‘Glass Onion’ Director Rian Johnson Laments Film Having ‘Knives Out’ In Title

Rian Johnson is opening up about the creation of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and said he lamented the film having Knives Out in its title.

Johnson tried hard to make a sequel to his 2019 hit Knives Out that would be its own standalone story with only detective Benoit Blanc crossing over from the first film.

More from Deadline

“I’ve tried hard to make them self-contained. Honestly, I’m pissed off that we have A Knives Out Mystery in the title,” Johnson told The Atlantic in an interview. “I want it to just be called Glass Onion.”

Johnson added, “I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling.”

The filmmaker, who also directed and wrote 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, also tried to give an ending to the movie despite being the second film of a trilogy.

“In terms of the Star Wars movie I did, I tried to give it a hell of an ending. I love endings so much that even doing the middle chapter of the trilogy, I tried to give it an ending,” he explained. “A good ending that recontextualizes everything that came before it and makes it a beautiful object unto itself—that’s what makes a movie a movie. It feels like there’s less and less of that. This whole poisonous idea of creating [intellectual property] has completely seeped into the bedrock of storytelling. Everyone is just thinking, How do we keep milking it? I love an ending where you burn the Viking boat into the sea.”

Best of Deadline