Fun fact: the Mona Lisa wasn't very well known until it was stolen. After the painting was stolen, an art critic wrote about the piece and talked about her mysterious smile. Everyone was super interested all the sudden and when the painting was found, everyone wanted to see it. Art historians don't really think of it as Leonardo da Vinci's greatest work of all time. In fact, it was never finished. However, it has certainly had an affect on modern culture and our perception of art.
There’s a poster print of the painting somewhere on which there are large red critical marks as though from a teacher’s pen, with something at the top to the effect of “B+ good try Leonardo”
It took a full day for anyone to even notice. A commissioned vanity piece, made famous by being reproduced in newspaper photography. A clear case of "famous because famous", but people don't like liking something because it's famous so we make up all this stuff about it being the best and most important thing ever made and repeat it until it becomes ingrained truth. A perfect fit for Miles Bron
The victim's name is Cassandra Brand, not Sandra. The name is a specific reference to someone who speaks the truth but isn't heard and/or believed. Like Cassandra in Greek mythology. You can see her actual name on screen in this video, at 16:36. And when she shortens it, she goes by Andy, not Sandra.
This movie made me realize how easily I'll buy into someone being an incredible genius even when it's very obvious they aren't. Especially if the person is rich and powerful it's so easy to slip into thinking, "Well there must be a good reason for them to be rich and powerful," even when Edward Norton is using all his acting powers to make me think his character is an obnoxious ass. Then I saw your reveal about the napkin and realized I made the same mistake twice in one movie.
The crazy thing about this movie is it brought me to the same realisation by tricking me OUT of solving the mystery early. So my cousin, who had already seen the movie, watched it with me, mostly to watch my reaction to it. After the end, he reminded me of two things I'd forgotten. When Miles was surprised at the beach, I called it: "Miles did it." And then, when he switched the glasses, I saw that sleight of hand and gasped. I saw the murder! And yet, when Miles retold the story, with the help of the film's camera and editing, I didn't just assume I was wrong, I totally rewrote my own memory to forgot what I saw in the first place. This film taught me that one of the most powerful layers to the Glass Onion is the media/propaganda/storytelling that complicates the simple conclusions that would otherwise be blindingly obvious: these people are fucking stupid. But we don't see it because we aren't just watching what happened, we're being TOLD what happened. After watching Glass Onion it was genuinely fascinating watching Elon Musk slowly destroy twitter. The number of media figures and pro-billionaire groupies who tripped over themselves to try to convince everyone else that actually he was a genius playing 12th dimensional chess. And yet the conclusion was obvious from the start: he was a rich idiot with too much money and no clue what he was doing.
@@ProfDCoy This tripling down is hilarious. "Media Propaganda" sounds like projecting given your slew of completely uninformed takes in the last paragraph. I'm sure you were licking Jack Dorsey's boots when he was running the company into the ground with no complaints. Seems like a "can't trust the 'common folk' to have access to the truth or they might make the wrong decisions" argument.
The important thing to remember is that the vast majority of the ultrarich started out rich. The biggest factor in determining someone's success is where they where born, so it's just luck.
“Stop following rich idiots, they’ll get you killed” is maybe the defining quote of our generation. Or any generation. Thanks Mikey and Tara for all you do!
I'm not sure how to respond when I see people say stuff like this, and then those same people still blindly follow whatever a bunch of unelected, unqualified, self-proclaimed "experts" on CNN tell them to think. 🤷♂
This movie introduced my new most favoritest but equal to my other most favoritest useless character in a movie ever. My original favorite useless character in a movie ever was the guy locked in the dungeon clapping along during Camelot scene of Monty Python and the holy Grail. Now equal to him although he does have more screen time is the equally useless dude on the beach. We are told he has nothing to do with anything and I absolutely love that they stayed true to that he didn't have a damn thing to do with anything
I've seen some theorize that he represents the ever present but unobtrusive (for the rich) manifestation of covid-19. But gotta say, I do also love how he's just ... there. Useless. Unbothered. Chilling. ^_^
And just to be extra META, Netflix created a fake real estate web site that purpoites to sell the Greek island where Glass Onion was shot. The realtor listed on the web site is none other than.... Darrol. Ta-da!
Mysteries need their red herrings. The "vaccine" in the airgun is a great one too. It's so foregrounded that you're led to believe it will be key to the plot, but it's not, but on further reflection it's thematically important, especially when you consider that it's probably really some worthless crank medicine.
FINALLY SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT HOW THE NAPKIN IS JUST MORE NONSENSE 🤣 I paused the movie toward the end when I was watching it with my family and burst out laughing and they were all confused and I was like read the napkin. And they still didn't get it so I had to explain that there's NOTHING AT THE CENTER OF THE ONION. That's the whole point. It was nothing but drunken scribbles featuring investor buzzwords. The mountain they stand on is made of sand. It's so, soooo good. I love this film and I love your analysis of it. Honestly, I would watch another three hours of this. I was like "ohh that was a good intro" only to realize I was 28 minutes into a 30 minute video. So glad you're on Nebula! I can't afford to subscribe to everyone's patreons, but I do subscribe to Nebula to do what little I can. I hope you're able to keep the lights on! Your work is incredible!
The costumes are so obviously right for the characters (I remember noticing that the influencer's bikini was just a touch too small, a clear choice), that you don't even notice them unless you look, genius level work
Allow me to go one level further re: what Alpha is and what it does. Lionel mentions that their "Crypto Kids" app made Alpha a ton of money - Miles "Child = NFT" fax - which I can bet was not too dissimilar to how grifters use cartoony NFT's and "loot box" gambling to exploit children (and their parents' wallets) with very little effort. That being said, in the flashback scene where Andi creates The Napkin, David Bowie's "Starman" is playing in the background, and the dialogue cuts out to show off some *very* specific lyrics: "Let the children lose it / Let the children use it / Let the children boogie." A crypto-based company like Alpha was always going to end up here. Speaking of Lionel, one of my favorite details is his wishbone-shaped lapel pin. A wishbone is only lucky if it's broken, but Lionel doesn't break anything. I love this movie so much, it's almost replaced Hot Fuzz as my Desert Island Movie in terms of the things I catch with every rewatch. I got a Nebula subscription through one of your past videos and was unaware of your merch store! I don't have a Patreon account, so I'm glad to have another avenue to support you. I've been a fan for many years, and no matter how long this gig lasts, I'm happy it existed. I recently introduced my dad to your series through the Interstellar essay (it's his favorite movie) and now whenever we get together and try to think of something to watch, he often asks "How about a video from that 'But did you knowww?' guy?" 🥰
I've inhaled every think piece on Glass Onion but I haven't seen anyone explicitly mention that Birdie's stupid mesh mask is a direct Lana del Rey reference. It's not a huge thing, but it really stuck out to me as a perfect moment of character work. I'm surprised it's flown so far under the radar.
Yeah especially these days. 20 years ago we all had to listen to pretty much the same TV, the same radio... now everyone's in their niche, happy as larry, with about as much idea as a teenager's mum about the underground band they love when it comes to anything not in their wheelhouse. I remember when reality TV started actually, my Dad would be very derisory about any celebo he'd never heard of. We did point out to him he doesn't actually watch much TV, and he doesn't watch "insert genre" so why would he know who they were? But what used to be more of an indicator of how much mass media you consume is now just a reflection of the state of things.
I'm still upset that Benoit's problem with Clue is just "it's dumb" and not the more thematically appropriate "guessing randomly does not make you a good detective". This movie was a Clue game where someone guessed right on the first turn and everyone thought it was a mistake so they ruled it out and ended up eliminating every other possibility before they realized their mistake was dismissing the first guess.
Brilliant breakdown. The film to me expressed just how much we allow people who "made it" a greater weight to their thoughts. So many things in the film were just straight up wrong, but the characters believed it because why would someone lie about that. Even though they do all the time. I also think the scene with Helen not caring about the perception and destroying the box was hilarious.
Interesting thing I had coincidentally just learned: in 1966 Sondheim and Perkins had made another weird piece of entertainment: Evening Primrose. A made-for-tv short musical about people living in a department store. I had known that part before. The new part (to me) was that Sondheim and Perkins were likely A Thing at the time. Now learning that they wrote a movie together 7 years later makes me wonder how much of A Thing they were, ‘cause that’s quite a long time in Hollywood years Also, loved the use of “Pinball Wizard”, Mikey
I'm wondering if the fact that the Mona Lisa in the film is obviously not the real one (way too big) is purposeful. As in Miles doesn't realise he paid millions for a fake. And then his whole island blows up and he becomes a laughing stock because he's so distraught at destroying something which anyone with any knowledge of the Mona Lisa knows is a fake.
There was a deleted scene in which Benoit Blanc talks to the police afterward about the fake Mona Lisa he had swapped in. Though that would imply that it's actually hard to distinguish from the real one. Johnson decided the film would be better without it.
Also, the guitar wasn't Paul McCartney's, because Paul had left-handed guitars made for him from very early on (basically the moment the Beatles was making mucho dinero). And the guitar Miles plinks away on is right-handed.
When I first watched it, I was like "that was okay I guess." But the movie stuck with me for days as I dug deeper into the many layers. It's incredible.
Agreed. It didn't have the immediate "that was frickin AWESOME!" sensation that came at the end of Knives Out, but there's just as much to explore and enjoy about it.
I saw this a month ago on Nebula, but watching it again today makes me want to go back and rewatch this movie AGAIN. How insight, such nuance. Kudos Mikey!
The guitar at the beginning was the biggest clue to me. Because Miles said that Paul wrote Blackbird with it, but it was a rightie guitar. Also, Norton played a thief whose main attributes was his lack of originality on the Italian Job. And I've always had a hard time forgetting about that trait whenever I saw him jn anything else since, because it's such a weird characteristic. So basically I just knew he was the main villain but didn't know how it would play out at all. An awesome movie !
@pedrogarcia8706 Honestly, that is plausible. But also, from a storytelling perspective, I think it was sort of an Easter egg to have it so blatantly erroneous. Because honestly, beyond Janelle being there, there was no real importance to Blackbird. It could have just been the righty guitar that another famous righty used to write an equally famous song. I might be reading too much into it, of course. But when watching it, that detail did pop out for me and put me in that frame of mind.
"...as the actors nail six pieces of ham to the wall" had to pause and comment there I was laughing so hard. Well played! (Edit though: I wonder who else realizes the "Miracle Mist" was almost certainly a placebo? The only reason we expect it to be anything else is because we expect Miles to be a genius. It was snake-oil with nothing more than an assurance of "You're good". )
Oh yeah, that was classic Covid though, people talking themselves into thinking their behaviour was fine because of some made up parameters which sounded ok, or some snake oil placebo etc. Like, it's fine I went to a rave and shared drugs cause I was outside! It's fine I went to the hairdresser even though they were supposed to be closed because it was only 7 of us and we wore masks. I won't catch covid I'm young. I won't catch covid God loves me... etc.
Hey Tara & Mikey thank you so much for this amazing video, you guys never seize to amaze and entertain in equal badassness parts. It's 2:30 am in Los Angeles, my partner and I called out from our jobs today and just spent 12 hours in our car delivering groceries in Hollywood hills to be able to have our rent check clear tomorrow and I'm tired... Not only because we are the lucky ones that even have a side gig and have a car, not only because everywhere you see human beings without anything living on the street , but especially because of the places and people we delivered to today, I swear people with actual spaces like these charectures in this movie picture show inhabit. I'm tired of this and all THAT was to say thank you guys for this, as my angry ramblings might have given away ever so slightly, I (curse word) needed this.
Now I have to watch Glass Onion again. There's so much more to it than I got the first time around. What an awesome video. Speaking of which... If I weren't on disability and could afford it, I'd totally support you guys. This is the best movie channel on UA-cam. I hope you guys get enough help to keep going. I would miss you. Thanks to everyone who _does_ support the channel. You're also making it so I get to enjoy these videos for free.
2:37 Small correction: at least in my neighborhood, there was SOME Halloween celebration! Kids still trick-or-treated, and people put bowls of candy outside their doors or found other workarounds. My roommate and I dressed up as superheroes and hung a battery-lit sign from our balcony telling kids to yell "trick or treat!" for a surprise. When they did, we pulled an orange plastic pumpkin bucket out of a flowerpot, dumped candy into it, and lowered it down to them on a rope. The kids liked it so much that they came back multiple times and started calling our place "the bucket apartment". Almost three years later, we're still "the bucket ladies". We made the whole setup out of stuff we had lying around: the costumes were made from stuff in our closets, the sign was from my protest stash, the light was a clip-on reading lamp, and the rope was out of an emergency kit. Only the bucket and the actual candy came from Rite-Aid. It might be the best Halloween of my life. (Note: I was raised by fundies and basically didn't get to do Halloween until I was a teenager.) I wouldn't be surprised to hear that other people had similar stories.
So glad to see this movie getting more love. I really loved it and thought it was a great follow up to Glass Onion, and it felt like people just were taking dookies on it left and right, but glad to see it'll likely be remembered fondly down the line and deconstructed more.
Goddamn, the intro to your videos is always just… instant fucking serotonin. So excited for this. I loved Glass Onion, and this’ll be a nice revisit. (Damn sure gonna grab some more pins on payday!)
i really hope humans can survive long enough to evolve past things like greed and arrogance. the number of people needlessly suffering so a few people can have some more cool stuff is mind numbingly horrible. it really is hard to wrap your head around and i can't even imagine the darkness inside someone who's ok with it because...cool stuff.
Not sure how I managed to miss you guys there for so long, but just became a patron on Patreon. Love your essays. Thank you so much for being a light in a dark world.
Still just trying to stay afloat here, Mikey, but I got you once things turn around. I did buy some catawumpus merch a while back, though, and "Fight Less Talk More Say Sorry Sometimes" has just about gone threadbare. It's easily my favorite shirt that I own. I always share out every video whenever they drop, hope that helps.
I want to leave this comment for no other reason than to let you know I will fervently support FilmJoy until there is no joy left. I love what y'all do and THANK YOU for being so awesome.
"Stop following rich idiots, they'll get you killed" The guy who founded Oceangate ignored safety regulations in the name of innovation, and died on his own submarine along with four other people. We need movies and media analysis like this.
I love how much this movie rewards you for noticing little thing. You feel like a detective playing at home trying to solve the case. Everything is important and nothing feels wasted
Hey Mikey I just want to add something on here. At the end of the movie when we see the painting burning, it burns like canvas, spoiling and pulling apart. The Mona Lisa is not painted on canvas. It's painted on solid wood. The museum gave him a fake!
Research varies, but some states "60% of new restaurants fail in the first year, 80% in the first five". Other research indicates, "most restaurants last eight to 10 years". Either way, while your channel is not a restaurant, it is comparable in unique flavors offered to mass audiences and has reached, or surpassed, average levels of success. This is not to say, "maybe it's time?" and rather WELL DONE! Rooting for another decade of great content and will contribute when and where I can.
Most of this essay went over my head but I will say immediately after seeing Glass Onion I had to rewatch. It was just as satisfying the 2nd time. So I agree it will age like wine.
I honestly thought Alpha was gonna be a SpaceX stand-in because it looked like a hangar at the start. Also i didn't read the napkin but i did read when Andy was writing "crypto scalability" and went "oh no that's gonna crash and burn"
I say this intoxicated and 2/3 through watching this video, but it’s often been said that films are a reflection of their time as much as a story. Well, now I feel that film criticisms, the good ones at least, are about reinterpreting films for the times in which they were reviewed (even if that time is just the next day). Getting heavy doses of that feeling in this video even with all the lovely history. PS: it’s weird to be nostalgic about the pandemic.
Really a return to form, I've loved the most recent vids but this one was SO GOOD! I want you guys to stick around for many years yet! Gonna go evangelize about FilmJoy and Catawumpus Ink now lol x3
Mikey + black and white movies is my happy place. Stemming from Logan and the praise for that movie I actually get excited when the color is removed in a video. Means Mikey is about to drop bars.
We celebrated halloween 2020. Our neighborhood did trick or treating where all candy was left outside rather than having to ring doorbells and everyone wore masks under their masks. We skipped the part where we gathered inside to compare candy. It was the closest thing to normal we'd had in months.
My roommate and I lowered a pumpkin bucket full of candy off our balcony on a rope for trick-or-treaters. The local kids loved it. Our apartment is still known as "the bucket apartment".
Really wish I could support, you’ve got one of the best channels on UA-cam here. Unfortunately I’m fresh out of college and can barely afford to eat at the moment.
Glass Onion. A mystery that is not a mystery at all. Everything is exactly as you think it is. But you think " That cannot be true". So you look for a mystery. But there is no criminal genius. And the only clues are clues to tell you everything is exactly what you think it is. If you can put aside the idea that there is a mystery here you know who did it. Right from the start. Everything and everyone is a red herring. (But is is still a great movie.)
Hello! My partner & I love your channel and, personally, it helped get me through some rough times. Saw your message in the video and ordered a t-shirt and backed your Patreon. (My first ever backing!) I hope your channel runs for basically all eternity.
Mikey! You're video showed up on my homepage for the first time in months when I opened UA-cam. I hope that's a good sign of things to come for you in the UA-cam Algorithm hellscape! Keep up the great work man! love your content!
Love your cadence, and jokes. Instant subscribe, and you are the new monarch of what to listen to while walking the dogs (though the editing is also *chefkiss*)
Also, the fact that Glass Onion stops right in the middle of a traditional murder mystery....exactly where you'd expect things to start falling directly into place, and changes everything around to be its own thing, is wildly unappreciated, I think. People want things to follow exactly the same pattern, which to me means all movies tend to look and feel exactly the same these days, and Johnson just kind of doesn't care about that, and I like it.
The pins on your website were cute and so legit for 4/$25 PLUS you had a pin envelope shipping option so I wouldn’t have to annoyingly pay for first class prices!! (I swear I’m not an ad just a pin enthusiast! But I do love that I could support the channel by buying directly from you!)
And it ends in Aphex Twin? Could these videos be any more fun and amazing? This one got me - I'm now a Patreon subscriber. Each one of these analyses is a joy (ha) that makes me appreciate the topic even more.
I didn't put much thought into the content of the napkin since it was barely shown and usually anything with text in a movie is often filled with just enough for the audience to know what it is. Sure it's cool when you pause and read newspaper articles that are actually about what they say they're about, but often it's just gibberish. I automatically assumed the same here. Given the thought that goes into these movies though, it makes sense that the napkin was deliberately stupid as well.
To be fair, that is a twist which has been used very poorly in many other works of fiction and because of that, a lot of people will have a gut reaction to seeing it at all. Glass Onion did a good version of the "They had a twin all along" twist and doesn't just use it to write itself out of a corner, but builds the story around it. But sadly, a lot of people have learned to hate the idea of someone having an unkown twin in the first place and won't accept it, even when it's done well.
Great video guys! Really insightful analysis. The connection between the art and NFTs passed me by, but it's right there, and you sum this excellent film up perfectly. In fact, I need to rewatch it with your thoughts in mind. Great work. Subbed!!
"Absurdist art can no longer keep up with reality" is a line that goes to friggin hard
Fun fact: the Mona Lisa wasn't very well known until it was stolen. After the painting was stolen, an art critic wrote about the piece and talked about her mysterious smile. Everyone was super interested all the sudden and when the painting was found, everyone wanted to see it. Art historians don't really think of it as Leonardo da Vinci's greatest work of all time. In fact, it was never finished. However, it has certainly had an affect on modern culture and our perception of art.
There’s a poster print of the painting somewhere on which there are large red critical marks as though from a teacher’s pen, with something at the top to the effect of “B+ good try Leonardo”
*all of a sudden
It took a full day for anyone to even notice.
A commissioned vanity piece, made famous by being reproduced in newspaper photography. A clear case of "famous because famous", but people don't like liking something because it's famous so we make up all this stuff about it being the best and most important thing ever made and repeat it until it becomes ingrained truth.
A perfect fit for Miles Bron
Adam Conover 😉
@@qwerty42a its...well known trivia
The victim's name is Cassandra Brand, not Sandra. The name is a specific reference to someone who speaks the truth but isn't heard and/or believed. Like Cassandra in Greek mythology. You can see her actual name on screen in this video, at 16:36. And when she shortens it, she goes by Andy, not Sandra.
Reading this, I suddenly realized that Cassandra’s name is very close to Sandra Bland, which may not a coincidence. #sayhername
This movie made me realize how easily I'll buy into someone being an incredible genius even when it's very obvious they aren't. Especially if the person is rich and powerful it's so easy to slip into thinking, "Well there must be a good reason for them to be rich and powerful," even when Edward Norton is using all his acting powers to make me think his character is an obnoxious ass.
Then I saw your reveal about the napkin and realized I made the same mistake twice in one movie.
The crazy thing about this movie is it brought me to the same realisation by tricking me OUT of solving the mystery early.
So my cousin, who had already seen the movie, watched it with me, mostly to watch my reaction to it. After the end, he reminded me of two things I'd forgotten.
When Miles was surprised at the beach, I called it: "Miles did it."
And then, when he switched the glasses, I saw that sleight of hand and gasped. I saw the murder!
And yet, when Miles retold the story, with the help of the film's camera and editing, I didn't just assume I was wrong, I totally rewrote my own memory to forgot what I saw in the first place.
This film taught me that one of the most powerful layers to the Glass Onion is the media/propaganda/storytelling that complicates the simple conclusions that would otherwise be blindingly obvious: these people are fucking stupid. But we don't see it because we aren't just watching what happened, we're being TOLD what happened.
After watching Glass Onion it was genuinely fascinating watching Elon Musk slowly destroy twitter. The number of media figures and pro-billionaire groupies who tripped over themselves to try to convince everyone else that actually he was a genius playing 12th dimensional chess. And yet the conclusion was obvious from the start: he was a rich idiot with too much money and no clue what he was doing.
@@ProfDCoy This tripling down is hilarious.
"Media Propaganda" sounds like projecting given your slew of completely uninformed takes in the last paragraph. I'm sure you were licking Jack Dorsey's boots when he was running the company into the ground with no complaints.
Seems like a "can't trust the 'common folk' to have access to the truth or they might make the wrong decisions" argument.
Benoit does it too:
From: "Miles Braun is not an idiot"
To: "Miles Braun is an idiot"
Quite literally from Act 1 to Act 3.
@@Coconut-219 You are completely missing their point while also proving the kind of thing their talking about.
The important thing to remember is that the vast majority of the ultrarich started out rich. The biggest factor in determining someone's success is where they where born, so it's just luck.
“Stop following rich idiots, they’ll get you killed” is maybe the defining quote of our generation. Or any generation.
Thanks Mikey and Tara for all you do!
PREACH
I'm not sure how to respond when I see people say stuff like this, and then those same people still blindly follow whatever a bunch of unelected, unqualified, self-proclaimed "experts" on CNN tell them to think. 🤷♂
All the more true with the recent submarine incident
@@Conteventwild how that comment was written before the OceanGate incident, I thought it was directly referencing it.
This movie introduced my new most favoritest but equal to my other most favoritest useless character in a movie ever. My original favorite useless character in a movie ever was the guy locked in the dungeon clapping along during Camelot scene of Monty Python and the holy Grail. Now equal to him although he does have more screen time is the equally useless dude on the beach. We are told he has nothing to do with anything and I absolutely love that they stayed true to that he didn't have a damn thing to do with anything
I've seen some theorize that he represents the ever present but unobtrusive (for the rich) manifestation of covid-19. But gotta say, I do also love how he's just ... there. Useless. Unbothered. Chilling. ^_^
And just to be extra META, Netflix created a fake real estate web site that purpoites to sell the Greek island where Glass Onion was shot. The realtor listed on the web site is none other than.... Darrol. Ta-da!
Mysteries need their red herrings.
The "vaccine" in the airgun is a great one too. It's so foregrounded that you're led to believe it will be key to the plot, but it's not, but on further reflection it's thematically important, especially when you consider that it's probably really some worthless crank medicine.
Fuckin' a.
And fun fact I only learned recently: the actor is the same guy who played Trooper Wagner in Knives Out.
FINALLY SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT HOW THE NAPKIN IS JUST MORE NONSENSE 🤣
I paused the movie toward the end when I was watching it with my family and burst out laughing and they were all confused and I was like read the napkin. And they still didn't get it so I had to explain that there's NOTHING AT THE CENTER OF THE ONION. That's the whole point. It was nothing but drunken scribbles featuring investor buzzwords. The mountain they stand on is made of sand. It's so, soooo good.
I love this film and I love your analysis of it. Honestly, I would watch another three hours of this. I was like "ohh that was a good intro" only to realize I was 28 minutes into a 30 minute video.
So glad you're on Nebula! I can't afford to subscribe to everyone's patreons, but I do subscribe to Nebula to do what little I can. I hope you're able to keep the lights on! Your work is incredible!
The costumes are so obviously right for the characters (I remember noticing that the influencer's bikini was just a touch too small, a clear choice), that you don't even notice them unless you look, genius level work
Allow me to go one level further re: what Alpha is and what it does. Lionel mentions that their "Crypto Kids" app made Alpha a ton of money - Miles "Child = NFT" fax - which I can bet was not too dissimilar to how grifters use cartoony NFT's and "loot box" gambling to exploit children (and their parents' wallets) with very little effort. That being said, in the flashback scene where Andi creates The Napkin, David Bowie's "Starman" is playing in the background, and the dialogue cuts out to show off some *very* specific lyrics: "Let the children lose it / Let the children use it / Let the children boogie." A crypto-based company like Alpha was always going to end up here.
Speaking of Lionel, one of my favorite details is his wishbone-shaped lapel pin. A wishbone is only lucky if it's broken, but Lionel doesn't break anything. I love this movie so much, it's almost replaced Hot Fuzz as my Desert Island Movie in terms of the things I catch with every rewatch.
I got a Nebula subscription through one of your past videos and was unaware of your merch store! I don't have a Patreon account, so I'm glad to have another avenue to support you. I've been a fan for many years, and no matter how long this gig lasts, I'm happy it existed. I recently introduced my dad to your series through the Interstellar essay (it's his favorite movie) and now whenever we get together and try to think of something to watch, he often asks "How about a video from that 'But did you knowww?' guy?" 🥰
I've inhaled every think piece on Glass Onion but I haven't seen anyone explicitly mention that Birdie's stupid mesh mask is a direct Lana del Rey reference. It's not a huge thing, but it really stuck out to me as a perfect moment of character work. I'm surprised it's flown so far under the radar.
The things you learn. I didn't even know who Lana del Rey was.
Maybe because Lana Del Rey is pretty insignificant as an artist?
@@girlirl Every artist is pretty insignificant, except to those that are moved by their art.
Yeah especially these days. 20 years ago we all had to listen to pretty much the same TV, the same radio... now everyone's in their niche, happy as larry, with about as much idea as a teenager's mum about the underground band they love when it comes to anything not in their wheelhouse.
I remember when reality TV started actually, my Dad would be very derisory about any celebo he'd never heard of. We did point out to him he doesn't actually watch much TV, and he doesn't watch "insert genre" so why would he know who they were? But what used to be more of an indicator of how much mass media you consume is now just a reflection of the state of things.
I'm still upset that Benoit's problem with Clue is just "it's dumb" and not the more thematically appropriate "guessing randomly does not make you a good detective". This movie was a Clue game where someone guessed right on the first turn and everyone thought it was a mistake so they ruled it out and ended up eliminating every other possibility before they realized their mistake was dismissing the first guess.
Brilliant breakdown. The film to me expressed just how much we allow people who "made it" a greater weight to their thoughts. So many things in the film were just straight up wrong, but the characters believed it because why would someone lie about that. Even though they do all the time. I also think the scene with Helen not caring about the perception and destroying the box was hilarious.
Interesting thing I had coincidentally just learned: in 1966 Sondheim and Perkins had made another weird piece of entertainment: Evening Primrose. A made-for-tv short musical about people living in a department store. I had known that part before. The new part (to me) was that Sondheim and Perkins were likely A Thing at the time. Now learning that they wrote a movie together 7 years later makes me wonder how much of A Thing they were, ‘cause that’s quite a long time in Hollywood years
Also, loved the use of “Pinball Wizard”, Mikey
I'm wondering if the fact that the Mona Lisa in the film is obviously not the real one (way too big) is purposeful.
As in Miles doesn't realise he paid millions for a fake. And then his whole island blows up and he becomes a laughing stock because he's so distraught at destroying something which anyone with any knowledge of the Mona Lisa knows is a fake.
There was a deleted scene in which Benoit Blanc talks to the police afterward about the fake Mona Lisa he had swapped in. Though that would imply that it's actually hard to distinguish from the real one. Johnson decided the film would be better without it.
Also, the guitar wasn't Paul McCartney's, because Paul had left-handed guitars made for him from very early on (basically the moment the Beatles was making mucho dinero). And the guitar Miles plinks away on is right-handed.
For narrative intents and purposes, it's the real one.
@legoneb considering that it zooms in on the canvas burning when the original is painted on wood, I think it's deliberate
@@MrGBH I didn't notice that! Good catch.
When I first watched it, I was like "that was okay I guess." But the movie stuck with me for days as I dug deeper into the many layers. It's incredible.
Agreed. It didn't have the immediate "that was frickin AWESOME!" sensation that came at the end of Knives Out, but there's just as much to explore and enjoy about it.
I saw this a month ago on Nebula, but watching it again today makes me want to go back and rewatch this movie AGAIN. How insight, such nuance. Kudos Mikey!
The guitar at the beginning was the biggest clue to me. Because Miles said that Paul wrote Blackbird with it, but it was a rightie guitar. Also, Norton played a thief whose main attributes was his lack of originality on the Italian Job. And I've always had a hard time forgetting about that trait whenever I saw him jn anything else since, because it's such a weird characteristic.
So basically I just knew he was the main villain but didn't know how it would play out at all.
An awesome movie !
so if it was the right guitar he would have had to have it restrung righty, right?
@pedrogarcia8706 Honestly, that is plausible. But also, from a storytelling perspective, I think it was sort of an Easter egg to have it so blatantly erroneous. Because honestly, beyond Janelle being there, there was no real importance to Blackbird. It could have just been the righty guitar that another famous righty used to write an equally famous song.
I might be reading too much into it, of course. But when watching it, that detail did pop out for me and put me in that frame of mind.
But Paul *did* write Blackbird on a rightie Martin D-28, it's one of his most famous instruments and he still plays it nowadays
"...as the actors nail six pieces of ham to the wall" had to pause and comment there I was laughing so hard. Well played!
(Edit though: I wonder who else realizes the "Miracle Mist" was almost certainly a placebo? The only reason we expect it to be anything else is because we expect Miles to be a genius. It was snake-oil with nothing more than an assurance of "You're good". )
I thought there was a missed opportunity for a mid-credits scene to show them getting home and all got COVID in spite of Miles' "Miracle Mist." :D
Oh yeah, that was classic Covid though, people talking themselves into thinking their behaviour was fine because of some made up parameters which sounded ok, or some snake oil placebo etc.
Like, it's fine I went to a rave and shared drugs cause I was outside! It's fine I went to the hairdresser even though they were supposed to be closed because it was only 7 of us and we wore masks. I won't catch covid I'm young. I won't catch covid God loves me... etc.
That intro will NEVER get old
Over here in the UK I just woke up. And honestly this is better than waking up next to anything else.
Hey Tara & Mikey thank you so much for this amazing video, you guys never seize to amaze and entertain in equal badassness parts. It's 2:30 am in Los Angeles, my partner and I called out from our jobs today and just spent 12 hours in our car delivering groceries in Hollywood hills to be able to have our rent check clear tomorrow and I'm tired... Not only because we are the lucky ones that even have a side gig and have a car, not only because everywhere you see human beings without anything living on the street , but especially because of the places and people we delivered to today, I swear people with actual spaces like these charectures in this movie picture show inhabit. I'm tired of this and all THAT was to say thank you guys for this, as my angry ramblings might have given away ever so slightly, I (curse word) needed this.
Now I have to watch Glass Onion again. There's so much more to it than I got the first time around. What an awesome video.
Speaking of which...
If I weren't on disability and could afford it, I'd totally support you guys. This is the best movie channel on UA-cam. I hope you guys get enough help to keep going. I would miss you. Thanks to everyone who _does_ support the channel. You're also making it so I get to enjoy these videos for free.
THIS.
2:37 Small correction: at least in my neighborhood, there was SOME Halloween celebration! Kids still trick-or-treated, and people put bowls of candy outside their doors or found other workarounds. My roommate and I dressed up as superheroes and hung a battery-lit sign from our balcony telling kids to yell "trick or treat!" for a surprise. When they did, we pulled an orange plastic pumpkin bucket out of a flowerpot, dumped candy into it, and lowered it down to them on a rope. The kids liked it so much that they came back multiple times and started calling our place "the bucket apartment". Almost three years later, we're still "the bucket ladies".
We made the whole setup out of stuff we had lying around: the costumes were made from stuff in our closets, the sign was from my protest stash, the light was a clip-on reading lamp, and the rope was out of an emergency kit. Only the bucket and the actual candy came from Rite-Aid. It might be the best Halloween of my life. (Note: I was raised by fundies and basically didn't get to do Halloween until I was a teenager.)
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that other people had similar stories.
So glad to see this movie getting more love. I really loved it and thought it was a great follow up to Glass Onion, and it felt like people just were taking dookies on it left and right, but glad to see it'll likely be remembered fondly down the line and deconstructed more.
Man the WGA strike and how shitty the Studios are being right now fits this to a tee. I'm sure this release date wasn't an accident. Love the channel.
Goddamn, the intro to your videos is always just… instant fucking serotonin.
So excited for this. I loved Glass Onion, and this’ll be a nice revisit.
(Damn sure gonna grab some more pins on payday!)
27:20 actually scared the hell out of me, A+ for the scariest audio editing I've witnessed in a long time
Same! I had to stop the video and make sure the Idiot Cat hadn't gotten into something!
We all love you Mikey. Keep up the good work
This video brings together my favorite essayist and favorite movie.
i really hope humans can survive long enough to evolve past things like greed and arrogance. the number of people needlessly suffering so a few people can have some more cool stuff is mind numbingly horrible. it really is hard to wrap your head around and i can't even imagine the darkness inside someone who's ok with it because...cool stuff.
Not sure how I managed to miss you guys there for so long, but just became a patron on Patreon. Love your essays. Thank you so much for being a light in a dark world.
Still just trying to stay afloat here, Mikey, but I got you once things turn around. I did buy some catawumpus merch a while back, though, and "Fight Less Talk More Say Sorry Sometimes" has just about gone threadbare. It's easily my favorite shirt that I own. I always share out every video whenever they drop, hope that helps.
I want to leave this comment for no other reason than to let you know I will fervently support FilmJoy until there is no joy left. I love what y'all do and THANK YOU for being so awesome.
"Stop following rich idiots, they'll get you killed"
The guy who founded Oceangate ignored safety regulations in the name of innovation, and died on his own submarine along with four other people.
We need movies and media analysis like this.
I cant wait for the 3rd installment of Knives Out
I love how much this movie rewards you for noticing little thing. You feel like a detective playing at home trying to solve the case. Everything is important and nothing feels wasted
Hey Mikey I just want to add something on here. At the end of the movie when we see the painting burning, it burns like canvas, spoiling and pulling apart.
The Mona Lisa is not painted on canvas. It's painted on solid wood. The museum gave him a fake!
Research varies, but some states "60% of new restaurants fail in the first year, 80% in the first five". Other research indicates, "most restaurants last eight to 10 years". Either way, while your channel is not a restaurant, it is comparable in unique flavors offered to mass audiences and has reached, or surpassed, average levels of success. This is not to say, "maybe it's time?" and rather WELL DONE!
Rooting for another decade of great content and will contribute when and where I can.
Most of this essay went over my head but I will say immediately after seeing Glass Onion I had to rewatch. It was just as satisfying the 2nd time. So I agree it will age like wine.
of all the things I'm coming away from this video with, "RINGO HAS A SEXY NOSE" is probably going to stick in my brain the longest.
I wish I could financially afford to support but just know your videos are amazing and appreciated!
Bliss is chilling out with a good video about a good movie. Fantastic, as always, thank you.
I honestly thought Alpha was gonna be a SpaceX stand-in because it looked like a hangar at the start.
Also i didn't read the napkin but i did read when Andy was writing "crypto scalability" and went "oh no that's gonna crash and burn"
Subscribed to patreon and bought a ton of pins, I love what's happening over here on film joy and I truly hope it can stay your full time jobs.
Every time I get a new movies with Mikey, I get a big old smile on my face
I say this intoxicated and 2/3 through watching this video, but it’s often been said that films are a reflection of their time as much as a story.
Well, now I feel that film criticisms, the good ones at least, are about reinterpreting films for the times in which they were reviewed (even if that time is just the next day). Getting heavy doses of that feeling in this video even with all the lovely history.
PS: it’s weird to be nostalgic about the pandemic.
All art reflects us back to ourselves IMO. It is the most interesting thing about it.
not expecting a Bo Burnham reference in a video essay about Glass Onion but it's appreciated.
Really a return to form, I've loved the most recent vids but this one was SO GOOD!
I want you guys to stick around for many years yet! Gonna go evangelize about FilmJoy and Catawumpus Ink now lol x3
this video is looks really good and has a really great script but i can’t process anything your saying bc of all the background noises
I can’t support financially right now but I’ll do everything I can for daddy algorithm
I signed up for Nebula through you!
Thanks!
I really hope it helps.
Easily one of the best video essays I've seen all year. Well done, Mikey and team. Thank you and well done. 💜💜
Mikey + black and white movies is my happy place. Stemming from Logan and the praise for that movie I actually get excited when the color is removed in a video. Means Mikey is about to drop bars.
Love listening to you guys break down a movie it always makes me want to go watch it again!
We celebrated halloween 2020. Our neighborhood did trick or treating where all candy was left outside rather than having to ring doorbells and everyone wore masks under their masks. We skipped the part where we gathered inside to compare candy. It was the closest thing to normal we'd had in months.
We put candy out like that just in case, but nobody showed up. The town had officially cancelled.
My roommate and I lowered a pumpkin bucket full of candy off our balcony on a rope for trick-or-treaters. The local kids loved it. Our apartment is still known as "the bucket apartment".
Brilliant, as always. The napkin analysis was genius!
Unlike the contents of the napkin, which I'm embarrassed to admit it never occurred to me to question 😅
I guess I'm a bad person, cuz I absolutely delight in hearing Mikey demolish "humanity's top people" while dropping Bo Burnham quotes
‘Boseph Burnham’
Really wish I could support, you’ve got one of the best channels on UA-cam here. Unfortunately I’m fresh out of college and can barely afford to eat at the moment.
Glass Onion. A mystery that is not a mystery at all. Everything is exactly as you think it is. But you think " That cannot be true". So you look for a mystery. But there is no criminal genius. And the only clues are clues to tell you everything is exactly what you think it is. If you can put aside the idea that there is a mystery here you know who did it. Right from the start. Everything and everyone is a red herring. (But is is still a great movie.)
Ive always loved your intro jam. But i watched this with a sound system connected instead of on my phone speakers. Its even more epic now
always happy to see a MwM come out! i am officially a pleased donut! if/when I make more money I'll try to upgrade!
Hello! My partner & I love your channel and, personally, it helped get me through some rough times. Saw your message in the video and ordered a t-shirt and backed your Patreon. (My first ever backing!)
I hope your channel runs for basically all eternity.
there should have been an extra scene of all the people on the island getting sick. 😂
Very very good video essay! Realized several things about the movie I hadn’t caught while watching!
Fuck Yes Mikey. Just when I was about to be bored you gave me salvation
Mikey! You're video showed up on my homepage for the first time in months when I opened UA-cam. I hope that's a good sign of things to come for you in the UA-cam Algorithm hellscape! Keep up the great work man! love your content!
I really love your stuff, i normally don’t want to support creator’s beyond watching and recommending their videos, but I’ll see what I can do
Love your cadence, and jokes. Instant subscribe, and you are the new monarch of what to listen to while walking the dogs (though the editing is also *chefkiss*)
Mikey, thank you for everything you do. Smart, funny, and a whole lot of heart. Thank you so much.
Don’t know if have said it before, but I love your channel’s content!
I've never done Patreon, but I can't live without FilmJoy. You're the proud new recipient of my monthly Visa cash back rewards.
A world without Filmjoy is a world without literal joy. I have signed up for Nebula, hope it helps!
Incredible Analysis, Mikey. You blew me away with this and I have more respect for this film thanks to you.
Also, the fact that Glass Onion stops right in the middle of a traditional murder mystery....exactly where you'd expect things to start falling directly into place, and changes everything around to be its own thing, is wildly unappreciated, I think. People want things to follow exactly the same pattern, which to me means all movies tend to look and feel exactly the same these days, and Johnson just kind of doesn't care about that, and I like it.
Caught this first on Nebula but wanted to catch it again over here too.
It's always a welcome sight to watch your videos. Great job as always guys. 👍
2am is the perfect time for Movies with Mikey! ❤
The pins on your website were cute and so legit for 4/$25 PLUS you had a pin envelope shipping option so I wouldn’t have to annoyingly pay for first class prices!! (I swear I’m not an ad just a pin enthusiast! But I do love that I could support the channel by buying directly from you!)
lovely as ever i will love this channel till the day i die
It was great meeting you at Pax! Another great and poignant video.
I love that you used some music from Brick while talking about noirs! Such a wonderful movie!
It's one I definitely try to share with others. Rian has always been an excellent director with interesting mysteries using just the best people.
Superb as always, Mikey. I've been calling this "the age of fraud and grift" for several years already.
Love you guys! Just bought 4 pins and a tank top and kicked in a 10% tip 😘😘😘
Subbed via Patreon. You guys make my life better. LOOOOVE your content🎉
Doesn't get any better than a Mikey analysis!
11:35 Eeek! Suddenly young Ian McShane is sudden!
After CinemaWins gushing video about this I was really looking forward to your take.
And it ends in Aphex Twin? Could these videos be any more fun and amazing? This one got me - I'm now a Patreon subscriber. Each one of these analyses is a joy (ha) that makes me appreciate the topic even more.
I legit thought you'd stopped making content because I hadn't seen an alert in over a year until this popped up this very day.
I hope they make many, many more of these. No series is so on the pulse about the injustices created by rich assholes in a bad system
Well, top of the evening to you Mikey.
I didn't put much thought into the content of the napkin since it was barely shown and usually anything with text in a movie is often filled with just enough for the audience to know what it is. Sure it's cool when you pause and read newspaper articles that are actually about what they say they're about, but often it's just gibberish. I automatically assumed the same here.
Given the thought that goes into these movies though, it makes sense that the napkin was deliberately stupid as well.
I WAS WAITING ON MIKEYS NEW VIDEO DEBUNKING THIS. Ive seen the knives out one so many times I can quote the intro.
10/10 isn’t enough for this video and channel
Lets gooooo. Been waitin for you to do these
Love You, FilmJOY!
I love the Catawampus, but even with the bell-icon + subscribed, I did not get notified of this vid until today. :(
I hadn't really considered the layers of writing about mystery games...but I see it now. I was slowly noticing more Beatles related details though
I loved this video, and I love this movie SO DARN MUCH I need to rewatch it now.
But wait, people were angry at the twin twist? Seriously?
To be fair, that is a twist which has been used very poorly in many other works of fiction and because of that, a lot of people will have a gut reaction to seeing it at all.
Glass Onion did a good version of the "They had a twin all along" twist and doesn't just use it to write itself out of a corner, but builds the story around it. But sadly, a lot of people have learned to hate the idea of someone having an unkown twin in the first place and won't accept it, even when it's done well.
Yeah, I can see that. It's a shame to not give a chance to a movie because of that but Oh well.
Thank you for that perspective!!
Great video guys!
Really insightful analysis. The connection between the art and NFTs passed me by, but it's right there, and you sum this excellent film up perfectly. In fact, I need to rewatch it with your thoughts in mind.
Great work. Subbed!!