Rian Johnson was “pissed off” that he had to add A Knives Out Mystery to Glass Onion‘s title
"There's a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling," Rian Johnson says
Aux News Rian Johnson
If you go to your local library and pick up an Agatha Christie novel from the shelf, you probably already have a vague idea of what’s in store. There will be a murder (or 5), everyone will look suspicious at one point or another, and an eccentric Frenchman will figure it all out in the end. It would be weird (and a little insulting) if they all had to be called something like Death On The Nile: A Murder On The Orient Express Mystery, right?
Die-hard Christie fan Rian Johnson certainly seems to think so. Speaking to The Atlantic about the title of his new whodunit, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, the director bemoaned the fact that modern audiences apparently can’t be trusted to solve the mystery of which 2019 blockbuster this new film that just happens to be in the same genre with the same director and the same star could possibly be connected to.
“I’ve tried hard to make them self-contained,” he said of the two films. “Honestly, I’m pissed off that we have A Knives Out Mystery in the title. You know? I want it to just be called Glass Onion.”
He continued: “I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling.”
Luckily for fans of Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc (and his wild accent), Johnson isn’t opposed to making more sequels—even if he has to give them all the same unwieldy title. “If each one of these can really be what Agatha Christie did, if it can be not just in a totally new location and a new cast, but also trying something exciting, I’ll keep doing it as long as Daniel [Craig] and I are having a good time. I’ll keep making these as long as they let me,” he told Variety back in October.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix.
151 Comments
I can see his point, it’s a silly title. Calling it ‘Glass Onion: A Benoit Blanc Mystery’ would at least make more sense.
Could’ve went the Indiana Jones route. First one is Raiders. After that it’s all “Indiana Jones and the ____” and then retroactively title the first one with the “Indiana Jones” part. I would go with “Benoit Blanc’s Glass Onion.” Benoit Blanc’s Knives Out”. But only because I like my shit at least somewhat alphabetical. Just looks better on a shelf. Because we all still buy physical media, right?
To be consistent with later titles in the franchise, the film was re-titled Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for its video release packaging in 1999, though the original title is retained onscreen in the movie.
Calling it Benoit Blanc’s Glass Onion makes it sound like Craig’s character suffers from some sort of fragile testicle syndrome.
And you’ve just written the premise for the porno version.
Casino Royale already gave us a scene about Craig’s fragile onions.
Even when I bought physical media I didn’t display it on a shelf.Too many bookshelves, you see, there’s no room for vulgar media like *scoff* Digital Video Discs on my bookshelves!
I used to display the shit out of mine but now that I have a small child that likes to get into daddy’s stuff, the films are put away elsewhere.
Often I buy physical media for the sole purpose of displaying it on a shelf. I own like maybe 100 trade paper backs of modern Marvel comics and I love looking at the covers so much that I’ve begun thinking about building or buying one of those slanted shelves for display the covers of books. I just love the way things look on a shelf.
I have a lot of movies on the shelf – mostly Criterion and Arrow releases, which also announces to visitors “a weirdo who invested his money in horror movies lives here.” My kid’s babysitter said seeing a shelf of DVDs is like time traveling back to high school.
Digital Versatile Discs, please. They have so much more than video to offer.
It can be a hat!Or a brooch!Or a pterodactyl!
Rapunzel!!!
I will never, ever, EVER accept the bullshit retitling of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Adding “Indiana Jones” in it makes the title insanely cumbersome and misses the entire point of the original: Indy himself is one of the “raiders!” Also, it’s just yet in a long line of Lucas’ idiotic/needless revisionisms, so fuck that bullshit forever.
Ha! Yeah, no I agree I do always just call it “Raiders” “Last Crusade” “etc.”
And I call How I Met Your Mother “Himyim” and I call The Beatles the “Fabs” and I call Beverly Hills, 90210 “Nine-Oh” and I call Stranger Things “That 80’s Show With The Weird Little Kids That I Don’t Watch”
Better than Indiana Jones Is A Raider Of The Lost Ark
or
Indiana Jones and the L.A. Raiders
Nah, I prefer, “Indiana Jones, one of several raiders of the Lost Ark, but not the only one, so expect additional Raiders, as well.”
Is Sgt. Fury one of the Howling Commandos? Maybe it should be Indiana Jones and HIS Raiders of the Lost Ark. You’d need to include Sallah for the plural.
Is Huey Lewis a member of the News?Is Tom Petty a Heartbreaker??Is Buddy Holly a Cricket???Is Kool part of the Gang????
You tell me. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. You’re positing that he is also one of the Raiders and so therefore the movie title should just be Raiders of the Lost Ark. So I guess what you’re saying is that Kool is NOT part of the Gang. Or, if he is, then it should just be The Gang.(this is for fun. I’m with you on the Raiders thing. It’s just a better title and there’s no need for revisions. I’m sorry artists lose control of their art after they send it out into the world but that’s just the nature of the beast. MY title is Raiders of the Lost Ark and not the longer version. It’s my piece of art as much as it is yours or Spielberg’s.
Spirit of fun received. I guess we can conclude that Kool is, sadly, not part of the Gang. Pretty sure Spielberg is on TeamRaiders, not TeamIJATROTLA. They would need Spielberg’s permission to actually change the title within the movie itself. Since it stands, I’m betting he didn’t sign off on that dumb crap.
Not to mention that a lot of people, myself included, refer to the other two as “Temple of Doom” and “The Last Crusade.”
At least he didn’t call the first movie “Episode IV”
Agree and I’m shocked to learn that wasn’t his original intention.
It’s like adapting the entire Song of Ice and Fire series into a TV show, and then naming that show after just the first book.
Make more sense, yes.
Make more marketing sense, probably not.
“Knives Out” is more recogniseable to consumers than Benoit Blanc, so the studio made the more potentially lucrative choice.
I liked Knives Out a lot, and if you asked me to name the detective character under penalty of death, I wouldn’t have had the first idea.
That’s weird, I saw it once and I remembered his name without a problem.
Good for you. Do you really think it’s weird that that was not the universal experience?
Thanks!Yeah I feel like if you liked the first movie then remembering the name of the main character is a pretty easy thing to do. Obviously I don’t expect it to be ‘universal’, as in everyone remembers, but on average I would hope people can remember it and think it’s kind of weird if they don’t. It’s not like the movie came out in 1950 or something, it was less than 5 years ago.
Except Knives Out is a pretty great title. No one knows or cares who Benoit Blanc is unless they’ve seen the first film.
The nice thing about making stand-alone stories is that you can drop in at any point- but it does help to have the name recognition, both to catch casual viewers of the first film and new viewers who might know of it but hadn’t seen it. Someone might’ve heard people liked Knives Out, but hadn’t caught up with it yet.
Except it doesn’t make a bit of sense when combined with the ‘Glass Onion’ title, which is what Johnson is saying. Nobody knew who Sherlock Holmes was until his name appeared a bunch of times either.
The clear solution is to make fun of it by calling the next film ‘a Glass Onion mystery’
Oh that’s good. That’s really very good. Someone retweet this to Rian!
Nice. 👍
I mean, that’s basic marketing procedure: Be a coward and assume everyone else is an bumbling imbecile. Kinda surprised they didn’t flat out titled it “Knives Out 2: Glass Onion” or something worse.
Onion II ‘Da Knives
Much better than a knife to the onions.
Rivendell always smells faintly of onions.
The Knives Out.
Knives Out: The Motion Picture
Glass Onion: The wrath of Blanc
It’s almost like the people who shell out many millions of dollars on these projects want to ensure they make back their money and then some and err on the side of caution.
Rian can call it whatever he wants if he’s spending his own money.
“It’s almost like the people who shell out
many millions of dollars on these projects want to ensure they make back
their money and then some and err on the side of caution.
Rian can call it whatever he wants if he’s spending his own money.”Nailed it. The more I hear this jack-ass talk in interviews, the less I want to see his movies.You have one decent time travel movie, a pretentious overrated star wars movie, and an excellent murder mystery movie. You’re not Scorsese, get over yourself.
2Knives2Out: Glass Onion Boogaloo
Honestly surprised it took that long to get to this title suggestion.
How long until we’re referring to the series as “Go see a Knife Out!”?
This joke is great because of the additional synergy of the fact that Rian Johnson directed a Star War.
aw, thanks.
That’s the kindest ‘No shit Sherlock’ I’ve ever seen.
Don’t say that too loud or you will summon the ones that dwell in the dark of the internet
Here’s ten dollars. Go see it.
And that’s his pissed-off face. Look at it!
no appreciation for history. the interview wasn’t just with The Atlantic, it was specifically conducted with AV Club alum David “SIIIIIIIIIIMS!!” Sims
He’s Blank Check’s David “I grew up in England” Sims to me.
I used to like that show. It just became so insufferably up its own ass.
yeah, but the Bit is abolished now
Poor guy
Won’t someone think of the Johnsons?!
I literally did that every day from age 13 to 25
you turned out alright.
His tube socks didn’t.
My parents had this gripe too and the only explanation I can come up with is that the studio actually thought audiences were too stupid to realize this was a sequel.
“No Time To Die: A James Bond thriller” is also understandably stupid. When I see “A Knives Out Mystery” in the title it makes me think the studio thinks their audience is dumb.
To be fair, MGM did think Americans would be too stupid to know what the word Revoked meant so they changed License Revoked to License to Kill.
I take your point, but I will say that my 70-something parents (who are avid movie fans but not the most media savvy) loved the first one, but they never would’ve even noticed this one without the subtitle. I think with a genre piece likely to appeal in part to an older audience, it may pay to spell it out for them.
they never would’ve even noticed this one without the subtitle.
How did your parents notice Knives Out in the first place? Why would Glass Onion be any different?
James Bond is an iconic character with more than a half-century of history with fans, and every movie has months of hype. Knives Out does not have that same level of history or passionate fandom. (In fact, one of its pleasures was that it was a fun, largely disposable watch, of the kind that Hollywood used to make.) It arrived as a movie on Netflix without the same level of anticipation as a new Bond movie. Given that, it’s helpful that the title highlights that it’s a sequel to Knives Out.
it’s helpful that the title highlights that it’s a sequel to Knives Out.
But it’s not a sequel to Knives Out. Just like Tomorrow Never Dies isn’t a sequel to GoldenEye.
Now you’re just being pedantic. It is the second mystery movie with the same director and starring Daniel Craig in the role of Benoit Blanc.
It is the second mystery movie with the same director and starring Daniel Craig in the role of Benoit Blanc. Exactly. Not a sequel. It has nothing to do with Knives Out. A sequel means the plot is influenced by what came before, and that’s definitely not the case with Glass Onion.Death On The Nile isn’t a sequel to Murder On The Orient Express. Tomorrow Never Dies is not a sequel to GoldenEye. Glass Onion is not a sequel to Knives Out. It’s just another movie.Now you’re just being pedantic.
Thank you for admitting that you’re wrong.
Death on the Nile does have a plot influenced by Murder on the Orient Express. Poirot only gets involved in the mystery because he is close friends with Bouc, the director of a route of the Orient Express, whose friendship with Poirot we see in the first movie. And (spoiler alert) Bouc’s death and Poirot’s realization that Bouc is a criminal is supposed to feel more poignant because of the shared history the viewer has experienced.And again, you’re not really engaging with my point. To say that Glass Onion is “just another movie,” as if it had no connection to Knives Out, is silly. It’s a mystery movie about the same character, and the point of referencing that connection in the title is to tell viewers who liked Knives Out that this is a related movie they’re likely to also enjoy.
Death on the Nile does have a plot influenced by Murder on the Orient Express.That was invented for the recent movie. It’s not an actual part of the decades-old story. Both have been made into movies before, and nobody thought one was a sequel to the other.
And again, you’re not really engaging with my point.
Well, maybe if you made a valid one…
To say that Glass Onion is “just another movie,” as if it had no connection to Knives Out, is silly.
No, it’s accurate. Tell me, which plot point from Knives Out is referenced in Glass Onion? How does what happened in Knives Out have anything to do with anything that happened in Glass Onion?
Whole-heartedly agree. At least onscreen in the actual film, the title is just Glass Onion, so Johnson will hopefully be able to live with that.
“the fact that modern audiences apparently can’t be trusted to solve the mystery”
This right here pisses me off. Who decided this? What makes this factual? This is the same reasoning that results in films dumping the entire film into trailers because they don’t trust audiences to see the film otherwise.
Just gonna take another moment to brag about how I didn’t watch trailers for Wakanda Forever and I therefore didn’t have the first moment of new Black Panther on screen spoiled for me. Just saying…. not as stupid an audience member as you think Rian Johnson!
I think the problem is WE are the problem. People seem afraid to see anything that isn’t based on a YA novel, comic, reboot or sequel to something else.
It could’ve been a worse title, like
The Secret Knives of the Ya-Ya Onion Syndicate
lol, I enjoyed the heck out of it, and frankly had I not known it was a Knives Out sequel I may have slept on it, but I can get understand why he got mad about having to add that to the title.
If Johnson wanted to test audience’s willingness to try out a new movie that wasn’t a sequel, he could have made a movie that wasn’t a sequel. But he decided to make a sequel for the exact same reason Netflix wanted the title to reference the first movie — so that people would go, “Oh, I liked Knives Out, so I’ll probably like this.”
This right here pisses me off. Who decided this?Probably the same people who decided Timothy Dalton’s Bond movie should be called License to Kill instead of License Revoked.
Not everyone is that stupid, but I can say there is a really awful cycle of studios dumbing things down, leading to audiences that want to be spoon fed every detail, to studios dumbing things down further and so forth. I can’t say where it started, but I will say the audience is legitimately part of the problem. People have become accustomed to TV that’s made to be watched while they doomscroll twitter on their phone, and they do not want to do the work.I don’t know that Johnson actually is blaming the audience here. He says they had to, which probably means that it’s an executive meddling situation.But that also probably means they have the focus groups to back it up.
I’m just still scratching my head at “fact…apparently”
Who decided this?Nobody decides this. They know this, because they have customer research. An issue is there’s no reward for any individual company to raise the bar a little higher, and make customers more fit, and you can make more money by raising the bar lower to ensure more customers can jump over the bar. It’s a downward pressure. (There are of course forces that exert upward pressure on .. let’s call the desire to be challenged by cultural input a kind of sophistication .. but much of that is probably fueled by opportunity and experience outside the intake of movies and television.)
OK, but what’s the value in “raising the bar” when it comes to the title of one’s movie? To weed out those of us who liked Knives Out but are not true, passionate Benoit Blanc fans?
“raising the bar lower”You should write for this website….Overly mean ribbing from internet strangers (i.e., me) aside, I do agree with your overall point. No one’s ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, least of all movie studios. It’s the people that try something new and weird with big budget films that get their hands burned. Leave the complicated storylines for smaller budget indie films and tv projects where the stakes are lower. (Again, not saying I like this situation, but I can’t say it doesn’t make sense financially).
yes, that was indeed a fuckup
What if, hypothetically, there was a right-wing grifter in twitter right now? And what if, hypothetically, that right-wing grifter had recently written an enormous tweet storm about how the “lateness’ of the first murder and halfway-point twist means Glass Onion deceived it’s audience and is therefore a bad movie?
Yet you don’t seem to have realized that Rian Johnson didn’t say that.
the thing about blanket statements is they don’t apply to everyone and if you’re offended they might apply to you more than you like
That’s not the flex you think it is.
The article in The Atlantic does not contain that quote from Rian Johnson. It appears to be the invention of this article’s author, for what it’s worth.
What’s the value of making it harder for people who liked Knives Out to realize that this was also a movie they might like to see? For what it’s worth, the author’s reference to what you see at a local library is just flatly wrong. Even a quick look at the covers of Agatha Christie books will show they’re frequently identified as Hercule Poirot stories, or have a reference to the fact that a story from the same author is being turned into the movie Death on the Nile. As with the title here, that makes sense — there’s no value in demanding a certain level of knowledge about Christie or her characters from someone who hasn’t even decided to get the book yet.
I know it’s a silly thing to be hung up on but Poirot was from Belgium
Yeah, but it is SUCH an AVClub thing to get that wrong.
It is NOW. Sad thing is, it used to be the kind of thing that they wouldn’t even need to check, because they’d have had a writer assigned to the article who’d actually read Agatha Christie novels, and were likely lifelong fans.Instead, we get writers who spend way more time scrolling Twitter and reading about politics than actually exploring the popular culture they’re supposed to be experts in.Not to get off on an old-man-yells-at clouds rant, but there does seem to be a difference now in the current generation w/r/t looking at earlier works. Gen Xers had no problem exploring movies from the 30s and 40s, and understanding how to trace the evolution of movies they loved back to those earlier works. I see a lot less interest or even willingness in the current crop of writers and critics to go back even as far as the 70s, let alone to the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Maybe that’s a function of their audience not wanting those articles (short attention span, too much new stuff coming out, etc) but I think the one feeds the other.
Poirot is Belgian, you racist.
In an article pointing out how the younger generation is more observant than they get credit for…
imagine thinking “belgian” is a race lmao
It’s a race of waffles, you waffl-ist!
I’d put money on the fact that she didn’t purposely write it that way with wink, wink.
Excellent reference. “Hello hello? I am saying, hello hello?”.
Glad someone pointed this out. It had me irate when I read it. You lose all credibility talking about Christie, in particular, and really the genre as a whole if you don’t know this.
This mistake is at least a running joke/sad reflection of this shithole country, at least in the TV series (it’s been a while since I read any Christie so I can’t remember whether it’s from the books), so *maybe* the author was making an ironic reference?…yeah, seems unlikely given the state of most pieces published here now.
A Belgian is just a Frenchman that wishes they were German.
I’d be pissed off if my project were associated with Knives Out. That movie was terrible!
Could have called it Glass Ogre.I heard from somewhere that Onions and Ogres are basically the same thing.
That’s a very layered observation.
I just watched it on Netflix and it is just Glass Onion on the credits screen.
I’d prefer it if it was titled a la Rocky And Bullwinkle stories, or Dr. Strangelove:“Glass Onion or ‘Help! A Motorcar is on the Roof’”“Glass Onion or How I Learned to Love the Hourly Dong”
If it serves as some consolation to Johnson, NOBODY is calling the movie “A Knives Out Mistery”. I’m still to hear a person callling it like that. Everybody refers to it simply as “Glass Onion”. The worst I have heard is people misremembering the title and putting a “The” in front of “Glass Onion”.
For Christ’s sake, Hercule Poirot is not French, he is Belgian. I’ve never read a single Agatha Christie novel or seeing a single film adaptation, and even I know that, and it would take literally five seconds to look up that information.
It’s also a running theme throughout the series that someone always calls him French and is arrogant about it. I think 99.9% of the time they’re British.
It’s abundantly clear Rian does not like to make what he considers serialized storytelling. Something, something let the past die, kill if it you have to, ect.
My expectations were appropriately subverted by this comment. But your next comment needs to be full of fan service and feature the inexplicable return of a dead villain.
It also has to be written by another person entirely.
“Somehow, Nathan Rabin returned.”
Subverting expectations, aka telling an exciting story
It’s amazing how many nerds have zero media literacy skills and think the bad guy’s quote was the message of the movie despite the actual plot refuting it.
I blame those who used that same line to defend the movie from criticism, tbh. This is a rare case of people liking something but not really “getting it”. Usually you say people don’t like something because they just don’t get it.
Yeah cool but I never came across those people. The only time I saw it quoted was by its haters in the context of “See? Rian Johnson hates Lucas’ Star Wars, the legacy characters, and us old school fans!” And they still do it to this day. So I blame them.
I think you need to visit better places on the internet. I’ve never seen those people.
I beg of you to watch The Last Jedi again, and realize that THE VILLIAN is the one who says that and it proven wrong by the protagonist in the film
I think it’s fine as a title, and it perfectly communicated to me that it would be another mystery a la Knives Out, involving a completely different cast of characters. It might be objectively kinda stupid, but it did the job well, and eliminated confusion. And it’s just a fucking title. Who cares. Titles and poster art are for selling the film.
If he hadn’t given his detective an uncommon, throwback name, they probably would have gone with using his name as the franchise identifier. Of course, he had no idea he’d be making more…
It caused confusion for me. I’m still not sure if I need to see the first one or not (I haven’t yet). If I absolutely don’t, then that title is what held me back from watching it over the weekend.
You don’t need to see Knives Out to watch, understand, and enjoy Glass Onion. I do recommend Knives Out as also a good film.
I’m not sure there’s any title that would alleviate that concern, having not seen the first film. Maybe “Glass Onion: A Completely Stand-Alone Story (You Don’t Need To See The First One)“?
Er, how about “Glass Onion?”
I think Rian Johnson is sort of a talented jerk. If you’re not a big fan are you supposed to just know that Glass Onion is related to Knives Out?
I’m so tired of Rian Johnson. All he does is cry, baby, cry.
Yeah no mention of how John Lennon is pissed off himself about the use of the title….
You just described what RJ haters do.
Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9…
“and an eccentric Frenchman will figure it all out in the end.”*twitches in British* Idiocracy wasn’t a documentary and yet here’s Interchangeable Emma making me think twice…
When he throws a party, is it Benoit Balls?
Awww poor thing! Such a terrible burden
*Belgian
“Pennyworth”, a cool TV show, was renamed “Pennyworth – The Origin of Batman’s Butler” for its third season by the top brass at HBO Max.
Many cinematic detective franchises have gotten stuck with the first case as the franchise name. The Thin Man and The Pink Panther both spring to mind. Rian Johnson is no doubt aware of this, but it’s basically been a convention since the early talkie era.
Yeah, it’s kind of funny tracking the evolution of the titles in both series until you see the exact point where they finally throw up their hands and “Okay! Okay! Inspector Clouseau is The Pink Panther! Nick Charles is The Thin Man!”It’s like when they finally started calling Captain Marvel “Shazam.”
Rian Johnson was “pissed off” that he had to add A Knives Out Mystery to Glass Onion’s titleDamn. Chill, dude.
Yeah I just ignore that it’s officially called that.
I’ll keep doing it as long as Daniel [Craig] and I are having a good time.Who wouldn’t have a good time making $50m per movie with barely any studio restrictions (aside from slightly changing the name) or interference and seemingly every actor in Hollywood wanting to join in?
Hercule Poirot is Belgian and not French. Benoit Blanc while having a typical French name is neither French.Knives Out was a nice movie, not the masterpiece that some people seem to believe, there really was nothing special, but entertaining. Glass Onion is a shit show, almost insulting to the audience. It’s dumb, knows that it’s dumb, acknowledges it openly in the movie, and thinks it is so clever because it did it. But as they say in the movie in the most ironical lines – because of the lack of self conscience – ever – “It’s so dumb it’s brillant”, she says. “No it’s just dumb”, he answers. Exactly.
You kinda need Knives Out in the title so someone knows it’s a part of a series. How else are you going to know, squinting at the key art on your phone and seeing Daniel Craig in a blazer?
Poirot isn’t French. He’s Belgian.
Virtually every Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple novel has a line on the cover somewhere identifying it as such. This is not that big a deal.Rian Johnson is getting to be kind of insufferable. He’s got a very high opinion of himself, like he thinks he’s always the smartest person in the room, and every thought he’s ever had is the first time it’s ever existed. He’s a very sharp, very thoughtful filmmaker, but he also seems to be developing a pretty strong dislike of the audience.I enjoyed Glass Onion, but it was ultimately kind of disposable. Nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t some earth-shaking work of genius either. Mostly it spends its time telling you how clever it is without giving any chance to the audience to actually engage with the mystery, because it just has so much going on.
He has appropriated the pretension of a multiple best picture Oscar winner director, when in actuality he has directed one decent film, one overrated film and one great film.He is lucky he got in on the gravy train and got the big deal before the bottom fell out of streaming services, especially Netflix.
Could have been worse:The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
I think most people would agree considering there’s no relation to Knives Out other than Benoit Blanc.