Glass Onion Has Layers

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is the sequel to Rian Johnson’s 2019 smash hit Knives Out. Knives Out was one of my favorite movies of 2019, so when I heard about a sequel coming out I was pretty excited. Although, I was also a bit nervous about the possibility of a lackluster sequel. 

Glass Onion is about a group of very successful friends and the detective Blanc, going to a billionaires private island for a murder mystery party. My main problems with glass onion starts with the characters because while they are interesting none of them feel particularly fleshed out. They all feel one note and  greedy. I really wish that there was more focus on understanding the cast. Despite their shortcomings, all the characters are really funny and the comedy definitely carries the movies for the first act.

The main criticisms I have with the movie starts with Detective Blanc. I feel like his character has too much screen time. I wish the movie would have focused more on the other parts of the movie like character motives, and Establishing the billionaire Miles Character. Blanc also just feels like a vessel to deliver the mystery. I also didn’t find many of his jokes too funny but I seem to be the outlier on that. 

The movie is really smart when it comes to presenting to the audience. It will intentionally mess with your perception of the events and make you wonder if anything it presents is true. It has lots of clever tricks that make the movie engaging and I’ve been thinking about some of them ever since I saw the movie. It also has lots of social commentary with Miles being a little too on the nose of the celebrity he was supposed to be portraying. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has lots to improve on and could definitely improve in the next installments in the franchise. I’m really excited to see where the 3rd movie will go and it could be one of the better trilogies to come out in recent years.