Amph Rian Johnson's Benoit Blanc Mysteries (Knives Out, Glass Onion, Wake Up Dead Man)

It’s definitely closer to being a straight-up satire that just happens to have a mystery revealed at the end, rather than a mystery that just happens to have a few satire elements like Knives Out. The killer from the first film, for instance, is much more dangerous than the killer in this film, and Blanc and Marat needed to be considerably sharper to solve the case in Knives Out, while here, Blanc dismisses the killer as too obvious early on.

…But to his credit, Johnson created whole new characters to make this satire with, and the fit their roles like a glove for the satire. That keeps the satire and comedy from screwing up any established characters, and allows the film to mostly just be a black comedy, playing to this cast’s strengths.

 

I like that it's about more than just figuring out Whodunnit but more Whydunnit. And a sort of reverse stretch of WhoAskinWhoDunnit.

 

I'm still waiting for a "He's an idiot!" gif from the film.

 

I think I’d have to disagree about the nature of the two films, though I still enjoyed both, and my disagreement might inform why I think that Glass Onion is funnier while Knives Put is much more tense and clever.

Knives Out very much *is* about and defined by the crime of the story, the intrigue within it, the tension and deception required for the protagonist to try and escape the frame-job, and about a much cleverer villain whom the film actually acknowledges is clever.

Some of this is from the format - because Knives Out starts out more like a conventional procedural with the death having already occurred while Glass Onion starts more like a Christine novel where the first act is establishing everyone first, Knives Out hits the ground running with its crime.

Some of it is stylistic - Knives Out simply takes itself more seriously and plays far more with tension and tragedy, using a dry and sardonic level of humor more as a complement to the story, rather than an overriding core of the story, while Glass Onion is at its core about the comedy and the satire, to an extent that it exchanges significant tension and drama for greater emphasis on the laughs and commentary (in a positive sense, for the record.)

For instance:

Spoiler

Miles’s murder of Duke is actually pretty slick and cunning, enough so the film’s insistence it’s “just” dumb sort of relies and depends on the humor of Blanc finding it rant-inducingly dumb to actually portray it that way, as well as the film’s much more overt parody-level of satire (which I tend to find the superior way to do satire, since there’s less chance of confusion or a misguided fanbase, and generally more laughs, too.) In fact, the murder method is very close to the central crime in the Nero Wolfe mystery Champagne for One, where it’s portrayed as clever, and *is* clever, provided the culprit carries it out quickly and smoothly, as Miles does in Glass Onion.

There’s also a significant difference caused by the film having to have Blanc dismiss Miles as too obvious a culprit, then call that out as another part of the humor, in order for the story to work; it’s covering for a much less clever part of Glass Onion’s story by using humor to emphasize the satirical message.

And of course there’s the generally more delightfully cartoonish way the cast is played in this film versus the Knives Out cast, which also helps the satire here, while the more serious portrayal in Knives Out helped the mystery there.

Knives Out is a mystery film where the satire is strictly background, unexgaerrated, and even debatably satircial at times; many of the “take that!” moments are too mundane to really be outrageous the way satire thrives. In contrast, Glass Onion is arguably a rather poor mystery for its central crime but an excellent satire because everything’s just a bit more over-the-top, so that we’ve sprinted past any possible “No duh. ” moments of restrained “satire” in favor of “Oh, you bet your sweet *** this is satire! In fact, this is satire the Nth level! We”re going to make this baby so satirical that jaded cynics will find it too overt!”

…Which again is the better type of satire to me.

 

Well, no, because Knives Out is a straight-up up murder mystery with some quiet satire popping up occasionally, while Glass Onion is a funny straight-up satire with a murder mystery thrown in.

Satires are allowed to cover their butts with a bit of winking and nodding at the audience where a mystery really needs to be something where you have to be very, very clever to see the vulnerability in the story.

 

Or any-and-all “crime and punishment” TV shows, which, if anything, are far more manipulative than movies because they have to produce literally decades worth of content…

 

I saw Glass Onion over the weekend. It was interesting, and suspenseful to a point, and the mockery of rich ***holes and people who think they are above Covid restrictions was great.

But I still found the movie and Johnson himself to be pretentious, like he was mocking people who like murder mysteries.