Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion nearly shattered “a hundred times a day”
Directing a whodunit sounds like a nightmare. Thankfully, Rian Johnson knows what he's doing
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Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion is exactly knotty whodunit Knives Out fans expect from the man who created both Benoit Blanc and porgs. Just as he did with the first film, Johnson makes the reveals, the fake-outs, and the mystery seem effortless. The thing glides, but it takes a lot of work to make it look so easy. We can only imagine how it felt every time Johnson shared the script with someone, hoping they didn’t point out some inconsistency that caused the whole thing to unravel. Luckily, we don’t have to imagine. In his chat for Variety’s “Directors On Directors” series, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski asked him what that was like.
Kosinski: The plot of Glass Onion is a puzzle. Does someone ever bring up a flaw in the logic that requires you, on the fly, to rethink?
Johnson: A hundred times a day, you’ll see an actor coming towards you, and you’ll see in their eye they have a question. On a whodunit, every single time that happens, it’s the scariest five seconds, because you think they’re going to ask the question that reveals the inconsistency where this whole thing unravels. Partway through shooting Glass Onion,” there was one thing — I think Daniel caught it. It was mostly terrifying because of the idea that I know I could fix this, but, oh shit, did I miss something else? And Daniel would somehow lose faith in me and be like …
Kosinski: “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Johnson: “He bleeds!” Yeah.
As difficult as it sounds to keep the movie’s logic in place, at least Johnson could work on the ground, where gravity isn’t constantly threatening to kill your stars and crew. Kosinski had to bear that burden, and he was left with 800 hours of footage. “We would usually do two or three camera setups on Top Gun,” Kosinski said. “But there were days — the aerial days — where we had 26 or 27 cameras going. Which, for my editor, Eddie Hamilton, almost gave him a nervous breakdown. I think we had 813 hours of footage at the end of the movie that we had to cut into two.”
Eight hundred thirteen hours of footage sounds way worse than making sure Benoit Blanc doesn’t figure out the mystery before production ends. Not that it’s a competition.
42 Comments
If anyone hasn’t seen these stinkers, I’ll save you the trouble: Immigrants good, Republicans bad. And also there’s murder!
Both of those things are true.
Oh look, the fake Dr. Emilio Lizardo is back.
You’re just describing reality.
Making that film must’ve been as difficult as trying to make a dovetail joint (yeah).
MILD SPOILER
…..
I love that they actually got the rights to the song for the closing credits.
For a whodunnit, this makes the movie very predictable and ruins the fun
There are genres called howcatchem’s, such as Columbo and Poker Face, you know.
I get it if no one else does!
“Thankfully, Rian Johnson knows what he’s doing.”I worked with the exact two drugs for years that were a pivotal plot point in the first Knives Out and hence beg to differ in regard to the science of pharmacology for starters (must have been magical versions of these drugs or something – I described what was going on in the film to a chronic pain specialist and I think she thought I was having a stroke.). As someone I know on a movie forum where we discussed this said, Rian Johnson is not someone you’d want to do intravenous drugs with.
That’s practically murder mystery convention at this point though; Agatha Christie was famous for playing fast and loose with which poisons did what, to the point of literally creating a fictional author character who’s always getting stuff wrong to poke fun at how much she did this.
Agatha Christie literally has her self-insert character explain that she doesn’t want to hear about how poisons actually work because she doesn’t care.
And then they had Zoë Wanamaker play her in the show, which, peak casting
*mournfully packs up 8ball of black tar heroin, two needs, and lucky syringe*
well that got dark.
Wait until the withdrawal sets in!
Congratulations on missing the point.
Logical inconsistencies. They’re talking about logical inconsistencies. Regardless of the real-life properties of the drugs involved, does the plot work according to the rules the movie, itself, establishes? That’s the standard most people apply when suspending disbelief—and even then there’s considerable leeway if one is being entertained. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are legal issues concerning the will or technical issues concerning the security tapes and the fridge magnet, etc., but I don’t care, because that’s all just CinemaSins nitpickery and I understand the nature of fiction.
I had to explain this to my mother (medical background), whose only gripe with Doctor Who was that the Doctor had two hearts. “There’s no way a cardiovascular system could work like that!” (Oddly, she had no trouble with the physics-defying Tardis.)
But I have to tell everyone that Superman couldn’t actually fly in real life!
This needs to go straight to the IMDB goofs section!
Every asshole who has uncommon knowledge about something always has to obsess over a movie not getting it accurately, instead of just enjoying the fiction. “This isn’t how it actually works in real life” is the thinnest, dullest form of criticism.Btw that specialist probably just thought you were annoying and was trying to humor you to be nice.
I’m not sure if it was Roger Ebert or Gene Siskel that once said you can’t watch a documentary when you really know the subject, but I’ve found the same thing applies to fiction. Pretty much any medical scene has me saying “it doesn’t work that way.”
I’m pretty sure savvy film watchers have their own area that they like to nitpick over. Mine will always be whenever there is a classical string instrument being played. I played the violin and viola for ten years when I was growing up, along with a touch of cello and bass. Nothing, absolutely nothing will make me start hating a film or series faster than when the camera will do a closeup of their fingers “working their magic” with the strings and it’s all, every bit, entirely wrong. The best semi-recent example of this is the season one finale of The Umbrella Academy. The scenes with The White Violin are not just bad, they are musically incorrect. And I don’t blame the actor, it’s called piss poor on set training/choreography. Music: It’s my hill.
I bashed my brother-in-law with a candlestick once and despite what Clue teaches you… Not a realistic murder weapon.
Suspending disbelief about drugs in a murder is different than what I think Johnson is talking about here which is a flaw in the logic of the crime. A character being responsible for something in one scene, but in the immediate scene before, the audience can clearly see that character is in a place that would be impossible for them to be involved in the thing they are responsible for, things like that.
Thank you for reminding me to pick up a first print copy of A Case of Need.
Nobody cares about that. The point of a murder mystery is to follow internal logic and have believable human motivations. Because you can’t write a mystery with the assumption that everyone is an expert at pharmacology and nobody want to sit through a tedious lecture about how medicine works.
I’ve known people like you. Totally fucking awesome.
A nurse disagrees with you.
‘Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion is exactly knotty whodunit’Is it really this difficult to spend even one single second proofreading? This is literally how the article starts!
I mean the headline doesn’t make any fucking sense either, why should the lede?
I thought the headline meant the glass Onion physical prop almost shattered. Sounds dangerous!
It sounds like fucking cake
It sounds like fucking cakeI thought it was pies one was meant to fuck.
sounds stressful. i would love to come up with a good murder mystery.
it’s an utterly moronic and awful movie
Maybe they shoulda just chilled out with some angel dust.
Knives Out was a contrived, convoluted mess, full of so many absurd twists and betrayals that it cheapened the movie. I started out loving it, and by the end, I was so frustrated and disappointed, I’d lost almost all interest. Ana de Armas’ performance was one of the few aspects that salvaged it. Sounds like Glass Onion falls into the same trap. I’ll give it a shot, because I love a good whodunnit, but I’m not hopeful.
‘The Big Sleep’ has one of the most famous inconsistencies in murder mystery fiction, with a dead chauffeur who is apparently killed by no one. Even the author, Raymond Chandler, said he had no idea who’d done it.
Also:1) Windows are loudspeakers2) People who walk around snooping all day in broad daylight are never seen3) Hot sauce doesn’t burn on the skin4) You can’t hear what someone says across a pool, even when they speak loud and clear5) Really rich guys who murder someone use their one-of-a-kind car to do it