Josh O'Connor furtively speaking to Daniel Craig in Wake Up Dead Man
By
Alex Harrison
Published 38 minutes ago
Alex is the Senior Movies Editor, managing the New Movies team, as well as one of ScreenRant's Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics. After graduating from Brown University with a B.A. in English, he spent a locked-down year in Scotland completing a Master's in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh, which he hears is a nice, lively city. He now lives in and works from Milan, Italy, conveniently a short train ride from the Venice Film Festival, which he first covered for SR in 2024.
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In recent years, as the film industry bleeds whatever IP it can find for all it's worth, it feels like the movie franchise has come to mean a specific thing. A certain (obsessive) relationship to its own history; an interwoven story building to an eventizable climax; an emphasis on fan service, whether via callbacks or Easter eggs that can be religiously cataloged. It's something that can often be felt, as if the studio turned on the franchise filter before sending their movie out into the world.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe remains the model that everyone's chasing – or, more specifically, the MCU's Infinity Saga heyday. After The Avengers proved audiences were on board for individual series that fed into a climactic team-up event, the universe approach proved a natural fit for adapting superhero comics, and the success went beyond Hollywood's wildest dreams. The interconnected story made it so that audiences showed up for every entry, and even less-prominent heroes could headline high-grossing blockbusters.
We had to learn the hard way that slapping cinematic universe on a franchise didn't guarantee the same returns; James Gunn and Peter Safran's DCU, another natural fit, should prove whether anyone can ever repeat Marvel's success. But much of today's franchise-chasing still seems enthralled by the same basic concept. Serialize the story, and give each sequel, prequel, or spinoff a sense of narrative need. But there are other ways that studios can, and should, go about this.
More Franchises Should Embrace The Knives Out Model
Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc in Knives Out
Wake Up Dead Man is in limited theaters now and comes to Netflix December 12. It's the latest in a collection of murder mysteries from director Rian Johnson and starring Daniel Craig as private investigator Benoit Blanc. What connects this one to the previous ones, 2019's Knives Out and 2022's Glass Onion? Not much beyond what I've said already.
In fact, Johnson spoke about the intentionality of this approach back around Glass Onion's release, when he explained that the film's subtitle, A Knives Out Mystery, wouldn't have been his choice:
“I’ve tried hard to make them self-contained. Honestly, I’m pissed off that we have A Knives Out Mystery in the title. I want it to just be called Glass Onion. I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling.”
Each film is made by the same filmmaker, features the same central character, and exists within the same genre. They offer the same benefit as a typical sequel: If you liked what came before, here's another you'll probably enjoy. But the story resets each time, along with the rest of the ensemble cast. And even if Blanc carries over, the goal isn't really to find out what happens to him next. He's just an enjoyable character to spend some time with, as the mystery unfolds.
These aren't movies you have to watch in a specific order to maximize your experience. You could walk into Wake Up Dead Man with no knowledge of the previous films and be just fine. What's on offer is a single-serving experience, packaged in a comforting degree of familiarity. In this changing landscape, that's something Hollywood should cultivate more of, not less.
Eventizing blockbusters is all well and good, but there can only be so many cinematic events, and the MCU lost sections of its audience by overestimating their buy-in and foisting too much on them. The Knives Out films sit in a middle ground that was once perhaps the domain of certain singular filmmakers, whose style offered a similar degree of connective tissue, but that needs to be approached differently in 2025. If more franchises could promise audiences a general vibe and ask little more of them than to show up, moviegoing as a casual activity might just endure.
Knives Out (2019) Movie Poster
Knives Out
Created by
Rian Johnson
First Film
Knives Out
Latest Film
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Upcoming Films
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Cast
Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana De Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield, Edward Norton, Janelle Monae
Movie(s)
Knives Out, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
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