Rian Johnson felt more pressure writing a follow-up to Knives Out than The Force Awakens
Daniel Craig's detective Benoit Blanc returns to crack an all-new case in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Aux News Rian Johnson
Writer-director Rian Johnson’s career has had a fascinating trajectory, from modernizing film noir with Brick to making Bruce Willis fight himself in Looper to doing a very different kind of sci-fi action fare in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In 2019, he struck gold again with Knives Out, a star-studded whodunnit that brought us Daniel Craig talking like Foghorn Leghorn, Chris Evans in a cable-knit sweater, and a breakout role for Ana de Armas.
It turns out that following up an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery was more challenging than working with one of the most beloved IPs in American culture. In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times (via IndieWire), Johnson opens up about the pressures of creating his new film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which sees Craig’s Benoit Blanc heading to Greece to crack another case.
“Last Jedi was actually a proper sequel, continuing the events from a movie that I didn’t write,” he describes, referring to J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt’s The Force Awakens. “With this, first of all, it’s not even really a sequel, it’s kind of like another book, basically another mystery with the same detective. If anything, going into it was a little scarier even than the Star Wars movie, because the first one, when we made it, it was in such a vacuum and we had no idea if people would be into this kind of thing. Genuinely, it was just something that I really loved, a genre I loved, and I’m like, ‘Let’s try this.’”
Johnson is certainly more confident in his ability to write serialized crime capers now. Since wrapping Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, he’s been working on Poker Face, a Peacock series starring Natasha Lyonne as a hard-boiled detective. A third Knives Out movie has also been confirmed at Netflix, and the director says he’s “creatively jazzed” to return to Benoit Blanc’s world.
Starring Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, and Leslie Odom Jr., Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is set to hit Netflix on December 23 with a theatrical release to be announced.
34 Comments
I still think The Force Awakens was really good.
It was, if not for being such a rehash of the original. It was hard not to gradually say “wait a minute…this is almost the exact same plot!” Which is a fair beef.
What makes JJ Abrams so frustrating is that there are things he’s legitimately good at, and TFA has them in spades; legitimately propulsive direction, top-notch action scenes (the skirmish between the Millennium Falcon and those TIE Fighters might be the best aerial combat scene in any Star Wars flick) and he consistently gets good work out of his actors. It’s a shame he’s such a godawful writer, or at least has decided to marry himself to the “mystery box,” aka the single most wrongheaded writing technique to emerge in the last decade. Until he finally gets it through his head that that shit’s fundamentally broken, he’s never gonna achieve real greatness; just the passing resemblance that falls apart the minute you leave the theater.
Fair enough, since Knives Out is a better movie than Force Awakens. And Benoit Blanc is one of the least worthwhile parts of it.
I’m happy someone is somewhat consistently creating whodunits, but yeah, the character isn’t one for the ages, at least so far.
He was fun and unique in a fish out of water way, but I have a hard time envisioning Blanc as a character worthy of an ongoing series of films. We don’t really learn anything about him in Knives Out other than he has the requisite powers of observation to be a private detective.
What makes Knives Out work is that the actual protagonist is Ana de Armas’ character.
Well, yeah. People were over the moon about Knives Out while the best Force Awakens reactions were “well, it’s better than the prequels”.
I mean, Knives Out is a movie that succeeds largely on the strength of its writing. TFA is a movie that succeeds largely on the basis of people’s nostalgia for Star Wars. Writing a mystery that works is much harder than “do Star Wars stuff.”
It’s true, Knives Out is great because of the scene-to-scene writing, stacked cast, and underlying political commentary. Storywise it’s a bit boilerplate Agatha Christie. Which is fine. It understands murder mysteries are about style, characters, and that cozy, big-fire-in-a-spooky-mansion feeling then the actual mechanics of the mystery.
Having a cast full of unreliable narrators was the best recurring bit from that movie. Whoever was telling their version of events from the party was the one standing next to Plummer as they sang happy birthday. Letting their personal shortcomings contribute to the sequence of events and subtly making it clear how various characters felt about one another without saying it out loud as well. Michael Shannon’s cantankerousness, Johnson’s arrogance, Collette’s oblivious shallowness, etc.
Doesn’t anyone who takes on a Star War go into it thinking “Ugh, there’s gonna be hate no matter what I do!”
That doesn’t sound either healthy or sane for a talented, self confident creator.
I know, right?
I’d say it speaks more to the fandom…
“Oh boy, I can buy a new house!” tends to override that
Since wrapping Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, he’s been working on Poker Face, a Peacock series starring Natasha Lyonne as a hard-boiled detective.This might convince me to pick up a Peacock subscription when it happens. Also, is this the secret Columbo reboot that the internet was talking about several months back?
How have I never thought of Natasha Lyonne for a hard-boiled detective show/film given she talks like she’s straight out of a Sam Spade movie.
If there’s one actress out there who I would legit buy in that profession it’s Lyonne. She’s been the toughest person in the room since American Pie.
Lyonne is one of the only two people who could pull off Columbo. The other, Mark Ruffalo.
That was the other name that was mentioned at the time. I assumed it was just a thought bubble that came about because of season 2 of Russian Doll, but maybe the origins were from somewhere else.
Good call on Ruffalo. He could basically repurpose his investigative reporter from Spotlight.
You don’t need one to watch anything, and the commercials aren’t too bad, nothing like I remember hulu being.
Really? I assumed it was completely subscription. I’ll look into this. Thanks.
Not everything is available for free. I had to subscribe to get the second and third Psych movies (which…as much as I adore Psych, those kind of weren’t worth it).
According to their website, their premium subscription is $1.99 a month for the first year and $4.99 a month after for their with-ads model, or $9.99 a month for ad-free. Not seeing a totally free option..?
There are shows and movies that do not require a subscription. I do not pay for Peacock, but occasionally watch stuff. Anything that doesn’t have a little blue feather on it is free. I think you may need to register an account, but there is no cost to that.
Well, sure, as it’s harder to write a sequel to a good movie than a bad one.
Im glad most reviews are saying this is is as good or better than Knives Out, because it’s my most anticipated for the year.
Rian Johnson can have a 100 year career with dozens upon dozens of successful films and he still won’t live down the Last Jedi grief.
I don’t believe him, just like I didn’t believe him about a trilogy that had no deal, no green light, and no scripts for year after year. He’s glib and full of kayfabe when promoting his projects. Look for the truth years later from other sources.
Creepy.
This right here is exhibit #1598 for why The Last Jedi was not, in fact, “good”.When even the filmmaker admits that it wasn’t a movie he loved or really felt very deeply about at all, it shows.
I would say “this right here” is more exhibit #UnexpressablyLargeFigure that y’all are somehow completely incapable of both Moving On and Getting Over It; and desperately need to, in the words of that great prophet, touch grass.