#point blanc spoilers

[thesamestarlight]

reading the alex rider series for the first time thanks to things that bleed (@thingsthatbleedfic) and. well. spoilers for point blanc below.

things alex rider and danny fenton have in common:

yo, they were just fourteen

secret identity

DISSECTION?????

[kentucky-fried-accent]

you guys think phillip ever organized some wildly intricate apartment mystery for benoit to solve because he recognized how understimulated and depressed the pandemic was making him ? because i think about that a lot and i think a fic writer should maybe think abt it too 👀

[morkaischosen]

here is a hill I have chosen to die on:

every time you talk about Benoit Blanc solving a case in five minutes, you’re doing a grave and inexcusable insult to the man’s sense of drama and willingness to appreciate a mystery’s full breadth, and I will demand satisfaction.

[llamasofchaos]

Kyra being so devastated by the thought of losing Alex made both sad and happy. Because Alex was her first friend, he was the first person to give a crap about her no matter the trouble she brought.

Everyone else looked at her and saw a troublemaker who did care about anything. Alex looked at her and saw this scared angry girl who he empathized with, he didn't look down on her for not understanding friendship or anything else that came so naturally to him he simply explained things because she didn't know.

[ninadove]

We are sooo getting Chat Blanc back next season.

[familyagrestefanblog]

Never will a day pass where I will not look into the distance for good 5 seconds, remembering that Félix somehow knew in "Emotion" that Adrien could be snapped back into existence without both of his amok rings being around.

The episode went out of its way to make clear we know that both Félix himself and Kagami have their objects on them while Gabriel and Nathalie are wearing Adrien's, but somehow Adrien was still perfectly able to live on without them once Gabriel and Nathalie were gone. For Félix and Kagami the episode seemingly deemed it crucial for them to have theirs but for Adrien the same rule apparently doesn't apply.

This one is not letting me go because it's the second time this has happened now. First time was in "Chat Blanc" which is generally used as an argument to debunk the Senti-Adrien theory. I personally was always willing to give "Chat Blanc" a pass in good faith regarding this because it's such a packed episode - especially for the flashbacks - so who knows what scenes ended up on the cutting room floor that would have maybe shown the whereabouts of Emilie's ring? It was beyond questionable but I was willing to work around that.

But apparently one doesn't need to work around it because "Emotion" created such a specific situation to reinforce the very same circumstances of Adrien being able to live without his amok rings and showing us that Adrien as a Sentihuman is different from Félix and Kagami in more ways than just him having two amok objects. All the while Félix is apparently VERY aware of that while executing his plan to free Adrien from his father.

The one time in "Chat Blanc" can be an accident, but the second time in ""Emotion" is too detailed and explicit of an reinforcement to write off as another screw-up.

[puppyeared]

OH HUGH GRANT ISHIS HUSBAND

[damnedtreasure]

Gosh for so much of glass onion I can so very easily imagine the fun they were having making this. Like I can imagine them going "okay so we have this slow zoom on the Mona Lisa and have elon Bron talk about the interpretations of her expression- and then we CUT TO ANDI" or "oh so one of the puzzles is a fugue how should we explain it? YO YO MA!" or "y'know what'd be cool as hell? Having a guy walk through the shot and disrupt things while saying 'ignore me,' right? But we have him always holding a bottle of Corona!!" or "what if we play the Nat King Cole song? Wait, no, to really hammer it home, we have the ending shot be of andi in the Mona Lisa pose!" Or "this character who no one believed despite telling the truth and predicting downfall, y'know what her name should be? CASSANDRA"

It was an incredibly fun film to watch. I can't imagine how much more fun it must have been to write.

[rosiefinches]

How is it that Gabriel 'I'm NoT a MoNsTeR' Agreste finds new ways to be one of the worst parents possible???

[sidecharactersdomatter]

No, Miles Bron the famous Tech Billionaire from NY does not use Grammarly.

[thesamestarlight]

ALSO. don’t answer this (/srs), but it’s been two full books now and i’m still confused. what the heck was up with the end of point blanc???? it was SO DRAMATICALLY AMBIGUOUS who walked away from that fight, and at the time, i was like, sure, it’s a cliffhanger to get you to come back. but then there was NO MENTION OF IT EVER AGAIN. i started reading skeleton key, and i kinda thought we’d get some kind of reassurance, from the narrator if nothing else, that that is, in fact, Still Our Guy, and not, you know, a CLONE. but then there was NOTHING? so, like, i guess this really is alex? probably? what happened to the other guy? based on the vibes i’ve been picking up in ttb, i’ve been assuming we’ll circle back around to that at some point, but suddenly those vibes feel A LOT LESS CERTAIN. i don’t think i actually want anyone to tell me one way or another (just in case it does come up later), but it just feels really weird.

[justabardling]

In the spirit of pointing out things Miles says that indicate how much of a phony he is: During the dinner scene when Miles is explaining the rules of his murder mystery, Blanc asks if the game has already started. Miles responds “Well as Watson says to Holmes-” before being cut off by Blanc.

So I took it to mean that Miles was going to finish the sentence with “the game is afoot” but he misattributes the quote. It’s Holmes who says it to Watson and it can be found in the beginning of the story “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange” which you don’t even need to know bc yeah, most people know that Sherlock says it. Love it. 

[jonathankai]

Today on This Show Has Been Going For So Long And It Has Changed So Much: tumblr just showed me my own post back from 2018 where I tried to theorize about possible outcomes for Gabriel and one of the variants was "Hawkmoth's identity is revealed, but he repents and stops using his Miraculous in harmful ways". And I actually decided this outcome is more likely, because "the show is cheerful and lighthearted". Huh.

We really went from "baby" version to "welcome to the harsh adult world" version, didn't we?

[wileycap]

Go see the new Dungeons and Dragons movie. Just run. Don't finish reading this post.

That was SO REFRESHING. GOD.

Some minor spoilers ahead, but frankly nothing that would spoil your enjoyment of the plot:

A man and a woman who are friends and co-parents, who don't constantly belittle and snark at each other and who aren't falling in love? Mwah! Fucking finally. A genuine friendship where they BOTH respect each other! FUCKING WHEN IS THE LAST TIME

And the humor doesn't get in the way of the characters! It's funny, but in a funny-for-real way, not in a research-shows-1-joke-per-48-seconds-is-optimal way.

Like: the barbarian woman goes to visit her halfling ex. Oh boy, here we go, right? WRONG. They have a mature, respectful, heartfelt and open conversation about where their relationship went wrong, and wish each other well.

Afterwards, the barbarian walks out to the bard, who gives her a Look. Oh boy, THIS is it. This is where the dumb jokes happen. WRONG AGAIN. The bard sees that his friend is clearly hurting, and just starts singing Their Song until she joins in. Like. An actual friendship moment. No jokes. It's cheesy but in the way that actual people are cheesy.

It doesn't depend on you being some ultranerd for DnD, either: it's not like Marvel's obsession with pointing out that yes, Steve the Intern WAS forced at gunpoint to comb through the entire run of Waffle Ass Man from the 80s in order to find you a Reference. It's just place names and some tropes that all stand on their own while showing that yes, they are adapting DnD and they are earnest about it. (I've played like 3 times, I didn't know shit going in.)

Earnest is actually a great word. The whole movie feels so earnest.

Fucking finally, a fun adventure movie. I could watch like 20 of these. Just give me, in alternating years, one Benoit Blanc mystery and one DnD movie, and I'll be happy.

[grymorfinon]

I just realized something about Glass Onion and the way it’s structured, and like everything else in the movie it was told to us in the start:

(GLASS ONION SPOILERS AHEAD)

… it’s a fugue. The movie is a Fugue.

During the puzzle box sequence when the music box puzzle opens, Yo Yo Ma tells Peg that the music they’re hearing is Bach’s “Little Fugue in G Minor” he explains:

“A fugue is a beautiful musical puzzle based on just one tune. And when you layer this tune on top of itself, it starts to change and turn into a beautiful new structure.”

Right in front of our eyes, Rian Johnson just told us how the movie was going to go. It starts out with a simple tune, your classic murder mystery setup much like the Clue movie and half of the mysteries Agatha Christie was famous for writing. We meet the eccentric characters, a murder happens, everyone runs around for a while, and the detective seems ready to tell us whodunit…

And then the movie starts over again. The tune is the same, but layered on top of itself with new context and a different point of view. Every new scene from Helen or Benoit’s perspective changes our perspective on the previous half of the movie, scene by scene. This new layer of the film adds to it and forms a beautiful new structure itself.

Addendum: the opening shots of each act also parallel each other. The first half begins with the start of Bach’s Little Fugue as we are introduced to Claire at her home when her puzzle box is delivered, and then we hear the fugue again but further on in the piece when Helen delivers her box to Benoit Blanc in the second half.

UPDATE: Having seen Rian Johnson’s audio commentary of the film, he confirmed that it was intentional! VINDICATION!!!

[oriigami]

(spoilers for both knives out movies ahead)

i think what i really enjoy about knives out and glass onion is that they are, while not completely fair-play whodunnits, pretty close to it.

a fair-play whodunnit is a murder mystery which is entirely solvable by the viewer before the detective sums everything up at the end; the viewer is given the same information as the characters, and the same opportunity to figure everything out. this is a style some modern detective stories like to break to preserve the ability to catch the viewer off guard, as hbomberguy elaborates at some length in his sherlock is garbage and here's why video.

knives out gives you almost all the information you need. its possible to figure out on ransom's introduction that there is, at least, something missing from his story, that he returned to the house for some reason after leaving; the dogs were heard barking the night of harlan's death, and he is the only one they are seen reacting aggressively to. likewise, the audience hears nana saying 'ransom, are you back again already?' well before blanc learns about it and realizes its importance.

the only crucial piece of evidence any of the characters ever see that the audience doesn't is the toxicology report, which the audience doesn't get a chance to see before blanc's summation at the end revealing marta's innocence. but even with that omission, it's possible to guess harlan wasn't poisoned! marta lists off the symptoms of morphine poisoning at five and ten minutes on screen, and we see him exhibiting none of them, even after she's left and snuck back in, which must have been more than ten minutes after the initial injection. later we see fran suffering an overdose of the same drug, and she's far more debilitated than harlan was even in his last moments.

glass onion, of course, plays a lot more fast and loose with this concept, because it hides large swathes of the setup from the viewer until the halfway point. blanc actually has a lot more information than the viewer until we get the extended flashback in the middle of the movie.

however, after you know the circumstances of andi's death, like blanc says, you can completely guess that miles killed her! helen even suggests it during one of their first conversations, because it's obvious! of course he did! the only thing the movie does to delay this conclusion is throw out a swarm of red herrings in presenting motive and opportunity for everyone else, but the motive is obvious. the main thing both the audience and blanc need to realize is just that miles is stupid enough to do it. blanc uses his countless malapropisms as evidence when reaching this conclusion, but he doesn't even need to; it's absolutely obvious from the fact, readily available to the audience, that HE MADE HIS HOUSE INTO A BOMB.

likewise, the movie shows you that miles handed duke the drink that killed him, though this is later corrected during his self-serving flashback. you can see the outline of a phone in miles's back pocket after duke's murder even though miles doesn't own a phone, and even a brief shot of him sticking duke's gun in the ice bucket on the table.

additionally, putting a little bit of thought into miles's justification for the lights going out reveals it makes no sense. he was supposed to give a big speech as part of the murder mystery?? no he wasn't! he's dead at this point! he gets shot by the crossbow at dinner! why would he be giving a big speech at 10 pm? because he made up the lights going out on the fly based on blanc's earlier comment, and didn't think it through at all, like everything he does!

i'm not gonna pretend i figured either of these movies out ahead of time on the first viewing- i totally didn't! but i know when the next one comes out, i'm going to be watching very carefully, and probably doing a lot of rewinding.