by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

“I told you about the fool on the hill, I tell you man he’s living there still,” could have been written about a Rian Johnson character. Of course, it predates any of his films by decades, as it is a lyric from The Beatles’ “Glass Onion,” but Johnson’s choice to borrow it for the title of the first Knives Out sequel is apt, as it fits with a few of the themes that run through his work to date. Rian Johnson protagonists are often fools, whether running toward or away from their destinies. And of course the suspects in murder mystery stories are often the biggest fools of them all, for thinking they can get away with it, especially once a World Famous Detective shows up. 

MovieJawn had a chance to chat with the writer-director about Glass Onion during his appearance at the Philadelphia Film Festival. To listen to the full conversation, join MovieJawn’s Patreon. 

Aside from his protagonists’ resistance to destiny, the other major througline to Johnson’s work is humor. He has worked across several genres so far, and all of his work has a comedic bent to it. But none of his films are sendups, rather, Johnson says he is “trying to do the genre well. I’m not trying to examine it or parody it or what have you,” In the case of Knives Out or Glass Onion, “I’m trying to write a great mystery. I hope the humor in it comes not from jokes but always from the situations and characters. It’s important to me with anything, that my heart is always going to be engaged with the thing, at a stab at doing something really well.”Longtime fans will recall Johnson’s sometimes anarchic appearances on The Filmcast over the years, and the director often uses humor as a way to surprise or subvert expectations.  Johnson does provoke with humor at times, another reason that “Glass Onion” fits as a title for one of his movies, as it is the only Beatles song that actively trolls its audience, “the walrus was Paul.” 

The dandy detective Benoit Blanc, the central character of Johnson’s whodunits, is like Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes. While he is the main character, the cases he’s involved in solving are the real story. Blanc glides through them, tracing the arc of “gravity’s rainbow,” as he explains in Knives Out but he is an unchanged participant. If he plays the fool, it is in the Shakespearan sense, a way to disarm his quarry while speaking the truth. 

Of course, Benoit Blanc is not Rian Johnson’s first detective. His debut feature, Brick, was not a whodunit, but a hardboiled noir, drawing on Dashiell Hammett rather than Agatha Christie. It remains impressive, not for the novelty of setting a 1940s tinged story at a contemporary California high school, but for the execution. It’s not a parody or even a loving send up, but Johnson leads his cast in playing it straight. Not only does it make the character stakes resonate, more, but you can watch Brick and it will work even if you are not familiar with its influences. Detectives of any flavor are truth seekers, and murder is sometimes used by those believing in their destiny so strongly that they will kill to claim it.

In both Brick and The Brothers Bloom, the central characters are not self-aware. Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrian Brody) know they are con men, of course, but they don’t know they are in a con artist movie. Nonetheless, they push against the conventions of the genre in the form of how they wrestle with the “rules” of confidence games. By the end of that movie, Stephen has pulled perhaps the perfect con, freeing him, his brother, and Penelope (Rachel Weisz) from the bounds of their playbook. 

The most literalized version of this theme in Johnson’s filmography so far was in his time travel neo-noir Looper, The central character, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis), interacts with himself at a different point in his life, and is thrust into the detective archetype while doing so. The older Joe wonders if he can change his own destiny, as he sees the younger version of himself on the same path and wants to prevent young Joe’s future. And in the final act, the younger Joe has to make the same choice when it comes to a potential evil. But can our future selves, even with their experiences, even know what is best for the past versions of themselves? These themes extended into his foray into works that aren’t original to Johnson as well. Johnson directed the Breaking Bad episode “The Fly,” which makes Walter White look like the biggest fool on the smallest hill. A bottle episode that only came about for budgetary reasons, it shows Johnson’s ability to seamlessly weave comedy into even the darkest stories. And in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, every single character’s arc sees them wrestling with their concept of destiny and if they even believe in it.

Returning to mysteries for Knives Out and its new sequel, Glass Onion, Johnson, who describes himself as a “whodunit junkie,” says that one of his goals with these movies is that the audience is “having so much fun, they forget they are supposed to be solving something.” That process starts with inventing the new characters for Benoit Blanc to go up against, and then casting. Johnson specifically called out Kathryn Hahn for bringing energy and laughter to the set each day, and Dave Bautista, who has “so much subtlety and depth to him” as a dramatic actor. 

When speaking about the genre in general, The Last of Sheila was one of the major inspirations, as was the Agatha Christie adaptation Evil Under the Sun. Johnson cites Peter Ustinov’s performance as his favorite incarnation of Hercule Poroit on screen. “The humor Ustinov found in the part, the kind of self-inflated importance of it. There’s a little of that element in Benoit Blanc,” he says with a grin. Muder mystery games even extended behind the scenes when the cast were in lockdown together during the Delta surge at a hotel in Belgrade. “We would rent out the roof and play Mafia, that’s my favorite mystery game because of the memories,” Johnson says. Mafia (or Werewolf in some variants) is a fantastic party game because, while it is simple to learn, the approach to the game is dependent on the other players. Johnson also shared that when playing with family, his nana won handily through longform deception. Johnson’s work is playful, but keeping the stakes true for the characters makes the emotions land when they are supposed to, and his characters are often funny people in very unfunny situations. 

There’s a lot of self-confidence required to pull all that off, and it comes partially from his longtime collaborations. His cousin, Nathan Johnson, has provided scores for all of Rian’s films except The Last Jedi, and cinematographer Steve Yedlin has been working with the director since they were 18 years old. For Johnson, the benefits of those partnerships is that it gives “you a comfortable base to push each other farther…when you have that kind of history with someone it forms a level of trust, and you can just be very honest with them and do your best work.” While Johnson’s love of whodunits also provides a familiar space to work in, it is easy to get the sense that he is still just getting started.