Hardest I've laughed in a while
Hi everybody. Today I am proposing a character from an extremely underrated and hilarious movie. Let's get started.
What's the work?
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is a sharp, satirical murder mystery film by Rian Johnson, following the investigative genius Benoit Blanc. The story centers around a group of wealthy, eccentric individuals invited to a private island by Miles Bron, a tech billionaire, under the pretext of a weekend getaway and a murder-mystery game. However, things take a dark turn when a real murder is committed, leading Blanc to unravel the intricacies of a modern-day socialite's toxic web.
Who is he?
Miles Bron, a billionaire tech mogul and self-styled visionary, co-founded the company Alpha with his former best friend, Cassandra “Andi” Brand. Andi was the real brains behind the operation; it was her groundbreaking idea (scribbled on a cocktail napkin years earlier at their old haunt, the Glass Onion bar) that became Alpha’s core product and made them both rich. Miles, however, was the showman: charismatic, connected, and ruthless when it came to keeping the spotlight on himself.
Over time, tensions grew. Andi began pushing a revolutionary new energy source called Klear. Early tests, though, revealed it was dangerously unstable (potentially explosive when scaled up). Andi, unwilling to risk lives for profit, refused to green-light full production. Miles saw only dollar signs and the chance to be hailed as the man who “solved clean energy.” When Andi wouldn’t budge, Miles orchestrated a betrayal: he convinced their tight-knit circle of friends (Birdie Jay, the washed-up fashionista; Claire Debella, the ambitious politician; Duke Cody, the macho streaming star; and Lionel Toussaint, Alpha’s lead scientist) to testify in a lawsuit that the napkin idea had always been Miles’s, not Andi’s. With their perjured testimony and Miles’s money smoothing the way, Andi was forcibly ousted as CEO and cut out entirely.
Humiliated and broke after losing everything, Andi spiraled. On the night she decided to come clean (she’d found the original napkin in her possession and emailed her friends a photo of it, threatening to expose Miles), Miles showed up at her house. In a panicked, impulsive moment, he killed her and staged it as a suicide with pills and her own car running in the garage.
Fast-forward to May 2020. The world is locked down because of COVID-19. Miles, ever the narcissist, decides to throw an extravagant murder-mystery weekend on his private Greek island, complete with his newly finished masterpiece: the Glass Onion, a massive dome atop his mansion housing the real Mona Lisa (on loan from the Louvre because, well, he’s Miles Bron). He sends his inner circle elaborate puzzle boxes as invitations. The guest list: Birdie and her assistant, Claire and her aide, Lionel, Duke and his girlfriend Whiskey, and (as the “murder victim” in the game) Miles himself.
Then two uninvited guests arrive by yacht: Helen Brand, Andi’s twin sister (identical, unknown to the group because Andi had been estranged from them for years), and the legendary detective Benoit Blanc. Helen had approached Blanc in secret after Andi’s “suicide” didn’t sit right with her. She’d destroyed the evidence that could have exonerated her sister (the napkin) in a fit of rage, then hired Blanc to find the real killer. Posing as Andi (with a dye job and a Southern accent she can barely maintain), Helen is there to search for proof among the very people who betrayed her sister.
The weekend starts as pure theater: ridiculous costumes, over-the-top clues, Miles hamming it up as the genius host. But when Duke suddenly drops dead on the floor (poisoned by a spiked drink meant, it seems, for someone else), the game turns real. Panic sets in. Benoit, who had been bored by how obvious Miles’s scripted “murder” was, now realizes there’s an actual killer among them (and that Miles himself is in danger, or so it appears).
Through a series of flashbacks and Benoit’s relentless questioning, the layers peel away. Benoit pieces together that Miles killed Andi the very night she sent that incriminating email. Miles, sweating, had tried to delete the email from everyone’s phones, but Duke (ever the opportunist) had seen it and been blackmailing Miles for a bigger media platform ever since. When Duke noticed Miles slipping something into Benoit’s drink during an argument, he raised his own glass in a toast (thinking he was safe), only for Miles to casually hand him the poisoned one instead. Dumb luck and dumber panic: Miles killed the wrong person.
One by one, the friends realize the man they’ve been propping up for years is not a misunderstood genius but a reckless, murderous fraud. Klear really is as dangerous as Andi warned; Miles plans to launch it anyway at an upcoming event with the Mona Lisa as backdrop, consequences be damned. When Helen (her disguise shattered after being shot by a harpoon gun in the chaos) pleads with the group to finally do the right thing and testify truthfully, they initially refuse (terrified of losing everything Miles still controls).
In a final act of defiance, Helen smashes Miles’s priceless glass sculptures one by one, then sets the room ablaze with a sample of Klear Miles conveniently left lying around. The resulting explosion proves beyond doubt how unstable it is. With the Mona Lisa now burning behind them (and the friends’ careers and reputations irrevocably tied to the truth), they finally agree to turn on Miles. He’s left ranting and alone on his island as the real authorities close in, his empire of lies literally in flames.
Benoit hands Helen a shard of glass from the wreckage, lights her cigarette with it like Andi used to, and they watch the Glass Onion burn. Sometimes, the only way to see the truth is to shatter everything.
Heinous Standards
He IS the heinous standard. The only other villains are bog standard while Miles Born here is trying to launch Klear even though he knew it was a hazardous and extremely flammable fuel on top of his own murder of Andi and Duke on top of his attempted murder of Helen.
Mitigating Factors
None. He is more than willing to use blackmail and coerce his buddies into lying for his benefit, demonstrating that his alleged care for them is not sincere. While him letting that guy live on his island could be seen as a pet the dog moment, I don't think that we can count this as a redeeming quality as he has shown that he is willing to ruin his friends's lives for his own gain and once push comes to shove, the only person he cared about was himself
Is he silly?
The entire third act is dedicated to making fun of his stupidity, no way he isn't silly enough
Absolutely. He functions as a parody of a number of tech billionaires, with the third act making fun of his numerous grammatical errors, how stupid he is and his lack of creative ideas before playing his defeat for laughs.
Despite this, his actions are taken dead seriously in-universe as Lionel actively shows his fear of what Klear might do to the world and his murder of Andi being played seriously
Verdict
Easy yes. He could also be TUE, ED and PP