Benoit Blanc made his big comeback last month in Glass Onion, the sequel to Knives Out. And while he solves the case, the whole murder mystery isn’t flawless. Review of plot inconsistencies.
Spoiler alert! This article reveals key plot elements of Glass Onion. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read on.
Released last month on Netflix, Glass Onion celebrates the return of Benoit Blanc, camped by Daniel Craig, who left to solve a new mystery. In a very different tone from At Knives Out, Rian Johnson’s film delves into the themes of injustice, elitism and manipulation. While Rian Johnson struggles to renew the whodunit genre, there are still some weaknesses in his screenplay.
No one realizes Andi is Helen
This is certainly the major point that makes watching Glass Onion tick. The big twist about Andi’s (Janelle Monáe) true identity – that she’s actually her twin sister Helen – comes halfway through the film and we learn that only Benoit Blanc knew about it from the start.
The problem is, Andi was supposed to be close to the other Disruptors, so it’s absurd that none of them recognize her. Characters like Claire (Kathryn Hahn) sensed Andi was acting differently but didn’t investigate. It’s all the more absurd when you think of Miles (Edward Norton) who looks shocked at Andi’s arrival when he was the one who murdered her.
He has good reason not to tell the others, but it doesn’t make sense that the others didn’t notice.
John Wilson/Netflix © 2022
No one gets cut by the shards of glass
Like a house of cards, the villa that gives the film its title was doomed to be destroyed from the start. It was therefore inevitable that the plot ends with a huge explosion and therefore logically, shards of glass flying in all directions. But oddly, no characters are harmed when the building begins to collapse around them. However, they should have been lacerated.
Helen even goes so far as to literally crawl over the broken glass at one point and yet emerges completely unscathed. As for Miles, he stands right next to another shard of glass and also walks away without a scratch. We want to believe that it is the magic of cinema, but at this point, it defies all logic.
Duke’s allergy
If the film does not lack irony, it injects a good dose of it into the murder of Duke (Dave Bautista) whose character is killed because of a pineapple allergy. We guess that Rian Johnson chose this death to better make fun of the character: a guy with impressive muscles and a real masculinist who gets knocked down by something that seems innocuous.
Still, when you think about it, there’s really no reason an allergy would kill him if he had taken the necessary precautions. Like anyone who knows they have a life-threatening allergy, Duke should have had an epinephrine injector with him. It’s possible he left it in his room, but he should have had one available if he had an allergy of concern.
Even without an injector on hand, because of his macho image, the others (in particular Benoit Blanc) should have realized that he was in anaphylactic shock. His face turning red and the fact that he couldn’t breathe were clear signs.
John Wilson/Netflix © 2022
The loan of the Mona Lisa
Much of the film’s climax revolves around the Mona Lisa. Miles Bron is obsessed with Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, and he flies her to his private island to be seen. He mentions that the Louvre museum allowed him to do this because he was losing money during the pandemic.
Fortunately, the Mona Lisa was not destroyed as shown at the end of the film. But the way Miles got her back is totally unrealistic. First of all because the Louvre does not really own the Mona Lisa. It is the French State which is the owner. If it is possible that the Mona Lisa is loaned, it would certainly not be under the conditions described in the film.
The mystery box sent to Andi
At the start of the film, Miles sends a mystery box to each of his guests with this challenge: “Are you smart enough to open my mystery box?“Andi receives the box when she is dead, murdered by Miles. That’s a hell of a flaw in the script. Not only had Miles murdered her before the events of the film, but before that, he had fallen out with her following their trial. And despite all that, he sends her a box! Which makes no sense since he ended their friendship by dispossessing her of her idea.
As a bonus, remember, Helen mentions that she found the mystery box in the garage when she went to her sister’s house. It is therefore likely that Andi already received the box before his death. The other question is why Miles didn’t take it with him when he left his house after committing the murder. We can console ourselves for this ineptitude by saying that it is clearly not the most intelligent character of Glass Onion.