[Editor’s Note: The following story contains spoilers for “Glass Onion.”]
Just because Miles Bron is an idiotic billionaire tech bro doesn’t mean he’s a reference to other idiotic billionaire tech bros, according to his creator, “Glass Onion” writer-director Rian Johnson.
As played by Edward Norton, Miles is the kind of rich guy who will pay to house the Mona Lisa in his home for a period of time and host lavish parties for friends, not to mention confidently using so many malapropisms only a cis heterosexual white male could get away with them. But just because Elon Musk is in the news every day now doesn’t mean that Johnson was taking direct aim at him while writing the script.
“There’s a lot of general stuff about that sort of species of tech billionaire that went directly into it. But obviously, it has almost a weird relevance in exactly the current moment,” Johnson told Wired. “A friend of mine said, ‘Man, that feels like it was written this afternoon.’ And that’s just sort of a horrible, horrible accident, you know?”
Johnson also spoke about the modern-day archetypes with which he peopled his list of suspects, from the outsider politician to the athleisurewear entrepreneur. “Once I had a tech billionaire at the top of the suspect pyramid, then the type of friends that they would have and the tenor of everything came together,” Johnson said. “Because the intent was to accurately reflect what it’s been like to have our heads in the middle of the cultural sphere for the past six years. It’s a pretty nightmarish kind of carnival, Fellini-esque inflated reality right now.”
As for the uncanny timing of the film amid months of controversy for Musk and Twitter, Johnson said, “It’s so weird. It’s very bizarre. I hope there isn’t some secret marketing department at Netflix that’s funding this Twitter takeover.”
Johnson previously spoke out about the marketing of the film — specifically his dismay at the addition of the subtitle “A Knives Out Mystery.”
“I’ve tried hard to make them self-contained,” Johnson told The Atlantic about the “Knives Out” films, which follow Daniel Craig’s dandy detective Benoit Blanc as he solves different complex mysteries with new casts of characters. “Honestly, I’m pissed off that we have ‘A Knives Out Mystery’ in the title. You know? I want it to just be called ‘Glass Onion.’ I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling.”
Just because Miles Bron is an idiotic billionaire tech bro doesn’t mean he’s a reference to other idiotic billionaire tech bros, according to his creator, “Glass Onion” writer-director Rian Johnson.
As played by Edward Norton, Miles is the kind of rich guy who will pay to house the Mona Lisa in his home for a period of time and host lavish parties for friends, not to mention confidently using so many malapropisms only a cis heterosexual white male could get away with them. But just because Elon Musk is in the news every day now doesn’t mean that Johnson was taking direct aim at him while writing the script.
“There’s a lot of general stuff about that sort of species of tech billionaire that went directly into it. But obviously, it has almost a weird relevance in exactly the current moment,” Johnson told Wired. “A friend of mine said, ‘Man, that feels like it was written this afternoon.’ And that’s just sort of a horrible, horrible accident, you know?”
Johnson also spoke about the modern-day archetypes with which he peopled his list of suspects, from the outsider politician to the athleisurewear entrepreneur. “Once I had a tech billionaire at the top of the suspect pyramid, then the type of friends that they would have and the tenor of everything came together,” Johnson said. “Because the intent was to accurately reflect what it’s been like to have our heads in the middle of the cultural sphere for the past six years. It’s a pretty nightmarish kind of carnival, Fellini-esque inflated reality right now.”
As for the uncanny timing of the film amid months of controversy for Musk and Twitter, Johnson said, “It’s so weird. It’s very bizarre. I hope there isn’t some secret marketing department at Netflix that’s funding this Twitter takeover.”
Johnson previously spoke out about the marketing of the film — specifically his dismay at the addition of the subtitle “A Knives Out Mystery.”
“I’ve tried hard to make them self-contained,” Johnson told The Atlantic about the “Knives Out” films, which follow Daniel Craig’s dandy detective Benoit Blanc as he solves different complex mysteries with new casts of characters. “Honestly, I’m pissed off that we have ‘A Knives Out Mystery’ in the title. You know? I want it to just be called ‘Glass Onion.’ I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling.”