Rian Johnson is a disrupter. His directorial debut – 2012’s Looper – broke the back of paradoxical time travel sci-fi. His take on Star Wars five years later – The Last Jedi – threatened to break the Internet. It is, then, with a deliciously wicked sense for the ironic that Johnson’s latest film – Glass Onion – gleefully lambasts the whole notion of disruption as hollow arrogance. That his obnoxiously self-proclaimed “disrupter” protagonists are each wholly at the lap and call of a cultural leach financier only adds to the fun. Netflix forked out $429m solely for the rights to make Glass Onion, a predominantly housebound folly that will little directly provable financial return. They’re disrupters too.
It’s been such a long time since James Cameron’s largely forgettable Avatar supposedly changed the face of cinema that a recap almost feels due. Or, rather, it would were such a prelude not to extend this second instalment’s already overwhelming runtime. If Avatar was a tale of romance, its sequel – The Way of Water – is one of familial ties. Thematically, little has changed in the transition. The same is true of the now franchise’s questionable approach to indigenous appropriation. And yet, it’s not narrative prowess that will draw the crowds to a Pandora return. Thirteen years of work has fuelled the technological advancement of Avatar 2. It shows.
Matilda is born of whizpopping minds. From Roald Dahl’s original battle cry to young rebels to the smash hit stage musical dreamed up two decades later by Tim Minchin, Dennis Kelly and Matthew Warchus. It’s their take on the tale that forms the basis of this new film. Dahl’s book has, after all, enjoyed the pleasure of adaptation, courtesy of Danny DeVito’s fondly remembered 1998 box office flop. As though to mitigate potential reprisal for such financial failure, Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical – to give the film its full title – is to be constrained to Netflix in all global territories but the UK. What a crying shame. This may be a film for and about little people but it’s a tour de force show stopper and duly demands the very biggest of screens.
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