Knives Out and its poor sequel

When someone at Netflix with good taste realised that Knives Out is a great film, they purchased the rights and paid for the sequel. Glass Onion remains entertaining but lesser than the original. I recommend you start with the sequel, you won’t miss a thing plot-wise. The original is better, you will finish watching on a high note with greater satisfaction.

There are many things in Glass Onion I find annoying, boring and uninspiring. The plot leaves many questions. Mind the spoilers ahead.

• Glass Onion is all about tech and disruption but it gets so many things wrong, while the original is not about tech but it manages to pay much greater attention to detail, like destroying VHS tape with a magnet or one of the characters using Proton Mail when sending an incriminating letter.
• Everyone is hating rich tech billionaires, right? Let’s make them a villain.
• Why would you, as co-founder, leave a company to stop a dangerous project instead of leaking it to the press which would be much more effective and will leave you with all control to make sure what happened in the film is prevented?
• An why would you email the next step you going to take to your enemies, giving them a chance to stop you?
• What a great joke with a prop knife, I haven’t seen it before, and a trick with a bullet stopped by something in the victim’s pocket, how many times we have seen this cliche?
• The final explosion just seems lazy, and I am sorry, I don’t find destroying the greatest piece of art in history to be satisfying, even if it’s done for the greater good.

Both films are about class issues but the original does a much better job talking about racism, greed and unequally. Knives Out have a great character cast and are bolder and more interesting, it’s a little bit more complex. We have a nazi boy and his racist father, great. But we also see his “liberal snowflake” daughter who is not ashamed of risking Marta’s mother to being deported, worrying about the safety of her education and betraying her friend. The core message of the film is about kindness, hard work, selflessness, and sacrifice. What about Glass Onion? I only see fury and hate caused by the victim being treated unfairly.

I would like Netflix to take more risks, and instead, it seems they are going in the direction of maximising public appeal with safe sequels and black-and-white characters.