Glass Onion

[rynling]

I didn’t enjoy Glass Onion as much as I enjoyed Knives Out. This was for purely personal reasons, those reasons being that I love Gothic stories about old houses and that I find both Ana de Armas and Chris Evans to be extremely attractive. Still, I enjoyed Glass Onion a whole lot.

Content warning for spoilers. Nothing explicit, but best to be on the safe side.

Glass Onion is about how Janelle Monáe destroys a cryptocurrency tech billionaire played by Edward Norton. Edward Norton’s character is high-octane cringe from start to finish. You want to see him destroyed, and it’s great when it happens.

Not only is it great when it happens, it happens for a good twenty minutes. Every single one of those minutes is a treasure. There’s none of the tension between the heroine and the villain that pervaded Knives Out; there’s just a billionaire’s life going up in flames. It’s cathartic.

What I appreciate about Glass Onion is that, as part of this destruction, the Mona Lisa is burned. I’ve talked about why I dislike the concept of fine art, and I feel like Glass Onion gets it. It’s not enough to hate the ultrawealthy; you also have to resist the culture of privilege that surrounds them. The beauty and history of the Mona Lisa is all well and good, but its worth as a financial investment and status symbol is nowhere near the value of the dignity of a single third-grade teacher who teaches kids to read.

Anyway, honorable mention goes to Dave Bautista’s thick thighs, as well as the multiple pairs of shorty shorts that enabled them. I was not expecting that from Glass Onion, but what a lovely treat.

Comments

[fishguts]

In the end, although I had a riotous time with Glass Onion, I ended up preferring Knives Out, too, and for the same reasons! From the old house with the trick window to the "one was in this room when the other was in that room" back-and-forth, there was something so richly hot chocolate satisfying about the murder mystery novel aesthetics of Knives Out, at least for me!

I could not agree more on wanting to see Edward Norton's character get thoroughly destroyed. When the napkin was destroyed, I was expecting some reveal that, oh, it's okay, someone caught it all on camera! but no, what Miles Bron does is absolutely irreversible, so why not make something even more irreversible happen? I love the direction the movie takes in those last twenty minutes. I have always been more or less indifferent about the Mona Lisa as a painting, never giving it too much thought, but Glass Onion made me want to see it burn.

I respect that!

[rynling]

Sorry to respond two weeks later! I've been reading a lot of opinion pieces about why Glass Onion is better than Knives Out, and I've been meaning to reply to your comment, so I thought you might appreciate the conclusion I came to in defense of Knives Out.

I think what Knives Out manages to do well is to make the audience sympathetic toward the Thrombey family, if only in bits and pieces. You end up wanting to see them punished, but you also understand why they've been allowed to get away with being entitled assholes for so long. In contrast, there's no nuance to Edward Norton's character at all.

These two movies were made in Hollywood, and they're supposed to be fun. Like, I understand that they're not really supposed to be provocative. Still, in terms of the effectiveness of the "eat the rich" message, I think Knives Out does a much better job of challenging the concept of inherited wealth in its demonstration of why so many of us are fooled into tolerating it.

Also, just as you said, the old house with the trick window is wonderful, and I love it so much.

[fishguts]

Oh, no, that is more than okay! I for one tend to take a little time with replying to my comments here on Dreamwidth, so I completely understand. But thank you very much for sharing your conclusion with me! I was excited to see this in my inbox and I found myself nodding so emphatically along as I read through it. Thank you :D

I think this is exactly it and I couldn't agree more with the conclusion you've come to. Reflecting on Glass Onion, it doesn't quite paint the same picture of its cast that Knives Out does. ...like, if the cast of Knives Out is a family portrait with Marta and Ransom at the center, then the cast of Glass Onion is more or less a photo of Miles Bron and Andi/Helen with the secondary characters no more than a bunch of blurry faces in the background.

You're totally right that there isn't any nuance to Miles Bron's character at all, and thinking about it now, this might well be why I had more fun hating the villain of Knives Out than the villain of Glass Onion. Glass Onion really doesn't give us any reason at all to have fun with its villain in any way, of course, he is a jerk, period. I hated him lovelessly. Which, I suppose, is why I so enjoyed seeing his empire get destroyed in the end.

Watching Marta come out quite literally on top is what makes Knives Out's ending satisfying, but watching Miles Bron's place get elaborately trashed is what makes Glass Onion borderline cathartic. I think I prefer the satisfaction of Knives Out's finale to the catharsis of Glass Onion's. Both movies are fun, but one is perhaps more fun while also being more provocative. By having Marta, for lack of a better word, 'win' (although I think the movie uses the same word; is it Benoit Blanc who says she 'played Harlan Thrombey's game and won'? or have I been playing too much Umineko lately, which bears a few similarities to Knives out? ...but I digress!), Knives Out nails the 'eat the rich' message right into the wall, like you said. But I do kinda think Glass Onion pushes more for not so much eating but dismantling the rich, thoroughly and with relish, and though it ends up going little too over the top in pushing this message, sometimes you really just wanna see a billionaire's stuff get destroyed, hahah.

[rynling]

Thank you so much for this beautiful response, and I want to let you know how much I appreciate this one perfect sentence: "I hated him lovelessly." Chef's kiss.