The art of the renowned detective has somewhat been lost in feature films, and Benoit Blanc is here to bring it back. One of Daniel Craig’s bestcharacters debuted in Rian Johnson’s 2019 film, Knives Out.The Last Jedi director brought new life to the whodunit genre in a movie that is equal parts humorous and intricate. The first Knives Out film was a massive success, and although it could have been a one-off, it opened up the world of the extended Benoit Blanc universe.
Johnson has since developed two more Knives Out mysteries, both with dramatically different setups from the original. This franchise proves that fans are hungry for more original content. All it takes is a beloved character and a love of murder.
‘Knives Out’ Is a Fresh Take on the Whodunit Formula
Fans of Rian Johnson know that the director can spin a good yarn. Before Star Wars, the filmmaker took on the genre of film noir in his early teen mystery, Brick. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in an early film role, the movie took teen drama to new heights in a story that hit on all the hallmarks of film noir. This was just the beginning of Johnson’s genius with genre, which he would develop into one of the best mystery franchises of all time.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
The Knives Out series is so successful not just because of the joy that Johnson brings in every one of these stories, but also because of how fresh and genuinely shocking these mysteries can be. The three films, Knives Out, Glass Onion, and Wake Up, Dead Man, all feature fascinating and fleshed-out characters, and all say something important about the world. Johnson puts out these films faster than most television series release seasons, and never once does it feel forced. In fact, each subsequent film offers something different, keeping the mysteries intriguing and fresh.
Johnson injected love of the murder mystery into the first Knives Out, a film about the apparent suicide of renowned mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer). As the family gathers to mourn the passing of the patriarch, the esteemed Benoit Blanc arrives to investigate what he believes to be murder. His suspicions are correct, but Johnson doesn’t leave it at that. The exact way Harlan was murdered is twisty and engaging as the director critiques the lives of the comfortable and affluent.
This theme crops up again in Glass Onion, when Blanc travels to an island where a reunion of exceedingly rich entrepreneurs turns violent. Wake Up, Dead Man, is arguably the most sensitive of the three and has a perspective that many modern films don’t. Josh O’Connor stars as a former boxer turned priest who becomes the prime suspect for the murder of a fellow priest in a remote village. When the world needed it most, Johnson delivered a story about empathy, showing all sides of religion.
Each one of these films has something to say, but of course, they are connected through Daniel Craig’s charisma as Blanc. These stories have serious themes about class and culture, but they would be nothing without Craig playing against type as the humorous southern detective. The Knives Out series has survived for so long because Blanc can travel from mystery to mystery, seemingly forever. While there are only three films out now, these stories are so good that fans would likely never stop watching them.
