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I watched the new Knives Out movie, and while the mystery plot was fun enough, my enjoyment of the movie was severely hampered by politics. I saw the previous Knives Out movie so I knew what to expect, but I do feel like this just went above and beyond. Minor spoilers to follow.
My wife was disappointed that I let politics ruin a good movie for me, but really, I think that the filmmakers honestly don't want you to view this movie as just a fun murder mystery without the context of politics. The movie is all about making a heavy handed political statement.
The movie just seemed like a pulpit for Rian Johnson to talk about how much he hates Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and various other people. I almost feel like the entire plot is really the secondary goal. The main goal of him making this was to implant and grow a brain worm in the audience that every famous rich person is connected, really part of a cabal that got what they got through no talent of their own, took advantage of individuals and the world at large, contribute nothing, and are evil, vile, worthless, and bratty pieces of shit.
Nowhere in the movie do they ever display the slightest amount of sympathy for anyone besides the detective and the poor black woman who was taken advantage of (major spoiler:or her secret twin sister ). I guess this movie really makes me feel like in order to write good compelling characters, you really have to love them, or have the capacity to love them, or maybe just respect and understand and empathize with them. Rian Johnson clearly does none of this, and his utter contempt for them just seeps through. He comes across like a high school kid writing screenplays to take pot shots at people he hates.
I don't know, I really can't believe that this movie has gotten so much praise. It really irritates me, and just seems like lazy complaining.
Other minor, non political gripe:
The movie came to a screeching halt when they decided to have the entire 3rd quarter of the movie as a flashback. I think small flashbacks are great in mystery stories, but the decision to have over a half hour told in flashback made me feel like it was dragging, and made me want it to just get back to advancing the plot.
I wish we had more tony starks and bruce wayne characters out there. Billionaires are portrayed terribly in recent movies.
Knives out has some fun twists. The plot is a bit unbelievable, but that's how murder mysteries are supposed to go, it's a chain of extremely unlikely events. It's a shame the characters felt so cheap, it made the the murderer rather predictable, other choices wouldn't have been as morally/politically satisfying.
They're never portrayed as good for being billionaires though. For both of those characters, the wealth is largely a way to explain why they have high-tech gadgets. They're shown as good because they act morally, not because they made money.
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Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to see small-to-medium size businesspeople as the heroes. Instead of a greedy land developer underhandedly swiping property from impoverished local residences, how about an overall pro-social depiction where an underutilized plot of land is recognized by a developer, he carefully negotiates with all the owners and stakeholders to acquire the rights to build there, and ends up employing many locals and assisting them with certain life problems and ultimately boosts the prosperity of the area while making himself a modest profit.
It's a Wonderful Life is my favorite Christmas movie, and one of my favorite movies, period, in part because that's almost exactly what it portrays.
I don't mind Billionaires as protagonists, and I think "extremely wealthy people can do a lot of good with their money" is a valid message, but I am cautious of the "ONLY billionaires can actually do good/save the world" motif that some films or series fall back on.
There ain't enough suspension of disbelief in the world for that. And if there were... well, it would be like a film about a man who disentangled the Gordian knot, spending most of the film on the intricacies of rope manipulation. As Alexander might say, BORE-ING.
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