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Rian Johnson's Benoit Blanc movies are smarter, more deeply understanding adaptations of and conversations with Agatha Christie than any of the recent Agatha Christie adaptations released since the end of Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet (The ABC Murders miniseries, the one that changed the ... everything about Poirot, 2018; Ordeal by Innocence miniseries, the one that changed the murderer and the motive, 2018; Murder on the Orient Express, 2017 movie by Kenneth Branagh; Crooked House, 2017 movie with Gillian Anderson, Christina Hendricks and Glenn Close; The Witness for the Prosecution, 2016 miniseries that I think also changed the end?). I said this when Knives Out came out and it's true again!
But I'm thinking about it now because I'm seeing a flood of reactions and content across social media related to Glass Onion and once again, I'm marveling that most of the reactions are evidently from people who don't know that Benoit Blanc is a Christie pastiche!
It's not a secret at all obviously, and Rian Johnson is quite open about it constantly, as is ... everyone else involved. But I keep seeing time and again all these statements that just... well, missing that these works are primarily Christie pastiche obviously leaves them perfectly possible to enjoy, but it leaves out an entire genre of context. There's so much "Obviously, yes, they're dealing with groups of rich assholes, because it's a Christie pastiche, and that's the format of all the most spectacular classic golden age detective stories, not just Christie's" and "Yeees of course he did, because it's a Christie pastiche" and "Oh my God, of course he's queer, he's Poirot!" It reminds me of all the mainstream readers who engaged with Harry Potter when it first came out without, like, asking a librarian or a bookstore clerk or checking Wikipedia and assumed she'd invented YA fantasy and all its tropes, the British boarding school novel, and/or the combination thereof.
It's not like Poirot is obscure. Not that I would call Enid Blyton or Diana Wynne Jones obscure, either, but the ITV Agatha Christie's Poirot is an extremely internationally successful show that ran for decades quite recently and still reruns! Generally, everyone usually seems familiar with it, but I suppose the issue is that they're not famiilar enough to necessarily recognize the bits. And even people who like Poirot haven't usually watched and rewatched and read it as much as I have (as previously mentioned on this journal, it's a longtime favorite show and I have a Tumblr sideblog called![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
maisouipoirot dedicated to screencaps of it... although I haven't updated it in... a few years? because the DRM on the discs makes my computer unable to read some of them).
I was very happy that they gave him Hugh Grant as his husband, because the casting so clearly underlines that he's Hastings (or the Hastings type) even with so little of him onscreen. He deserves it, was my feeling. And like Granada Holmes's choice to quietly eliminate Watson's marriage(s), it feels more in keeping with canon than the actual details of the books. Blanc isn't quite Poirot, of course - he's a more laidback version, with an infusion of the witticism of Peter Wimsey or Albert Campion (minus the British class overtones).
But I'm thinking about it now because I'm seeing a flood of reactions and content across social media related to Glass Onion and once again, I'm marveling that most of the reactions are evidently from people who don't know that Benoit Blanc is a Christie pastiche!
It's not a secret at all obviously, and Rian Johnson is quite open about it constantly, as is ... everyone else involved. But I keep seeing time and again all these statements that just... well, missing that these works are primarily Christie pastiche obviously leaves them perfectly possible to enjoy, but it leaves out an entire genre of context. There's so much "Obviously, yes, they're dealing with groups of rich assholes, because it's a Christie pastiche, and that's the format of all the most spectacular classic golden age detective stories, not just Christie's" and "Yeees of course he did, because it's a Christie pastiche" and "Oh my God, of course he's queer, he's Poirot!" It reminds me of all the mainstream readers who engaged with Harry Potter when it first came out without, like, asking a librarian or a bookstore clerk or checking Wikipedia and assumed she'd invented YA fantasy and all its tropes, the British boarding school novel, and/or the combination thereof.
It's not like Poirot is obscure. Not that I would call Enid Blyton or Diana Wynne Jones obscure, either, but the ITV Agatha Christie's Poirot is an extremely internationally successful show that ran for decades quite recently and still reruns! Generally, everyone usually seems familiar with it, but I suppose the issue is that they're not famiilar enough to necessarily recognize the bits. And even people who like Poirot haven't usually watched and rewatched and read it as much as I have (as previously mentioned on this journal, it's a longtime favorite show and I have a Tumblr sideblog called
I was very happy that they gave him Hugh Grant as his husband, because the casting so clearly underlines that he's Hastings (or the Hastings type) even with so little of him onscreen. He deserves it, was my feeling. And like Granada Holmes's choice to quietly eliminate Watson's marriage(s), it feels more in keeping with canon than the actual details of the books. Blanc isn't quite Poirot, of course - he's a more laidback version, with an infusion of the witticism of Peter Wimsey or Albert Campion (minus the British class overtones).
