Last week, Rian Johnson confirmed the sequel toKnives Out and Glass Onionwith Benoit Blanc is “coming along," during an interview withThe Wrap. “I obviously couldn’t work during the strike, and now that it’s over, I’m diving in full force, and so it’s coming along. I’ve got the premise, I’ve got the setting, I’ve got what the movie is in my head. It’s just a matter of writing the damn thing.”
That might sound like the excuse you give your boss when they ask if you’ll have that project you haven’t started working on ready by its looming deadline. But if you know how Johnson works, it likely means the hardest part is already over. The writer-director has said that he approaches his work structure first, jotting down all the details of his mysteries in notebooks as he works out the plot, and only moving to the keyboard when he knows exactly where he wants it to go.
So, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Knives Out 3 hitNetflixin the next year or two. When it does? I hope Johnson can cool it a little on the cameos. Johnson’s last three works — Glass Onion, Poker Face, and Knives Out — have all boasted stacked casts. This worked well in Knives Out and Poker Face, with guest stars bolstering the latter’s case-of-the-week structure. But Glass Onion buckled a bit under the weight.
Knives Out was the rare original movie aimed at grown ups and, in order for those to get greenlit, they tend to need a tiny budget or a lot of big stars. But the parade of celebrities became a liability in Glass Onion. That’s because the sheer star-studdedness felt like it was in conflict with the message of the movie — that rich people are stupid and selfish. All told, the movie’s cast includes Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Jessica Henwick, and Leslie Odom, Jr. in the lead roles, plus cameos from Hugh Grant, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ethan Hawke, Yo-Yo Ma, Natasha Lyonne, Angela Lansbury, and Stephen Sondheim.
The SAG strike has taught us that just because someone is in TV shows or movies you know, that doesn’t mean they’re rich, and I don’t want to ignore that. But let’s be real, most of those people make good money. And when you get that much wealth on screen — and when the whole endeavor is bankrolled by a $450 million Netflix buyout — it gets harder and harder to buy the sincerity of the whole “the rich are bad and stupid” angle. The call is coming from inside the extravagant onion-shaped house!
The other issue is that cameos constantly remind you that you’re watching a movie. When Ethan Hawke showed up for his minute of screen time in Glass Onion, I thought, “Oh right, I remember reading that he was nearby for Moon Knight, and Rian Johnson asked him to do a part.” Similarly, when I saw Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury, and Natasha Lyonne show up early on for a Zoom call with Benoit Blanc, I thought both, “This is a random assortment of people,” and, “Oh right Sondheim and Lansbury both have posthumous appearances in this.” I didn’t experience these moments, primarily, as beats of the story. I experienced them as little winks that had me thinking about the real world again, not the web of intrigue the movie was weaving.
It’s still a pretty fun movie, but it feels like it’s high on its own supply, more intent on spinning Johnson’s growing Rolodex than a compelling yarn. I love Johnson’s work and have for a long time — my first date with my wife back in 2012 was going to see Looper — but I want to see him go back to basics a bit for the next film. Even though ‘basics’ in this case will still be somewhere populated by the fabulously wealthy.
