Glass Onion is the sequel to 2019’s Knives Out and this time Netflix is making it instead of Lionsgate/StudioCanal who relinquished the rights to the series in 2021 but both Rian Johnson the writer/director and Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc are back and this time Blanc must solve the mystery of who murdered tech genius Miles Bron (Edward Norton) and his small group of friends (Kathryn Hahn, Janelle Monae, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr, Jessica Henwick and Madelyn Cline) are the prime suspects but murder cases are never quite what they seem on the surface.
I was very keen for Glass Onion as I was a big fan of the first Knives Out film, it was a great time at the cinema with an audience that seemed to get what the film was going for and I had high hopes that despite having to watch it at home along on my TV that this sequel could be a worthy successor and not a stinker like a real Onion can be.
Well its sadly a little bit of both as this sequel isn’t a bad movie but it falls pretty short of the first film for me and before I peel back those layers I want to talk about what I do like and that is primarily Daniel Craig and Janelle Monae, Craig was a lot of fun as this Foghorn Leghorn sounding detective in the first film and he’s just as good here delving more into the southern drawl and clearly having a better grasp of the character and how he thinks this time around and much like his James Bond it makes for a great character turn.
Monae meanwhile is easily the standout of the new cast members and she has a very good role here, I won’t delve into too many more details but it is full of surprises that were nice to discover as I was watching it and she handles it all very well.
But this film has a big problem that makes it smell like an Onion:
And that is I hated all of the new cast members outside of Monae, much of the films first half centres on introducing them and where they are and their connection to Bron and I didn’t care for any of it, they all came across as vacuous vapid nini’s and I didn’t give a flying fuck whether either of them lived or died during the course of the film.
And the way that Johnson writes these characters as well as Bron to some extent makes his allegory and metaphors a little too transparent as if the film is winking at you saying “Get it, do you get it, huh huh huh huh” and I sat there thinking “Yes Rian I get it, I’m not an idiot Kapiesh” and the Last Jedi had a similar problem in a lot of its scenes for me as well where what he was metaphoring and allegoring towards felt a little too on the nose.
And when that is compared to the fun of the family in the first film where you hate some of them and love others it makes it all feel like a big stepdown in that department and as someone who is a big fan of Johnson’s as a writer and a director it was a little disappointing to see, sometimes getting notes from studio executives benefits some talent and it definitely helps bring out the best in Johnson when he gets that constructive feedback instead of being given carte blanche like here and on the Last Jedi.
And lastly this movie takes much longer as a result of the character work to get going into its central mystery whereas in the first film you were thrown into it right away with the discovery of Christopher Plummer’s character and the family interviews beginning not long after, that doesn’t happen here and I was very impatient for it all to find its feet and get going.
And so that is Glass Onion and its not a bad sequel but in a year that gave us Top Gun Maverick and Avatar the Way of Water this one is a very distant third and a step down from the first film, 2 and a half out of 5.
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