Rian Johnson: Glass Onion

I really wanted to see this. In fact, I watched Knives Out purely so I could see it fully educated in the ways of this series. Knives Out was fantastic, so tightly plotted that even my picky brain never found a single hole in the story. I loved it. I should watch it again.

Instead, I watched Glass Onion, then the next day kept thinking, "Wait..." and watched it again. And it has holes, alas. 

Spoilers going forward for both movies, probably, but definitely for Glass Onion.

There were a lot of things I adored about the movie. I loved that we thought we knew what was going on, then learned that we were seeing everything wrong. That was similar to Knives Out and was something I loved there, too. I loved the way we saw Whiskey very differently once Andi talked to her and got past the surface appearance. I loved all the various things that seemed completely different once we saw them from multiple angles. That's something Johnson does brilliantly. 

But there were plot holes. 

There was some hand-waving about how Miles cut Andi out of the company. That is just not how anything works. Two people who have equal partnership in a company, right? One can't just suddenly cut the other one out. And the stupid napkin is meaningless. It's set up as this PROOF that one or the other had the idea first, as if any court would be like, "Well, the napkin proves this or that." There has to be massive paperwork and legal protections and on and on. That's such a fundamental fatal flaw that the rest of the movie falls apart because of it.

The second major flaw is connected: it's that Miles would have any reason to kill Andi. Why? What does that accomplish? He already won the court case. In this world, another napkin suddenly proves that he's not the originator of the company? But he took it all away from her regardless of any napkins.

I cannot get over how idiotic the napkin thing is. It's just terrible. It's maybe a first draft idea, but should have been replaced with something from our reality that makes actual sense. 

I do love that Miles is extremely stupid and steals everyone else's ideas. That I buy 100%. 

I don't buy that Andi would let him in after he destroyed her life and took her company away, the company that she started. 

It makes no sense that he would kill her, as again it accomplishes nothing, and he takes her (fucking) napkin anyway. He has it, and he won already, so there is literally no reason to kill the person. He's also not a killer, in any way that we've seen so far. Maybe if he was seriously threatened, pushed to the absolute edge, but he wasn't. I could have imagined Duke, a violent person who carries a gun everywhere, pushed to murder by immense frustration or anger, but there was nothing to show Miles was like that. Poor characterization. 

He also had zero reason to kill Duke, especially in front of everyone. Look at the purported reasoning: Duke gets a Google alert on his phone that says Andi is dead. So, what does that mean? Miles looks super happy about it. Duke looks super happy about it. Now--inexplicably--it means Duke gets whatever [thing] that he's been wanting from Miles but Miles was holding back on. Why??? So Miles agrees to give him whatever the thing is (seriously, what is it?) and then instantly kills him. 

WHAT FOR?

To hide that Andi is dead? Everyone will get that information soon anyway.

Also, and this is the biggest plot hole: Miles killed, or tried to kill Andi, but then she walks up the dock and is there on his private island. He has an interesting reaction, a complex expression. He looks sad and moved and hopeful and I don't know what all else. He's a good actor to pull that off. I can't stand that actor, Edward Norton, but that's kind of why he's cast in this role, I think. He's so good at that smarmy self-aggrandizing sleazy smug bastard character. 

If I had tried to kill someone and they walked onto my private island, I would be highly on guard. I would imagine I'd be super tense. Right? I'd know that person knew a terrible thing about me. I'd know they were probably there for revenge or at minimum to tell everyone about that crime. But he never seems worried at all. Granted, he's dumb as a rock, but even he should be able to figure out that someone you tried to kill would be MAD AT YOU. Especially when it's Andi, who was already enraged at him for the whole stealing all her money thing. (It still makes no sense. What, she didn't have any money in the bank? She didn't own shares? There's just no way to make that work.)

This leads to the biggest twist, one that I don't even know is true. I mean, I believe it. I watched it twice to see whether my idea could be right. I'm sure it is. But I haven't seen it anywhere else. I tried reading the Reddit thread on the movie but since I deleted the app, reading it on a browser is (deliberately) so difficult and annoying that I bailed after a while. 

I don't think that's Helen. I don't think Andi died. Maybe she has a twin sister, sure, but I don't think that's her. I think it's Andi pretending to be Helen pretending to be Andi. 

They both have that down home accent, but Andi covers it up with her "dog ate the caviar" voice. They both can do that, as Helen proves. 

The person who receives and opens the box is the key clue here. Her hair is up in a towel wrap. I remembered it being Andi's short blond bob, but when I watched it a second time, her hair was covered. That's not accidental. That means it's obscuring which one of them it is. 

It's Helen who brings the smashed box to Benoit, but it makes no sense that Helen would even care about that box enough to smash it up, or would know Miles well enough to know what was in it. Helen believes her sister was murdered, but again there's no evidence for that and she had just lost everything. Suicide wouldn't be unheard of in that kind of situation. Helen's evidence is that the red envelope was nowhere in the house, but so what? It could be destroyed, or hidden really well. Andi lost it herself in her house until she was knocking over bookcases and it reappeared. 

I'm not even sure Benoit believes Helen is Helen. She has the long hair, but you can get around that easily. Frumpy clothes and different hair and a different accent and manner, sure. He could be going along with it to solve the attempted murder, even if he doesn't believe a real murder occurred. The thing about releasing a statement isn't a thing. If someone dies, that's public record. So when he says he can pull some strings and keep it from coming out--what? That's not a thing either. What strings? Where? Wait, so it would just come out anyway, based on that, but she needed to release a statement? That's contradictory.

Helen does not know these people well enough to interact with them the way she does throughout the whole movie. Just acting mad and aloof wouldn't do it. Granted they're all drunk the whole time. But when she gets into it with Duke, he says, "There she is. That's the Andi I know." That's because it is Andi the whole time. 

I'm also going by her vast rage at Miles and destruction of his company. That's Andi's kind of revenge, not Helen's. Helen is a third grade teacher, so smashing everything makes sense for her character, but Andi knows what will really hurt Miles and save lives all over the world and does that. Her actions show someone with a deep understanding of the Klear product that we only know as an audience because we've overheard people talking in the pool and elsewhere. 

She slips back into Helen's down home accent, but it's also Andi's original accent. 

Her Mona Lisa smile at the end seems to me enigmatic enough to imply there is a lot more going on than is on the surface. That's Andi. Helen is a character created by Andi who is scared of boats and terrified of the whole weekend among these rich fancy assholes. Andi is not.

Anyway, a friend and I are always saying that audiences these days are always looking for multiple levels beyond what are even there, so maybe I'm doing that, but given the contradictions about Andi/Helen throughout, I'm sure this is the case. And I like it that Benoit Blanc either doesn't know or doesn't care because he's interested in figuring out the case itself. He keeps saying he's very bad at stupid things--it's a running theme. One person pretending to be another seems like a stupid thing he'd be bad at. What other stupid things are there in the story for him to be bad at figuring out? There's a whole set-up with Among Us and crosswords and all these lesser puzzles that are not complex enough for him to be good at. 

There, solved it. 

But I'm mad about all the plot holes. Take second, third, and fourth passes at those things, seriously. You can call me. I'll read your thing and point out what parts don't actually work. (This is literally my job.) Mysteries are super hard. I know it. But a story can't only make sense when we don't know what's going on. This is exactly the same problem as with Nine Liars. It only hangs together when we don't know the ending. Once we know the ending, everyone including the police has to be outrageously stupid and incompetent for things to go the way they go. 

Speaking of which, wouldn't Helen go to the police? Wouldn't there be an investigation if she believes her sister was murdered? That gets into the news. Why does she think it's Miles or any of the shitheads at all? Again, she would have no reason to think that unless she was actually Andi and knew perfectly well who it was, just couldn't prove it and wanted her ridiculous plot point napkin back. 

I can buy a lot of nonsense in fiction. I watch shows over and over with enormous buys in them. Leverage! Agents of SHIELD! Community! I can suspend my disbelief! But I'm not okay with massive plot holes and things that make no logical sense that are supposed to be part of the actual way the world works. The ungodly stupid napkin thing and the corporate "legal thing" and two utterly unmotivated murders? That's quite a lot too much for me to buy. 

That movie was a lot of fun the first time around, though. Yo-Yo Ma was there! Serena Williams showed up! The setting was amazing! Miles is a great terrible villain, straight out of Despicable Me! These selfish, lazy people who are hanging around Miles for personal profit and gain are wonderful. Whiskey was a terrific character, as was Duke's mom. I liked how the shitheads were all full of self-loathing and had no spines at all, so they'd switch sides as soon as it was expedient. I liked how dumb and easy it was for Miles to hide Duke's phone (though again--WHY) by sticking it in his pocket. (Why not just turn it off and shove it in the couch? I swear, nothing makes any sense in this movie.) I loved how clueless Kate Hudson's character was. Perfectly believable to me. I've met so many of those people. I met a guy once who didn't believe in expertise and told me he thought he could do brain surgery. I met a recovering heroin addict who said she didn't want the Covid vaccine because she didn't know what was in it. But you'll shoot up things you buy from a guy under a bridge? Okay! People are full of misplaced confidence and ignorance and wildly inaccurate knowledge and super flexible ethics. I liked that about all the characters. 

I definitely want to watch Knives Out again, though. That was a great movie. The check to make as a writer is not: can I fool someone first time through, but once they know what's really going on, will they still think this makes sense? Doing it the first time only way is cheap and sketchy and honestly lazy writing.