Small Parallel I love with Knives Out and Glass Onion
Neither Harlan Thrombey nor Andi Brand are good people. They’re not. They’re also not evil people to be clear, but again, they’re not really good people.
By the kind of people his family and especially his children are, we get a sense of who Harlan is or largely was in his life, especially with the comment that there is so much of him in Ransom.
Andi was also clearly more than okay with both Birdie and Duke as not just acquaintances but close friends; as well as what other nonsense came out of Miles before “Klear,” and she was his business partner and friend.
She wasn’t some moral beacon of wholesomeness.
Her standard of good was –
Let’s not put this very dangerous and unstable thing that hasn’t even come close to being properly tested out into the world, especially not under our company’s name; because we are not some daring startup company anymore, we’re an established conglomerate and this could easily sink us.
That’s not exactly a high bar of morality.
I like how neither movie truly idolizes Harlan or Andi to the point they are made out to be truly good people, BUT yet, we still see why Marta and Helen clearly loved and cared about these two and why their deaths matter.
Marta and Helen are our truly good souls for these movies.
The two main groups of people - The Thrombeys and The Disruptors - are all various shades of the same kind of bad person for each movie.
The Thrombeys are all willing to live off Harlan’s hard work and they all believe they are entitled to his fortune because it’s their family right. It’s theirs. And once you peel back the layers of liberal or conservative, they’re all the same, because they’re all a bit more than willing to defend what they think is theirs, with knives out and teeth bared.
The Disruptors are somehow even more reliant on Miles than the Thrombeys were on Harlan (which is saying something); and they will cling onto him until they see his boat is doomed to sink. They literally know he killed two people; two of their so-called “friends” and they’re not willing to do anything. At least, not until Miles is truly fucked.
They all care more about their own survival and ambitions than doing the right thing. And once more, when you peel back the layers of liberal or conservative, we once again see they’re all the same, they’re all more than willing to lie for a lie and stab a “friend” in the back.
But Harlan and Andi are our mixed bags of morality.
This is clear enough with the two types of people they are associated with.
The Thrombey Family and Marta.
The Disruptors and Helen.
They’re kind of like an optical illusion, it really depends on how you look at them and what you see when it comes to their own morality.
However, they do have two traits that I think redeem them for the audience, or at the very least make them more admirable to us.
They are genuinely self-made people.
Harlan was a brilliant murder mystery writer. He was. And he did build this publishing/franchise empire of his.
Andi was a brilliant mind who dabbled in many different things, but her real talent (as I saw it) was being able to spot a certain something-something in people. She saw the doers in the world, even when they weren’t quite there yet, she saw their potential to be the kind of person who others would notice and remember.
They were also both willing to stand by their values and once they made a decision, they would not be bullied into changing it.
Harlan decided to cut off his family and was sticking by that.
Andi decided to walk away from Miles and was sticking by that.
And I don’t know, I just like that little bit of extra moral complexity these two characters bring to these movies.
Oh, and Benoit Blanc is a good person, but he definitely isn’t governed by what the law or society says is good. He’s an eccentric who’s here for a good time, a fun and challenging mystery, and is more than willing to help out the good souls in the world when he gets the opportunity.
