Knives Out 2 Really About The Worlds Most Controversial Man?
Fans are theorizing that Edward Norton's character in Glass Onion is based on Twitter CEO Elon Musk, a charge Rian Johnson and Norton deny.
Rian Johnson’s follow-up to his hit Knives Out finds world-famous detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) on the case in Greece, as he tussles with a smarmy tech billionaire (Edward Norton) and his eclectic group of friends. Although Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery doesn’t open in theaters until November 23, critics who have seen advanced screenings of the film say Norton’s character, Miles Bron, is strikingly similar to Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Any similarities to the real-life, controversial billionaire are completely coincidental, Johnson and Norton insist in new interviews with Kevin Polowy of Yahoo.
Johnson says that the inspiration for the Miles Bron character in the Knives Out sequel was never Elon Musk, insisting that trying to model the fictional character after a real one just wouldn’t work. “When I was writing, I found that any time I started thinking too specifically about any one person, it got very uninteresting, very quickly,” the Star Wars: The Last Jedi director said. “Just taking the piss out of a specific person. Not that interesting.”
Rather than trying to mimic a person, Rian Johnson said he was more interested in exploring the fascination with the wealthy elite class, and the people who surround them. “The thing that was more interesting was kind of zooming back and thinking about this general group of people and our relationship to them as a society…But we want to hurl insults at them, but we also all have this deeply unhealthy thing inside us like, ‘Maybe they’re actually going to save us.’ It’s exploring that uniquely American thing of mistaking great wealth for great wisdom…more than going after any specific person that I don’t know in real life.”
Edward Norton, who plays Miles Bron, agrees that his character isn’t meant to be a caricature of any particular person. “Miles is representative of a species. There’s a handful that have had documentaries made about their foibles and their excesses and their lies and their self-aggrandizement and their notional talent,” he said. Norton also points out that several people contributed facets to the character, rather than a single personality.
While there are superficial similarities between Elon Musk and Miles Bron, the idea that he inspired the character in the Knives Out sequel doesn’t make logical sense. Norton points out that the movie was filmed in early 2021, with Rian Johnson writing the script long before that. At that time, Elon Musk was the eccentric tech billionaire who was solving the energy crisis by making electric cars mainstream and revolutionizing space travel, so it seems unlikely he was the specific inspiration.
In the film, Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc travels to Miles Bron’s exclusive Greek island to join his friends as they solve a staged murder mystery, but the game goes awry when a real murder occurs among the select group, leaving only a handful of potential subjects.
While the similarities between Miles Bron and Elon Musk appear to be little more than media attempts to find an headline angle, viewers can decide for themselves at a local theater or on Netflix next month. After a week-long theatrical run, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery premieres on Netflix on December 23. It’s a unique and welcomed move by the streaming service, as they have voiced their intent to continue to support theaters.
The film also stars Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., and Jessica Henwick.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk continues to revamp and streamline Twitter, firing employees by tweet and making plenty of headlines in the process.
