Rian Johnson admitted that he’s had a difficult time composing a scene on Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery in between Helen and Blanc, depicted by Daniel Craig and Janelle Mon áe respectively. He’s relating to the huge expose of presenting Helen’s character. It will make or break the movie given that he’s preparing to totally alter the instructions of the story. Johnson wished to completely perform the plot twist of the movie, so it took him a while of continuous altering and rewording.


During an interview with Variety, Rian Johnson detailed the scene that took him a while to develop.

“The scene between Blanc and Helen on Blanc’s New York apartment balcony is the lynchpin of the movie. It’s the scene where we reveal the structure of the entire film, showing our hand, and also where we introduce the main character, Helen. The scene has to not only orient the audience as it flips what they think they’ve been watching on its head, but it also has to introduce a new character and have us like her, get on her side, and then clearly define her mission that will carry the second half of the movie.”

At that point, audiences most likely had their own conclusions on what precisely took place, so Johnson needed to thoroughly thread the story for a smooth shift of the expose. He admitted, “All of this [happens] in a long static conversation at a table at the exact midpoint of the movie, where the danger of the pace flagging is at its highest. I was rewriting that scene up to the last moment, and then shaping it drastically in the edit.”


Rian Johnson Wanted to Keep the Audience Hooked

Duke and Whiskey arrives at the dock.

After the expose, the most significant difficulty for Johnson is to keep the accessory of the audience to the story. He discovered it tough to perform since he wished to improve the audience’s intrigue after the huge expose. He stated, “The challenge before the scene is that the audience does not have an emotional proxy in this group of horrible murder mystery suspects. Blanc is the nearest thing we have, and he has to carry the water in that first half. In a big way I’m relying on the audience’s trust as the track is laid, and in the promise of the genre that a murder is coming, just be patient.”

He continued, “The challenge immediately following the scene is that the moment we get Helen and Blanc’s mission we want to get right back to the island, but we still have some backstory exposition to get through. Pacing those scenes up and driving them forward with a music driven montage style helped.”