Why Rian Johnson wanted to make Knives Out a modern-day whodunit

Reported today on The Verge For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/4/20... Reported today in The Verge. Why Rian Johnson wanted to make Knives Out a modern-day whodunit Rian Johnson's new film Knives Out is a devoted love letter to the whodunit genre - from its Poirot-esque detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig with an over-the-top Southern drawl, to its apparent murder victim Harlan Thrombey, an aging mystery author who "practically lives in a Clue board." But it's also a sharply contemporary project, not an Agatha Christie period piece. Even as Knives Out creates a familiar cozy atmosphere, it draws on present-day archetypes and culture-war conflicts, sketching a modern American family whose motives for murder are instantly recognizable. For Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed Knives Out after working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, breaking the whodunit's comforting and familiar elements out of their "hermetically sealed jewel box" was key to the project. Around the film's release last week, I spoke with Johnson about reworking old tropes in new ways, dealing with toxic fandom, and Chris Evans' sweater. This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. You've talked about how Knives Out is an homage to the whodunit genre that also blends in some elements of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Were there any parts of the genre that you'd wanted to leave behind? There were things I knew I loved about the genre that I wanted to definitely have in the movie - like the sequence where everybody is questioned, and you get to investigate the past through all these different perspectives, and then the big denouement with the detective at the end, where he ties together the whole case. That's one of my favorite types of scenes in all of fiction and I knew I wanted to do a barn-burner one of those. I guess if there was anything I wa