It’s fun to romanticize his foresight, but Rian Johnson is no prophet. Like most of us, he had no idea his film would coincide with such a specific moment in Elon Musk’s career. Johnson largely credits the coincidental parallels of “Glass Onion” with current events as a reality of writing satire and approaching a subject tied to the moment.
“I had no idea. I mean, also I was just riveted along with everyone else just as ‘Holy crap, this is happening in the world right now. What’s going to happen?'” Johnson explained. “That’s kind of, you know, the scary interesting thing about the approach of just kind of not trying to be timeless but really trying to write to the moment in a way. You don’t know how it’s gonna go. And so, it was very, very surreal. It was really, really weird. It felt like maybe, you know, we were just getting trolled at some point.”
A key point Johnson wants to emphasize about both Benoit Blanc mysteries is that while they were written with modern-day sociopolitical issues in mind, Johnson believes his movies have a longevity and universality that is often times overlooked in favor of the more instantly gratifying aspects. He expanded:
“The other thing is, I mean, you know, with this movie and also with the first movie I feel like — I mean I will say, in a way, all this stuff that’s happened with billionaires very recently — I’m looking forward to the movie living beyond that. And, I feel like that has kinda taken a lot of focus in terms of what the movie is about, and for me […] I don’t find just the idea of ‘rich people are jerks’ to be that interesting.”