But the problem is, the whole murder plot has to rest on “she only found the napkin she’d misplaced some time after the trial.”
The napkin isn’t going to necessarily get her company back, but it is proof that all four of the shitheads committed perjury. She’s basically blackmailing them to say “help me take down Miles or I take down all of you.”
Sure, but they committed perjury by lying about that: it kind of has to be doing the heavy lifting in those courtroom proceedings, or else it wouldn’t have been the thing they’d lie about.
Okay, I think you can simplify the whole thing. Andi comes up with the company, founds it with Miles money. Lets say he owns 50.1%. The whole business with Klear happens, he dilutes her shares ala Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Savarin. She sues him based on “intellectual ownership of the company’s founding idea.” She wasn’t even thinking about the napkin as some important piece, because she figured her four best friends would back her up, considering they all kinda hate Miles. Instead, they lie in court.
Her finding the real napkin may not get the company back, but it takes down the four friends AND shows the world that Miles is a liar (remember he was showing off the napkin that he “happened” to find after the trial).
I wonder how some of the nitpickers make it through a film like Casablanca.
I mean, there was clearly gambling going on there!
What next, are you going to tell me these are the droids I was looking for?
My post was not about the courtroom. It was about the relative contributions of Andi and Miles to Alpha’s success. As I said:
I’ll keep it simple. Here are some statements:
- Andi is intelligent.
- Miles is an idiot.
- Andi and Miles team up to create and develop Alpha.
- Miles takes over the company and shuts out Andi.
- Andi sues Miles and loses.
- Andi would have won if she had the napkin.
- Andi finds the napkin and tells the other four.
- Miles finds out about the napkin, realizes that he will lose the company, kills Andi, and takes the napkin.
Is that a fair summary of what happened in the movie before May 13, 2000?
I’ll leave it there for now. I’ll wait for comments and clarifications.
I’ll say this, though: The legal explanations given by Miller, The_Other_Waldo_Pepper, Joey_P, Left_Hand_of_Dorkness, and AlsoNamedBort don’t make sense or are not consistent with what we are told in the movie. Stanislaus’ explanation makes sense:
In what ways?
Not to make this political but as an example: Donald Trump is, by many metrics, not very bright and yet by all reports was sufficiently skilled and cunning to bilk countless investors and others out of substantial amounts of money. Miles is similarly skilled and cunning at manipulating people to his benefit and their detriment without being intellectual in any real way.
Yeah, I’d like to hear this. I gave an example, based on a real world event. Nto saying that’s exactly how it happened, but just refuting the point of “There’s no way Miles could force Andi out of the company.”
I would amend this to “Miles finds out about the napkin, thinks that he will lose the company, kills Andi, and takes the napkin.”
In reality, once Andi is able to produce the napkin, a mutually beneficial arrangement could have been arrived at. Miles could have saved face and announced that he felt bad about Andi and paid her her “fair share” of the company. Andi, she was a Shithead too, probably would have taken it. Unfortunately, Miles is an idiot.
I would slightly change this. Andi is technically brilliant, but isn’t a genius at social skills. Miles is an idiot in most areas of life, but he’s a genius at social engineering.
Granted, when it comes to social engineering, Miles was born with a deluxe social engineer’s kit. But he’s really really good at using it.
I just watched this last night. Enjoyed it a lot, and have read this entire thread today. Some of my questions have been answered already, but there is one thing I noticed at the end that hasn’t been mentioned.
In the final shot, we close in on the side of Helen’s head and peeking through her hair is a red light coming from her ear that, to me, looked like an ear piece or something like that? Did anyone else notice that? Am I crazy? I haven’t re-watched the scene yet, but I’m pretty sure it was intentional zoom in to show that red light.
Looks like it’s just the flashing lights of the police boats reflecting off her earring.
Oh ok, that may be it. I wasn’t at home or I would have rewound it. (I guess rewound is an anachronistic term these days.)
Before I provide more explanation and respond to several posters, I’m wondering if anyone has any explanation for why Rian Johnson included a shot of the Alpha/Klear contract that Andi was about to sign? See 1:21:51 point in the movie.
The scene is the first time that we see Andi raise any objections to Klear. There’s no indication of any previous rift between Andi and Miles. And yet, the contract clearly shows that Andi has no title or corporate email address. She’s obviously not an Alpha employee. Why did Johnson create the contract the way he did? Strange, too, that a person’s title, address, cell number and email address are not usually on the first page of a contract, and I’ve never seen a contract with the signature line on the first page.
I did notice that Andi’s zip code and cell number are consistent with a home in New Rochelle, NY and Miles’ zip code is for the NYC financial core, so maybe Johnson wants us to figure out how long it took Miles to drive from his New York office to Andi’s home.
Johnson knew that the movie was going to be shown on Netflix so, by including a shot of the contract, it’s as if he’s practically telling viewers to pause and examine it. Any idea why?
(Damn, I did it again. I replied to AlsoNameBort. I meant a general reply.)
Another post, to explain my overall position on the movie.
I think that Glass Onion is the most intricately connected movie I’ve ever seen. Rian Johnson has done an amazing job of story telling by presenting the two halves of the movie as interconnected layers, with an incredible amount of consistency between the two viewpoints.
(BTW, did you notice that the movie starts with a white hand knocking on a black door and the second half starts with a black hand knocking on a white door?)
I think that such a movie calls for analysis that goes beyond the viewing pleasure. I’m trying to understand the screenwriting but I realize that I’ve focused on what I believe to be flaws. Sorry that I’ve come across like a bitter nitpicker. I hope that my subsequent posts will be a bit more positive.
In some ways.
She unsuspectingly sat down with Miles, after giving him a reason to put stuff in her drink and kill her, and so he — put stuff in her drink and killed her. And she got screwed over in court when she couldn’t produce the napkin that perjurer after perjurer after perjurer lied about — not just because that’s another example of her not suspecting that people would do what they had a reason to do, but also because she simply couldn’t recall where she’d put so important an item (that is, in something helpfully marked “Innovator’s Dilemma”).
She’s intelligent in other ways, though.
I thought that it would be revealed that Duke was a big faker and his gun was loaded with blanks. I didn’t buy that Andi’s little notebook or whatever could save Helen from a real shot from a badass gun.
Also Helen’s “real” Alabama accent was less convincing than Daniel Craig’s outrageous accent.