It’s approaching two decades since Rian Johnson announced himself as one of genre cinema’s most intriguing young talents. His debut feature, Brick, a high-stakes high school noir with a clockwork plot and killer script, set the tone for what was to come – not least its opening shot of a dead body lying face down in the dirt. Aside from a sojourn in a galaxy far, far away, Johnson’s film career has remained grounded in murder and mystery ever since, from the swizzling exploits of The Brothers Bloom, to the time-skipping thrills of Looper, to the yarn-spinning larks of Knives Out. Never one to repeat the same trick twice, Johnson is back with Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, another slickly constructed whodunit that expands the world of his previous film while reacquainting us with Cajun crime solver extraordinaire, Benoit Blanc.
LWLies: Glass Onion is not a direct continuation of Knives Out. You have Daniel Craig returning as Benoit Blanc, but it’s a new story, new cast. Was it always the idea not to do a direct sequel?
Johnson: Yeah, that was always the intention, even before we knew we were going to keep making these movies. The notion was, if we can make more, then they should be like mystery novels. Each one should have a new cast of characters, its own setting, its own unique tone, and most importantly its own reason for being. It’s the way Agatha Christie would do it.
And what about Daniel? He’s become almost like your Poirot figure.
I’ve been lucky to have had good relationships with a bunch of different actors over the years. But it’s rare that you end up being in the same lifeboat as someone like Daniel Craig. Thank god we like each other, because this
