Rian Johnson Knows You Think ‘Glass Onion’ Is About Elon Musk And He Kinda Meant To Do That (But Not This Much)
If you watched Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery over the holidays, it’s hard not to see the parallels between Edward Norton’s tech billionaire Miles Bron and embattled Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Those parallels feel particularly poignant following Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter, which has done significant damage to his reputation as some sort of wunderkind genius who will save the planet. However, according to Glass Onion writer/director Rian Johnson, he honestly didn’t mean for Norton’s role to hit Musk that hard. It just sorta happened.
When asked during a recent interview with WIRED if he’d ever make a movie about Twitter’s downfall, Johnson joked, “Didn’t I just do that?” before explaining that the Musk parallels were a coincidence because he wrote the film during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. That’s two years before Musk randomly tried to flex on the social media world by buying Twitter.
Here’s what Johnson told WIRED about Norton’s character, who was supposed to have a bit of Musk in him, but not this much:
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. 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?
So there have you it. Glass Onion is kinda about Elon Musk, but only because he leaned way too hard into being an evil tech bro billionaire right before the movie came out, which no one could’ve predicted, but probably should have.
In the meantime, you can see Twitter having an absolute field day with Glass Onion‘s (slightly) inadvertent takedown of Musk:
There's an Elon Musk documentary on Netflix under the name of Glass Onion, and I cannot recommend it enough. pic.twitter.com/zPUiGdviEG
— Prashanth Srivatsa (@prashatsa) December 24, 2022
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is the MASTERFUL critique of Elon Musk, and the whole if tech bro culture, I NEVER expected from a comedy murder mystery.
It's the fuckin' Citizen Kane of our time and it's FUCKING hilarious. OH MY GOD.#KnivesOut2 #GlassOnion #KnivesOut
— Dr Robotica (@Rhube) December 23, 2022
More people need to see “Glass Onion” to appreciate how Rian Johnson tried to creat a sort of ur-billionaire character out of composite parts, and yet Elon Musk somehow stumbled backwards into fully inhabiting the character this year. It makes me chuckle. pic.twitter.com/fiM6g399eB
— James Van Fleet (@HorrorFilms101) December 21, 2022
ok I get that Elon Musk was spiraling long before buying twitter but it's actually very difficult to accept that Glass Onion wasn't written and filmed in the past couple of months
— Dev (Parody) (@Dervine7) December 26, 2022
Glass Onion landing on Netflix right when Elon Musk is in the heat of blowing up Twitter: pic.twitter.com/APmP99MZyE
— Stuart P. Bentley (@s@stuartpb.com) (@stuartpb) December 24, 2022
Holy shit Rian Johnson releasing Glass Onion in a time where the whole world see Elon Musk as a sociopathic dumbass is incredible timing. Just like when Animal Crossing released during the pandemic.
— Toulou TouMou (@Le_Toulousaing) December 23, 2022
Exhibit A: Who Elon Musk thinks he is.
Exhibit B: Who Elon Musk actually is.#GlassOnion pic.twitter.com/viLhSQIDFT
— Ginsengaddict is looking forward to NACC (@ginsengaddict) December 24, 2022
Watched GLASS ONION again and I think it’s beautiful that Rian Johnson was like “I wonder if my class critique was a bit too subtle last time, let’s just dedicate 2.5 hours to pointing and laughing at Elon Musk, the world’s number one dumbass bitch”
— Abe Goldfarb (@AbeGoldfarb) December 26, 2022
elon musk watching glass onion
pic.twitter.com/juHM92jcsO— ivy (@ohhhhherewego) December 23, 2022
I can't believe Elon Musk spent $44 billion to advertise for Glass Onion
— Django Wexler (@DjangoWexler) December 28, 2022
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is available for streaming on Netflix.
(Via WIRED)