The original post: /r/movies by /u/Hog_enthusiast on 2025-01-03 15:34:55.
I watched Glass Onion again last night because it had finally been long enough for me to forget the plot. I remembered not liking it, and I didn’t like it on the second watch either. I really enjoyed the first Knives Out, and Glass Onion gets mostly positive reviews, so why do I hate it so much?
There’s a few things that detract from the movie that are obvious up front. The aesthetic is worse. The characters aren’t believable and contradict themselves repeatedly. Blanc wins the record for quickest flanderization of a character in human history. The constant jokes about Covid and NFTs are dated and stale already. But that’s not enough to make me hate a movie. I can excuse dumb character decisions, or ugly costumes, or bad accents, or factual mistakes and inconsistencies.
The thing that absolutely kills this movie is twofold. For one thing, the cardinal sin in a mystery is to have a twist that the audience couldn’t ever figure out. There need to be hints. “Actually, Andy is dead and this has been her sister the whole time”? Terrible twist. The audience had no hint, no subtle costume detail, no strange line or moment that is later explained by that twist. Now this wouldn’t be enough to kill the movie. But because of that twist we get the real issue:
The whole movie is an attempt to figure out if Miles killed Andy, or if someone killed Andy on behalf of Miles.
Who cares?
Seriously, who cares? What difference does it make? Either way she is dead, she was screwed over by her friends, and Miles is responsible. The movie builds to nothing, it’s in pursuit of nothing. And maybe I could excuse that, if there were some fun or interesting scenes or characters. That isn’t the case. The dialogue is boring and hamfisted. The characters have no chemistry. It says a lot that I saw this movie two years ago, and couldn’t remember any characters or plot points or scenes.
To be forgettable is one thing, to be stupid is another. To be forgettable and stupid is unforgivable.