Looking Through A Glass Onion

This is a Rian Johnson Stan Substack

I’ve been working on my piece about The Last Jedi for a while, just to make sure it says everything I want it to say. I love that movie fiercely, and I want to express that as well as I possibly can which has slowed down that public declaration of adoration.

So here’s another clue for you all: Ahch-To Baby doubles as a Rian Johnson stan account. And Glass Onion, his follow-up to the modern classic Knives Out, is more proof of his precision. This is a director that uses arrows where other filmmakers use flamethrowers and hits bullseyes all day long.

I won’t spoil even one centimeter of Glass Onion, but I will say it is both a departure from and restatement of Knives Out. There’s a particular format at play, a movie that know how we watch movies, a movie that retroactively works by knowing we may be thinking it doesn’t.

Examples of how Johnson does this are all over The Last Jedi. In Episode VIII there are magical occurances that, in a typical film, would be left open to interpretation.