Glass Onion: Did you spot those Fight Club references?

Insufferable Miles Bron, awesome Edward Norton

With the possible exception of Daniel Craig, whose performance as Benoit Blanc would almost make you forget that he is for many the best James Bond of the whole sagathe most iconic actor present in Glass Onion is Edward Norton. As Miles Bron, a self-absorbed tech billionaire and less clever than he seems, the actor of fight club and of The 25th hour book a high level serviceas funny as deliberately annoying.

Central character of this new whodunit directed by Rian Johnson after At loggerheads, Miles Bron turns out to be a hollow, stupid man who, despite appearances, has nothing original about him. A personality that is on the one hand useful to the plot, and on the other hand is a veritable well of references. There is thus the outfit he wears during the flashbacks to the Glass Onion – exact copy of that of Tom Cruise in Magnolia -. Or the fact that his tastes and ideas are totally borrowedas for his character in The Italian Job.

And, like this last reference, the character of Miles Bron offers a few nods to another Edward Norton film: fight club.

From Miles Bron to Tyler Durden

You can find in Glass Onion at least two references to fight club, cult film of a whole generation in which Edward Norton faces Brad Pitt. The latter, in fight club, plays the other personality of the narrator, who is played by Edward Norton. The plastic of Brad Pitt in fight club was celebrated, fortifying to the extreme the aura that the actor already possessed. It is referred to in Glass Onionvia a painting in a pronounced bad tastewhich Miles Bron hung in his indescribable living room/cabinet of curiosities (below).

For this painting, a shirtless portrait of Miles, the production designer Rick Heinrichs says he was inspired by the style of the painter Lucian Freud and sent photos of Edward Norton to an artist so that he could make it. Edward Norton himself describes this “crust” in these terms : “Miles in fight clubpainted by Francis Bacon“. Indeed, given the generation of Miles and the influence of David Fincher’s film on the young men of the late 90s, it is more than likely that the billionaire and leader of Alpha has fight club as a cultural reference.

Another nod to Fight Club, spotted by a Reddit user, the destruction by flames of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece: Mona Lisa. Its destruction marks the final end of Miles Bron, who had rented it to the Louvre, and this can most certainly echo a sentence dropped by Tyler Durden to the character of Edward Norton in fight club : “Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.” (In VF: “Hey, even the Mona Lisa is collapsing”).