Dreaming of a Blanc Christmas?
But don’t expect this sequel to be just like the ones we used to know.
“Each one of them must have its own reason for being and its own theme.
Daniel Craig and Rian Johnson on Entertainment Weekly’s 2022 Holiday Movie Preview cover.Kanya Iwana for EW
Sometimes with series or sequels, it can become weird, stratified, fossilized from the previous movies.
The fun thing to me is genuinely creating something fresh and new.”
Even with that vote of confidence, Johnson sought to re-create the original’s feeling of breathless uncertainty.
Daniel Craig and Rian Johnson on Entertainment Weekly’s 2022 Holiday Movie Preview cover.Kanya Iwana for EW
I just reminded myself of who he was."
“But the setting was almost window dressing.
“It’s not about tech billionaires per se, but power and big lies,” he explains.
Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’.NETFLIX
Exposing the hypocrisy of that power is Blanc.
“I underwrote the character,” he says.
“Benoit Blanc is the constant North Star of all of these movies.
But you have to think of him as the detective, not as the central character.
The story has to function in terms of the suspects, the murder, and the victim.
Benoit is weaving his way through that, but the dramatic stakes are never his.”
Kate Hudson.Kanya Iwana for EW
“I like the ambiguity of the character,” says Craig.
“I like leaving him a little bit up for people to guess about.”
For Craig, the key to Blanc is his fascination with other human beings.
Edward Norton.Kanya Iwana for EW
“He loves strangers,” Craig says.
I venture to play him as unjudgmental as possible.
He has to be open so people want to open up to him.
Leslie Odom Jr.Kanya Iwana for EW
He wants to disarm people and to alienate people with his smarts goes against his technique.”
Norton said yes toGlass Onionsight unseen.
“Rian creates characters that are terrible people,” explains Hudson, 43.
Kanya Iwana for EW
“They do terrible things all the time, and it’s delicious to watch.
“Rian doesn’t just pick people who are right for the parts,” adds Hahn, 49.
“He picks people who are right for the ensemble.
Kathryn Hahn.Kanya Iwana for EW
It feels egoless everyone is on the same playing field.”
“Everyone was a little giddy with the fun of it,” says Norton, 53.
But you’re free to feel that a lot of fun has gone into making it.”
Madelyn Cline.Kanya Iwana for EW
So many in fact that Johnson estimates that dozens didn’t make the final cut including that Bowie number.
(Psst, Netflix, can we get a supercut?)
“We’d show up at the beginning of the day.
Jessica Henwick.Kanya Iwana for EW
We’d play some chess, play some music.
We were there for the hang.”
“He didn’t seem like the happiest person on Bond, but onGlass Onionit was the complete opposite.
He was so much fun and always smiling and happy.”
Craig, no stranger to long-running franchises, admits he’d probably make these movies forever.
“I should be so lucky.”
Naturally, the sartorial supernova, Monae, 36, came prepared.
And she had fake mustaches and pipes.")
“I would ensure that I made it gruesome and interesting.
Each new death had to be something special.”
Most of the cast claims they were terrible at Mafia.
He remembers the game nights as a more shambolic affair.
(He’s being modest since the rest of the cast names Norton the unequivocal champion.)
They needn’t have worried.
“A lot of us hadn’t even seen the movie,“Hudson says the next day.
And then, the laughter started, and it did not stop.
“Rian has really taken the form and applied it to the modern world.
It walks that tightrope between a delightfully entertaining movie and commentary and satire to give it teeth.”
Cline says the skewering occasionally hit close to home while playing her social-media-obsessed influencer character.
Which brings us back, once again, to that central metaphor of the glass onion.
Ironically, revealing that hollowness only underlines the satisfying richness of Johnson’s work.
“He always manages to somehow make it relevant without being preachy,” says Craig.
Adds Monae: “It has something to say without beating you over the head with it.”
For Johnson, all of that is as orchestrated as one of Miles Bron’s games (His motto?
“Create a roller coaster, not a crossword puzzle”).
But it’s plotted to ensure it never pulls focus from the joy of the viewing experience.
“I feel like that’s an important balancing act with these movies.
But they always need to be, first and foremost, entertainment.”
