'll never get the experience of trying to figure out the mystery and being surprised by the answers. Every other time you watch it, you know the answer already, and your subsequent viewings are just finding the details or clues that you missed the first time around. I had that experience with both movies and they were each my first time.
So, please, watch these movies blind, don't spoil yourself, no matter how tempting it might be. I mean, I'm trying my best to keep this as spoiler free as I can, just so I don't ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. If there's a third Knives Out 🗡️ movie, which I have a feeling there probably will be because this one got pretty good reviews and got pretty good viewership on Netflix, I will try to do the same.
You got it? Good 👍, let's move on. There are few things that stood out to me when I watched it. Not only was the mystery pretty good, and the acting pretty good (obviously, just look at that cast), but I really liked how Rian Johnson decided to weave the pandemic 😷🦠 into the story. That was something that stood out to me, when I first saw the reaction videos to this movie. He set the movie in 2020, at the height of the pandemic 🦠😷, when everyone was on lockdown. He didn't have to do that, you know, most movies made during the pandemic 🦠😷 tended to just avoid the pandemic 🦠😷 all together, pretend like it wasn't happening.
But, he did, and I really appreciate him for that, and because he did that, it counts as a true "pandemic movie 😷🦠." It's a time capsule for this short, weird, and chaotic time in history, when a virus 🦠 hit the entire world, we all had to lockdown, we all had to quarantine, shut down our businesses, take unemployment, take the stimulus checks, stay home, and we all kind of went a little crazy. This movie has a few other 2020 references in there, like Among Us, remember when that was a trendy game that everyone and their mother was playing (sometimes literally)?
It's the game that Benoit Blanc is playing in his introductory scene, when he's in the bath tub 🛀, in a Zoom call with all his buddies, who are also apart of his Among Us crew, and he's wearing that funny looking hat with the tassel on it. That's not a spoiler, since it's Benoit Blanc's intro scene, it has nothing to do with the main story or the mystery, and it's a scene that they show and talk about in the behind-the-scene featurette. So, if they're willing to give away that scene, then I see no problem talking about it here. Of course, there's the usual contemporary references and celebrity name drops that the first movie had as well, and those are pretty fun and make sense with the plot and with the kind of people that these characters are.
Another thing that I like about this movie, particularly in contrast to the first one, is that most of the first half of the movie is from Benoit Blanc's point of view. He's the audience surrogate, he's our window into this strange world with all these eccentric rich people, and he's along for the ride. The first movie really wasn't from his point of view at all. It was more from Marta (Ana de Armas's character)'s point of view, and Benoit Blanc was kind of just a supporting character in her story. But, here, he's at the forefront of it, for most of it. And then, when a big reveal happens, and the answer to the mystery starts coming together, the movie kind of shifts point of view between Benoit and this other character who I won't spoil.
I thought that was a really nice way to differentiate this movie from the first movie. It kind of eases us into the story since we're seeing it partially through the eyes of the one character that was carried over from the first movie. I'm even glad that Rian Johnson decided to go with a completely new mystery for this movie at all, instead of just continuing on with the story from the first one. I mean, that's how most whodunit stories are. The mystery is different each time, the suspects are different each time, but the detective remains the same each new installment of a particular series.
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He likes the challenge, the thrill of the hunt, the danger of trying to solve a murder mystery, that's really all he lives for. So, when he can't do that, like during the height of the pandemic 😷🦠, he quickly becomes bored and directionless, and just stays in a bath tub all day 🛀, while his friends try to cheer him up and keep him busy with puzzles and games.)
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