Rian Johnson Discusses How Politics In 2019 America Influenced 'Knives Out'

Bolstered by the works of Agatha Christie, “Knives Out” delves into similar constructs of the murder mystery. Except, with his own whodunit, writer and director Rian Johnson weaves old tropes with new ideas, blending Christie’s British concepts with that of a "2019 America."

In an interview with IGN, Johnson delves deep into the confines of his newest film. Using long-established murder mystery tropes inherent in Christie’s writing, Johnson attempts to mesh his characters, an overarching puzzle, and political intrigue into one cohesive narrative.

“Going back to Agatha Christie, one of the things that I love about her books is how she is engaged with society at the time, and that all the character types she was writing about can seem like musty old tropes today, but that’s because it’s easy to forget that they were very present in British society when she was writing,” Johnson related.

He added, "That’s kind of what I wanted to do. I wanted to plug this into 2019 America, but that can’t just mean giving everyone cellphones and saying we’re modern-day. We wanted to do what she did back then, today. They are a big family, so what are they going to be arguing about? Well, they’re arguing about politics. Let’s actually plug this in and make the character types actual character types that we’d recognize today. And that means engaging with the culture right now, and that means engaging with politics."

Johnson also identified how politics were an immediate backdrop in his movie which is star-studded with the likes of Chris Evans, Jaime Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, and its main protagonist, Daniel Craig. While “Knives Out” does indeed utilize a great deal of current political insight, it never once seems to rely upon any one of them explicitly, or ever imply one is better than the other. Maintaining an equal balance amongst the characters seems to have been of the utmost importance to the writer and director.

“I know that—for me—the movie is as much about privilege as anything else,” Johnson said. “And it’s very important, no matter what side you are on, to be able to recognize that in yourself. You don’t want to 'both sides' anything…But I guess [my] attempt was to take every single one of these characters and find an angle on them, and find a way into their motives and methods and madness.”

Online toxicity is also touched upon in the film, something Johnson is familiar with due to the backlash his previous work, “The Last Jedi,” received from some fans. While the director doesn’t discuss future “Star Wars” as much as some may have hoped, he did touch on how “Knives Out” was shaped with this topic in mind.

He added, “I think it’s more a reaction to just being on the internet in 2019. If you’re on the internet in any way, shape or form, you don’t have to have made a ‘Star Wars’ movie to see that and have a laugh at it. It just happens to be the waters we’re all swimming in right now.”

Johnson’s “Knives Out” brings the whole family together in theaters on Wednesday.