The new Glass Onion trailer — okay, technically we’re supposed to call it Glass Onion: A Knives Out mystery — isn’t so much knives out as “sun’s out, guns out.”
Not just because many in the cast — including Dave Bautista and Kate Hudson — are dressed (or undressed) for the pool, but also because Bautista is flashing an actual gun — a raising of the ol’ stakes in the saga of savvy investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). The Knives Out sequel finds him leaving behind the creaky old mansion of the first film in favor of a sunny island, populated by the likes of Edward Norton, Jessica Henwick, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Madelyn Cline, and Janelle Monáe. It looks like they’re expecting a fun, pretend murder mystery — which of course turns into a real one.
“I was writing [Glass Onion] during the lockdown of 2020, and I wanted to be on a beach vacation more than anything,” Johnson explained to Tudum, Netflix’s promotional arm.
The streamer paid more than $400 million for the rights to Glass Onion and Knives Out 3, whatever it turns out to be called. But that’s not why Johnson makes them, obviously.
Rian Johnson directs Janelle Monáe while shooting Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
“So much of why I’m so into making these is that they just do bring me an intense amount of joy. Working with Daniel in this genre and having fun with it and the humor, getting to work with a new group of actors every time, everything about it just brings me happiness,” Johnson told Tudum.
Interest is high: More than 350,000 Knives Out fans had viewed the teaser trailer — which you can watch above — within an hour of its release Thursday morning.
Puzzles figure heavily into the Glass Onion trailer, but don’t expect the movie to be one.
“The phrase I kept coming back to and talking about the first movie is, ‘It’s a roller coaster and not a crossword puzzle,’” Johnson says. “It’s a common mistake in writing whodunits, thinking that you’re making a crossword puzzle, and that the fun is that the audience is actually going to analyze all this and figure it out. I know when I’m reading or watching a whodunit, I always let go of the notion of figuring it out about a third of the way through it.”
Also, we haven’t seen Glass Onion and have no idea who the killer is, so no spoilers here. But it’s gotta be Ed Norton, right?
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will premiere in select theaters on a to-be-announced date and globally on Netflix on December 23.
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