Streaming is just so ephemeral...I mean, I have to admit, until this article I had not even HEARD of Rebel Moon, let alone watched it, and I'm a movie fan. Admittedly I guess I'm more focused on prestige pictures at this time of year, but still, I hate how "blockbusters" on Netflix don't bust any blocks because they're not events in the slightest. They fade into oblivion and make no mark on filmgoing society (let alone pop culture) in the slightest.
Me saw brothers over holidays, and middle brother is luddite who not own computer, and still watch cable, and me reminded when me talk to him that there stark cultural divide between cable-only monsters and streaming-only monsters. He have no idea shows like Severance or Andor exist, and me have no idea about shows where people sell things in pawn shops, or conspiracy theories marketed as History Channel. It just separate worlds.
Along similar lines, my pass Redbox in local supermarket, and it seem like it full of fake movies someone made up for Seinfeld episode. But people who rent those movies probably (inexplicably) not get excited for Korean-language relationship dramas. Me suspect that unfathomable other half know all about Rebel Moon, whereas me saw couple of ads pop up on internet and immediately put it out of mind.
For sure we always have to be mindful that we are not representative, but I'm a teacher in a public high school so I get a sense of what normies (at least, 14-18 year old normies) are watching and I promise you, they are way more aware of Songbirds and Snakes, Mean Girls, and Saltburn than the Extraction and Rebel Moons of the world.
This is so true. My tastes are incredibly middle-to-lowbrow by commenting-on-a-film-critics'-Substack standards---"the low-hanging-fruit cable dramas everyone watches". My sister is into the kind of "because he's MYYYY butler!" network TV that is just downright alien to me.
Mama Cookie is obsessed with Young Sheldon for some reason, and me get that occasional reminder that, oh right, this show me have almost zero awareness of (and its predecessor) is hugely popular with Mr. & Mrs. America and ships at sea.
Side story: when Cookie Jr. was 5 or 6, he kept seeing ads for Big Bang Theory, and said he wanted to watch it, and turned it off after ten minutes because he was angry it not was about actual Big Bang. We ended up binge-watching Cosmos instead.
I've watched a lot of Big Bang Theory, and find it funny 10% of the time, dreary 80% of the time, and morally reprehensible 10% of the time. I mean, it's a Chuck Lorre sitcom. The first couple of seasons have an energy to them and the sitcom-vet cast is sitcom-vet funny. I've watched a little of Young Sheldon and don't find there to be much to it - it's just bland - almost like a Simpsons episode from the '10s. My concern isn't that it's not funny---my concern is that I'm not sure there was anything in there that was *meant* to be funny.
But, yes, the divide is a real thing. My sister recently branched out and tried a new-to-her show that is, by her standards, incredibly postmodern and adventurous: "The Office". And, honestly, I think that's really cool. We only broaden our horizons by broadening them.
> I'm not sure there was anything in there that was *meant* to be funny.
And me think that part of appeal to Mama Cookie. It just heartwarming slice of life with occasional joke. But she more invested in characters than show being funny. And that pretty easy trap for ostensible comedy show to fall into — past two seasons of Bob's Burgers have gone down that road.
And me agree that broadening horizons little by little always good thing. Me worked in bookstore years ago, and there was one very popular title in romance section that was straight-up porn. (Me not can remember actual title) It was hard to keep on shelf, because people bought it and people stole it. So when people ask for it, me would redirect them to romance author that was salacious, but not straight-up porn.
Then when people would ask for romance recommendations, me would steer them towards "chick-lit" type women's fiction. If me had been in that job long enough, me was confident me could get at least one customer from porn up to Toni Morrison given enough upward moves.
And US Office was postmodern and adventurous compared to American sitcoms that came before. That show debuted in Two and Half Men era, and it was very adventurous by comparison. It only seem watered-down and lowest-common-denominator because we all watched high wire act that was UK Office first.
What gets me with streaming is that the size of the audience is inherently smaller. I'm an occasional subscriber to Netflix, but don't have it right now. My sister, mentioned in another comment, doesn't have it. Most of my friends don't have it. Making movies used to be in part about getting famous---James Cameron made Titanic in part for money, in part for passion, and in part because he wanted to be king of the world. A movie on a service most people don't have access to is never going to achieve the cultural ubiquity of a Titanic or an Avatar, and conquering pop culture used to be a big part of the point.
Is that even a thing nowadays in our more fragmented media? Maybe not. But maybe if anyone were still swinging for the fences, someone would hit a home run.
Agreed. We have a critical establishment that wants tiny movies that no one watches (look at the Oscar winners of the last 15 years, or the latest Sight and Sound poll. We have movies made for increasingly smaller segments of the population, as you allude to. And it sucks because film is one of the truly great mainstream arts. Or, at least, it was
I'm of two minds about your first point---is it the critical establishment's fault for liking small movies, or is it the industry's fault for not making those movies into big movies?
One of my all-time favourite movies is Midnight Cowboy. It's insane to me that a movie as out-there as it was enjoyed either critical or box-office success - wouldn't happen today on either front. Now, in terms of gay themes and artistry and pushing the envelope, Moonlight is the Midnight Cowboy of its day. But Moonlight does not have an "I'm walkin' here!" moment. Used to be, Hollywood put out movies with challenging content, and then people watched them. This doesn't happen as much anymore. Losing the monoculture is great in some regards, but it is a loss.
Moonlight has no stars, whereas MC had scorching hot Dustin Hoffman, and it's not as immediately engaging a movie either (though I think they're both very good).
But I'm not looking for "challenging content." It's kind of a weird assumption that film-people make that good movies must CHALLENGE people. I just want more great movies, and preferably ones that a lot of people see
I don't necessarily mean "challenging" in, like, a snooty cineaste way---just in the sense of being out of someone's comfort zone. Like this:
Back in my parents' generation, '60s, '70s, one or two movies a week came to our smallish suburban town, and my parents would go see them, because...those were the movies. Not super-into watching a Jon Voight-Bob Balaban sex scene? You saw that movie anyway, because that's what was playing. Not super-into horror? You saw The Exorcist, because you liked movies and that's what was playing.
With so much more "content" now, most of us self-select out of watching anything that doesn't feel like it was curated carefully for us. There are increasingly movies for you and movies for me, and many, many fewer movies for us.
Yeah, I hear you. Until I saw you did the same, I was also about to put CONTENT in big scare quotes because that's where we're at. The Holdovers is probably the best movie I saw last year and it's noteworthy that it is self-consciously a 1970s movie (ahhhhh what a decade) and, sadly, not noteworthy for the waves it made at the box office .
Between this an DC's disappearing Batgirl movie, there probably broader piece to be written on Vaporware Era of cinema, although me not quite able to see edges of it — ironclad rule of butts-in-seats seems to have been replaced by abstract last-stage-capitalist ideas like never-ending growth, and companies whose main source of income is venture capital.
In fact, there probably good satire waiting to be made about tech company that not actually have product, just hype. (Me guess George Michael storyline in Netflix-era Arrested Development feinted at being that satire, but like most of those two seasons, it was toothless and not terribly funny.)
Theranos is definitely that. WeWork actually did sell product. Me work in office that has several floors of WeWork space. But that whole point — it not take much to push real-life company that have absurdly overvalued product into satirical company that not actually have any product at all.
WeWork is at least in a weird liminal space where it's selling a "vibe", and for nowhere near enough to meet its costs (thanks VCs!).
On your first point (butts in seats), Netflix's approach does reflect the new reality of how we consume content. Netflix doesn't care if you watch Bridgerton or Seinfeld or Rebel Moon as individual properties, they only care if you retain on the service. If watching one episode of Seinfeld a month is enough for you to keep paying them $20 forever, great. If it's Rebel Moon, great. If it's 50% Bridgerton, 20% Mike Flanagan, 15% Orange is the New Black and 15% whatever new thing, great. They're much more like a cable company that knows they have to offer both HGTV and ESPN to keep subscribers, but doesn't much care how subscribers spend their time.
"Semi-charismatic" is the highest praise Charlie Hunnam has gotten in years. And maybe overstating the case a bit? The more times I rewatch Crimson Peak, the more I think his casting there is perfection: I too would also risk being murdered by Hiddleston's charming collection of red flags if my only other option was Hunnam's character.
An interesting comment on the Netflix algorithm's place in all this: despite opening Netflix probably 15+ times in the past 4 weeks, I have seen no hint that this movie exists. I can only guess that Netflix has correctly pegged me as someone who is not a fan of either Snyder or Star Wars. Still- a slightly eerie world to live in.
I feel like a really good comparison point here is The Creator. They are two recent original sci-fi films told on a grand scale. I've seen neither so can't comment about the quality of the films, but at least where I live I've seen plenty of adverts for The Creator and seen more online promotion of it than I have for Rebel Moon. It feels tangible in a way RM doesn't.
CREATOR at least has the designation of being an according-to-the-spreadsheet bomb. Watched it recently and it didn't deserve that treatment, but was also wondering who thought that would be a big enough hit to cover its costs.
I think the opening credit montages of DotD and Watchmen are absolutely fantastic. It's almost impressive that nothing else he's done even remotely speaks to me (300 was cool enough at the time I guess).
I clicked the headline and then tried to skim through the article so I could do a comedy routine about how back in my day, movies had simple one-word names like JAWS and THEGODFATHER, but then damned if your prose didn't just grab me and I ended up reading the whole article. That's some damn fine writing!
I forget the source but I recently read something referring to direct-to-streaming movies as essentially the new TV movie of the week and yeah they basically are.
The ephemerality of it all wouldn’t be so bad if the only way to reliably hear about them wasn’t to have by chance glanced at enough of the marketing blitz or seen people on social media talking about it.
While I’ve long argued somebody should make some sort of tv movie archive in the name of preservation (there’s a lot of good and bad in that space like anything else), streaming movies just seem to by and large be pumped out constantly like hallmark movies with the specifics for the most part not mattering that much.
I think we’re well past a time when “inventing a whole cosmos” could be considered praiseworthy. There have just been too many film/tv/game projects where some wankers spent too much time writing lore notes and did little else to make the work appealing. I just roll my eyes whenever anyone tries to introduce a new IP-worthy fantasy or sci-fi setting…
Yes. 100%. Like The Gray Man and Red Notice and that other movie with Gal Gadot (whose title I have already...wait, I do remember it, Heart of Stone), they are DTV/VOD movies, even with the big stars. I'd be the first to admit that any movie that premieres on Netflix automatically gets pushed down my mental list of movies to watch. The devaluing gets worse every year.
I don't think it's possible for a Netflix movie (or any streaming movie) to be an event or a hit. For a movie to be a major event, it has to be away from your couch, outside of your home. Maybe in the future, when Meta or Apple finally figure out the metaverse and shrink down the goggles to glass levels and we can't tell what is real and what is not, and we "attend" virtual premieres indistinguishable from our own reality...but even that just sounds terribly lame.
The only Snyder movie I saw in person was 300, and it was on an IMAX screen at one of the AMCs in NYC, and even though the movie was spectacularly stupid, I also had a spectacularly good time...
Even the one or two guys I know who might enjoy this have reported back that they can’t be bothered to finish it. I think that hype bought this thing a big opening weekend and then word of mouth caught up to it.
I know it's by no means a new phenomenon or a fresh idea, but movies seem to exist on a product <> story axis, and everything - like RM-P1:ACoF (good lord, now that I've typed that out) are so firmly slammed to the product side, and so obviously so, that I don't even view them as a thing I might want to watch. It's like it's an ad for Netflix (or whatever service), but the product is the ad itself and you have to pay to access it. I will never watch this, nor any of the movies that cost hundreds and hundreds of millions and then vanish. Not in any kind of high-minded, I'm-too-good-for-this kind of way, but because it looks so, so boring.
Side note, I signed up to Netflix for a month pretty much solely to watch Fincher's The Killer, except I messed up the release date and ended up watching House of Usher and some other stuff before my subscription ended literally one day after the movie finally arrived. I wonder if that counts towards a "hit" for Netflix.
I'm personally less concerned about whether this is a hit or not, but more curious about cases like the aforementioned The Killer, Mank, Roma, or even Happy as Lazzaro. Is it enough that they have them available? Did they generate the perceived prestige they wanted? Did people sign up to access them?
I'm starting to think the proper approach for most streamers (with my personal exception being the Criterion Channel) that you wait until there is enough there that you want to see to fill a one month trial, get the trial, then cancel for the next five years to go by until you are ready to catch up again.
Some of that is probably so Netflix can slap "Oscar winning/nominated" on their marketing material, as well as planting a bunch of friendly press that mentions them by name a lot. I don't ever recall seeing articles like "Warner Brothers have five nominated films" but I've certainly seen that for Netflix.
Snyder is such a disappointment. Seems like a really good guy and absolutely has some kind of talent. The opening sequence from Dawn of the Dead was so good they released the entire thing as an as for the movie. It’s a long road from there to Army of the Dead.
Tig Notaro’s appearance in that movie is the 250 million dollar version of Bela Lugosi’s star turn in Plan 9. I know it was an emergency, and the idea of putting Tig in that role was genuinely hip, but the jankiness of those edits just serves to underline how the rest of the movie is only marginally smoother.
Oh for the days when movies came out in a THEATER (and COMMITTED to that release, because IF there was to be a video release, it was MONTHS away...) and let the audience (or lack thereof) prove whether it was a success or a failure.
Streaming is just so ephemeral...I mean, I have to admit, until this article I had not even HEARD of Rebel Moon, let alone watched it, and I'm a movie fan. Admittedly I guess I'm more focused on prestige pictures at this time of year, but still, I hate how "blockbusters" on Netflix don't bust any blocks because they're not events in the slightest. They fade into oblivion and make no mark on filmgoing society (let alone pop culture) in the slightest.
Me saw brothers over holidays, and middle brother is luddite who not own computer, and still watch cable, and me reminded when me talk to him that there stark cultural divide between cable-only monsters and streaming-only monsters. He have no idea shows like Severance or Andor exist, and me have no idea about shows where people sell things in pawn shops, or conspiracy theories marketed as History Channel. It just separate worlds.
Along similar lines, my pass Redbox in local supermarket, and it seem like it full of fake movies someone made up for Seinfeld episode. But people who rent those movies probably (inexplicably) not get excited for Korean-language relationship dramas. Me suspect that unfathomable other half know all about Rebel Moon, whereas me saw couple of ads pop up on internet and immediately put it out of mind.
For sure we always have to be mindful that we are not representative, but I'm a teacher in a public high school so I get a sense of what normies (at least, 14-18 year old normies) are watching and I promise you, they are way more aware of Songbirds and Snakes, Mean Girls, and Saltburn than the Extraction and Rebel Moons of the world.
This is so true. My tastes are incredibly middle-to-lowbrow by commenting-on-a-film-critics'-Substack standards---"the low-hanging-fruit cable dramas everyone watches". My sister is into the kind of "because he's MYYYY butler!" network TV that is just downright alien to me.
Mama Cookie is obsessed with Young Sheldon for some reason, and me get that occasional reminder that, oh right, this show me have almost zero awareness of (and its predecessor) is hugely popular with Mr. & Mrs. America and ships at sea.
Side story: when Cookie Jr. was 5 or 6, he kept seeing ads for Big Bang Theory, and said he wanted to watch it, and turned it off after ten minutes because he was angry it not was about actual Big Bang. We ended up binge-watching Cosmos instead.
Excellent kid.
I've watched a lot of Big Bang Theory, and find it funny 10% of the time, dreary 80% of the time, and morally reprehensible 10% of the time. I mean, it's a Chuck Lorre sitcom. The first couple of seasons have an energy to them and the sitcom-vet cast is sitcom-vet funny. I've watched a little of Young Sheldon and don't find there to be much to it - it's just bland - almost like a Simpsons episode from the '10s. My concern isn't that it's not funny---my concern is that I'm not sure there was anything in there that was *meant* to be funny.
But, yes, the divide is a real thing. My sister recently branched out and tried a new-to-her show that is, by her standards, incredibly postmodern and adventurous: "The Office". And, honestly, I think that's really cool. We only broaden our horizons by broadening them.
> I'm not sure there was anything in there that was *meant* to be funny.
And me think that part of appeal to Mama Cookie. It just heartwarming slice of life with occasional joke. But she more invested in characters than show being funny. And that pretty easy trap for ostensible comedy show to fall into — past two seasons of Bob's Burgers have gone down that road.
And me agree that broadening horizons little by little always good thing. Me worked in bookstore years ago, and there was one very popular title in romance section that was straight-up porn. (Me not can remember actual title) It was hard to keep on shelf, because people bought it and people stole it. So when people ask for it, me would redirect them to romance author that was salacious, but not straight-up porn.
Then when people would ask for romance recommendations, me would steer them towards "chick-lit" type women's fiction. If me had been in that job long enough, me was confident me could get at least one customer from porn up to Toni Morrison given enough upward moves.
And US Office was postmodern and adventurous compared to American sitcoms that came before. That show debuted in Two and Half Men era, and it was very adventurous by comparison. It only seem watered-down and lowest-common-denominator because we all watched high wire act that was UK Office first.
What gets me with streaming is that the size of the audience is inherently smaller. I'm an occasional subscriber to Netflix, but don't have it right now. My sister, mentioned in another comment, doesn't have it. Most of my friends don't have it. Making movies used to be in part about getting famous---James Cameron made Titanic in part for money, in part for passion, and in part because he wanted to be king of the world. A movie on a service most people don't have access to is never going to achieve the cultural ubiquity of a Titanic or an Avatar, and conquering pop culture used to be a big part of the point.
Is that even a thing nowadays in our more fragmented media? Maybe not. But maybe if anyone were still swinging for the fences, someone would hit a home run.
Agreed. We have a critical establishment that wants tiny movies that no one watches (look at the Oscar winners of the last 15 years, or the latest Sight and Sound poll. We have movies made for increasingly smaller segments of the population, as you allude to. And it sucks because film is one of the truly great mainstream arts. Or, at least, it was
I'm of two minds about your first point---is it the critical establishment's fault for liking small movies, or is it the industry's fault for not making those movies into big movies?
One of my all-time favourite movies is Midnight Cowboy. It's insane to me that a movie as out-there as it was enjoyed either critical or box-office success - wouldn't happen today on either front. Now, in terms of gay themes and artistry and pushing the envelope, Moonlight is the Midnight Cowboy of its day. But Moonlight does not have an "I'm walkin' here!" moment. Used to be, Hollywood put out movies with challenging content, and then people watched them. This doesn't happen as much anymore. Losing the monoculture is great in some regards, but it is a loss.
Moonlight has no stars, whereas MC had scorching hot Dustin Hoffman, and it's not as immediately engaging a movie either (though I think they're both very good).
But I'm not looking for "challenging content." It's kind of a weird assumption that film-people make that good movies must CHALLENGE people. I just want more great movies, and preferably ones that a lot of people see
I don't necessarily mean "challenging" in, like, a snooty cineaste way---just in the sense of being out of someone's comfort zone. Like this:
Back in my parents' generation, '60s, '70s, one or two movies a week came to our smallish suburban town, and my parents would go see them, because...those were the movies. Not super-into watching a Jon Voight-Bob Balaban sex scene? You saw that movie anyway, because that's what was playing. Not super-into horror? You saw The Exorcist, because you liked movies and that's what was playing.
With so much more "content" now, most of us self-select out of watching anything that doesn't feel like it was curated carefully for us. There are increasingly movies for you and movies for me, and many, many fewer movies for us.
Yeah, I hear you. Until I saw you did the same, I was also about to put CONTENT in big scare quotes because that's where we're at. The Holdovers is probably the best movie I saw last year and it's noteworthy that it is self-consciously a 1970s movie (ahhhhh what a decade) and, sadly, not noteworthy for the waves it made at the box office .
This article made me think of BRIGHT, an early attempt at a Netflix franchise that turned out to be a nonstarter for numerous reasons.
Between this an DC's disappearing Batgirl movie, there probably broader piece to be written on Vaporware Era of cinema, although me not quite able to see edges of it — ironclad rule of butts-in-seats seems to have been replaced by abstract last-stage-capitalist ideas like never-ending growth, and companies whose main source of income is venture capital.
In fact, there probably good satire waiting to be made about tech company that not actually have product, just hype. (Me guess George Michael storyline in Netflix-era Arrested Development feinted at being that satire, but like most of those two seasons, it was toothless and not terribly funny.)
The Jared Leto/Anne Hathaway WeWork series was basically already that. Or the Amanda Seyfried Theranos series. Once again, scooped by reality.
Theranos is definitely that. WeWork actually did sell product. Me work in office that has several floors of WeWork space. But that whole point — it not take much to push real-life company that have absurdly overvalued product into satirical company that not actually have any product at all.
WeWork is at least in a weird liminal space where it's selling a "vibe", and for nowhere near enough to meet its costs (thanks VCs!).
On your first point (butts in seats), Netflix's approach does reflect the new reality of how we consume content. Netflix doesn't care if you watch Bridgerton or Seinfeld or Rebel Moon as individual properties, they only care if you retain on the service. If watching one episode of Seinfeld a month is enough for you to keep paying them $20 forever, great. If it's Rebel Moon, great. If it's 50% Bridgerton, 20% Mike Flanagan, 15% Orange is the New Black and 15% whatever new thing, great. They're much more like a cable company that knows they have to offer both HGTV and ESPN to keep subscribers, but doesn't much care how subscribers spend their time.
I suspect it's long been fairly common for movies to get shelved even when near completion. We just never used to hear about them.
"Semi-charismatic" is the highest praise Charlie Hunnam has gotten in years. And maybe overstating the case a bit? The more times I rewatch Crimson Peak, the more I think his casting there is perfection: I too would also risk being murdered by Hiddleston's charming collection of red flags if my only other option was Hunnam's character.
An interesting comment on the Netflix algorithm's place in all this: despite opening Netflix probably 15+ times in the past 4 weeks, I have seen no hint that this movie exists. I can only guess that Netflix has correctly pegged me as someone who is not a fan of either Snyder or Star Wars. Still- a slightly eerie world to live in.
I wasn't sure whether to lump Michiel Huisman in there, but I've actually liked him in some things so I left him out.
On the other topic, now Netflix thinks this is _exactly_ what I want to watch.
I would call that a sick burn on Netflix's part but I'd hate to be judged by what Netflix thinks I want to watch.
I feel like a really good comparison point here is The Creator. They are two recent original sci-fi films told on a grand scale. I've seen neither so can't comment about the quality of the films, but at least where I live I've seen plenty of adverts for The Creator and seen more online promotion of it than I have for Rebel Moon. It feels tangible in a way RM doesn't.
CREATOR at least has the designation of being an according-to-the-spreadsheet bomb. Watched it recently and it didn't deserve that treatment, but was also wondering who thought that would be a big enough hit to cover its costs.
I think the opening credit montages of DotD and Watchmen are absolutely fantastic. It's almost impressive that nothing else he's done even remotely speaks to me (300 was cool enough at the time I guess).
ARMY OF THE DEAD has similarly robust opening credits but it kind of falls flatt.
He's pretty good at casting, too. Though Rebel Moon seems like a step or two down.
I watched the first 30 minutes and turned it off. How does that skew the numbers?
I clicked the headline and then tried to skim through the article so I could do a comedy routine about how back in my day, movies had simple one-word names like JAWS and THEGODFATHER, but then damned if your prose didn't just grab me and I ended up reading the whole article. That's some damn fine writing!
I forget the source but I recently read something referring to direct-to-streaming movies as essentially the new TV movie of the week and yeah they basically are.
The ephemerality of it all wouldn’t be so bad if the only way to reliably hear about them wasn’t to have by chance glanced at enough of the marketing blitz or seen people on social media talking about it.
While I’ve long argued somebody should make some sort of tv movie archive in the name of preservation (there’s a lot of good and bad in that space like anything else), streaming movies just seem to by and large be pumped out constantly like hallmark movies with the specifics for the most part not mattering that much.
I think we’re well past a time when “inventing a whole cosmos” could be considered praiseworthy. There have just been too many film/tv/game projects where some wankers spent too much time writing lore notes and did little else to make the work appealing. I just roll my eyes whenever anyone tries to introduce a new IP-worthy fantasy or sci-fi setting…
It’s Snyder; ofc it’s a flop
"But doesn’t it also seem non-existent?"
Yes. 100%. Like The Gray Man and Red Notice and that other movie with Gal Gadot (whose title I have already...wait, I do remember it, Heart of Stone), they are DTV/VOD movies, even with the big stars. I'd be the first to admit that any movie that premieres on Netflix automatically gets pushed down my mental list of movies to watch. The devaluing gets worse every year.
I don't think it's possible for a Netflix movie (or any streaming movie) to be an event or a hit. For a movie to be a major event, it has to be away from your couch, outside of your home. Maybe in the future, when Meta or Apple finally figure out the metaverse and shrink down the goggles to glass levels and we can't tell what is real and what is not, and we "attend" virtual premieres indistinguishable from our own reality...but even that just sounds terribly lame.
The only Snyder movie I saw in person was 300, and it was on an IMAX screen at one of the AMCs in NYC, and even though the movie was spectacularly stupid, I also had a spectacularly good time...
The Grey Man literally does not exist. It’s an internet hoax. People who claim to have seen it are slow-rolling you.
Even the one or two guys I know who might enjoy this have reported back that they can’t be bothered to finish it. I think that hype bought this thing a big opening weekend and then word of mouth caught up to it.
I know it's by no means a new phenomenon or a fresh idea, but movies seem to exist on a product <> story axis, and everything - like RM-P1:ACoF (good lord, now that I've typed that out) are so firmly slammed to the product side, and so obviously so, that I don't even view them as a thing I might want to watch. It's like it's an ad for Netflix (or whatever service), but the product is the ad itself and you have to pay to access it. I will never watch this, nor any of the movies that cost hundreds and hundreds of millions and then vanish. Not in any kind of high-minded, I'm-too-good-for-this kind of way, but because it looks so, so boring.
Side note, I signed up to Netflix for a month pretty much solely to watch Fincher's The Killer, except I messed up the release date and ended up watching House of Usher and some other stuff before my subscription ended literally one day after the movie finally arrived. I wonder if that counts towards a "hit" for Netflix.
I'm personally less concerned about whether this is a hit or not, but more curious about cases like the aforementioned The Killer, Mank, Roma, or even Happy as Lazzaro. Is it enough that they have them available? Did they generate the perceived prestige they wanted? Did people sign up to access them?
I'm starting to think the proper approach for most streamers (with my personal exception being the Criterion Channel) that you wait until there is enough there that you want to see to fill a one month trial, get the trial, then cancel for the next five years to go by until you are ready to catch up again.
Some of that is probably so Netflix can slap "Oscar winning/nominated" on their marketing material, as well as planting a bunch of friendly press that mentions them by name a lot. I don't ever recall seeing articles like "Warner Brothers have five nominated films" but I've certainly seen that for Netflix.
Snyder is such a disappointment. Seems like a really good guy and absolutely has some kind of talent. The opening sequence from Dawn of the Dead was so good they released the entire thing as an as for the movie. It’s a long road from there to Army of the Dead.
Tig Notaro’s appearance in that movie is the 250 million dollar version of Bela Lugosi’s star turn in Plan 9. I know it was an emergency, and the idea of putting Tig in that role was genuinely hip, but the jankiness of those edits just serves to underline how the rest of the movie is only marginally smoother.
Oh for the days when movies came out in a THEATER (and COMMITTED to that release, because IF there was to be a video release, it was MONTHS away...) and let the audience (or lack thereof) prove whether it was a success or a failure.