Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro has been mocked for not understanding how murder mysteries work.
Mr Shapiro criticised the film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery by Rian Johnson on Twitter on Monday.
“I regret to inform you that ‘Glass Onion’ is actively bad,” he wrote, adding that “the first half of the movie is a complete misdirect and a waste of time”.
“We only find out about the actual murder we’re supposed to investigate full one hour and ten minutes into the film, as well as an entirely new backstory,” he tweeted. “We’re actively deceived by the writer.”
He went on to claim that “the story itself in the purest form of incredible laziness. It relies on not one, not two, but three bad writing tropes: an identical twin, a comprehensive journal, and a moron of a murderer”.
“We get an hour of wasted time, because we have to make up for the fact that the murderer is perfectly obvious from moment one,” he added. “Rian Johnson actually knows this. That’s why by the end, he is telling the audience via Blanc that everything Miles Bron did is dumb.”
Mr Shapiro argued that Johnson’s “politics is 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”.
“This is an incredibly stupid theory, since Musk is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in human history,” Mr Shapiro wrote in his lengthy Twitter thread.
Twitter users were quick to mock the rightwing pundit for his take on the film.
“I, for one, am delighted that every contrarian who got on here and fixed their fingers to call Glass Onion ‘boring’ for including all the elements of a classic whodunit (flashbacks, third act reveals etc) is now retroactively in league with f***ing Ben Shapiro,” Katharine La Ronde tweeted.
“Ben Shapiro explaining why House of the Dragon is bad: ‘First of all, there are dragons in it. Dragons don’t exist,’” Laura Shortridge-Scott added.
“Ben Shapiro couldn’t get traction with a screenplay in Hollywood and — instead of trying to improve his screenwriting — blamed liberals for holding him down, literally writing a book about it. Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if GLASS ONION gets a WGA nom from actual screenwriters,” Joe Russo wrote.
“Ben Shapiro not understanding how a murder mystery works at the age of 38 might be one of the biggest self-owns of the year,” Brad Whipple tweeted.
“My new favorite thing is Ben Shapiro not understanding how murder mysteries work,” one Twitter user said.
“Ben Shapiro is discovering what a murder mystery is in real time and acting like he understands what writing one means and I am truly and honestly crying. This is my Christmas gift,” Rachel Leishman tweeted.
“The Ben Shapiro thread on the GLASS ONION is legit hilarious. Putting the (predictable) politics aside, he says that Johnson misdirects and deceives the audience. Sacre bleu! A misdirection in a murder mystery? Now I’ve seen everything!” Mac Weiss wrote.
“Ben Shapiro wrote a long angry thread about a murder mystery that had the utter nerve to include some misdirection that threw viewers off the real culprit and now I’m worried someone is going to tell him about Agatha Christie,” Kevin Kruse added.
In June, Johnson tweeted that “something I love about Agatha Christie is how she never tread water creatively. I think there’s a misperception that her books use the same formula over and over, but fans know the opposite is true”.
“It wasn’t just settings or murder methods, she was constantly stretching the genre conceptually. Under the umbrella of the whodunnit she wrote spy thrillers, proto-slasher horrors, serial killer hunts, gothic romances, psychological character studies, glam travelogues,” he added.
“When I made Knives Out, that’s what excited me about the prospect of making more mysteries with Daniel [Craig] as Benoit Blanc - to emulate Christie and have every film be like a whole new book, with its own tone, ambition, reason for being… and (ta dah) title,” he tweeted.
