Now the limited release has ended, fans have to wait a few weeks until Glass Onion is available on Netflix, but it's worth the wait, as some are calling the sequel better than Knives Out. The movie brings back the instantly iconic movie detective Benoit Blanc, whose southern drawl and love of convoluted metaphors have made fans fall in love with the character.
However, while he might be lovable, he isn't the best movie or TV detective out there, and far from it. Ultimately, any armchair critic knew who the killers were in Knives Out and Glass Onion, and it didn't need a famed detective with a New Yorker article about them to solve it. Between Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Lisbeth Sandler, there are many better movie/TV detectives, and theatrics can only get Benoit so far.
Samuel Gerard (The Fugitive)
The Fugitive is one of the most thrilling cat-and-mouse movies ever made, as it follows Detective Samuel Gerard trying to smoke out Richard Kimble, who is wanted for the murder of his wife. Chicago is a big place, but Gerard manages to find Kimble at several points throughout the film, and though Kimble manages to escape as many times, that's just a testament to how evenly matched they are.
The only reason Benoit hasn't struggled to the same lengths as Gerard is because Benoit hasn't had an evenly matched foe, as both Ransom and Miles are two of the dumbest criminals possible. And from the moment audiences are introduced to Gerard, they learn exactly what kind of detective he is, as he immediately calls out a police officer for lying to the press and immediately screams out demands to departments that he may or may not be in charge of.
Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes)
Both private detectives have similar skills when it comes to manipulating and fooling suspects into saying what they want to know, but the Southern detective also doesn't have the same kind of deduction skills. Even though any one of the on-screen Sherlock Homes iterations could be considered smarter than Blanc, Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal in the Guy Ritchie-directed movies is the smartest in every aspect.
BBC's Sherlock might be the fan-favorite depiction of the detective, but the character's movie version knows how to take down any henchman and deduces where their weak spots are just by looking at them. Benoit isn't exactly a violent person, so there's no knowing if he has the same sixth sense as Sherlock in terms of taking down his enemies.
Veronica Mars (Veronica Mars)
While there were three seasons of television about the titular private detective before the film was released, Veronica Mars takes the titular character to another level, as she's studying law when audiences are reintroduced to her seven years later. Not only does Mars have a strong knowledge of the law, but her deduction skills are on another level and some of the best from 21st-century movie detective.
What's more impressive is that Veronica is so young despite being such a seasoned detective. Both Veronica and Mars are great detectives, but it took Benoit decades to reach his status, whereas Mars was a child prodigy. And as her father is also a seasoned detective who runs Mars Investigations, his own daughter solves the cases before him, and that's after she's been told she isn't allowed to work on them.
Clarice Starling (Silence Of The Lambs)
In a world where psychopaths are trying to eat each other and serial killers are on the loose, Benoit Blanc would want to touch a case like this. FBI Academy student Clarice was willing to put herself in grave danger in The Silence of the Lambs, and she solved the crime, and she survived.
Benoit has never been one to come face-to-face with danger, and any sense of danger might have put him off a case. Clarice deduces where to find Buffalo Bill based on Hannibal's cryptic hints, something that Benoit might have been able to do too, but he never would have visited the cannibal in Baltimore Mental Institution in the first place.
K (Blade Runner 2049)
Blade Runner 2049 followed the original movie by 35 years, and instead of Deckard, the film follows a new Blade Runner, K, but they have very similar story arcs. The plot leads K to question his own mortality, and instead of "retiring" the child replicant that he's hired to do, he decides to delve further into the mystery of how the child replicant came to be.
K was ultimately wrong, as he thought that he was the replicant child before it was revealed to be Ana Stelline. However, he put all the pieces of the puzzle together, he was the one who discovered the buried replicant, he was the one who was able to track down Deckard, and he also found the slave orphanage by himself.
Jessica Fletcher (Murder, She Wrote)
Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) has way more screen time than any other movie or TV detective, as Murder, She Wrote lasted for an impressive 12 seasons and 264 episodes. And one episode after another, the series showcased the mystery writer and amateur detective constantly outsmarting the police and many other authoritative figures.
Even Knives Out writer/director Rian Johnson knows just how great of a detective Jessica Fletcher is, as Lansbury has a cameo in Glass Onion, and it's poetically her final posthumous role. As odd as it is, her playing Among Us on a Zoom call with Benoit while he sits in a bathtub is almost like a passing of the torch.
Hercule Poirot (Murder On The Orient Express)
There's no doubt that Hercule Poirot was a huge influence on the creation of Benoit Blanc, as they're both extremely eccentric and develop rapport with their suspects. However, Hercule has so many solved murder cases under his belt, and he has some peculiar quirks to thank for them.
What Hercule does best is that he's able to lure the suspects into a false sense of security. He knows that his unusual mustache and foreign accent will make suspects believe he isn't a threat, and those quirks will also lead the suspects to get a little too comfortable and maybe even slip up. Benoit has adopted those quirks a little with his Southern drawl and overexcitement, but Hercule perfected it.
William Somerset (Se7en)
Unlike Sherlock or most other movie detectives, William Somerset lacks the theatricality of his peers, which is both a good and a bad thing. The theatricality element of Hercule or Benoit might lure suspects into a false sense of security, but the laser-focused Detective Somerset has seen so much terror that he constantly suspects everyone and trusts nobody in Se7en.
Somerset tries to get inside the mind of the suspect unlike any other detective, and he spends as much time in the library researching as he does on crime scenes. Somerset's final line, "Ernest Hemingway once wrote: 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part." speaks to the character's personality and approach to his work better than anything, and it's one of the greatest final movies lines ever.
Robert Graysmith (Zodiac)
What makes Robert such a great detective in Zodiac is because of how unlikely of a detective he is. Jessica Fletcher might have been a retired English teacher, but Robert Graysmith is simply a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and he's even more committed to tracking down the masked serial killer than police inspector Dave Toschi. While the mystery movie ends the case unsolved as the Zodiac killer is never caught, the San Francisco Police Department wouldn't have come as close as they did if it wasn't for Robert.
From his amateur background to how committed he is to solving the case, he has the edge over Benoit in a couple of areas. Benoit might have called Miles Bron's puzzle box at the beginning of Glass Onion a children's game, but there's no way he could have solved the Zodiac Killer's ciphers quicker than Graysmith. And audiences have yet to see how far Benoit's commitment to a job goes, as both Knives Out and Glass Onion takes place over just a couple of days.
Lisbeth Salander (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one of the murder mystery movies that actually takes advantage of technology, something that few whodunnit films do. Lisbeth is a coder and a hacker, and she knows how to use technology to her advantage better than any other movie detective today.
If Benoit was clued up with technology, he'd be a lot better at his job, and his lack of being tech-savvy significantly holds him back. He gets so frustrated when playing the celebrity game of Among Us on a zoom call that if he can't figure that out, he would undoubtedly struggle in his line of work when so many crimes are digital these days.