Writer/director Rian Johnson discusses if Miles Bron is a ripoff of Elon Musk in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a stand-alone sequel to 2019’s Knives Out, stars Edward Norton as tech millionaire Miles Bron and Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc. Miles Bron has invited his opportunistic friends to an island in Greece for a murder mystery party. Since the Netflix original series Glass Onion aired on December 17, there has been much debate online about whether Miles, whose businesses include Alpha Cosmos, Alpha Car, and Alpha Shop, is modeled on real-life tech tycoon Elon Musk.
Johnson addressed the question of whether Miles Bron is modeled on Elon Musk in a recent interview with Wired. The writer/director of The Glass Onion claims that Musk was not the intended target of Miles’ satire and that the Knives Out sequel’s Netflix release coinciding with Musk’s catastrophic takeover of Twitter was simply a “terrible mistake.” Below is what Johnson said:
It’s so weird. It’s very bizarre. I hope there isn’t some secret marketing department at Netflix that’s funding this Twitter takeover. There’s a lot of general stuff about that sort of species of tech billionaire that went directly into [the movie]. But obviously, it has almost a weird relevance in exactly the current moment. A friend of mine said, “Man, that feels like it was written this afternoon.” And that’s just sort of a horrible, horrible accident, you know?
Unveiling the Real-Life Models for Every Glass Onion Character
As Johnson adds, Edward Norton’s Miles Bron isn’t supposed to be an exact replica of Musk; instead, he’s a mashup of several tech millionaires. Given that Miles is wearing a black turtleneck, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and to a lesser extent Bill Gates may also fall under this category. If Miles Bron is the company’s Steve Jobs, then Leslie Odom Jr.’s Lionel Toussaint, also known as the technical and scientific brains of the enterprise, would be the company’s, Steve Wozniak.
However, characters from the Glass Onion aren’t limited to Miles and Lionel for their influence. Almost all of Miles Bron’s guests and pals, including Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), and Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), are based on actual people in some fashion. Like Miles, Bautista’s Duke Cody is based on several video game broadcasters and men’s rights advocates who have become well-known online. However, audiences have noted that Duke, due to his share of scandals, has a remarkable similarity to Joe Rogan or, maybe less favorably, Andrew Tate.
The Kardashians are one more real-life celebrity that Hudson’s Birdie Jay character explicitly resembles. Hahn’s Claire Debella makes a broad observation on dishonest politicians rather than specifically criticizing anyone. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has a certain topicality that it otherwise wouldn’t have as a simple whodunit because Johnson doesn’t just draw inspiration from one particular famous person for each of the aforementioned main characters, but rather from a celebrity archetype that audiences can recognize.