Which the witnesses would have to lie over and for which any physical evidence has been destroyed. (I understand that it's a movie, and it's mostly fine.)
I think destroying the Mona Lisa is enough to ruin most people's reputation. An investigation into how this could happen would reveal many things.
As for the broad characters and so on - did you see the first one? Not exactly subtle in which archetype of white liberal/conservative each character is.
What is politically interesting about the first and this one is how it clearly demonstrates that these wealthy people with different political ideologies all come together to defend their class interests when they're threatened.
Even in Glass Onion, none of these people turn their back on Norton until he's destroyed the Mona Lisa.
It's not a moral change of heart. They're protecting themselves by turning on Norton. Which was telegraphed way back at the beginning of the movie, that these people would turn on anyone to protect what they have.
There is a flashback when they are talking about Klear, in which somebody (either Janelle Monae, or Leslie Odom Jr.) mentions that Edward Norton wants to bet most of the assets of the company on this energy source. So it failing spectacularly would likely be devastating for him personally, and monetarily. I think the napkin testimony reversal from the friends was more about them abandoning him now that it was easy.
The ending made me hate the supposed "good guys" in this film so much. They literally destroy one of the most cherished works of art in the entire world and discredit a breakthrough technology, thereby diminishing the cultural heritage and future potential of billions in order to get revenge on the bad guy. Maybe this was intentional and some sort of dig at longtermism or something, but regardless, I did not appreciate it.
I read it as a critique of how the characters in the billionaire’s orbit could get sort of swept up in revolutionary fervor and seem to turn against him, but only up to the point of their own upper class sacred values (“cultural heritage”) getting stepped on.
You could view this as the film arguing that the crimes of the wealthy are only punished when they become an international scandal.
Gates and Musk (until recently) and many other billionaires have been able to pitch themselves as Good Guys basically right up until their Epstein connections came to light. And for some, this still doesn't matter much! Look at all the people in this very comment section arguing that billionaires are good and we're lucky to have them and maybe there should be even more.
Yes, if getting so angry you destroy a piece of cultural heritage makes one heroic, I would please like to exchange any culture in which that occurs for another.
So, what's the solution? Do we have a 100% wealth tax when someone's wealth hits $1 billion? Would the world have been better off if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had just packed it in when they made their first billion?
Sounds a lot like theories of spontaneous generation in biology. Is this your logic, “these things now exist, therefore they were going to exist anyway?”
Have you ever had an idea that eventually really became a product from someone else? There’s a good reason you’re not getting credit for it, and that someone else is. Edison’s “99% perspiration, 1% inspiration” applies here.
Only if no other person wanting to get rich stepped in. It *certainly* would not have been taken over suddenly by open source. So the question is, in fact, unanswerable.
I like Carnegie libraries and the Art Institute of Chicago and the children’s hospital in my town initially financed and endowed by a ranching heiress.
I don’t want to get into a “philanthropy shouldn’t exist and all culture and social care should be government issued” conversation right now because it’s exhausting. But I don’t happen to agree with that.
Change the tax code to be less complex. No loopholes. No incentives for “approved” behavior. No deductions. Establish a graduated tax that treats all sources and uses of income equally. When wealth is not rewarded with wealth, then you don’t have to tax it. Achievers should not be demonized, nor should they be allowed to manipulate the tax code to their advantage. In my experience, achievers are not motivated by wealth but rather by the sense of achievement. Some are simply satisfied with a job well done. Some want to be recognized. Money and acclaim is really only about how that is measured. Either way, getting it done is the goal. Not the money.
And finally... white collar crime must be prosecuted. If you lie, cheat and steal, there must be consequences equal to the crime. If your bad decisions cause harm to your workers and or customers, the individuals making those decisions should be punished. From the top down. Corporations don’t commit crimes. People do.
Bad decisions aren't necessarily criminal even if some people are financially harmed by them. All of us make decisions that seem bad retrospectively but at the time seemed quite proper
I agree that a decision should not be judged solely on its outcome. No one has a crystal ball and sometimes decisions must be made with only the information on hand. That is not what I’m referring to. Knowingly, and let me emphasize knowingly, misrepresenting the risks of a drug should be criminal.
For that matter, I don't know whether Dave Thomas was a billionaire, but by all accounts, he really was a nice old man. That said, people like Dave Thomas are remarkable for being the exceptions.
Buffett's job is to look after the owners of his business. He can't just give the store away. I'm sure the railroads would have been willing to exchange some
Sickleave is abused all the time. In critical industries, this cannot happen. That is why the federal government has the power to shut down railroad strikes.
Here in Chicago, where the unions have negotiated luxurious sickleave, the jails have a 70% sick call in after the final Four and Super Bowl. Things are not simple. Even if you wish they were.
I don't hate anyone. But I recognize that the way capital accumulates is through the exploitation that is by definition inherent in the capitalist mode of production. And since I think people are entitled to the product of their labor power then no one deserves to be a billionaire. I don't actually think they're all sociopaths. I think some are probably nice. I don't have any personal grudges against them but I still think none of them are entitled to their wealth.
Mostly preaching to the choir here, but the vast majority of people (in online English speaking discourses at least) seem unable to think in terms of structural critique, but only in terms of individual dunking/ cancellation etc. [Which, not coincidentally, has proved very useful for the likes of oil companies pushing concepts like the individual's carbon foorprint, etc.]
There have been a lot of these cathartic but ultimately toothless films and programmes about sociopathetic rich people over the last couple of years - Glass Onion, The Menu, Violent Night, Succession, etc.
At the risk of 'knowingness' posting: you're absolutely right, but why would anyone look to Hollywood in general and Rian Johnson - a Star Wars director! - in particular for serious structural critique of any kind, much less a Marxian kind? Of course he's going to deal in personalities and characters. He's operating inside the system, a system that's been extremely good to him and whose values he doubtless sincerely believes in.
He's hardly going to bare his teeth towards the billionaire class when he's pals with Bob Iger (a figure who would make a fascinating study for the kind of art Freddie alludes to in his article; a billionaire who's apparently a fairly decent guy, an extremely smart guy, doing a good-to-very-good job with an iconic beloved company... yet a guy who could still be very easily depicted as a malign force.) And even if he wanted to, it wouldn't get made.
It all feels like asking your butcher why he doesn't sell lettuce.
Sure in capitalist systems having more capital means you have more power, but what’s the alternative. Curbing the incentive to make money? In this case would leave us without the best space program in the world (10x cheaper than NASA?) best EV company in the world, solar panel roof tiles, PayPal and a less government controlled Twitter. And not to mention the satellite internet company that’s currently providing internet to underserved areas of the world- including free internet in Ukraine. Don’t most billionaire also pay astronomical taxes? I would argue that the kardashian millionaires of the world, or Bill gates doing dubious things with farm land and vegan products are of more concern. But again what’s the alternative? America has the most free to make money society and has the most billionaires, but also has the most innovation. And in a Democracy the people have an oversized influence on who gets elected, it’s fair to say the best person for the job and for a country rarely gets elected and it’s more typical to get flip flopping inadequacy or above average performance.
Ps I think the idiot billionaire in the movie was doomed because of the Mona Lisa being destroyed. The argument was that bad press would destroy his reputation. His new energy source blowing up the Mona Lisa, which he had borrowed - would crater his goals at the company and show the world how stupid he was. I also got the Elon take but felt it was much too obvious, same with the Joe Rogan take. Having more than a 1% knowledge of the real people you can see these are total make fun caricatures, not serious poking fun. Elon and Joe actually have depth and intelligence and values to them. I am also sure there actually are idiot billionaires and millionaires out there.
Overall I agree though, the movie was interesting but missed any deeper takes. It’s was all surface level fun and social commentary
Yeah I agree. It’s easy to poke holes in our overarching marker economy democracies, in particular the “everyone isn’t rich” or “ billionaires have unfair amounts of power and wealth”. But the alternatives are much worse. The fact of the matter is that a rising tide lifts all boats. The benefits of free market capitalism actually benifit the poor the most. The poorest person in the USA has it better than a good chunk of the word, definitely better than even the average person in Soviet Russia or China. I’ve seen homeless people that have entire teams of support workers, free housing and iPhones- this is payed all through taxes and innovation bringing costs of luxuries down.
I would argue there is also frustration the other way. I know there are tons of very smart, hard working people that have made incomes to feed and support their families, and are not super happy with giving 30-40 cents on the dollar to their government that isn’t run by the best and brightest because they handed out political “candy” to get elected. So it’s a complicated system but overall I feel quality of life of everyone has gone up in the last hundred years. Leave the billionaires alone
So spot on. I grew up in a military family and us know my history. There is no such thing as equal distribution of power. One group always has more. With capitalism and a democratic republic that power is transparent and accountable mostly
Billionaire's don't pay astronomical taxes nowadays because most of their wealth is typically tied up in equity in their company. Musk is only the richest man on earth because many people believe that Tesla will be one of the largest car companies on earth, etc. As you'll notice, his overall "wealth" has gone quite a bit down since Tesla stock started crashing. Like SBF, his wealth would go down signficantly if Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter crashed like FTX.
Figuring out how to tax those stock holdings is the issue with billionaires, because how do you tax it when they've not cashed out? This is why some believe taxing luxury goods astronomically - like the purchase of a private jet, jet fuel, expensive cars, clothes, property etc. - would be a better way of sharing that wealth.
Wealth taxes are stupid. Luxury taxes don't hurt the wealthy, they hurt the workers building the private jets, selling the jet fuel, making the clothes, etc.
And why the hell should a billionaire share his wealth. By definition it's his. If you want to confiscate his wealth and give it to others, just say so. Don't try to make is sound like it's a benevolent thing to take something from one person and give it to someone else.
If you were successful in taking Musk's wealth (which is almost exclusively tied up in equity in his companies), then as soon as you did, it would become worthless (even before you distributed it to others).
If somehow you were able to maintain the value of Musk's wealth before you distributed it, and you split it between every man, woman, and child in the world, everyone would get about $ 20.00.
Congratulations - you've destroyed several companies and the thousands and thousands of jobs that went with it, and wiped out the wealth of many thousands of individual investors, all so everyone could get $ 20.00.
And, I would think you would want to encourage the wealthy to convert their wealth into cash in order to buy things, rather than continue to hold their wealth as investments. Because, apparently, investing in a well run company that employs thousands of people somehow contributes less to society than just liquidating a billionaire's wealth and giving it to everyone else.
And the idea is that a billionaire is a billionaire because of their environment. Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't be a billionaire without the work the US government did to create the internet, or the fertile education system that enabled him to employ engineers that allowed him to scale his company, or the protection that the US military provides to his enterprise and the banking system that holds his wealth. Since he's been able to make such an immense profit using those resources, then some portion of it should be redistributed to create more resources so that others can profit. What size that portion should be is up for debate, but surely billionaires should pay some taxes.
Forbes today is not the Forbes I read decades ago.
Also, anyone with a margin account can do this. The risk, though, is that the value of the collateral falls, and they get margin call sold out. Happens all the time. Not a remotely riskless strategy.
No, they can’t. The interest rates are very very low on these deals. The banks offer super low rates in hopes of getting investment banking business from the companies controlled by the billionaires.
While I don’t agree with your reliance on socialism as the antidote for capitalism, and understand you dislike a system that produces Elon Musks, I am stunned that Musk is viewed as an incompetent fool: PayPal, SpaceX and especially the Tesla are major innovations. And as the owner of a small business, I know that managing a large corporation is extraordinarily challenging and difficult. I can understand disliking him, but people who sneer at Elon Musk are simply blinded by their jealousy or are otherwise revealing their own lack of understanding of the world.
And as I'm suggesting here, it's debating sometime debatable rather than focusing on what's true from the lefty perspective. What if he is successful? Does that really change your political critique?
It is pathetic to assume those who disagree with you do so out of jealousy. PayPal also wasn't much of an innovation, if we're being serious. It was just financial arbitrage.
Your and others’ motivated reasoning is a sight to behold. Not an iota of doubt to be had. You will never learn if you aren’t willing to accept that opposing views might have merit.
Although I agree with you that many of Musk's critics underrate (some of) his accomplishments, I think it's a bit childish to accuse people you disagree with of only saying what they say because of envy.
At my age, I appreciate being told I'm childish. But seriously, I was not saying it was people who disagreed with me; I said it was people who sneered at him. I enjoy this community for Freddie, of course, but also for the disagreement.
He’s a good and smart businessman who has been successful in emerging fields. But managing a team of rocket scientists, even if it’s difficult, is not rocket science.
I'll speak from experience - once you get to the scale of a SpaceX or a Apple or any other megacorp, it becomes all about privilege. How lucky are you? What connections were you able to obtain with government and industry? It's really easy to do what Musk did, you just have to be in the right place at the right time and be born to the right people in the right country etc etc etc...
If it's so easy, why don't we have more companies like SpaceX? Or Apple?
It's easy for a genius to come up with a radical new design for some gizmo, because they are a freakin' genius.
But, that doesn't mean they have access to capital, or the guts to actually try to start a company to build it, or the ability to sell their idea, or any of the other millions of things that have to happen to turn an idea into a 'megacorp'.
Parent is 100% wrong, but this counter argument is even dumber. OP is claiming that it’s about circumstances, not the person.
The (misguided) leftist argument goes that Microsoft, SpaceX, Amazon, etc, were inevitable, and someone had to merely step in and take credit. Under this theory, the reason you don’t see more of these (despite it being easy to run them) is that there aren’t more inevitable technologies.
Any competent person who has ever worked in RnD will understand how facile this is, and anyone who hasn’t never could.
I agree with your specific point but that doesn't mean what you are replying to is wrong. SpaceX Musk is great value to the world in a way that Tesla Musk just is not.
That‘s a very engineering focused critique. It’s one thing to engineer something and it’s quite another to bring that something to market profitably. Engineers are famous for overweighting their contribution and underrating the business acumen needed to execute a successful product.
Sure, he has lots of business acumen, which was certainly necessary to make Tesla successful. But he shouldn’t get the credit of the engineers who slaved over electric car batteries or the literal rocket scientists who worked long night shifts for SpaceX. This idea of “credit” is kind of a microcosm of the problem with billionaires and executives at large; they do generate value, but they gain wealth at a hugely outsized ratio to all other laborers in the operation.
He’s getting the credit for successfully coordinating the effort of all those people. That is a much harder thing and a much rarer skill than being a software developer, rocket scientist, etc.
From a quick google search: “CEO pay has risen by 1,460% since 1978”, 36% faster than the market. “Compared with the typical worker’s pay, CEOs were paid 399 times as much in 2021, the highest multiple on record, EPI said. In 1965, CEOs were paid 20 times what the average worker made.” Has coordinating teams become that much more difficult, or do executives just have the power based on their class to hoard arbitrary wealth?
Aren't most CEOs capable of cat-herding a company? Musk's problem is that he actually thinks he's a genius in everything when he clearly isn't. He has "big brain" ideas and thinks they're new and his defenders fall over themselves thinking it's genius.
Tesla was little more than a cool brand name when Musk joined. He led a good portion of the design. This is all very easily verifiable from statements by Eberhard and the other founders. And that’s just the Roadster.
Everything else Tesla has done was led by Musk.
What’s wrong with admitting he’s probably the most productive person alive? You can still be against him being a billionaire.
Because there's no evidence that he is "the most productive person alive." It's pretty clear he just takes the credit for work that other people do. Look at how dumb twitter has made him, for example.
Musk is a successful opportunist who has been lucky in some respects (being at the right place at the right time to cash in on Web1.0) and prudently bankrolling that lottery win into the next endeavor. He's not a genius in the way that Musk fanboys think he is. He took over Tesla and marketed the cars well enough to get people to buy the hype and invest. He's like Tucker in that respect - marketing an ok electric car loaded with "cutting edge" AI software and a huge touch screen. As for SpaceX - he essentially took the tech that NASA developed since the Apollo missions and space shuttle and ran with it. That's great too. But people acting like the guy invents new things is preposterous. It's like his fucking Tesla tunnel that has people convinced it solves transportation problems when it's just a marketing opportunity for cities to pay him to build a private car tunnel.
If all Musk did with SpaceX was "took the tech that NASA developed since the Apollo missions and space shuttle and ran with it", then why didn't Boeing do the same thing. Especially since they essentially already owned the tech?
SpaceX didn't take the tech and run with it. They took the tech and improved it, and took other tech (mostly processing power) and applied it differently so that they could build truly re-usable rockets.
Most people who dislike Musk seem to miss the point of SpaceX - it's the re-usability of the tech that is the innovation. It's something that Boeing should have done, but didn't. SpaceX did do it. That makes SpaceX an innovator, and Boeing incompetent.
"Running with it" means taking that tech and building on it and improving it. Boeing main focus is their bread and butter products and maintaining that airplane duopoly they have with Airbus so why branch into something like reusable rockets for commercial payload stuff? SpaceX has made great leaps in that respect. They still have failures because going to space is complex. I mean, why didn't Lockheed Martin run with the same tech? Probably because they've got a lucrative gravy train with the pentagon and providing deep-space rockets for NASA. Musk found the niche market for SpaceX to operate and flourish in.
Yep, it's asinine and puerile, revealing more about the speaker than the subject.
It's also stunning for me after years of being dogpiled by his legions of (predominantly leftist) online fans any time I would express any even mild or measured critique of the guy.
I groused about him because I'm in oil and did not appreciate him trying to put me out of business. He also displayed many of the same flaws then that he does now - and blatantly so, willing to reveal and revel in his shortcomings in a way I begrudgingly came to admire.
Still, as he was on their team then the online wanna-be intelligentsia would not hear it - anything less than fawning praise, much less a hint he may have acted less than ideally, would get me absolutely mobbed in derision.
Now he can do nothing right. It's like he lives in a reality distortion field and when he changed his politics the switch flipped. The debasing apologetics I saw earlier has vanished, replaced by absolutely preposterous insults and descriptions of him, his actions, and motives.
Before he was to be defended and exalted; now he is to be dunked on.
Like someone with borderline personality disorder, the conclusion they want to be true is driving their beliefs of what the facts are - rather than the other way around as most of us were taught to expect and aim for.
He's made some unbelievably, comically, undeniably stupid comments and decisions. Most people have a hard time with the idea that someone can be idiotic one moment and brilliant another.
Now that they can no longer ignore the fact that he's at least occasionally a moron, and the related fact that many of the things he used to build the legend of his "brilliance" are outright lies, people are assuming that he's completely useless.
But the truth is that intelligence is almost entirely contextual. And that, even in theoretically-intellectual fields like tech, it's not the most important skill for a leader. So his ongoing Twitter fiasco really does nothing to undermine how good he was (and probably still is) at squeezing work out of rocket scientists.
glass onion fucking sucks (i was at the TIFF premiere and it was a genuinely bizarre experience to be the only person totally quiet throughout), but its class politics are pretty rote at this point, even in indie circles.
it’s strange that a batman movie had more to say about the ethics of the “do-gooder” billionaire or the estrangement that wealth causes than most of the explicitly political art released this year did. at least that paul schrader-but-high-camp film has the gall to suggest that pattinson’s crusade might be genuinely fucked up and totally unhelpful.
also musk might be the best thing to happen to rian johnson, should he actually destroy twitter. not only will he be freed of the star wars chuds, but he won’t have his nose perpetually and slightly dipped in the online political sphere. talk about liberation! he might make movies about other, less current, things once again.
The real resources involved in billionaire-level consumption like the private island complex, art commissions, etc. are resources that then don’t go to more socially beneficial ends. But I find it a fairly tenuous claim that owning a company you founded deprives anyone of anything by itself. Like, “Oh no, an enterprise that isn’t state owned!” isn’t going to make people believe your character is a villain.
Totally agree on the movie review, like you took the words straight out of my head. Although I will say that star power can salvage a viewing experience of a mediocre movie, and in this case Craig, Hahn, Norton, the always delightful Dave Bautista, and most especially Janelle Monae, are all fun to watch for two hours regardless.
As to your second point I don’t see how we can have a system that incentivizes human progress without the resultant financial success. I can’t think of a time in human history when there weren’t vast disparities in power and wealth, but historically these hierarchies were hereditary or religious.
Of course this still continues today, but at least THEORETICALLY anyone can become a billionaire through their own ingenuity and hard work, which is unique to modern times. EDIT: for me this fact alone means there is no such thing as an undeserving billionaire or a deserving one, save in cases of inherited wealth (which the movie does not present). If we believe that anyone can become a billionaire by whichever [legal] means they can, then every non-legacy billionaire is deserving.
<this is a quickly drafted and not thoroughly thought out comment which I may revise later >
Completely agree with your movie review, I had identical thoughts.
Regarding billionaires, I love that we have a lot of them. The more the better. So obviously I have different opinions on how to relieve human suffering. As silly as these caricatures of the rich are in this movie, the idea that some sort of equalization will relieve any suffering strikes me the same way.
Elon Musk might make a convenient bad guy today due to the latest with Twitter and his seemingly ideological pivot right, but trying to paint the guy who revolutionized electric cars and space travel as incompetent or stupid is an incredibly weak argument. Just say you don't like his politics.
Also, people are taking this movie way too seriously. It was an easy holiday watch that I chuckled at a few times, and that I will never think about again. That the bad guy and the politics and the "twist" don't make any sense is just not very important.
If you want to shit on a movie, go hate watch Babylon.
"That the bad guy and the politics and the "twist" don't make any sense is just not very important."
I don't understand this comment. Clearly the movie wants you to think it's important, which is why it's front and center and quite obvious. If the movie fails to make that theme interesting, digestible, clear, and/or entertaining means it hasn't done its job as a piece of art.
My point is this movie isn't really high concept art. It's a breezy, mildly entertaining spoof of a murder mystery. It's fine to hate it or love it but I personally don't think it's deserving of feelings that strong. For comparison sake, I watched Banshees of Inisherin immediately after, and IMO that movie is much more deserving of a conversation than Glass Onion.
The fact that you don't think it's worth talking about is why it's worth talking about - it clearly wants to be a topic of discussion (which is why it's so topical) and it's failed to do that.
Ok. I think we agree it’s not worth talking about. I’ve seen spirited critiques from Freddie on the left and Ben Shapiro on the right and all I can think of is...there’s better movies we could all be discussing.
Well put and i think balanced. "If" you think all billionaires are bad, do you also believe all politicians are good?
The answers really show your world view. For all their wealth, these billionaires have created more public good (jobs, college education, available resouces) than most any politician ever. You can argue whether how much wealth is deserved, but even the most miserly greedy billionaire is a net positive on society.
If you hate politicians but love billionaires, you may need to ask yourself who donates all the money to these politicians to get them to vote the way they do.
It seems like this is a good place for Glass Onion discussion. One thing that stuck out to me is the derision towards Dave Bautista's character, who's called a "Men's rights activist", as well as focus on the "red-pilling" of Ed Norton. Obviously, both of these caricatures (there are no characters in this movie, as Freddie points out, only exaggerated versions of humans that can be easily recognized by the Twitterati seeking acknowledgment and eye-winks from their entertainment) are gross people with cruel intentions. They're in no way sympathetic.
What the movie doesn't seem to recognize is that Kathryn Hahn's character, the supposedly beloved liberal politician, is the embodiment of why people get disillusioned with liberal politics in the current era. She says the right things, but for the sake of her careerist goals, she cozies up with terrible people and willingly sacrifices her ethics for political gain. With politicians like that, why the fuck would you ever want to believe in any party? If no one in government gives a fuck about the public, most especially the ones who claim to give a fuck about the public, then is it a great mystery why there's an attraction to extreme self-interest from the public?
I continued watching the movie hoping for some interesting twist, but there wasn't any - it was one of the more boring mysteries I've seen in a while. It's been said in many places, but the modern attraction toward incompetent villains doesn't make for good entertainment. Creators seem to be fearful that making someone like Norton evil but also intelligent would validate him as a human, so they have to make villains comically inept to show how much they "know" the villains are in the wrong. This isn't interesting, it's playing video games on easy mode - it's the kind of thing that appeals to children and not adults. Every Holmes should face a Moriarty; here, Benoit Blanc faces Elmer Fudd.
Also, somehow they made Kathryn Hahn not funny, which I thought was impossible, and they gave Janelle Monae's character literally nothing to do except look wooden for two hours.
No, I don't think that. My point is that they don't make Bautista or Norton complicated bad guys - they're just dumb. And, to me, it's not very dumb to be extremely self-interested in a world where you can't trust your government to make the right decisions (which is the very world they paint where Kathryn Hahn can be so easily bought). That should be an interesting dynamic to explore in the film, but it's completely glossed over for the sake of obvious and unfunny jokes.
You can call it a farce, but I don't think it's a very good one. It seems obvious to me that a large majority of the jokes - see everything Kate Hudson says - are winks at an extremely online audience who wants to believe that everyone they dislike is this dumb. This movie seemed to be more engineered to induce claps instead of laughs.
I haven't seen it since I very rarely care for mysteries/ crime narratives (Patricia Highsmith being a bit of a personal exception) but it sounds a bit like 'Don't Look Up' if that's the case?
"Claps instead of laughs" is 100% what this movie is going for, to its detriment. The entire message of it is "Hey, middle-aged college-educated liberal, the people you think are dumb and bad are just as dumb and bad as you think they are."
Who would go into this movie expecting complex characters? That's not the intent of these farcical mystery movies. It's very reason you don't cheer for Edward Norton's character vs. people idolizing Walter White because Norton's character is an intentional billionaire trope
Characters with depth are essential to mysteries - if they didn't, you would know who the bad guy is from the word go (like Edward Norton). The killer is often who you least expect because they have more dimensions than just being dumb and impulsive.
I think some people wanting depth of character from these shallow character tropes misses a big point. All of these characters became transactional once they became successful and then literally did anything to maintain their current position and stay in the good graces of their benevolent benefactor. For the average person, we know this. Kathryn's character is the politician with good intentions on a road to hell she paved herself. Batista is a youtuber who redpills for the money. It's like that online bro Andrew Tate. Does Tate strike you as a complicated person? Kate Hudson is like any other career-slumping celebrity that becomes a lifestyle guru.
None of these people are complex because by and large they're not meant to be complex. We're not looking for character studies here.
But this is the problem - if you're going to make all of these people shallow character tropes, then it should be a really funny movie and it's not.
Is Andrew Tate a complicated person? I don't know - in his personal moments, does he feel guilty? Is he trying to impress his dad? Is there some thing he's overcompensating for? Typically, human beings have a variety of things driving them to make bad choices or be selfish, some of them they understand and some of them they don't. This is universal among all of us. That's why some of the best art makes us recognize ourselves in monsters.
I mean, compare this to a satire like American Psycho. Bale is a literal serial killer, but the movie manages to be funny (much funnier than Glass Onion) and a fairly capable criticism of its era by actually giving him depth and exposing the emptiness of consumerism. It's not perfect, but had Glass Onion even waved at respecting these shallow character tropes the way that AP respects Bale as a human, it would be considerably more effective, entertaining, and humorous.
Whether or not you found it funny is up to you. But trying to compare a comedy murder mystery like Glass Onion to American Psycho is comparing apples to oranges. GO is akin to Death on the Nile / Murder on the Orient Express in that there are intentionally too many characters to focus your attention on and thus you never become invested in any of the characters because they exist solely as foils for what is the primary character (the detective) to do their puzzle solving.
American Psycho is a very different movie.
If Glass Onion fails to make you laugh because you didn't find it funny that is fine. I found moments of it funny. I thought it could have been better written and it felt very rushed at the end. But again, it was never intended to be American Psycho or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
I'm responding to people who are saying it's satire, so I compared it to satire - it's not apples to apples with Agatha Christie stories because those actually take themselves seriously and attempt to craft an interesting mystery. They have deeper characters - they have to, or else it would be obvious who the murderer is - while Glass Onion makes Ed Norton's character so shallow that you see his responsibility for the murder coming a mile away. Maybe it's just me, but nothing was surprising about that and the only twist was something that was hid from the audience (the Brand sister) and not Blanc, which is never as satisfying.
There's a shell game being played with this film which is not serious enough to be taken seriously, but also we shouldn't point out that it's not very funny because it's a mystery film. It not satisfying either category very well is not a point in its favor.
Nobody just invents commedia characters. The ones that do exist are there because they speak to something primal in the human psyche. Because they're so universal the audience needs little in the way of introduction and can just focus on the wit and cleverness. There is a world of difference between that and making every character a shallow stereotype. That is just bad writing.
I didn't see the new movie, but the "characters were all such broad caricatures that it deadened its obvious satirical pretensions" was precisely what annoyed me about the first Knives Out film.
There is an additional angle that most people don't consider - billionaires are suffering, and tend to have an incredibly poor quality of life. All of those alienation tokens piled high render them subhuman, and their inability to identify with those who aren't totally alienated like themselves leads to misery. Kanye is a good example of this.
We would be doing billionaires a favor by taking their wealth. They are much like rabid dogs: dangerous to others while living pathetic lives bereft of meaning.
The easiest way out would be to put them out of their misery like the rabid dogs they are. In an ideal world, though, they would have the opportunity to go through rehabilitation to truly tackle the disease of alienation that comes with being a billionaire. Then they could rejoin society and live meaningful, unshitty lives.
I dont think you're really meant to think too hard about the politics here.
Also, the ending has nothing to do with the napkin and everything to do with his new technology destroying the most famous piece of art in the world.
Agreed. Nonetheless, I think Freddie nailed it. First one was much better.
First one is definitely better but I think for different reasons. This one would've been better at 100 minutes rather than 140.
Which the witnesses would have to lie over and for which any physical evidence has been destroyed. (I understand that it's a movie, and it's mostly fine.)
I think destroying the Mona Lisa is enough to ruin most people's reputation. An investigation into how this could happen would reveal many things.
As for the broad characters and so on - did you see the first one? Not exactly subtle in which archetype of white liberal/conservative each character is.
What is politically interesting about the first and this one is how it clearly demonstrates that these wealthy people with different political ideologies all come together to defend their class interests when they're threatened.
Even in Glass Onion, none of these people turn their back on Norton until he's destroyed the Mona Lisa.
It's not a moral change of heart. They're protecting themselves by turning on Norton. Which was telegraphed way back at the beginning of the movie, that these people would turn on anyone to protect what they have.
There is a flashback when they are talking about Klear, in which somebody (either Janelle Monae, or Leslie Odom Jr.) mentions that Edward Norton wants to bet most of the assets of the company on this energy source. So it failing spectacularly would likely be devastating for him personally, and monetarily. I think the napkin testimony reversal from the friends was more about them abandoning him now that it was easy.
First Knives Out was much better, IMO.
The ending made me hate the supposed "good guys" in this film so much. They literally destroy one of the most cherished works of art in the entire world and discredit a breakthrough technology, thereby diminishing the cultural heritage and future potential of billions in order to get revenge on the bad guy. Maybe this was intentional and some sort of dig at longtermism or something, but regardless, I did not appreciate it.
I read it as a critique of how the characters in the billionaire’s orbit could get sort of swept up in revolutionary fervor and seem to turn against him, but only up to the point of their own upper class sacred values (“cultural heritage”) getting stepped on.
You could view this as the film arguing that the crimes of the wealthy are only punished when they become an international scandal.
Gates and Musk (until recently) and many other billionaires have been able to pitch themselves as Good Guys basically right up until their Epstein connections came to light. And for some, this still doesn't matter much! Look at all the people in this very comment section arguing that billionaires are good and we're lucky to have them and maybe there should be even more.
Yes, if getting so angry you destroy a piece of cultural heritage makes one heroic, I would please like to exchange any culture in which that occurs for another.
Love the Unforgiven reference in the subtitle
So, what's the solution? Do we have a 100% wealth tax when someone's wealth hits $1 billion? Would the world have been better off if Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had just packed it in when they made their first billion?
Uh, yeah. We would have been.
Sorry. I like Windows and my smart phone. So does most of the world.
I hate to tell you this but those things would exist without billionaires. The tech for a smartphone was not invented by Jobs or his company.
As for Windows - would software be better if it was more open sourced or tightly controlled by a near monopoly?
Sounds a lot like theories of spontaneous generation in biology. Is this your logic, “these things now exist, therefore they were going to exist anyway?”
What technology did Apple invent to make the first iPhone?
Did you know computers had operating systems before Windows?
Have you ever had an idea that eventually really became a product from someone else? There’s a good reason you’re not getting credit for it, and that someone else is. Edison’s “99% perspiration, 1% inspiration” applies here.
Inventing tech is one thing building a successful consumer product is another much harder thing.
Only if no other person wanting to get rich stepped in. It *certainly* would not have been taken over suddenly by open source. So the question is, in fact, unanswerable.
Open source was thriving. The reason everyone hated Gates in the 90s was because of how he was throttling innovation in favor of monopoly.
It was? In which form? It didn't seem to be taking the consumer world. That was for-profit, proprietary companies.
I like Carnegie libraries and the Art Institute of Chicago and the children’s hospital in my town initially financed and endowed by a ranching heiress.
I mean I don't live in the US but my local children's hospital, library and art museum were all funded by the government...
I don’t want to get into a “philanthropy shouldn’t exist and all culture and social care should be government issued” conversation right now because it’s exhausting. But I don’t happen to agree with that.
Yes.
Change the tax code to be less complex. No loopholes. No incentives for “approved” behavior. No deductions. Establish a graduated tax that treats all sources and uses of income equally. When wealth is not rewarded with wealth, then you don’t have to tax it. Achievers should not be demonized, nor should they be allowed to manipulate the tax code to their advantage. In my experience, achievers are not motivated by wealth but rather by the sense of achievement. Some are simply satisfied with a job well done. Some want to be recognized. Money and acclaim is really only about how that is measured. Either way, getting it done is the goal. Not the money.
And finally... white collar crime must be prosecuted. If you lie, cheat and steal, there must be consequences equal to the crime. If your bad decisions cause harm to your workers and or customers, the individuals making those decisions should be punished. From the top down. Corporations don’t commit crimes. People do.
Bad decisions aren't necessarily criminal even if some people are financially harmed by them. All of us make decisions that seem bad retrospectively but at the time seemed quite proper
I agree that a decision should not be judged solely on its outcome. No one has a crystal ball and sometimes decisions must be made with only the information on hand. That is not what I’m referring to. Knowingly, and let me emphasize knowingly, misrepresenting the risks of a drug should be criminal.
I don't hate billionaires. I hate sociopaths, and it's hard to become a billionaire without being a sociopath.
How is Warren Buffett a sociopath?
I didn't say "impossible".
For that matter, I don't know whether Dave Thomas was a billionaire, but by all accounts, he really was a nice old man. That said, people like Dave Thomas are remarkable for being the exceptions.
Refusing to allow all his railway employees to have any days of sick leave seems like the behavior of a sociopath, but that's just me.
The unions negotiated higher pay. They could have negotiated more sick leave. It's a choice. I'm pro choice.
Weird that they went on strike then that had to be shut down by congress.
Also, if Buffett weren't a sociopath, he could give them both. By refusing sick leave, he's still a fucking maniac.
Buffett's job is to look after the owners of his business. He can't just give the store away. I'm sure the railroads would have been willing to exchange some
pay for sick leave.
If giving workers 5 days of sick leave is "giving the store away" maybe he needs to go to a managerial class
Sickleave is abused all the time. In critical industries, this cannot happen. That is why the federal government has the power to shut down railroad strikes.
Here in Chicago, where the unions have negotiated luxurious sickleave, the jails have a 70% sick call in after the final Four and Super Bowl. Things are not simple. Even if you wish they were.
Yes, because someone abuses sick leave we should take it away from everyone.
Excellent stuff.
True that.
They tried to negotiate for more sick leave. The government cut them off and forced them back on the job.
I don't hate anyone. But I recognize that the way capital accumulates is through the exploitation that is by definition inherent in the capitalist mode of production. And since I think people are entitled to the product of their labor power then no one deserves to be a billionaire. I don't actually think they're all sociopaths. I think some are probably nice. I don't have any personal grudges against them but I still think none of them are entitled to their wealth.
Mostly preaching to the choir here, but the vast majority of people (in online English speaking discourses at least) seem unable to think in terms of structural critique, but only in terms of individual dunking/ cancellation etc. [Which, not coincidentally, has proved very useful for the likes of oil companies pushing concepts like the individual's carbon foorprint, etc.]
There have been a lot of these cathartic but ultimately toothless films and programmes about sociopathetic rich people over the last couple of years - Glass Onion, The Menu, Violent Night, Succession, etc.
At the risk of 'knowingness' posting: you're absolutely right, but why would anyone look to Hollywood in general and Rian Johnson - a Star Wars director! - in particular for serious structural critique of any kind, much less a Marxian kind? Of course he's going to deal in personalities and characters. He's operating inside the system, a system that's been extremely good to him and whose values he doubtless sincerely believes in.
He's hardly going to bare his teeth towards the billionaire class when he's pals with Bob Iger (a figure who would make a fascinating study for the kind of art Freddie alludes to in his article; a billionaire who's apparently a fairly decent guy, an extremely smart guy, doing a good-to-very-good job with an iconic beloved company... yet a guy who could still be very easily depicted as a malign force.) And even if he wanted to, it wouldn't get made.
It all feels like asking your butcher why he doesn't sell lettuce.
That is a fair point! XD
Sure in capitalist systems having more capital means you have more power, but what’s the alternative. Curbing the incentive to make money? In this case would leave us without the best space program in the world (10x cheaper than NASA?) best EV company in the world, solar panel roof tiles, PayPal and a less government controlled Twitter. And not to mention the satellite internet company that’s currently providing internet to underserved areas of the world- including free internet in Ukraine. Don’t most billionaire also pay astronomical taxes? I would argue that the kardashian millionaires of the world, or Bill gates doing dubious things with farm land and vegan products are of more concern. But again what’s the alternative? America has the most free to make money society and has the most billionaires, but also has the most innovation. And in a Democracy the people have an oversized influence on who gets elected, it’s fair to say the best person for the job and for a country rarely gets elected and it’s more typical to get flip flopping inadequacy or above average performance.
Ps I think the idiot billionaire in the movie was doomed because of the Mona Lisa being destroyed. The argument was that bad press would destroy his reputation. His new energy source blowing up the Mona Lisa, which he had borrowed - would crater his goals at the company and show the world how stupid he was. I also got the Elon take but felt it was much too obvious, same with the Joe Rogan take. Having more than a 1% knowledge of the real people you can see these are total make fun caricatures, not serious poking fun. Elon and Joe actually have depth and intelligence and values to them. I am also sure there actually are idiot billionaires and millionaires out there.
Overall I agree though, the movie was interesting but missed any deeper takes. It’s was all surface level fun and social commentary
Yeah I agree. It’s easy to poke holes in our overarching marker economy democracies, in particular the “everyone isn’t rich” or “ billionaires have unfair amounts of power and wealth”. But the alternatives are much worse. The fact of the matter is that a rising tide lifts all boats. The benefits of free market capitalism actually benifit the poor the most. The poorest person in the USA has it better than a good chunk of the word, definitely better than even the average person in Soviet Russia or China. I’ve seen homeless people that have entire teams of support workers, free housing and iPhones- this is payed all through taxes and innovation bringing costs of luxuries down.
I would argue there is also frustration the other way. I know there are tons of very smart, hard working people that have made incomes to feed and support their families, and are not super happy with giving 30-40 cents on the dollar to their government that isn’t run by the best and brightest because they handed out political “candy” to get elected. So it’s a complicated system but overall I feel quality of life of everyone has gone up in the last hundred years. Leave the billionaires alone
So spot on. I grew up in a military family and us know my history. There is no such thing as equal distribution of power. One group always has more. With capitalism and a democratic republic that power is transparent and accountable mostly
Billionaire's don't pay astronomical taxes nowadays because most of their wealth is typically tied up in equity in their company. Musk is only the richest man on earth because many people believe that Tesla will be one of the largest car companies on earth, etc. As you'll notice, his overall "wealth" has gone quite a bit down since Tesla stock started crashing. Like SBF, his wealth would go down signficantly if Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter crashed like FTX.
Figuring out how to tax those stock holdings is the issue with billionaires, because how do you tax it when they've not cashed out? This is why some believe taxing luxury goods astronomically - like the purchase of a private jet, jet fuel, expensive cars, clothes, property etc. - would be a better way of sharing that wealth.
Wealth taxes are stupid. Luxury taxes don't hurt the wealthy, they hurt the workers building the private jets, selling the jet fuel, making the clothes, etc.
And why the hell should a billionaire share his wealth. By definition it's his. If you want to confiscate his wealth and give it to others, just say so. Don't try to make is sound like it's a benevolent thing to take something from one person and give it to someone else.
Then you are a thief.
If you were successful in taking Musk's wealth (which is almost exclusively tied up in equity in his companies), then as soon as you did, it would become worthless (even before you distributed it to others).
If somehow you were able to maintain the value of Musk's wealth before you distributed it, and you split it between every man, woman, and child in the world, everyone would get about $ 20.00.
Congratulations - you've destroyed several companies and the thousands and thousands of jobs that went with it, and wiped out the wealth of many thousands of individual investors, all so everyone could get $ 20.00.
You're a hero.
And, I would think you would want to encourage the wealthy to convert their wealth into cash in order to buy things, rather than continue to hold their wealth as investments. Because, apparently, investing in a well run company that employs thousands of people somehow contributes less to society than just liquidating a billionaire's wealth and giving it to everyone else.
Well, that's why I said "some people."
And the idea is that a billionaire is a billionaire because of their environment. Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't be a billionaire without the work the US government did to create the internet, or the fertile education system that enabled him to employ engineers that allowed him to scale his company, or the protection that the US military provides to his enterprise and the banking system that holds his wealth. Since he's been able to make such an immense profit using those resources, then some portion of it should be redistributed to create more resources so that others can profit. What size that portion should be is up for debate, but surely billionaires should pay some taxes.
It is benevolent to save a person from the disease of alienation. Taking their billions would actually improve their quality of life massively.
Musk isn’t the richest man on earth anymore. Which I think highlights your point.
“ Don’t most billionaire also pay astronomical taxes? ”
No.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrae/2022/07/14/how-the-rich-use-the-buy-borrow-die-strategy-to-avoid-large-tax-bills/amp/
Forbes today is not the Forbes I read decades ago.
Also, anyone with a margin account can do this. The risk, though, is that the value of the collateral falls, and they get margin call sold out. Happens all the time. Not a remotely riskless strategy.
“Also, anyone with a margin account can do this.”
No, they can’t. The interest rates are very very low on these deals. The banks offer super low rates in hopes of getting investment banking business from the companies controlled by the billionaires.
While I don’t agree with your reliance on socialism as the antidote for capitalism, and understand you dislike a system that produces Elon Musks, I am stunned that Musk is viewed as an incompetent fool: PayPal, SpaceX and especially the Tesla are major innovations. And as the owner of a small business, I know that managing a large corporation is extraordinarily challenging and difficult. I can understand disliking him, but people who sneer at Elon Musk are simply blinded by their jealousy or are otherwise revealing their own lack of understanding of the world.
And as I'm suggesting here, it's debating sometime debatable rather than focusing on what's true from the lefty perspective. What if he is successful? Does that really change your political critique?
It is pathetic to assume those who disagree with you do so out of jealousy. PayPal also wasn't much of an innovation, if we're being serious. It was just financial arbitrage.
Your and others’ motivated reasoning is a sight to behold. Not an iota of doubt to be had. You will never learn if you aren’t willing to accept that opposing views might have merit.
Although I agree with you that many of Musk's critics underrate (some of) his accomplishments, I think it's a bit childish to accuse people you disagree with of only saying what they say because of envy.
At my age, I appreciate being told I'm childish. But seriously, I was not saying it was people who disagreed with me; I said it was people who sneered at him. I enjoy this community for Freddie, of course, but also for the disagreement.
Elon didn’t found Tesla, nor was he an engineer who actually worked on the tech. He made a good investment, but he hardly innovated.
He’s a good and smart businessman who has been successful in emerging fields. But managing a team of rocket scientists, even if it’s difficult, is not rocket science.
Keep telling yourself that.
It’s much harder.
I'll speak from experience - once you get to the scale of a SpaceX or a Apple or any other megacorp, it becomes all about privilege. How lucky are you? What connections were you able to obtain with government and industry? It's really easy to do what Musk did, you just have to be in the right place at the right time and be born to the right people in the right country etc etc etc...
Swing and a miss. I don't use twitter or any other social media.
If it's so easy, why don't we have more companies like SpaceX? Or Apple?
It's easy for a genius to come up with a radical new design for some gizmo, because they are a freakin' genius.
But, that doesn't mean they have access to capital, or the guts to actually try to start a company to build it, or the ability to sell their idea, or any of the other millions of things that have to happen to turn an idea into a 'megacorp'.
Parent is 100% wrong, but this counter argument is even dumber. OP is claiming that it’s about circumstances, not the person.
The (misguided) leftist argument goes that Microsoft, SpaceX, Amazon, etc, were inevitable, and someone had to merely step in and take credit. Under this theory, the reason you don’t see more of these (despite it being easy to run them) is that there aren’t more inevitable technologies.
Any competent person who has ever worked in RnD will understand how facile this is, and anyone who hasn’t never could.
"from experience"
Have you worked at a fortune 500 tech company in an rnd role?
I agree with your specific point but that doesn't mean what you are replying to is wrong. SpaceX Musk is great value to the world in a way that Tesla Musk just is not.
That‘s a very engineering focused critique. It’s one thing to engineer something and it’s quite another to bring that something to market profitably. Engineers are famous for overweighting their contribution and underrating the business acumen needed to execute a successful product.
Sure, he has lots of business acumen, which was certainly necessary to make Tesla successful. But he shouldn’t get the credit of the engineers who slaved over electric car batteries or the literal rocket scientists who worked long night shifts for SpaceX. This idea of “credit” is kind of a microcosm of the problem with billionaires and executives at large; they do generate value, but they gain wealth at a hugely outsized ratio to all other laborers in the operation.
He’s getting the credit for successfully coordinating the effort of all those people. That is a much harder thing and a much rarer skill than being a software developer, rocket scientist, etc.
From a quick google search: “CEO pay has risen by 1,460% since 1978”, 36% faster than the market. “Compared with the typical worker’s pay, CEOs were paid 399 times as much in 2021, the highest multiple on record, EPI said. In 1965, CEOs were paid 20 times what the average worker made.” Has coordinating teams become that much more difficult, or do executives just have the power based on their class to hoard arbitrary wealth?
Porque no los dos?
We are taking about billionaires not guys who will be lucky to bank $100 million.
If you have to Google search a topic, then you are clearly incompetent to speak on it.
You used Google. Company created by billionaires. The CEO's whose pay has grown.
Aren't most CEOs capable of cat-herding a company? Musk's problem is that he actually thinks he's a genius in everything when he clearly isn't. He has "big brain" ideas and thinks they're new and his defenders fall over themselves thinking it's genius.
“ Aren't most CEOs capable of cat-herding a company?”
Not at anywhere near Musk’s level, no.
Yes, and look what's happening at Wells Fargo. Poor coordinating and thievery.
Tesla was little more than a cool brand name when Musk joined. He led a good portion of the design. This is all very easily verifiable from statements by Eberhard and the other founders. And that’s just the Roadster.
Everything else Tesla has done was led by Musk.
What’s wrong with admitting he’s probably the most productive person alive? You can still be against him being a billionaire.
Because there's no evidence that he is "the most productive person alive." It's pretty clear he just takes the credit for work that other people do. Look at how dumb twitter has made him, for example.
Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile either. He simply made it available to the masses.
I think the problem is just that he's kinda irritating on a personal level and people go from that to claiming that he's incompetent.
Musk is a successful opportunist who has been lucky in some respects (being at the right place at the right time to cash in on Web1.0) and prudently bankrolling that lottery win into the next endeavor. He's not a genius in the way that Musk fanboys think he is. He took over Tesla and marketed the cars well enough to get people to buy the hype and invest. He's like Tucker in that respect - marketing an ok electric car loaded with "cutting edge" AI software and a huge touch screen. As for SpaceX - he essentially took the tech that NASA developed since the Apollo missions and space shuttle and ran with it. That's great too. But people acting like the guy invents new things is preposterous. It's like his fucking Tesla tunnel that has people convinced it solves transportation problems when it's just a marketing opportunity for cities to pay him to build a private car tunnel.
If all Musk did with SpaceX was "took the tech that NASA developed since the Apollo missions and space shuttle and ran with it", then why didn't Boeing do the same thing. Especially since they essentially already owned the tech?
SpaceX didn't take the tech and run with it. They took the tech and improved it, and took other tech (mostly processing power) and applied it differently so that they could build truly re-usable rockets.
Most people who dislike Musk seem to miss the point of SpaceX - it's the re-usability of the tech that is the innovation. It's something that Boeing should have done, but didn't. SpaceX did do it. That makes SpaceX an innovator, and Boeing incompetent.
"Running with it" means taking that tech and building on it and improving it. Boeing main focus is their bread and butter products and maintaining that airplane duopoly they have with Airbus so why branch into something like reusable rockets for commercial payload stuff? SpaceX has made great leaps in that respect. They still have failures because going to space is complex. I mean, why didn't Lockheed Martin run with the same tech? Probably because they've got a lucrative gravy train with the pentagon and providing deep-space rockets for NASA. Musk found the niche market for SpaceX to operate and flourish in.
Yep, it's asinine and puerile, revealing more about the speaker than the subject.
It's also stunning for me after years of being dogpiled by his legions of (predominantly leftist) online fans any time I would express any even mild or measured critique of the guy.
I groused about him because I'm in oil and did not appreciate him trying to put me out of business. He also displayed many of the same flaws then that he does now - and blatantly so, willing to reveal and revel in his shortcomings in a way I begrudgingly came to admire.
Still, as he was on their team then the online wanna-be intelligentsia would not hear it - anything less than fawning praise, much less a hint he may have acted less than ideally, would get me absolutely mobbed in derision.
Now he can do nothing right. It's like he lives in a reality distortion field and when he changed his politics the switch flipped. The debasing apologetics I saw earlier has vanished, replaced by absolutely preposterous insults and descriptions of him, his actions, and motives.
Before he was to be defended and exalted; now he is to be dunked on.
Like someone with borderline personality disorder, the conclusion they want to be true is driving their beliefs of what the facts are - rather than the other way around as most of us were taught to expect and aim for.
He's made some unbelievably, comically, undeniably stupid comments and decisions. Most people have a hard time with the idea that someone can be idiotic one moment and brilliant another.
Now that they can no longer ignore the fact that he's at least occasionally a moron, and the related fact that many of the things he used to build the legend of his "brilliance" are outright lies, people are assuming that he's completely useless.
But the truth is that intelligence is almost entirely contextual. And that, even in theoretically-intellectual fields like tech, it's not the most important skill for a leader. So his ongoing Twitter fiasco really does nothing to undermine how good he was (and probably still is) at squeezing work out of rocket scientists.
glass onion fucking sucks (i was at the TIFF premiere and it was a genuinely bizarre experience to be the only person totally quiet throughout), but its class politics are pretty rote at this point, even in indie circles.
it’s strange that a batman movie had more to say about the ethics of the “do-gooder” billionaire or the estrangement that wealth causes than most of the explicitly political art released this year did. at least that paul schrader-but-high-camp film has the gall to suggest that pattinson’s crusade might be genuinely fucked up and totally unhelpful.
also musk might be the best thing to happen to rian johnson, should he actually destroy twitter. not only will he be freed of the star wars chuds, but he won’t have his nose perpetually and slightly dipped in the online political sphere. talk about liberation! he might make movies about other, less current, things once again.
The real resources involved in billionaire-level consumption like the private island complex, art commissions, etc. are resources that then don’t go to more socially beneficial ends. But I find it a fairly tenuous claim that owning a company you founded deprives anyone of anything by itself. Like, “Oh no, an enterprise that isn’t state owned!” isn’t going to make people believe your character is a villain.
Totally agree on the movie review, like you took the words straight out of my head. Although I will say that star power can salvage a viewing experience of a mediocre movie, and in this case Craig, Hahn, Norton, the always delightful Dave Bautista, and most especially Janelle Monae, are all fun to watch for two hours regardless.
As to your second point I don’t see how we can have a system that incentivizes human progress without the resultant financial success. I can’t think of a time in human history when there weren’t vast disparities in power and wealth, but historically these hierarchies were hereditary or religious.
Of course this still continues today, but at least THEORETICALLY anyone can become a billionaire through their own ingenuity and hard work, which is unique to modern times. EDIT: for me this fact alone means there is no such thing as an undeserving billionaire or a deserving one, save in cases of inherited wealth (which the movie does not present). If we believe that anyone can become a billionaire by whichever [legal] means they can, then every non-legacy billionaire is deserving.
<this is a quickly drafted and not thoroughly thought out comment which I may revise later >
most of human history was "pre history"
Completely agree with your movie review, I had identical thoughts.
Regarding billionaires, I love that we have a lot of them. The more the better. So obviously I have different opinions on how to relieve human suffering. As silly as these caricatures of the rich are in this movie, the idea that some sort of equalization will relieve any suffering strikes me the same way.
Elon Musk might make a convenient bad guy today due to the latest with Twitter and his seemingly ideological pivot right, but trying to paint the guy who revolutionized electric cars and space travel as incompetent or stupid is an incredibly weak argument. Just say you don't like his politics.
Also, people are taking this movie way too seriously. It was an easy holiday watch that I chuckled at a few times, and that I will never think about again. That the bad guy and the politics and the "twist" don't make any sense is just not very important.
If you want to shit on a movie, go hate watch Babylon.
"That the bad guy and the politics and the "twist" don't make any sense is just not very important."
I don't understand this comment. Clearly the movie wants you to think it's important, which is why it's front and center and quite obvious. If the movie fails to make that theme interesting, digestible, clear, and/or entertaining means it hasn't done its job as a piece of art.
My point is this movie isn't really high concept art. It's a breezy, mildly entertaining spoof of a murder mystery. It's fine to hate it or love it but I personally don't think it's deserving of feelings that strong. For comparison sake, I watched Banshees of Inisherin immediately after, and IMO that movie is much more deserving of a conversation than Glass Onion.
The fact that you don't think it's worth talking about is why it's worth talking about - it clearly wants to be a topic of discussion (which is why it's so topical) and it's failed to do that.
Ok. I think we agree it’s not worth talking about. I’ve seen spirited critiques from Freddie on the left and Ben Shapiro on the right and all I can think of is...there’s better movies we could all be discussing.
Well put and i think balanced. "If" you think all billionaires are bad, do you also believe all politicians are good?
The answers really show your world view. For all their wealth, these billionaires have created more public good (jobs, college education, available resouces) than most any politician ever. You can argue whether how much wealth is deserved, but even the most miserly greedy billionaire is a net positive on society.
If you hate politicians but love billionaires, you may need to ask yourself who donates all the money to these politicians to get them to vote the way they do.
What if he does not hate one and love the other? Nuance does exist. You should try it.
My point is that billionaires and politicians are part of the same puddle, not distinct forces in society.
I see that supporting my point.
Politicians are supposed to represent the electorate, not the wealthy electorate.
Wealthy people can spend money because it is their money. They can buy cars, houses, or influence.
I lay that on politicians.
It seems like this is a good place for Glass Onion discussion. One thing that stuck out to me is the derision towards Dave Bautista's character, who's called a "Men's rights activist", as well as focus on the "red-pilling" of Ed Norton. Obviously, both of these caricatures (there are no characters in this movie, as Freddie points out, only exaggerated versions of humans that can be easily recognized by the Twitterati seeking acknowledgment and eye-winks from their entertainment) are gross people with cruel intentions. They're in no way sympathetic.
What the movie doesn't seem to recognize is that Kathryn Hahn's character, the supposedly beloved liberal politician, is the embodiment of why people get disillusioned with liberal politics in the current era. She says the right things, but for the sake of her careerist goals, she cozies up with terrible people and willingly sacrifices her ethics for political gain. With politicians like that, why the fuck would you ever want to believe in any party? If no one in government gives a fuck about the public, most especially the ones who claim to give a fuck about the public, then is it a great mystery why there's an attraction to extreme self-interest from the public?
I continued watching the movie hoping for some interesting twist, but there wasn't any - it was one of the more boring mysteries I've seen in a while. It's been said in many places, but the modern attraction toward incompetent villains doesn't make for good entertainment. Creators seem to be fearful that making someone like Norton evil but also intelligent would validate him as a human, so they have to make villains comically inept to show how much they "know" the villains are in the wrong. This isn't interesting, it's playing video games on easy mode - it's the kind of thing that appeals to children and not adults. Every Holmes should face a Moriarty; here, Benoit Blanc faces Elmer Fudd.
Also, somehow they made Kathryn Hahn not funny, which I thought was impossible, and they gave Janelle Monae's character literally nothing to do except look wooden for two hours.
No, I don't think that. My point is that they don't make Bautista or Norton complicated bad guys - they're just dumb. And, to me, it's not very dumb to be extremely self-interested in a world where you can't trust your government to make the right decisions (which is the very world they paint where Kathryn Hahn can be so easily bought). That should be an interesting dynamic to explore in the film, but it's completely glossed over for the sake of obvious and unfunny jokes.
You can call it a farce, but I don't think it's a very good one. It seems obvious to me that a large majority of the jokes - see everything Kate Hudson says - are winks at an extremely online audience who wants to believe that everyone they dislike is this dumb. This movie seemed to be more engineered to induce claps instead of laughs.
I haven't seen it since I very rarely care for mysteries/ crime narratives (Patricia Highsmith being a bit of a personal exception) but it sounds a bit like 'Don't Look Up' if that's the case?
Yes, it is the "Don't Look Up" of mysteries. Nonsensical and without subtlety.
"Claps instead of laughs" is 100% what this movie is going for, to its detriment. The entire message of it is "Hey, middle-aged college-educated liberal, the people you think are dumb and bad are just as dumb and bad as you think they are."
Who would go into this movie expecting complex characters? That's not the intent of these farcical mystery movies. It's very reason you don't cheer for Edward Norton's character vs. people idolizing Walter White because Norton's character is an intentional billionaire trope
Characters with depth are essential to mysteries - if they didn't, you would know who the bad guy is from the word go (like Edward Norton). The killer is often who you least expect because they have more dimensions than just being dumb and impulsive.
I think some people wanting depth of character from these shallow character tropes misses a big point. All of these characters became transactional once they became successful and then literally did anything to maintain their current position and stay in the good graces of their benevolent benefactor. For the average person, we know this. Kathryn's character is the politician with good intentions on a road to hell she paved herself. Batista is a youtuber who redpills for the money. It's like that online bro Andrew Tate. Does Tate strike you as a complicated person? Kate Hudson is like any other career-slumping celebrity that becomes a lifestyle guru.
None of these people are complex because by and large they're not meant to be complex. We're not looking for character studies here.
But this is the problem - if you're going to make all of these people shallow character tropes, then it should be a really funny movie and it's not.
Is Andrew Tate a complicated person? I don't know - in his personal moments, does he feel guilty? Is he trying to impress his dad? Is there some thing he's overcompensating for? Typically, human beings have a variety of things driving them to make bad choices or be selfish, some of them they understand and some of them they don't. This is universal among all of us. That's why some of the best art makes us recognize ourselves in monsters.
I mean, compare this to a satire like American Psycho. Bale is a literal serial killer, but the movie manages to be funny (much funnier than Glass Onion) and a fairly capable criticism of its era by actually giving him depth and exposing the emptiness of consumerism. It's not perfect, but had Glass Onion even waved at respecting these shallow character tropes the way that AP respects Bale as a human, it would be considerably more effective, entertaining, and humorous.
Whether or not you found it funny is up to you. But trying to compare a comedy murder mystery like Glass Onion to American Psycho is comparing apples to oranges. GO is akin to Death on the Nile / Murder on the Orient Express in that there are intentionally too many characters to focus your attention on and thus you never become invested in any of the characters because they exist solely as foils for what is the primary character (the detective) to do their puzzle solving.
American Psycho is a very different movie.
If Glass Onion fails to make you laugh because you didn't find it funny that is fine. I found moments of it funny. I thought it could have been better written and it felt very rushed at the end. But again, it was never intended to be American Psycho or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
I'm responding to people who are saying it's satire, so I compared it to satire - it's not apples to apples with Agatha Christie stories because those actually take themselves seriously and attempt to craft an interesting mystery. They have deeper characters - they have to, or else it would be obvious who the murderer is - while Glass Onion makes Ed Norton's character so shallow that you see his responsibility for the murder coming a mile away. Maybe it's just me, but nothing was surprising about that and the only twist was something that was hid from the audience (the Brand sister) and not Blanc, which is never as satisfying.
There's a shell game being played with this film which is not serious enough to be taken seriously, but also we shouldn't point out that it's not very funny because it's a mystery film. It not satisfying either category very well is not a point in its favor.
Nobody just invents commedia characters. The ones that do exist are there because they speak to something primal in the human psyche. Because they're so universal the audience needs little in the way of introduction and can just focus on the wit and cleverness. There is a world of difference between that and making every character a shallow stereotype. That is just bad writing.
I didn't see the new movie, but the "characters were all such broad caricatures that it deadened its obvious satirical pretensions" was precisely what annoyed me about the first Knives Out film.
There is an additional angle that most people don't consider - billionaires are suffering, and tend to have an incredibly poor quality of life. All of those alienation tokens piled high render them subhuman, and their inability to identify with those who aren't totally alienated like themselves leads to misery. Kanye is a good example of this.
We would be doing billionaires a favor by taking their wealth. They are much like rabid dogs: dangerous to others while living pathetic lives bereft of meaning.
One reason I subscribed to Freddy is to get an insight on his worldview, and that of his fellow travelers. The ignorant hate is almost entertaining.
Rob them for their own good.
That's a great spin, it's still incredibly shortsighted and morally bankrupt but it's a hell of an attempt to manipulate the optics.
The easiest way out would be to put them out of their misery like the rabid dogs they are. In an ideal world, though, they would have the opportunity to go through rehabilitation to truly tackle the disease of alienation that comes with being a billionaire. Then they could rejoin society and live meaningful, unshitty lives.
I know two billionaires. Spent a decade working quite closely with one. They are pretty great guys who live awesome lives.