Note: This post contains spoilers for “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”
Media personality Ben Shapiro missed the point of “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” in a lengthy Twitter thread lodging his complaints about the story and the film’s politics, and his lukewarm takes were met with significant pushback on social media the weekend that the film hit Netflix.
“Glass Onion” (once again written and directed by Rian Johnson) follows clever detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), who is back to solve yet another murder mystery. Tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) sends out a puzzle box to his group of friends — a politician (Kathryn Hahn), a canceled model (Kate Hudson), her assistant (Jessica Henwick), a men’s rights YouTuber (Dave Bautista), his girlfriend (Madelyn Cline), a scientist who works with Bron (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Bron’s former business partner (Janelle Monáe) — that invites them each to his Greek island to play a murder mystery game.
Bron’s friends are not only mega-rich like him, but have a massive amount of social influence and are thought to know something that others don’t. However, as the film goes on, it’s clear that rich people aren’t the greatest people nor are they smarter than anyone else. In fact, they might be a bit stupid.
Though Johnson wrote this film long before Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, “Glass Onion” still serves as an allegory for living in the era of Musk, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, and for lack of a better term, dumb Silicon Valley tech bros. Unsurprisingly, Shapiro didn’t get the irony of Norton’s character, the movie’s other campy tropes, or its larger message. So, he went on a Twitter tirade about it the morning after Christmas.
“The story itself is the purest form of incredible laziness,” he began. “It relies on not one, not two, but three bad writing tropes: an identical twin, a comprehensive journal, and a moron of a murderer. You can write your way out of literally any scenario given an identical twin (which removes the need for linear coherence), a comprehensive journal (which explains everything) and a moron for a murder (which removes the necessity for plot logic).”
He continued: “Rian Johnson’s politics is as lazy as his writing. His take on the universe is that Elon Musk is a bad and stupid man, and that anyone who likes him – in media, politics, or tech – is being paid off by him. This is an incredibly stupid theory, since Musk is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in human history (how many rockets has Johnson launched lately?), and it’s a foolish conspiracy theory to boot.”
“What about all the people who like Musk? They’re dumb and corrupt, too (which means you need no logic for them, so more bad writing!). This means that all Miles’ friends/supporters are still “sucking the golden teat” for Miles/Musk because he keeps signing them checks,” Shapiro concluded. “In Johnson’s bizarro-world, taking down the most powerful and rich person in the world is something nobody would consider. Weird, since he just made a $40 million movie trying to do just that.”
Some users called out Shapiro for missing the point of the movie.
Others just took this thread as an opportunity to diss Shapiro.
