In “Glass Onion,” the thrilling sequel to 2019’s “Knives Out,” Edward Norton performs Miles Bron, a tech billionaire who invitations all his profitable, barely sycophantic pals to an island in Greece for a enjoyable getaway. Miles is extraordinarily rich and stuffed with out-of-the-box concepts; we study once we meet his worker Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.) that a few of his current ideas embody “Uber for biospheres,” “AI in canine = discourse,” and “baby = NFT.” “Genius at all times appears like madness at first,” Lionel tells nervous buyers, and it is apparent the entire group, if not the entire world, consider this about Miles. His firm Alpha, we study, owns many others, together with Alpha Cosmos, Alpha Automobile, Alpha Store.

For anybody listening to the information, Miles would possibly sound just a little acquainted. He would possibly sound lots like Elon Musk. And on the finish of “Glass Onion” (*spoiler alert*), grasp detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) reveals Miles is not a tech genius in any respect; he is simply constructed his identify on the backs of others, which is a typical critique of Musk, too.

Author and director Rian Johnson has mirrored on whether or not Miles is definitely based mostly on Musk, and the reply is a bit difficult. Speaking to Wired in a Dec. 23 interview, he defined, “There’s a whole lot of common stuff about that type of species of tech billionaire that went straight into it.” Musk was an inspiration, however not the inspiration. However Johnson admitted it is unusual to have created this film nicely earlier than Musk acquired Twitter, however launch it when he is in the course of the zeitgeist.

“It is so bizarre. It’s extremely weird. I hope there is not some secret advertising division at Netflix that is funding this Twitter takeover,” Johnson mentioned. In the identical interview, he defined, “A pal of mine mentioned, ‘Man, that feels prefer it was written this afternoon.’ And that is simply type of a horrible, horrible accident, you recognize?”

Johnson instructed Shondaland on Dec. 20 that he particularly stayed away from basing Miles on only one explicit individual. “After I was writing it, I came upon in a short time that it was very unuseful to think about any particular individual,” he mentioned. “In reality, it bought very boring in a short time.”

He added: “The moment it grew to become about making enjoyable of 1 man, it was not very enjoyable in any respect. What’s attention-grabbing to me is our relationship as a society to billionaires, and the way we as People wish to throw poop at them and name them idiots, however we even have that unhealthy intuition of mistaking wealth for competence — wanting them to be Willy Wonka, this want achievement that they are going to remedy every part, the ‘do not guess in opposition to them; what in the event that they’re proper?’ That was extra enjoyable.”