So long as you’re mentioning those guys, IIRC you can connect some dots on first viewing upon repeatedly hearing about Bautista almost getting pancaked: first he mentions that the rich dumbass nearly did it to him, and we later hear that it happened to him near Andi’s place the night she was murdered — and that one-two punch later gets showcased in the exposition-heavy flashback, but one can note it beforehand and say okay, I see this fair-play revelation coming.
True, but I did love the scene where Jonae Monae’s character just looks at the puzzle box and decides to just smash it with a hammer!
In the other thread, somebody linked to an argument that Glass Onion wasn’t a mystery movie at all. It was a heist movie. It works much better in that context.
The neat thing about the smashing of the puzzle box:
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It’s a proper “Alexander slicing the Gordian knot” solution, ironically thinking outside the box in order to get into the box.
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It’s kind of how the “mystery” is solved. “Andi” tried the “cleverly get incriminating evidence to present in court/public” approach and failed, so she achieved her objective by literally smashing everything. Again.
Not to mention Blanc realizing that treating the mystery like a complex puzzle rather than just metaphorically smashing through to the root of it, which was that the murderer was a dumbass and the murder was done stupidly for stupid reasons.
I understand why it infuriates so many people - we like the “complex murder plot and clever detective unravelling it by following the clues” format, so a story in which the obvious guy commits an obvious murder obviously actually comes as somewhat of a shock. (That’s also setting aside those who were infuriated by its suggestion that the RL techbros they worship may not be the 5D chess grandmasters they’ve staked their worldview on.) It’s almost refreshingly uncomplicated.
It’s more obvious even than that (in retrospect). The dialogue is something like;
DUKE: You remember when you almost pancaked me at And…
MILES: Anderson Cooper’s party, yeah. [to Blanc] Cooper’s parties are legendary.
I mean… it’s right there. Duke mentioning Andi and Miles covering it in teh dumbest way possible. And I say that as someone who missed it.
I remember thinking Anderson Cooper was a really weird choice for a wild rager that Duke almost got killed at, but chalked it up to quirky storytelling.
Yeah, me too. And the Among Us cameos did set up a “celebs doing unexpected things” vibe. But “we just saw an idiot making up a dumb lie” option is right there.
When Bautista’s character mentioned early on that he was allergic to pineapple, I had half the plot figured out. Anytime a character mentions a food allergy in a movie you know it’s going to kill them.
See also: Chekhov’s blowtorch.
Haha, right. But the thing about Chekhov’s gun/blowtorch/whatever is that you know it’s going to be used, but not by whom and not on whom. With the food allergy half the unknowns are missing. It’s just lazy writing.
I’m glad to hear there are people who didn’t like it. I’ve tried twice to watch it and never got through the first episode. I felt like I had to keep trying since so many people loved it. So now I’m out!
It’s a movie, not a TV show. It doesn’t have episodes.
If you look closely, you can actually see Duke’s cell phone in Bron’s back pocket (after he bragged he didn’t own one) and Bron chucking Duke’s gun into the ice bucket. But of course, this all happens before the viewer knows they’re supposed to be significant, so they’re easily missed.
Oh, yeah, and Duke’s gun does indeed go missing right after Bron hugs him.
I liked it, but I was surprised they went with the most obvious possible person who could have committed the crime. Like I was along for the ride anyway, “whodunnit” wasn’t really what the story was about, but really? The enormously famous rich guy who had the most to lose is the one who did it? Shocker.
That was kind of the point, I think. There were twists in the plot, but one of the twists was that the murderer was not someone subtle. When you hear murderous hoofbeats, think narcissistic rich dudes.
I spent a few years as a plumber, installing the steel pipes that safely deliver flammable gas to your real world home. They just screw together with a little bit of lubricant, any idiot could do it. What flows through these pipes is either natural gas (methane) or propane, which are used for this purpose because they’re abundant and easy to work with. Methane and Propane require a pretty narrow range of fuel/air mix to burn. They are heavier than air and tend to stay low in a room.
Hydrogen is another beast entirely. It will ignite in a room with 4% hydrogen, it will ignite in a room filled with 75% hydrogen. A hydrogen explosion is more violent than a methane or propane explosion because the burning velocity is higher. Hydrogen is such a small atom that it will leak through anything less than specialized gas lines, so you can forget about the cheap black pipe I put in your house, trade it in for braised or welded tubing. Look up the hazards of “coal gas” and “town gas”, two hydrogen-containing fuel gasses used for heating and cooking in the early 20th century. Hydrogen fuel cells would be a superb way to power electric cars, except in involves carrying a tank of volatile hydrogen gas that is likely to result in a Hollywood-style explosion in an accident.
There are researchers interested in “metallic hydrogen” that forms in crushingly hot and dense places like the core of Jupiter, and I’ve read sci-fi stories that posit this miracle hydrogen would remain stable and metallic when the pressure is released, making it a fantastic fuel. I think that’s the idea they were going for in Glass Onion, or some similar “it’s like hydrogen but better” concept because hydrogen would definitely be better for everyone if it was safer and easier to work with. Obviously the point of the movie is this form of hydrogen is in fact not any safer, but Miles Bron is pushing it anyway because he is an idiot who thinks he’s immune from consequences.
But you and most people know gas is dangerous if not handled properly and act accordingly. The problem with Klear was it was a solid that people were led to believe is stable. People burned coal as fuel but generally treated it like a rock because most of the time it IS a rock; except when it’s a powder, it doesn’t explode.
However, Klear was in “fact” highly unstable. When Bron was about to toss it to Blanc, the governor and the techie, both of whom knew the whole story with Klear, looked very anxious. I said aloud (I watched the movie at home) that they were acting like it was a bottle of nitro in an old Western. That was the concern about having it in homes, etc.: imagine a basement bin of what most people think is coal but is actually really unstable nitro. 
Are you perhaps thinking of White Lotus?
Mystery stories that play with the “it’s never the most likely suspect” trope are definitely not unheard of in past tales.
I thought maybe TRC4941 was referring to the original Knives Out as the first instalment of this “franchise”, but your guess is as good as mine.