 Glass Onion, A Knives Out Mystery, is possibly one of the worst scripted films I've ever seen. Don't misunderstand me. The cast is all in. Jean-Almone kills it. There's also some light-hearted, enjoyable filmmaking. I'm sure many people will see Glass Onion and be entertained for 139 minutes before moving on with their lives. However, I am not one of them. I was furious. Glass Onion will now haunt him for the rest of my life. I recall declaring Ryan Johnson as a terrific talent to watch when Looper came out. Looper was fascinating, patient, dynamic, and brave. Then there had to be Star Wars The Last Jedi, which I detested. But Knives Out? That was repentance. Despite being an entirely different genre from Looper, I believe the original Knives Out was just as innovative. It possessed the same level of craftsmanship. This has me justifying Last Jedi and rediscovering Ryan Johnson as a filmmaker I admire. Now, here we are. Glass Onion. What the hell? Near the end of Glass Onion, Benoit Blanc delivers his major speech, in which he discloses who murdered Duke. Blanc, irritated by Miles Braun, exclaims how stupid this whole situation is. Birdie J responds, Oh, it's so dumb. It's brilliant. No, it's simply dumb, Blanc responds. Consider that for a moment. Blanc just said something stupid. Miles Braun is not one of them. It is the entire situation, everything that happened in the movie we were watching. The world's greatest detective has gathered the facts, assessed the players, and concluded that the situation is effing ridiculous. To be fair, there is a reason why things are so stupid. Thematically, Glass Onion depicts how evil individuals achieve power. Each of the best pals is wearing golden handcuffs and is only kind to Miles because he's helped them advance in their careers. In some ways, it's a Trumpian story where someone gets to the top and others simply go along with everything the leader does since they'll be fired if they speak up. Finally, the film demonstrates how the inversion is correct. The cronies have more power than they realize. Wouldn't things be better off if they just raised their hands and did the right thing? The idea is sound. It has the potential to be a fantastic film. It's only the execution that's so bad. Johnson's discourse emphasizes how foolish it is. When you learn how to write, one of the things that comes up is perspective. From whose point of view is this story written? This brings up the issue of first and third person narration. The I in first person narrative is the he, she, they, and third person narration. If you use first person, you are limited to what that character knows. There is a spectrum when it comes to a third person narration. You can use third person limited, which limits the scope of the text to what perspective that character has, is experiencing, and will experience. The difference between the first and second knives out is that Marta, Anna DeArmes, was the main character. With a few exceptions, the audience knew pretty much what she knew. So, while a lot of information was hidden from us, it was because the POV character was not present at those events or had not informed Blanc about them. Blanc was able to be this secondary protagonist who kept this sense of mystery and could be ahead of the viewer in terms of knowledge, without it feeling like a deception. Marta does not exist in Glass Onion. Blanc is our point of view character. For the first hour, we're led to believe, boy, this is mysterious. It appears that Johnson has crafted a deeply interwoven plot trapped behind character perspective. Allah, Sixth Sense, Get Out, or Shudder Island. We don't believe Blanc has more information than us because so little has been released. However, Johnson did not construct an extensively constructed storyline. Instead, he employed the most basic and laziest tactic in the book, withholding facts for no apparent reason. The initial revelation in Glass Onion is that Benoit did not receive an invitation like everyone else as the film implied. He met with Helen Brand, learned everything he could about Miles and the rest of the group, learned of Andy's death, and then devised the plan to have Helen play Andy and assist in determining who on the island was the murderer. Instead of the spectator experiencing this with Blanc in chronological order, it is cut out and delivered to us as exposition in the middle of the film. That does two things. Neither is ideal. For starters, it renders the opening hour of the film meaningless. It was presented to us in one way, but none of it was true. Blanc's perplexity? Not true. Andy's relationship with old friends? Not true. Contrast that with get out. There's a similar structure. How characters act in the first hour isn't representative of their underlying reasons. Chris believes that meeting Rose's family is a routine occurrence. Rose's parents, however, are members of a cult that transplants the consciousness of wealthy, old white people into the bodies of young black people. They're prepping Chris. When we finally comprehend what's going on, we feel betrayed, which is consistent with how our perspective character feels. Chris didn't know any more than we did. He's as perplexed as we are. If the movie cut back to the beginning and showed us Chris did a Google search and read rumors about the family so he knew the entire time and went there with the express purpose of defeating them, that would be a slap in the face to what we'd experienced as an audience and point of view character together. The same is true with Fight Club. We're stuck with Edward Norton's point of view, so it's no coincidence that he and Brad Pitt are both Tyler Durden. Norton didn't know, so neither did we. But if you go back and watch the picture again, you can see how the director, David Flincher, played with our perceptions and built up to the reveal. It signifies that the story up to the reveal is still true because the characters acted in accordance with what they knew. The same goes for Shutter Island, prisoners, Scream, hereditary, annihilation, parasite, primal fear, and psycho. Our main perspective character, Glass Onion, was performing. And we didn't know because the film refused to tell us. That would be more effective if our main character was, say, Birdie J, or all of the best pals from the beginning of the film. We wouldn't know Blanc's point of view. Therefore, withholding information would be appropriate. The same as in Knives Out. However, because Glass Onion abandons the friend group as perspective characters and focuses solely on Blanc, the information is cheaply skipped over. And it makes watching the first hour pointless because nothing is genuine. All the pals were performing. Blanc was on stage and he was on stage. There will be no meaningful perspective until we've completed Glass Onion 75% of the way through. It saps the tension from successive viewings. The second issue is that exposition is terrible. I mean, it might work, especially if it's a true character viewpoint. The Jurassic Park opening tour, The Matrix's introduction to finding the matrix. Exposition that has simply forced history or huge disclosure of previously unseen activities, is nearly always sloppy writing and should come chronologically. Here's an illustration. Consider a scenario in which Jesse and Jamie are attending a formal dinner. Jamie becomes enraged and leaves after Jesse goes to the bathroom for an extended period of time. Jamie is our only point of view character. Jesse returns home hours later and tells Jamie that they went to the restroom to practice their proposal speech one last time. However, the ring was dropped by accident and slipped down a drain in the floor. They were humiliated and didn't know what to do, so they remained on the floor crying for 30 minutes before a plumber arrived and removed the ring. It took another 30 minutes since they couldn't think of anything to say. Jamie is angry but moved, and she says I do, and they kiss. Now envision that story unfolding in chronological order. Jesse and James are attending a formal dinner. Jesse uses the restroom. We observe Jesse rehearse his proposal speech, then remove the ring. We cut to Jamie standing there. We cut to Jesse, who seems terrified. Cut to Jamie becoming enraged. Cut to Jesse phoning plumbers because he's too ashamed to ask for help at the restaurant. Jamie is on the phone and texting. Cut to Jesse blatantly ignoring the phone calls. Jamie is seen departing. There's a lot more tension. It pains you as a viewer to know what Jesse planned to accomplish against how things turned out. It saddens you to see Jamie get furious when you know they're about to get a wonderful surprise. This brings us back to something Hitchcock mentioned about tension. If you watch a scene in which two people converse for five minutes in a restaurant before a bomb goes off, it's boring for five minutes and shocking for an instant. If you see a scenario in which someone sets a bomb under a table, then two actors appear and converse for five minutes. You're left wondering if the explosive will detonate. It adds a lot of energy to the debate. If Glass Onion had just played out chronologically with Helen showing up to Blanc's house and Blanc agreeing to the case and everything playing out in sequence, the entire movie would have been so much better. We get to be a part of the investigation and learn about the motivations of the characters. Blanc's performance is now ours to appreciate. But however, we were given the lazy option, the one who disregards the significance of the audience protagonist relationship and the perils of exposition. Ryan Johnson had the problem of Helen impersonating Andy when writing the story. Okay, so identical twins do exist. So that's the end of the looks like Andy nonsense. What about behavior though? These are Andy's former best friends. They know her better than anyone else. How do you accomplish that? You could simply have Andy not say much, but someone will eventually approach her, right? They'd been together for a decade. How does Helen, who has never met any of them, fair? There are numerous intriguing approaches to this, especially if the audience realizes it's Helen, not Andy trying to improvise. Her mistakes could be amusing. Her achievements could be spectacular. It could be an interesting subplot, like Jamie Foxx and the film Collateral. Instead, Glass Onion tells us that Andy was a committed journaler who journaled every day of her life. So Helen simply read a number of the diaries. That's all. Don't be concerned. It's comparable to how COVID is handled. Because the film is set in 2020, individuals should be wearing masks, keeping a safe distance, and being wary of intimate contact. Miles, on the other hand, has someone spray something into everyone's mouth. There is no explanation. They've been vaccinated, protected, or whatever. That's all there is to it. It's never mentioned again. To be honest, there's no reason for COVID to be in the film if they're going to dismiss it like that. If you come back to it as part of the Miles's Trillion Idiot reveal, and it turns out the spray had no effect, you could go with that path. Miles may have given them all COVID on top of everything else he says and does. That's a resolution to the subplot. As it stands, the COVID inclusion is a needless addition that adds nothing and does nothing. Glass Onion is one lazy option after another. If Andy was a true journaler, wouldn't she have kept journals regarding the foundation of Alpha? Wouldn't the journals have held some weight if the entire court case came down to who came up with the idea? Sure, I suppose I should start with no and give Glass Onion the benefit of the doubt. But the writing in Glass Onion is so awful that there's no reason for me to give it a chance. If a napkin could have won the case, surely the journals would have done something. A quick author's note, a passage regarding what happened to the pistol has been removed. I saw the movie in cinemas and completely forgot about the one quick side of the gun falling at the scene where Miles shot Andy around the one hour eight minute mark. I was invalid, minus one to me. Johnson gets a plus. My final point of contention is the burning of the Mona Lisa. Helen destroys it because it will eternally identify clear and miles with the laws of the world's most renowned picture. At least that's the plan. On the one hand, it's a work of art. What is the worth of a single picture compared to bringing down a wicked jerk who could harm millions of people? You could argue that the sacrifice is worthwhile. Who knows? On the other hand, Helen didn't have the support of Birdie J, Claire, Lionel or Whiskey at the time. If they all continued to support Miles, no one would ever know clear started the fire. They could simply blame Helen for everything. Who knows what will happen if that group turns on Miles? Johnson never shows us the aftermath of the story. Call me cynical, but in today's media and political climate, accountability isn't guaranteed. Helen's bet on the destruction of the Mona Lisa being enough to ruin Miles, I'm not saying it. That incident made me dislike Helen. I also adored Helen and Blanc just leaving her in a room with someone who had murdered two people made me think less of Blanc. I walked into glass onion with high hopes, but I couldn't get into it. It's a sloppy, indulgent mess.