Glass Onion: Rian Johnson says popular comparison with Ed Norton’s character is a ‘horrible accident’

Critics and viewers have likened Norton’s character to divisive Tesla founder Elon Musk

Rian Johnson is well aware of the “bizarre” similarities between Edward Norton’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery character and Elon Musk.

Since the release of the director’s Knives Out sequel on 23 December, critics and viewers have called out the uncanny parallels between Norton’s tech billionaire Miles Bron and Twitter’s new overlord.

However, according to Johnson, the perfect timing of the film’s premiere alongside Musk’s Twitter drama is just a “horrible accident”.

“It’s so weird. It’s very bizarre,” Johnson recently told Wired. “I hope there isn’t some secret marketing department at Netflix that’s funding this Twitter takeover.”

The director acknowledged that “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,” Johnson added. “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?”

Following the film’s release, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro sharply criticised Johnson’s “politics”, for being “as lazy as his writing”.

“His take on the universe is that Elon Musk is a bad and stupid man, and that anyone who likes him – in media, politics, or tech – is being paid off by him,” Shapiro wrote on Twitter.

Daniel Craig and Janelle Monáe in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' (John Wilson/Netflix)

While a slew of other critics and viewers have drawn similar comparisons, many have mocked Shapiro for his lengthy diatribe.

The movie, which has been a major hit with audiences, sees the return of Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc, who’s invited to Bron’s private Greek island, along with seven of Bron’s other close friends.

When one of them turns up dead, Detective Blanc is tapped in to solve the case.

Read The Independent’s four-star review of the whodunnit sequel here and find a list of all the celebrity cameos you may have missed here.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is out now on Netflix.