Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Equal-Doc6047 t1_j2cfcxl wrote

Reply to comment by PsychonauticalRaz in In Glass Onion (Knives Out), why did a certain character act in this way? by stockholm__syndrome

That’s the genius of the film, and imo what makes Glass Onion so much better than the first film. You know so much about everyone the mystery becomes more whose going to die and who will obvious do it (essentially the mystery is what is the mystery if you know what I’m saying). Whereas Knives Out for the most part follows some traditional murder mystery conventions, Glass Onion elevates them up to 11, keeping you guessing every time, even before the murder itself happens.

6

PsychonauticalRaz t1_j2cg5mi wrote

That's not genius, it's just Rian Johnson subverting expectations like that itself is a good trick and satsifying. If you see the murder, the mystery is over, and if you don't see the murder, fuck you because you have no chance to figure it out.

The first movie does the same subversion schtick. We "see" how he died so we spend the movie not worrying about the whodunnit aspect, but we also suspect foul play, at which point the obvious candidate is the ONE suspect they focused on for the second half of the movie. Atleast that one had the "Hugh did it" scene, but Glass Onion is just not a mystery movie, it's a "let me explain exactly what's happening as it's happening while leaving out the actually important details so I can make a cheap revelation scene at the end to explain the mystery you had no chance at solving yourself". It's not genius, it's disappointing.

Unearned misdirection is just gaslighting, and when he's been doing that since atleast Looper it isn't clever anymore.

−7