Knives Outs (Rian Johnson, 2019-2025)

[knives]

I’ll come out as another lover of this movie. Maybe my favorite Johnson with the sub Wes Anderson playing with chronological setting being a particular satisfying part for me. I found the plot mechanics to be secondary to this clash which is probably what helped me to enjoy this as Agatha Christie mysteries are among my least favorite anything.

[DarkImbecile]

When I saw you posted to this thread, I really wanted you to dislike this for a totally ludicrous reason so I could reply “Knives, out”

[knives]

I could still do that. Um, not enough ass shot of Chris Evans?

[therewillbeblus]

I liked this a lot more on a revisit, as the absence of mystery allowed me to attend to the assorted ingredients Johnson pours into this comprehensive vision. I knew he was doing a lot, but the degrees of ambition run a lot deeper than I remembered, especially the narrative trajectory, which pulls from all characters, not only Craig's Southern Poirot or de Armas' innocent moralist. The first act could have easily failed, as we get visually reconstructed memories from ten-plus people with a mixture of outright lies, falsehoods-by-way-of-willful-perspective, and hidden truths, yet Johnson doesn't only make it work but translates this arrangement into an extremely digestible flow.

Helping out here are the colorful details, and they're embedded and layered in nearly every scene. The intricate architectural blueprints of the house come clear to us across a series of scenes without revealing this as their purpose. The three detectives' dynamic presents a diversity in personality resembling both comedy troupes from film history and America as it is now, with Stanfield breaking his detective role seamlessly with blunt, witty slang to illustrate his points, and Segan never even attempting to become a detective, embodying a privileged, witless, branded third-wheel whose entire psychology seems to reject doing any actual work. Craig and de Armas are both fishes out of water in a New England charade of classist narcissism, and their affinity of foreignness is felt throughout as our surrogates to sniff the shit. We get plenty of cues to relate to the family early on, but Johnson pulls us away from identifying too strongly. I think he lets the audience off way too easy by shifting back to these two and 'other'ing the family from them and the viewer, and overall plays it very safe with the method by which he expresses the obvious cultural references, but hey, they still work fine on the surface in step with the film's congenial tone.

The references that do work for me though aren't the loud political gags, but smaller details pasted in the cracks. Even the significant prop of Naloxone works on name-recognition following its ubiquitous prevalence in the opioid epidemic (at least in the Boston area, a sizable chunk of people I know have it on hand here), and speaking of, it’s ultimately a great anthropological study of the concealed hypocrisy in the upper class of Boston suburbs, and Northeast egocentricity in general. Meg is the most frustrating character of them all, one that the film makes a point to exploit but whom de Armas forgives effortlessly, and if we read between the lines we can pity Meg for wanting to do the right thing but reacting wrongly in a silver-spoon fight/flight mode when her privilege of tuition at Smith College is threatened. And I don't mean pity because she's got a fair point to turn on her friend and put actions in motion to ruin her family's life, but because her worldview has given her no tolerance to what kind of problems one needs to sacrifice their morals for, and so this is her bar, tragic and pathetic at once. The shells of microaggressions in New England are expressed in many ways here, from racism and self-pity clumsily hidden under a thin sheet of progressiveness to selfishness manifesting as kindness and empathy, but the depiction of moral relativism applied unknowingly whenever stimulated is an apt description of the 21st century sensitization effect. Johnson magnifies, with bitter humor, how the coddling generation isn't a post-9/11 gen x phenomenon but extends all the way up to boomers who don't even know it. Plummer and de Armas' warmth contrasts with nearly everyone else to optimistically proclaim that the world belongs to the humble and the grateful.

On a purely cinematic level, the film is very fun, and I don't care so much that everything is so contrived- that seems to be the point. Luck and skill are balanced here- and the latter is demonstrated by ridiculously superhuman mental gymnastics we aren't privy to and.. holding back vomit, in the classical definition of "skill." However, the skill of humanistic development, of being kind and moral against self-preservation- or as an advanced form of it, is what matters, and it's somehow presented to us in a recycled motion without ever feeling at-odds with the vibe of forward-momentum entertainment- quite the opposite, actually, often lending itself to being explicitly part of the action. And who doesn't want to give a Fuck Off stare to one's enemies, as a quiet form of violence set to Sweet Virginia?

[DarkImbecile]

Netflix buys the rights to two sequels for $450 million(!)

[captveg]

I get that this is Netflix paying out Lionsgate's expected box office returns on the two films, but $450m on two films just for the rights to make them? Assuming they can make both of them for under $100m total (the first film had a $40m budget), that's a conservative estimate of $550m spend on two movies. And that's if production costs stay essentially flat. Unreal.

The streaming wars heating up for sure.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

According to this, it doesn't sound like Lionsgate is getting anything from Netflix, since Johnson and his co-producer Ram Bergman own the IP and the the deal for the original gave Lionsgate no rights to sequels. I assume the $450m includes the money that Johnson and Bergman will use to make the movies (which I also suspect will come in north of $100m total—certainly salaries are going to go way up now that everyone knows this is a bona fide big-money franchise), but that's definitely a hefty payday on top.

[Monterey Jack]

Surreal to me that Johnson will personally make more money on Knives Out than on making a Star Wars movie.

[captveg]

According to this, it doesn't sound like Lionsgate is getting anything from Netflix, since Johnson and his co-producer Ram Bergman own the IP and the the deal for the original gave Lionsgate no rights to sequels. I assume the $450m includes the money that Johnson and Bergman will use to make the movies (which I also suspect will come in north of $100m total—certainly salaries are going to go way up now that everyone knows this is a bona fide big-money franchise), but that's definitely a hefty payday on top.

Thanks. That makes it a little more understandable (but still...)

[therewillbeblus]

Edward Norton and Dave Bautista have signed on to the sequel

[therewillbeblus]

Edward Norton and Dave Bautista have signed on to the sequel

+ Janelle Monáe

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Edward Norton and Dave Bautista have signed on to the sequel

+ Janelle Monáe

+ Kathryn Hahn

[Monterey Jack]

Guess it was Agatha All Along...

[Pavel]

Edward Norton and Dave Bautista have signed on to the sequel

+ Janelle Monáe

+ Kathryn Hahn

+ Leslie Odom, Jr.

[domino harvey]

This thread has turned into a game of "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing..."

[therewillbeblus]

Well today I'm bringing Kate Hudson

[therewillbeblus]

In case anyone missed Rian's release of the storyboards:

[Pavel]

Ethan Hawke and Jada Pinkett Smith join the picnic

[therewillbeblus]

The sequel's title has been announced: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

[soundchaser]

It really should be A Benoit Blanc Mystery, but I get why they’re choosing the less elegant route.

[Kracker]

Ugh i wish they wouldn't. I get that the studio is all like "People don't know what Glass Onion is. People know what Knives Out is! We have to have Knives Out in the title!" But people didn't know what Knives Out was at all and it was a big hit. Having 'From the director of Knives Out' or 'the sequel to Knives Out' on all the ads would have done the job.

[knives]

So I guess that means Mr. Kite was killed by Lady Madonna Jude in the strawberry field.

[Roger Ryan]

Great - the twist ending was already spoiled 54 years ago...

Spoiler

"The Walrus was Paul".

[Persona]

The title is GLASS ONION. I don't really care what subtitle Netflix marketing decides to attach to it.

[therewillbeblus]

Release date for Netflix is Dec 23