With Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery finally peeling back its secrets on Netflix today, Rian Johnson is doing the rounds to discuss his latest success. Following up on his hit first, the sequel in his Hercule Poirot-esque mystery sent Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to the private island of billionaire tech bro Miles Bron (Edward Norton) to solve a murder among the mogul's influential friends. Since first seeing it in theaters, fans have been pointing out that Miles' characterization seems eerily similar to that of real life tech giant Elon Musk. As revealed in a recent Wired interview, Johnson recognized the comparisons.

Musk has gained far more public salience of late for his purchase of Twitter, but he's still best known as the mind behind businesses like Tesla and SpaceX. His turn as "Chief Twit" has been especially marked with criticism for poor decision-making when it comes to policy and for sinking so much money into a platform that was already in the red. His reign has largely been seen as chaotic, culminating in him recently announcing he'd step down once he found someone "foolish enough" to helm the site. Similarly, Miles carries the same tendencies. He has that same bravado and unwillingness to admit to a foolish decision. He also still has the gadgets and intellect to back up his credentials. In a post-Musk Twitter purchase world, the comparison seems obvious.

Johnson was asked about Musk and Miles, and he admitted he definitely understood where everyone was coming from. That said, because he wrote Glass Onion amid the pandemic and not in 2022, Musk wasn't his exact target when writing Miles:

There’s a lot of general stuff about that sort of species of tech billionaire that went directly into it. But obviously, it has almost a weird relevance in exactly the current moment. A friend of mine said, “Man, that feels like it was written this afternoon.” And that’s just sort of a horrible, horrible accident, you know?

Edward Norton as Miles Bron in Glass Onion a Knives Out Mystery
Image via Netflix

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Johnson Tackled Several Archetypes With Glass Onion

Of course, Miles is only one of many colorful characters in Johnson's film. There's Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a Twitch streamer and men's rights activist a la Andrew Tate, supermodel turned fashion mogul Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), and rising star politician Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn) among others that surround Miles. Each one could earn their own comparison to one influential figure or another. Johnson was eager to tackle these types of eccentric personalities and have them all shoved into a room alongside his sleigh with a Southern drawl Blanc. When asked how he decides who to scrutinize with his characters, he emphasized that he was merely holding up a mirror to our current cultural zeitgeist:

On this one, once I had a tech billionaire at the top of the suspect pyramid, then the type of friends that they would have and the tenor of everything came together. Because the intent was to accurately reflect what it’s been like to have our heads in the middle of the cultural sphere for the past six years. It’s a pretty nightmarish kind of carnival, Fellini-esque inflated reality right now.

Furthermore, he explained that the creation of these more true-to-life caricatures was a bit of a departure from the original Knives Out. Rather than creating characters that take classic whodunit tropes to their extremes, he wanted to capture the extremes of our world:

It’s a much more heightened tone. But any time I would think, “Oh God, should I tamp this down?” I would just open Twitter or turn on the news and realize it’s an honest reflection of what it feels like to be alive right now and paying attention to these people. It needs to be ridiculous because they are ridiculous, you know?

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is available to stream now on Netflix. Check out our interview with Johnson below: