The author also "absolutely loathed Star Wars: The Last Jedi" which to me feels like an overreaction to a movie.
The Last Jedi was completely disjointed from the previous movie, introduced "fuel" as a plot device that hadn't been even mentioned in the 7 previous movies, gave us the Mary Poppins Princess Leia, had a weird and heavy handed side quest in a casino planet that ultimately had no impact on the plot, killed Snoke without giving the audience some form of closure as to who he was, had BB-8 pilot an AT-ST as an ex-machina…
I’m geniunely wondering what the audience is supposed to get from all the 2020 references (Covid, Among Us, Zoom, Twitch), and the barrage of celebrity name-drops. I feel like the film was written for some specific Twitter subculture Rian Johnson is a part of, and maybe they find all the references hilarious. The mystery is dull, the dialogue obnoxious, the jokes unfunny, and the camera has that patented ugly digital…
They did a great job making the contemporary things at least work in the service of the story. COVID allows a shortcut to describing each character. The detective is depressed and bored. Birdie ignores lockdown restrictions and throws massive parties. The scientist is alone in his lab working the whole time. Duke built a home studio and spent his life online, etc. And Miles has a cure/vaccine for COVID but only uses…
As a writer, you can choose to convey character and plot points in many different ways. You don’t have to use things that are considered “hip” at the time of writing. It seems to me that Johnson’s foremost concern was having all those elements in the film, after which he reverse engineered some of the character and plot points you’re talking about.
The movie doesn’t “cheat” as far as I can tell. What it does is withhold details from what the camera shows the audience. This could be upsetting if you felt there was some implied promise that the camera PoV was showing you the entire story, but there isn’t.
Again, I haven't seen the movie -- but that does sound a little like cheating to me; the implied assumption is that it should be possible for the audience to come up with a valid theory on their own; if it's not possible because some essential piece of the puzzle is missing, then it is cheating.
It was very obvious from the moment Benoit Blanc reveals the nature of his invitation to the island that some essential element of the story was being withheld.
I too was disappointed with "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." My first struggle with the movie is that it breaks the first rule of a good mystery story in that you need the audience to have enough information that they can plausibly solve the crime themselves. Glass Onion only provides information when it becomes relevant to move the plot along. You could have never known certain things, you could have never even…
From the very beginning you should have been asking how Benoit received the box. There were only a few people who could have given it to him, and one was shown destroying hers beyond repair.
I did and in fact I guessed correctly, but it was just a guess. I still couldn’t have really know why or to what end. And it didn’t help me anticipate the plot twist.
[spoiler warning] Just watched the movie yesterday evening and I was also quite disappointed, some of the choices did seem cheap, the twin, the book stopping the bullet, the "punishment" of Miles by the destruction of the Mona Lisa. I think that the movie had some potential, but after the twin reveal everything started going south. Edit: added warning
Maybe you should add a spoiler warning. BTW I thought the punishment was very good writing. As long as he's rich, all will lie to protect him. Once the source of his money - which is he reputation of Klear - is destroyed, all of them stop lieing to cover for him. I thought it highlighted their hypocrisy exceptionally well.
Imo if you destroy the Mona Lisa to punish a person, you don't punish a person, you destroy the Mona Lisa.
I should’ve been more clear. He may have reacted in his face, but it’s never addressed, even in a private moment. Given the potential realm of implications to her presence, he just… carried on. Same as he planned. And I’d argue her presence, plus the addition of an investigator… can’t reasonably be ignored, or dismissed. Which, in the story, it seems to have been.
Given that our PoV character are Blanc and Brand, when would we have seen any substantial reaction? To what end? (Bron doesn't want the other people there to think he killed her, who would he even talk to?) "Why isn't he playing 5D chess?" has the same answer in the movie as it often does in the real world: He's actually just not that smart. This becomes especially clear after his reaction to Blanc pointing out he's…
Well, having as the point of your mystery that the main antagonist being dumb is putting the dunk ahead of the audience, but as a metaphorical response: if you’re throwing a drug fueled rager and your mom shows up with a cop, it’s definitely not the time to snort another line.
Rian Johnson based the central character on Elon (amongst other billionaires), but admits that the portrayal turned out to be closer to Musk than he intended: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/12/26/glass-onio...
I feel bad for Rian Johnson, since before the whole Twitter fiasco, it was more plausible for idiot tech billionaire to not be a Musk wearing a mask. But with how badly the Twitter purchase went down after the Glass Onion was written, it's hard to watch it without thinking of Musk.
When the twin destroyed that painting, she became the villain of the movie.
I think part of the point of the movie was that EVERY character was a psychopath who prioritized their own interests over what would be true or best, and that scene shows that she’s not exempt from that
[spoilers] I like the interpretation, but I wish this were highlighted a bit more, imo the movie seems to suggest that the twin will pay no consequences for her act but only the bad guy.
Except that this was not a steak dinner, not even close. It was a microwave pizza with ananas served in “Italian” restaurant.
No, that was my point. The movie was very good for what it was , and the article’s complaints are almost all based on the author making incorrect assumptions about the movie’s intent and then complaining that the writing did not meet their incorrect assumptions. It’s fine to dislike the movie; about 7% of critics and moviegoers do, according to rotten tomatoes. But at least have the grace to understand it.
In some occasions 7% of critics do have correct assumptions, being able to see through the catchy hooks, and this is one of those cases. This movie is expected to continue the original story as a proper sequel, but it is something completely different — it simply does not match the expectations. It is very easy to understand this movie, because it is flat and unimaginative junk that does not leave any space for intellectual discussion, so trivial are the ideas, the plot and the dialogues in it. In the end, of course, it is a matter of taste, so let‘s not throw the words like „grace“ in this conversation — they are reserved for more important things.
The movie doesn’t “cheat” as far as I can tell. What it does is withhold details from what the camera shows the audience. This could be upsetting if you felt there was some implied promise that the camera PoV was showing you the entire story, but there isn’t.
Again, I haven't seen the movie -- but that does sound a little like cheating to me; the implied assumption is that it should be possible for the audience to come up with a valid theory on their own; if it's not possible because some essential piece of the puzzle is missing, then it is cheating.
By that criterion, a lot of detective fiction cheats. Someone else mentioned Agatha Christie's Murder of the Orient Express. And Then There Was One/Ten Little Indians probably qualifies too and I'm sure there are many others from Christie and others.