4-13
Rules of the Game:
A Rian Johnson Profile
By Sam Adams
14-23
The Stage is Set:
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Glass Onion
By Beatrice Loayza
24-33
Hidden Clues:
The Inspirations Behind Glass Onion
By Charles Bramesco
RULES OF THE GAME
A Rian Johnson Profile
Words by Sam Adams
In Knives Out, the movie that introduced the world to gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), Rian Johnson’s laconic Southerner explains how his investigative method diverges from that of a typical fictional gumshoe. While others root about like “truffle pigs,” Blanc anticipates “the terminus of gravity’s rainbow,” coolly calculating the parabolic arc of a murder plot and strolling to its precisely calculated endpoint.
Johnson arrived at his position as one of the most distinctive of modern franchise movie directors by the same leisurely but inevitable route. His early efforts, including the high-school noir Brick (2005) and the stylized caper The Brothers Bloom (2008), pulse with a deeply informed love of the genres they emulate and reinvent. They don’t feel like the work of a filmmaker who’s dying to get his hands on a coveted piece of corporate IP and work on a global scale; these miniaturist homages are turned inward rather than out.
With the hard-boiled sci-fi of 2012’s Looper, Johnson began to let more air into the room, but his first masterpieces came in the realm of television–the three episodes of Breaking Bad he directed between 2010 and 2013, including the bottled-up ‘Fly’ and the shattering ‘Ozymandias’. The restrictions of serial storytelling offered both discipline and liberation, a chance for wild flights of style within the predetermined confines of both time and plot.
“In an environment where many feature directors can feel creatively stymied, Johnson not only persevered but flourished.”
And that experience carried over as he set about solving the puzzle that has stumped many a promising 21st-century filmmaker: how to make a franchise movie while simultaneously making one of his own.
No one expects a writer/director to do their most distinctive work on a midstream saga entry–least of all the franchise-owners themselves, who prefer compliant journeymen or indie newcomers without the clout or savvy to push back. But in an era flooded with ever-expanding cinematic universes, Johnson’s The Last Jedi stands virtually alone as an example of thoughtful, expressive blockbuster filmmaking. (Only Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther comes close.)
With its surly, gone-to-seed Luke Skywalker and its bold inversion of Star Wars’ chosen-one mythology, the movie paid tribute to the series’ history by expanding it rather than being in thrall to it, like a test pilot finding the limits of what a new aircraft can do.
A vocal handful of self-described fans may
have bristled at the idea of being challenged rather than served, but The Last Jedi was a box-office and critical smash, and pleased the keepers of Lucasfilm’s flame enough to tap Johnson for a Star Wars trilogy of his own.
The fluctuations of brand management have made the likelihood of Johnson’s return to a galaxy far, far away seem more and more distant, but for now he’s created a universe of his own, centered around a private detective with a cornpone drawl and a penchant for strained analogy. Spending the credibility acquired from one of the most successful movies of all time on a modestly budgeted whodunit might have seemed like a quizzical step at the time, almost verging on perverse, but in retrospect it’s as if Johnson had locked himself inside a room just for the pleasure of finding his way out.
“So many modern genre movies are set in a digital no-man’s land, but Johnson always manages to hold on to a sense of the material world.”
How do you revive a moribund genre without endless resources and in an arena openly hostile to anything not based on a pre-existing property? The answer, it turns out, is through a deft mixture of deference and invention, informed by the idea that the best way to express one’s love for a genre is ensuring its future.
Knives Out is sufficiently self-aware of its lineage to have one character observe that the house of the murder victim, a successful writer of crime novels, looks like “he lives in a Clue board.” But it’s also very clearly set in the present, buttressing its class allegory with references to Trump-era xenophobia and alt-right trolls.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which finds Johnson and Craig back on the case, is even more topical, set in the opening weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a cast of suspects that includes a men’s rights activist, an unscrupulous Senate hopeful, and a model turned sweatshop mogul. So many modern genre movies are set in a digital no man’s land, but even when he’s
traveling through time and space, Johnson always manages to hold on to a sense of the material world, no matter how fantastic that world might be.
Johnson is currently prepping a third film which will once again revolve around the continuing adventures of Benoit Blanc. When, where and how that case will unfold is anyone’s guess, but where there are problems there are also solutions, and Rian Johnson delights in figuring them out.
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Words by Beatrice Loayza
With Glass Onion, master detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns to the scene of the crime. This time, however, it’s not a creaky New England mansion but a sparkling private island, home to smarmy tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). In this follow-up to Rian Johnson’s 2019 whodunit Knives Out, new-money extravagance takes the place of old-money allure. The upgraded coastal location–and a new clique of celebrity suspects–cranks up the stakes, dropping the viewer into a bigger, glitzier, and more intricate murder-mystery playground, all conceived by writer/director Johnson with the help of production designer Rick Heinrichs.
“Heinrichs and his team conducted a global search for the perfect location, ultimately settling on a privately owned Greek villa.”
Heinrichs’ past credits include two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, various Tim Burton projects, and Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (his first collaboration with Johnson). In other words, he’s someone who is up to the task of world building and working big.
In Glass Onion, Miles’ island estate looks like an ultra-modern palace; it boasts a tiered garden, a massive atrium filled with multimillion-dollar paintings, and a winding staircase leading up to a transparent office-cum-throne room–the titular glass onion.
Heinrichs and his team conducted a global search for the perfect location. Ultimately, they settled on a privately owned Greek villa with a “great hierarchical architectural organization to it” several kilometers inland, creating the lavish retreat we see in the film using digital technologies. Outrageous luxuries like the literal glass onion and Miles’ various original artworks–including a Basquiat, a Degas, and a Matisse–were digitally rendered as well. As Heinrichs explains, Miles’ art collection and extravagant living spaces are all part of the character’s backstory: “His aesthetic expresses his cool-bro, subversive veneer. But it’s all a sad cry for attention and many of the pieces are clichés of expensive art.”
“We took apart [Rian’s] description, designed the boxes, and computer-animated them to see the sequence of events. Then we turned it over to prop master Kris Peck.”
When Heinrichs set out to design the enormous interior sets, he was given several detective-story references near and dear to Johnson: “After the film premiered, critics and commentators talked about its resemblance to The Last of Sheila [1973] but [Rian] had other films and books in mind, specifically those written by Agatha Christie–‘And Then There Were None’ and ‘Evil Under the Sun’ directly inspired the dining room lounge area filled with red.”
One of the most striking objects in a movie filled with expensive knick-knacks appears within the first ten minutes, when Miles sends a puzzle box invitation to each member of his inner circle. Imagine a maze squeezed into a wooden box that’s “the size of four medium pizza boxes,” says Heinrichs, noting how specific Johnson’s requirements were. The box, which opens up like an origami fortune teller, was informed by Johnson’s fascination
with practical magic. “We took apart [Rian’s] description, designed the boxes, and computer-animated them to see the sequence of events. Then we turned it over to prop master Kris Peck,” says Heinrichs, adding that the Fibonacci spiral, tic-tac-toe, and 'Magic Eye' books also influenced Johnson’s invention.
Even the most observant viewer will want to revisit Glass Onion multiple times to pick up on all the clever details woven into the production design. “Beatles’ paraphernalia is all over the movie, but for the switch, we came up with a Hummel figurine–these adorable ceramics that are super-weird and kitschy. It’s a little boy in a jester outfit; the titular Fool on the Hill,” explains Heinrichs, referring to a song on the band’s 1967 album ‘Magical Mystery Tour’.
Heinrichs continues, “It’s hard to create a rich space with lots of moving pieces that feels organic and reveals motivations while also creating something that is like a museum filled with Easter eggs. It helps that Rian’s approach to the visual elements, the story, and the characters is kind of like Benoit Blanc’s. He’s a great problem-solver.”
HIDDEN CLUES
The Inspirations Behind Glass Onion
Words by Charles Bramesco
Motivated by murders most foul, trafficking in a mix of greed, cowardice, and spite, the whodunit would seem to be nasty business. Each entry in this subgenre invariably ends with a peek into the depths of immorality to which the human soul can stoop, and yet it’s all supposed to be an enjoyable lark.
In Glass Onion, writer/director/master of ceremonies Rian Johnson establishes outright with a montage of puzzle-box minigames that we’re allowed to have fun here, briskly whisking us and the lineup of suspects away for a week’s holiday of parlor-room detective work led once again by Daniel Craig’s eminent private eye, Benoit Blanc.
Tech zillionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) has summoned a coterie of his closest friends for their annual reunion, from his luxury yacht to his Xanadu-esque private island in the Mediterranean, where blood-stained tragedy will strike. Sun, sand, and sleuthing–even with a killer afoot, the primary threat is that of a good time.
As the characters are ferried from one mode of leisure to the next, so too does Johnson trace a line from one of his chief influences to another. A seafaring palace sets the scene for 1973’s The Last of Sheila, while an island getaway hosts the macabre machinations of 1982’s Evil Under the Sun, a pair of movies united in their fascination with knotty logical conundrums and the pleasure taken in unraveling them.
“In Glass Onion, writer/director/master of ceremonies Rian Johnson establishes outright that we’re allowed to have fun.”
Scripted by Broadway legends Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, and inspired by the real-life scavenger hunts they held across Manhattan for their board-treading pals, The Last of Sheila sets a clear precedent for Johnson’s ‘roleplay game turned homicide’ conceit.
In director Herbert Ross’ droll cult classic, a Hollywood producer convenes an inner circle consisting of a starlet, her manager husband, a screenwriter, a director, and a talent agent, all of whom were present at the party where their host’s wife died one year prior. (They appear together in a Polaroid, the same piece that completes Glass Onion’s cryptic jigsaw.) Suffice it to say that one question mark overlaps with a second, a devious subversion of formula on which Johnson ups the ante with an even more dazzlingly labyrinthine structure.
Above all else, both movies follow the imperative to relentlessly entertain, their investigative loop-de-loops showcasing starry ensembles feasting on meaty roles before they wind up as mincemeat. The same goes for Evil Under the Sun, an Agatha Christie adaptation that shares much of its DNA with Glass Onion. (Keen-eyed viewers will notice Benoit Blanc on a group Zoom call with Sondheim, Columbo-to-be Natasha Lyonne, and Angela Lansbury, star of Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d and small-screen whodunit staple Murder, She Wrote.)
“In one of Johnson’s more overt winks to Evil Under the Sun, an ominous hourly chime takes the place of a cannon.”
Here’s where Johnson picked up the moves that keep him one step ahead of his audience, with crucial moments repeated and reframed to upend the clues the viewer may have taken for granted. In one of Johnson’s more overt winks to Evil Under the Sun, an ominous hourly chime takes the place of a cannon, which fires at 12 o’clock on the dot.
Glass Onion places itself in a genre tradition dating back to the 19th century–Charles Dickens’ unfinished final novel, ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’, shares Johnson’s predilection for using gumshoe thrills as cover for cutting social commentary–but its references to more recent forebears are perhaps the most telling. Like a serial killer leaving a calling card, Johnson wants us to know exactly who’s responsible for the carnage.