In “Glass Onion,” the thrilling sequel to 2019’s “Knives Out,” Edward Norton performs Miles Bron, a tech billionaire who invitations all his profitable, barely sycophantic associates to an island in Greece for a enjoyable getaway. Miles is extraordinarily rich and stuffed with out-of-the-box concepts; we be taught after we meet his worker Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.) that a few of his current ideas embody “Uber for biospheres,” “AI in canine = discourse,” and “youngster = NFT.” “Genius all the time appears like madness at first,” Lionel tells fearful buyers, and it is apparent the entire group, if not the entire world, consider this about Miles. His firm Alpha, we be taught, owns many others, together with Alpha Cosmos, Alpha Car, Alpha Shop.
For anybody listening to the information, Miles would possibly sound a bit acquainted. He would possibly sound quite a bit like Elon Musk. And on the finish of “Glass Onion” (*spoiler alert*), grasp detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) reveals Miles is not a tech genius in any respect; he is simply constructed his title on the backs of others, which is a standard critique of Musk, too.
Writer and director Rian Johnson has mirrored on whether or not Miles is definitely based mostly on Musk, and the reply is a bit difficult. Talking to Wired in a Dec. 23 interview, he defined, “There’s numerous common stuff about that form of species of tech billionaire that went immediately into it.” Musk was an inspiration, however not the inspiration. But Johnson admitted it is unusual to have created this film nicely earlier than Musk acquired Twitter however launch it when he is in the midst of the zeitgeist.
“It’s so bizarre. It’s very weird. I hope there is not some secret advertising and marketing division at Netflix that is funding this Twitter takeover,” Johnson stated. In the identical interview, he defined, “A pal of mine stated, ‘Man, that feels prefer it was written this afternoon.’ And that is simply form of a horrible, horrible accident, you understand?”
Johnson instructed Shondaland on Dec. 20 that he particularly stayed away from basing Miles on only one explicit individual. “When I used to be writing it, I discovered in a short time that it was very unuseful to consider any particular individual,” he stated. “In reality, it obtained very boring in a short time.”
He added: “The immediate it turned about making enjoyable of 1 man, it was not very enjoyable in any respect. What is attention-grabbing to me is our relationship as a society to billionaires, and the way we as Americans wish to throw poop at them and name them idiots, however we even have that unhealthy intuition of mistaking wealth for competence — wanting them to be Willy Wonka, this want achievement that they are going to resolve every part, the ‘do not guess in opposition to them; what in the event that they’re proper?’ That was extra enjoyable.”
