Back in 2019, premiered Knives Out, a masterful film that took all the elements of the whodunit, added some layers of social commentary, in order to create a film that turned the genre on its head. Its success was not only from a critical point of view, but also from a financial standpoint. In one of the few good news of 2020, it was announced that a sequel will be made.

Good news up to now, but, there is a problem for those -like me- who believe is difficult to catch lightning in a bottle more than once. However, before the fans started to ask questions like “How do you make a sequel to a film as good as Knives Out?”, or “Does the film really deserve a sequel?”, Neflix stepped in to confirm that they had bought the rights – for around $469 million- and that two sequels had been greenlit.

If Netfilx had existed before, we would have sequels of films like Apocalypse Now, Casablanca (with a prequel focused on the early years of Rick Blaine) or The Third Man.

I am more than aware that Knives Out is not as good as those three previously mentioned films, and considering it ended in a fitting conclusion, I am of the opinion that no sequel was needed. But, one thing is for sure, if the second entry in the BBCU -Benoit Blanc Cinematic Universe- was as good as the first one, nobody was going to complain.

However, Rian Johnson (who wrote and directed the first film) is not a person who likes to create something perfunctory. Along the lines of directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, Johnson is not a conventional thinker who enjoys doing the same thing he has mastered before, therefore, it would be foolish to sit and expect a re-hash of Knives Out, especially keeping in mind the time Johnson was given the director’s chair in The Last Jedi.

You might like it. You might hate it, but one thing is certain: there is nobody indifferent to a film in which we got that marvellously unnecessary shot of Luke Skywalker enjoying some fresh milk. This shot, together with the one in which he tosses the lightsaber away (and a few other things I will not discuss here), should have been enough to make us aware that Johnson does what he wants, whether his audience goes along with it or not.

So, what do we have in Glass Onion? There is a mystery, but it is not a mystery as straightforward as one might expect. There is a big cast (with names like Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Dave Bautista, Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr, among many famous names that pop up for a couple of scenes). The set design is as excessive as it is a joy to behold, and the film as a whole is original and worth watching.

Thankfully, Glass Onion has been made as a standalone sequel to the first film, not a continuation of the story, as the only repeating character is Blanc (who is introduced here having a bath whilst playing a match of Among Us against some familiar faces). He is suffering from despair, he cannot survive without a mystery to solve. The parallelism with Hercule Poirot is never hidden, as Agatha Christie is one of the sources of inspiration for Johnson.

Although Johnson has tried to turn everything that made the first film a success up to eleven, if you judge the sequel by the sum of all its parts it is undoubtedly inferior in all aspects.

Its effort to reinvent the whodunit yet again, has resulted in a film that is clunky and feels too aware of what it wants to do, as if saying to its audience, “I am very clever, see, do you get it?”. Its critique on social classes is too broad and does not have the punch of the first one. The cast is not terrible (Norton feels like the MVP of a film that actually does not have that much of Craig), though their roles are too one-dimensional to be perceived as real people – and there are too many famous names being dropped and too many cameos to be funny. Finally, despite the attention to detail of the mansion, and the beauty of the location, it all feels too much, too many colours, too many masterpieces, too much of everything.

Is hard to be mad at a film like this, though. Personally, I am not a big fan of it, but when you consider that Johnson made Knives Out as a return to the mystery genre, and now he finds himself with plenty of cash to play around with and do whatever he wants, he is not going to go along the easy route and deliver something we expect… and we should be thankful for that.

Furthermore, this expansion of the BBCU might not have been on our mind on the first place, but it was on Johnson’s, and it feels as if he is enjoying himself, trying to reinvent the wheel in the process. So, try to enjoy the ride as much as possible, because it will be a bit bumpy.