Eating the rich with ‘Glass Onion’

Billionaires were everywhere in the news this year. Here in Pennsylvania, Jeffrey Yass spent $18 million on 2022′s elections alone. Michael Rubin expanded Fanatics into a sports merchandising colossus, while the man who bought his stake in the Sixers, David Adelman, is spearheading the team’s controversial Center City arena plans. Beyond Philly, the headlines have been filled with billionaires — from the daily soap opera of Elon Musk and Twitter, to the rapid fall of indicted former crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried.

Our culture’s love/hate relationship with the super-rich has been reflected in the movies this fall season, with Glass Onion, The Menu, and Triangle of Sadness. And the second season of The White Lotus that we all binged on.

Glass Onion is director Rian Johnson’s sequel to his 2019 hit Knives Out, one that brings back dandy investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) with an all-new cast. After a festival run that included a stop at the Philadelphia Film Festival in late October and a brief theatrical run in November, the film landed on Netflix on Dec. 23.

Both Benoit Blanc films are modern-day remixes of the Agatha Christie-style mystery genre, set in the realm of the very rich. While the 2019 movie was about the family of a popular author fighting over his fortune, Glass Onion is about a group of friends — “The Disruptors” — who gather for a murder mystery on a luxurious Greek island. The all-star cast includes Philly native and original Hamilton star Leslie Odom Jr., who plays a scientist, as well as singer/actor Janelle Monae.

The rest of the cast consists of several familiar modern-day types. Kate Hudson is a fashion influencer who has been “canceled” repeatedly, without it appearing to have hurt her career. Kathryn Hahn plays a sellout Democrat, while Dave Bautista is a gaming YouTuber who flirts with alt-right politics.

Edward Norton plays the island’s owner, Miles Bron, an arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s saving the world, although doubts are raised about both his intentions and his competence. The character, at the time of Glass Onion’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, bore a passing resemblance to Elon Musk, one that’s since become a bit less passing with every unhinged tweet. (Johnson, in an interview during the Philadelphia Film Festival, made it clear that none of the characters were directly based on real people.)

“I think that for me … it’s about… when money enters a human situation between people, it can bring out the worst in people,” Johnson said in an October interview with Film Scribes podcast (of which I am a cohost.)

“It’s less about indicting the rich in Glass Onion, to me, it’s more about looking at OK, what is this power structure that forms from that, where people who have self-interest in protecting the thing at the top are going to do awful things in order to do that.”

Movies about the ultrarich are hardly new, but what is it about this particular moment, in the post-Trump era, that has gotten Hollywood thinking about this? Both modern liberalism and conservatism have resentment of the very rich built right in (to the left, it’s “millionaires and billionaires”; to the right, it’s “the elite”), while no political ideology is immune to aspirations to wealth.

Other recent movies in this trend have included Mark Mylod’s The Menu, an acerbic satire about foodie culture in which various types of wealthy foodies (an actor, finance bros, and assorted business people) genuflect before a famous chef (Ralph Fiennes). Ruben Östland’s Triangle of Sadness puts a combination of models, influencers, and oligarchs on a cruise ship before everything goes sideways in every way you can imagine.

However, with these movies and shows, there is a degree of having their cake and eating it, too. Sure, we’re invited to resent the obscene greed and ruthlessness of these people, while also luxuriating in the beautiful trappings of the expensive wealth that we’re seeing on screen.

And of course, if someone is in a position to direct or produce a big-budget movie, or star in it, they’re probably fairly well-off themselves.

“The idea of just finger-pointing at the rich isn’t interesting,” said Johnson, “but the idea of what the effect of that looking can be on all of us [is].”

Billionaires continue to exercise outsized influence on our world and our city, from helping to determine everything from who represents us in elected office, to which buildings are built where, to which free agents sign with the Phillies, to the fate of your crypto portfolio. The movies, especially Glass Onion, cast a humorous and comparatively satisfying gloss over it all.