After the 1% satire of Glass Onion, Wake Up Dead Man returns to the more traditional murder mystery formula of Knives Out – but you couldn’t call Rian Johnson’s third film in the Benoit Blanc saga a retread in any way.
Before he even started work on this latest detective story, Johnson took it upon himself to dig deeper into the murder mystery genre and fill in any significant blind spots he still had. One of those ended up being formative in shaping this latest tale.
“I’ll always have blind spots because the genre is such an expansive field”, Johnson told Zavvi. “But this time, a lot of the movie came out of me discovering an author I had never heard of before named John Dixon Carr, who was working at the same time as Agatha Christie, but was always far less well known than her.
“His work had this gothic horror tone to it, and many of his stories centred around this incredible detective who has fast become one of my favourite characters in detective fiction: Dr Gideon Fell. I fell in love with Carr’s writing and these dark stories about impossible crimes, and a big part of that led to the tone of this movie.”
Daniel Craig’s southern detective is this time called to a small-town Parish in Upstate New York, where a rivalry emerged between conservative Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) and the far more open and tolerant young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) who had been assigned his right-hand man after a violent outburst. The first hour of the film breaks down how this rivalry came to split the congregation, with Jud the number one suspect after a seemingly impossible murder takes place during Easter service.
It’s a film which takes the concept of faith seriously, with the atheist Blanc forging an odd couple relationship with O’Connor’s late-in-life convert. When mapping out the dynamic between these central characters, Johnson quickly realised it was some of the most personal material he’s inserted into his series to date.
He explained: “I grew up very religious. I’m no longer a believer, but when I was in my teens and early twenties, my whole world was framed through Christianity and my relationship with Christ, so this topic was something I have a very personal experience with.
“But as I’ve grown older, I’ve found more of Blanc’s perspective on religion inside me too. I wasn’t approaching this story from his perspective though, it’s more that I understand both of their sides – I'm basically arguing with myself about religion in the movie, and that always leads to the best arguments!”
After Edward Norton’s Elon Musk-parodying tech billionaire in Glass Onion, many critics have been quick to suggest Johnson is going after a bigger fish here, arguing that Brolin’s antagonist has been designed as the shadow of a certain American President. The writer/director understands why people are viewing the movie this way, but he wanted to make a more humanist statement than an outwardly political one.
“This whole thing is me wrestling with my personal feelings about not just faith, but that intersection of faith and politics. To me, Wicks represents everything that feels the least Christ-like to me about that intersection, which is what I’m most upset with about politicians exploiting religion.
“Father Jud represents what I felt were some of the most wonderful things about having faith and actually following Christ’s teachings from the Bible. Wicks wasn’t an analogue of any specific political figure, but a representation of how figures like that are flipping humanist messages on their head and teaching the opposite values.
“We need more of the teachings about loving our enemies, helping the weak and having humanity, and not the poison which Wicks represents. It absolutely needs to be called out as that.”
As you can probably guess, I’m leaving the specifics of the murder mystery case itself – and the typically mismatched cast of A-list suspects – as far under wraps as I can, but it’s no secret to say Blanc doesn’t show up until near the midway point. It’s a risky move, and Johnson knew that he needed to find someone special to be his protagonist so nobody would start questioning when Craig would finally show up.
“It was the most crucial role to fill; it’s a part similar to Ana de Armas in the first film or Janelle Monae in the second, only this time they’re carrying the film for longer. It’s somebody the audience needs to immediately invest in, or it doesn’t work.
“Honestly, it became clear it had to be Josh after I saw Challengers and La Chimera, seeing this wide range of what he was capable of; it just suddenly clicked that this was the guy. And we were lucky to get him, as he’s now on the most insane hot streak – he's gone straight from us to Steven Spielberg and Joel Coen, we’re going to see him constantly working in the stratosphere of legends.
“And it’s what he deserves, he’s a really special actor.”
Johnson signed a mammoth $400 million deal with Netflix to make two Knives Out sequels, and while it seems unlikely he’ll return to the streaming service for more, he knows that this isn’t Benoit Blanc’s last case.
“I never wrote this as the end for Blanc. I’m writing my next movie now, which is something completely different, but I would be the happiest person in the world if I could come back after that and keep making these for the rest of my life.
“I never want to write an ending for Blanc. At the same time, this isn’t a TV detective series where the ending leads into the next case – I want each story to feel complete, like a satisfying novel on your shelf that has a wonderful, conclusive ending.
“It makes me happy to hear that people think that this could be a finale, as it meant that this story felt satisfying, and that he got a good conclusion. I hope all of my movies do that in their own way.”
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday, 26th November, and will be released on Netflix on 12th December
