Culture Crash: A Review of “Glass Onion”

Over Christmas, a whole slew of new movies hit streaming services to capitalize on the many hours of binge-watching people had to spare. Through all the noise, though, the one that seemed to capture the attention of the culture the most was Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The film, which sees Daniel Craig return as Benoit Blanc, the offbeat genius detective first introduced in Knives Out. With Glass Onion, writer/director Rian Johnson made Blanc into a modern-age Hercule Poiroit from the famous Agatha Christie novels. Glass Onion, like the Christie novels, presents a familiar detective in an entirely new case, making it easy for new audience members to follow the completely original mystery story at the movie’s heart.

Netflix scooped up the rights to Johnson’s Blanc universe after the runaway success of Knives Out, and if the attention garnered by Glass Onion is any indication, Netflix now has its first real Blockbuster franchise. Sure, the Kissing Booth movies did good numbers, and I enjoyed the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before movies, but Glass Onion captured the internet and Christmas dinner tables alike in a way that those movies never did.

Netflix is already set to produce a third movie in the series, and if Johnson keeps churning out charming, original mystery stories, it’s hard to see how a fourth movie wouldn’t be greenlit too. Here’s to many more cases to solve.

Glass Onion is now streaming on Netflix.