Wake Up Dead Man Delivers On Director Rian Johnson's Original Knives Out Mission

Spoilers follow.

Although the church-heavy setting of "Wake Up Dead Man" may seem old-fashioned, the movie is still very contemporary with its social commentary. Its list of suspects feature a right-wing social media influencer, as well as a once-beloved author who has grown increasingly angry and reactionary. ("Harry Potter" fans may recognize the latter character all too well.) These two are united in their unquestioned loyalty towards their church's leader Jefferson Wick (Josh Brolin), a man who is blatantly reminiscent of the current President of the United States and divisive politicians in general. 

Wick is portrayed as a bitter, domineering man who uses his sermons to foster fear and hatred in his community. He's remained in power by creating an increasingly insular cult of personality. At one point, a character straight-up tells Wick that it doesn't matter what he says or does, they will support him no matter what. 

Not everyone may appreciate this approach to the murder mystery format; some viewers want to escape the mess and stress of modern-day politics and culture when they go to the movies. But for director/writer Rian Johnson, this approach is important because it stays true to the series' Agatha Christie roots. As Johnson explained in a 2019 interview with /Film promoting the first "Knives Out" film, Johnson is repeating Christie's technique of make all his characters a commentary on the current moment:

"I very purposefully said, 'You know what? Let's do the equivalent of the grumpy old colonel and the maid and the butler who maybe did it from back then, let's do the equivalent of that today.' That mean just drawing a broad range of types, of caricatures, of different types from 2019."

For his first film, Johnson pointed to Toni Collette's character (a privileged lifestyle guru) as an example of him embracing modern-day archetypes, and it's easy to see what he's doing with all the characters there too. Ransom (Chris Evans) is the smarmy trust-fund playboy, Meg (Katherine Langford) is the privileged liberal who drops her ideals the second her wealth is threatened, and of course Jacob (Jaeden Martell) is the right-wing internet troll. 

That last character type is perhaps the most common throughout the series. "Glass Onion" brings in Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a right-wing Twitch streamer, and "Wake Up Dead Man" brings in Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), a right-wing political influencer. 

It might seem like Johnson's repeating himself too much with this archetype, but the tone in which he presents each of them is still interesting: "Knives Out" and "Glass Onion" largely present its right-wing troll characters as goofy losers, whereas "Wake Up Dead Man" presents Cy Draven as a genuine menace inflicting clear harm and invoking genuine disgust from the people around him. This evolution helps give these "Knives Out" movies an almost history-book feel to it; decades from now if you want to give someone an idea of what the general vibes were as the Trump era trudged on, you can do a lot worse than these movies. 

In the fan and critical discussion around the first two "Knives Out" movies, the second especially, there were concerns that they'd become dated too quickly. People especially pointed to Edward Norton's character Miles Bron — widely seen as an Elon Musk homage — as an element that future viewers might find confusing or irrelevant. They also pointed to the second movie's emphasis on masking (and all the subtext imbued in the type of masks each character wears) as something that won't be relatable to viewers down the line.

But I think this fear's unfounded for the same reason why Agatha Christie's best novels aren't seen as dated either: a text can't really be outdated if it's intentionally commenting on a specific period of time. Most historical dramas take a lot longer to feel out of date than dramas set in the present, for instance, because the former isn't taking anything for granted about its setting or the cultural norms that come with it. 

The "Knives Out" movies function as period pieces that happen to be set in the present day. Modern archetypes and settings aren't being tossed in just to feel relatable to contemporary audiences; they're featured because the movie has something it wants to say about them. "Wake Up Dead Man" is a movie that is actively examining the mid-2020s and making a point about them. Just as the specific can be universal when it comes to creating relatable characters, the "Knives Out" movies can be timeless by not trying to be timeless at all.