I met Rian Johnson a long time ago. It wasn’t something I got into with him during our recent interview, although it was alluded to beforehand in my fawning over his criminally underrated The Brothers Bloom. It hasn’t surprised me in the least that Johnson’s popularity over the years has grown, hitting its peak with 2019’s Knives Out, a star-studded murder mystery that introduced the world to Daniel Craig’s southern-fried detective, Benoit Blanc.
Three years and a massive Netflix deal later, Johnson is back with the anticipated sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Once again, Craig is back as the bumbling but dogged Blanc, who finds himself swept up in a new mystery involving a group of well-to-do friends on a billionaire’s elaborate island getaway.
What has always attracted me, and undoubtedly millions of others, to Johnson’s work is that he approaches every movie like a fan, then subverts what us fans are expecting to see. Whether he’s turning a teen drama into a film noir (Brick), playing with our notions of the overused time-loop sci-fi thriller (Looper), reimagining the heroic core of Star Wars (The Last Jedi) or using humor to turn the whodunnit on its ear as he did with Knives Out and Glass Onion, Johnson is having as much fun making these films as we are watching them.
It was a treat for me to speak with Johnson about Glass Onion, his part in revitalizing the detective story on the big screen, his thoughts on a third Knives Out, and more. You can check out that interview below!
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is in theaters now, on Netflix beginning December 23rd.
