Elon Musk Was The Basis For The Worst Glass Onion Character?
Rian Johnson stated the comparison of Elon Musk to Miles Bron in Glass Onion is a "horrible accident."
Many people have pointed out that there are a lot of similarities between Elon Musk and Edward Norton’s tech billionaire character Miles Bron in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, but director Rian Johnson maintains that the parallels are just a coincidence. Deadline reported on Johnson’s Wired interview, where he said “There’s a lot of general stuff about that sort of species of tech billionaire that went directly into [Glass Onion]. But obviously, it has almost a weird relevance in exactly the current moment.”
After a friend of Johnson’s pointed out how relevant the Miles Bron character’s choices are to the current state of Elon Musk’s activities, Johnson simply stated that it was “just sort of a horrible, horrible accident.”
Johnson also made sure to point out that the script for the film was written long before Elon Musk took over Twitter and became more controversial than ever. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has been written since 2020, so it seems like this is just a case of Johnson being prescient about the state of the world, rather than ripping characters from the headlines. It’s not too surprising that Johnson just so happened to be spot-on with his social satire, just as he was with the original Knives Out.
Although Elon Musk is not a part of the film or, apparently, a part of the film’s inspiration, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is another biting success for Johnson. The film once again stars Daniel Craig as the Southern detective Benoit Blanc who arrives in Greece to participate in a murder mystery game hosted by Norton’s Bron. The film also stars Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr, Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Noah Segan, Hugh Grant, and more.
While Elon Musk is certainly not the only tech billionaire in the world, it is interesting to see such a similar character in a major movie like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story. The film is being watched by plenty of people and has great reviews, so it makes sense that people are drawing lines to real-world events. It’ll be interesting to see what lines people draw to characters in the movie with other real-life celebrities.
Elon Musk has always been a semi-controversial figure, but his controversy reached new heights when he bought the Twitter social media platform and started making sweeping changes. The tech billionaire has been in the news a ton lately, mostly for things that rub people the wrong way, so the Glass Onion character just happened to come along at the right time. As Musk continues to make divisive decisions, it’s unlikely that he’ll be out of the public consciousness anytime soon.
Even if Elon Musk wasn’t directly parodied in Glass Onion, the Twitter story has been crazy enough that someone will surely adapt it into a TV series or film in the future. Films like The Social Network and TV shows like Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber gives us some insight into how these events actually played out and the people behind them. It might still be a little early for this to come to fruition, but I’d certainly tune in if Rian Johnson decides to just straight-up make a movie about Musk and his crazy Twitter acquisition.
In the meantime, you can check out Glass Onion now on Netflix. The film played briefly in theaters before hitting the streaming platform on December 23. There are also more Knives Out mysteries on the way, so we’ll have to wait and see how timely those movies turn out to be.
