Given that it's the same director (Rian Johnson) as the first Knives Out (2019), I thought Glass Onion would follow the same very successful formula as the first one. But it doesn't. It's a lot wilder and less obviously structured. The plotline and the dialog go all over the place, and Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, excellent as always) seems to be almost a different character entirely than he was before. But it's totally entertaining. My advice is to forget all about the first one and just treat Glass Onion as a standalone. Let the mystery unwrap itself, layer after layer, and enjoy the crazy mix of characters. And the first hour-plus is essentially just a prelude to the last hour that is even wilder but somehow brings everything to a logical conclusion. Following good dramatic practice, everything introduced in the first half gets used in the second half.

I'm sure a third Knives Out will be coming, but what's it going to do to top this? And what sort of person will the chameleon-like Benoit Blanc be?

Now a mild spoiler alert: if you haven't seen it, don't read on!

First fun item: toward the end, it suddenly struck me that the sisters both played by Janelle Monae are named Cassandra ("Andi") and Helen. Those are the names of the two most prominent princesses of Troy: Cassandra was the prophet who was never believed but always right, and Helen was the outsider over whom the Trojan war was fought. Those kind of map on to their roles in the movie. I haven't seen anyone else mention that, but it doesn't seem like it can be a coincidence.

There's a second fun historical connection. Back in Dante's time, there were apparently uber-rich people who would hold big parties at which they would burn up part of their wealth just to show off how wealthy they were. Dante wrote those people into The inferno, putting them into one of the circles of hell. In Glass Onion, Miles Bron (played by Edward Norton) is just like one of those, but here it's his guests who set the blaze going for him, and they don't stop at just part of it. Karma bites.