Can you really eat the rich when a hundred-billion-dollar corporation is footing the bill? It’s the unavoidable question eating away at the recent mainstream wave of anti-capitalist media, from Squid Game and The White Lotus to last month’s culinary comedy-thriller The Menu. It feels especially apt, though, when talking about Knives Out. The sequel rights to Rian Johnson’s 2019 murder mystery, where the decent and just are pitted against the monied and morally corrupt, were acquired from Lionsgate by Netflix in 2020 for an eye-watering $469m. But, to his credit, Johnson seems fully aware of the irony.
While 2019’s Knives Out was a leaner, meaner beast, rife with resentment towards liberal hypocrisy in the Trump era, its sequel Glass Onion shakes off some of its internal hypocrisy. It’s a film that’s lighter, brighter, and far more straightforwardly comic in approach, trading its predecessor’s shadowy, creaky Massachusetts mansion for the Mamma Mia splendour of a private Greek island. Knives Out may have bottled a cultural moment, but Glass Onion seems built for longevity: it’s populist entertainment with its head screwed on right. And there’s plenty of value in that.
