While I can agree with the issue of "it's impossible to figure it out since some information is left secret for half the movie", I did enjoy the mystery in this one more than in the first one. Maybe it's just because I found all of the subtle foreshadowing really entertaining and loved discussing all of the clues with my boyfriend afterward, and maybe it's because I liked how the movie repeatedly twisted expectations and toyed with the audience's perception of events which, and maybe it's both.
In general in this movie I think I liked the more twisty, less straightforward mystery than the mystery from Knives Out, mostly because I feel like in the original the twist is a bit too obvious and for most of the movie there wasn't a mystery we were expected to solve since from the get go we were supposed to trust Marta's account and the reveal that the bottles were tampered with wasn't super-obviously foreshadowed unless you knew what to look for. Meanwhile in this one while the twist was needed to connect the dots, the foreshadowing had been pretty well laid-out so I think it worked well enough.
I love the first movie, don't get me wrong, but I think Glass Onion just delivered on a sort of presentation and mystery style that I found way more interesting to analyze and think about.
To each their own, though: I can completely understand why someone would prefer the less confusing and less intentionally misleading plot of the first one, especially if you're more into classic mysteries, which I guess maybe I'm not.
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Yep, that I also agree wholeheartedly with. The film's narrative is extremely entertaining and fun to follow through while also offering those little touches that proved to be crucial foreshadowing and clues for events later on.
I actually love how in Knives Out we're tricked into believing how the case seemingly happened and how one character is at the center of it all. It's actually rather mindblowing that Rian did this intentionally to sway us from the fact that the case is more than it seems and that there were events in motion that someone else orchestrated specifically.
I like how in Glass Onion, there are enough breadcrumbs left for us in the first half that we can easily guess the true culprit way before the second half even begins. However, as mentioned, some of these breadcrumbs wouldn't really make sense until all the contexts are revealed in the second half.
Both movies are great in their own right, but as you say, they both have vastly different styles of narrative and give different takes on the 'whodunnit' genre: while Knives Out mostly follows the same conventions but with some new spins on it, Glass Onion breaks away from those conventions and even deconstructs some of them by pointing out how Blanc - who was expecting to see all these complexities he've been used to in other traditional cases - is tricked by the villain's plan (which is actually far simpler and straightforward) precisely because of it.
Right. Either way, both movies are very well made.
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Wackier and funnier, but also less elegant than the first movie (edited, minor spoilers)
In a nutshell, Glass Onion is about Rian making fun of his own filmmaking style for two hours.
The 'Disruptors', as Miles Bron describe it, are those who wanted to make big changes, to disrupt the status quo, to destroy conventions and push boundaries even if people don't want them to, just because they can. As it happens, this is exactly how Rian Johnson operates, and this is reflected right in the narrative itself.
Instead of having a straightforward narrative like the first film, Glass Onion has two 'halves' telling the same story. The first half is straightforward setting up for the mysteries and seemingly complex relations the characters have. Then the second half is basically retracing the first half in an entirely new context, giving us new information and important clues/motivations that have eluded us the first time.
This is a double-edged sword, though. On one hand, it feels like Rian 'cheated' his viewers with this narrative style: even viewers who can keep track of everything in the first half and all the potential clues and subtle character actions, it won't really all make sense until they've seen the second half where much more important information is revealed. On the other hand, Rian is just that talented at making a really entertaining narrative that we don't really notice this until everything falls into places.
This narrative choice in Glass Onion breaks conventional 'whodunnit' storytelling by intentionally obscuring important information from viewers for the majority of the movie (as opposed in 'Knives Out' where nothing is withheld and sharp-eyed viewers can figure everything out if they pay attention) does give a fresh new take on the genre, but it also cheats its audience out somewhat by essentially limiting what they know to what the movie has given them at that point, until everything comes to a sudden climax and Blanc unravels the mysteries and facts that we just learned barely 10 minutes ago.
As for other aspects, I praise how Rian made all the characters more active in the story this time. As opposed to Knives Out characters where only a few of them do have major roles in the story, everyone in Glass Onion feels more involved in the plot going on. That being said, there's still the same common flaw that most whodunnit stories share: you have many characters who can all be potential suspects, but you can easily cut down the majority of them as actual culprits to only about 1-2 characters that the plot really gives focus to, and Glass Onion is no exception.
All in all, Rian Johnson uses his mastery of telling an entertaining narrative and fun twists and turns to hide the fact that the case itself as a whodunnit story is rather simple (which admittedly is the entire point) and breaks conventional rules of the genre simply because he could. How much you'll love this movie depends on how impressed you are with the story and the characters, less so with its quality as a whodunnit story.