Why Are the Most Expensive Netflix Movies Also the Worst? (theguardian.com) 78
Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite attracting major talent and pouring massive resources into productions like "Red Notice," "The Gray Man" and now "The Electric State."
These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."
These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."
Is it really a flop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Critics hate it but the audience scores are good.
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I thought it was entertaining. Silly and unrealistic but so what.
Re:Is it really a flop? (Score:5, Informative)
According to Metacritic, everyone hates it, critics and unwashed masses alike.
I agree with your sentiment: the purpose of a movie is to make money, not to please some ivory-tower gatekeepers of "goodness." If the popular audience likes it, then that's a win.
But in this case, it's a flop.
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Ah, but this is Netflix - the purpose of a movie is to keep people from unsubscribing, and ideally to get new subscribers. As long as it's good enough that existing subscribers think "they have good stuff come out sometimes, I'll stick with it" is it really a flop?
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How many people actually watched it instead of had it playing in the background
Re:Is it really a flop? (Score:5, Insightful)
To further ramble about this, media shills and the talent/creatives behind some movies and other forms of entertainment, will call legitimate criticism review bombing, while completely ignoring the flooding of 5-star ratings with generic comments as legit.
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This has been a problem literally going back to the concept of the critic, as humorously portrayed in the opening segment of Mel Brooks' film History of the World, Pt. 1.
The only two standards that truly matter are both surrounding interest in seeing/hearing/viewing, basically otherwise consuming the work. One is in the short-term, when it's new. The other is for the long term when it's well known.
For the short-term, you're right, there's a real potential for string-pullers to manipulate exposure for a wo
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> To keep on music for a bit, Tears for Fear's, "Mad World," as a single never charted
More accurately, it was never released in US. No idea why as it reached number 3 in UK singles chart and was the 12th best-selling UK single of 1982. Every country it was released in it got into the top 25.
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I often mention that in some measures James Cameron is the best director of all time.
3 of the top 5 box office movies are him (Titanic, and the two avatar movies). Also, the Terminator franchise was very successful for R rated, and I think True Lies is pretty far up there for R rating.
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exclude all ratings that came out less than a month after the movie came out
This would of course make it almost completely useless for theatergoers, and yes they still exist.
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I've gotten tot he point that if critics like Rotten Tomatoes like something, that that's a huge red flag for me.
So either you're truly anti-establishment or you don't understand movie critics. Whether you agree with a critic typically should be highly dependent on the movie. Critically acclaimed movies in one genre are likely to be excellent, while in another genre may be completely missing the mark. E.g. Fanservice categories, some movies are truly trash but tickle our inner nerd and in those cases you see some massive disconnect between critics and viewers. To put it simply, a critic is someone who force watches mo
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Its a flop if it fails to turn a profit and a success if it does. The article reads more like just another legacy media outlet lamenting its growing irrelevance.
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Its a flop if it fails to turn a profit and a success if it does. The article reads more like just another legacy media outlet lamenting its growing irrelevance.
How is profit measured when there is no box office nor DVD/on-demand sales?
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>>How is profit measured when there is no box office nor DVD/on-demand sales?
Same as on TV; viewing numbers (which Netflix keeps to themselves).
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>>How is profit measured when there is no box office nor DVD/on-demand sales?
Same as on TV; viewing numbers (which Netflix keeps to themselves).
TV is a fully ad-supported model. Netflix is subscription but offers a lower tier with ads. So just viewing numbers alone don't generate revenue. Can they associate new subscribers resulting from specific new content?
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Maybe not that exactly, but they wouldn't need to. They can already tell "our piece of crap mockbuster was one of the first things new user X watched", and that would give them a pretty good idea that user X signed up (at least in part) to watch the crappy mockbuster.
Because they don't stick with a good story? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Like you said, the story is usually more important than money. With big money, you can't take risks. With less money you can take risks and try something original. Large amount of original stories are just waste of time (there are hundreds if not thousands of bad stories for every good story), but when story-population is large enough, there are always some winners among the trash. But we should not forget all those losers. Big money pretty much guarantees you to be on top of thousands of bad movies that no
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Or if they do, they try to check off as many hot topics as they can, which obscures and dilutes whatever story there was to tell. The film industry needs to back off the formulaic approach and get back to mentally engaging entertainment.
Focus groups, or creating by committee, don't work that way. And that's what most filmmaking is now. Especially when there's big money involved. That's a creativity killer no matter how its implemented, because focus groups are averages of creative output. And the average person's creative output is, "Whatever was cool last year, or maybe last month."
I'd like to see big budget films where the focus is on characters you can root either for or against, with plotlines where it seems like it matters both to the
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You have to look at who they are choosing for their focus groups as well. It's very selective because those groups are very noisy. Unfortunately it doesn't represent the vast majority of viewers.
This group aggressively tries to get into focus groups as well and is attracted to it because they want to promote a specific message and make it the norm for everyone when it's not. The results of the movies reflect that.
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Except, this doesn't apply to The Electric State. It didn't have any of that.
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The above probably don't care. They're likely just happy to find an excuse to complain about "woke", it doesnt have to correlate with reality.
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Yeah I still remember them claiming Star Trek: Discovery was about a lesbian character.
Re: Because.... (Score:2)
Star Trek has always been a target of conservative ire, starting from TOS because black people and aliens were senior bridge officers.
It continued into TNG since the cardasians were a representation of the end result of conservativism: fascism. It continued into DS9 because the captain was black and into Voyager because the captain was a woman.
Everyone hated enterprise equally though.
Discovery is trash because its just trash. Not because the main character is a black woman or the head doctor is gay. Strange
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Discovery is trash because its just trash. Not because the main character is a black woman or the head doctor is gay.
Truer words were never spoken.
Re: Because.... (Score:2)
Budweiser is just bad beer. Whether they use Andrew Tate or a trans person in a commercial is neither here nor there.
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Christ in a chicken basket you people are stupid.
Disney would be so happy to be as "broke" as Warner Bros, which released Barbie, a "woke" movie if ever there was one, to 1.44 B. Worldwide.
Disney released Black Panther in 2018, another "woke" movie, to a measly 1.3 B worldwide, and Black Panther 2, also "woke", to a pathetic 900M worldwide.
If Disney is going broke, it's not because of "woke".
Also, every time you people use the word woke, god creates another drag queen.
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Inexperience but they aren't alone (Score:3)
When you swing for the fences in dramatic fashion, your failure is more visible. In fact, the burn rate quickly makes it untenable to walk away from a project, even when you know it's a misfire. If a film's revenues are less tangible - streaming for instance, where distribution is endless - you don't even have the sunk cost principle to allow you to eject.
Almost nobody routinely gets high budget success correct. Look at the list of underwhelming films that lost big money in the last five years. And Netflix is an infant in this space. An infant with a lot of money. Studios usually have to learn to make good choices, or fold. That pressure isn't on them to the same degree.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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Almost nobody routinely gets high budget success correct.
I think the problem being discussed here is that they dont seem to ever get it "correct" in the context of their big budget movies.
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Yes. My point is that they're new to it, and not subject to the pressures that force maturation.
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Aright, I get that. I'm surprised they cant poach enough talent from established media companies though.
The thing that puzzles me in all this (I posted about it further down) is that they don't have this problem with shows. Sure there are bombs in this context as well but every streaming service has a number of big budget successes both in the context of critical reviews and those from the public. If talent and experience were the only issue why is that not true of these huge budget shows they are doing?
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"Big budget" is a big part of the problem. It's actually very hard to spend vast sums and do it well. Some failures might well have succeeded if they had only 25% as much money.
Early in the software project management phase of my career I asked for $4M for the first tranche of an effort. I was taken aside and told I needed to be more aggressive on the approach and I needed to ask for $12M. I told him if they gave me $10M there was a good chance I'd waste five of it. I got my $4M, knocked it out of the park,
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From a fiscal point if you're investing large sums on a riskier project, wouldn't you like more review of the story, the director and the producer's intentions on the subject matter? Otherwise, you get Snow White remakes that nobody wants to see.
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Those failures might all have passed those markers while just on paper. They probably did. If oversight at the ideation and approval phases was all that was needed to gatekeep success, nobody would ever produce a dud.
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Well in this particular case doing a live action version of a classic only makes sense from a profit perspective; it's just a money grab. So many of the franchises that were valuable in terms of fan loyalty and revenue have been co-opted with horrible releases with plot lines that resemble formulaic garbage, not a new well thought out stories.
Take "The Boys" as an example. In the first few seasons there were surprises at every turn. Now it seems they're phoning it in and sadly, the next season will be the l
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The main problem about swinging for the fences and failing is you end up in a round of mediocrity - do you spend $250M on a new untested movie, or $50M on 5 movies that are simply sequels of existing properties?
And then you see why Hollywood is releasing sequel after sequel after sequel rather than some new original content.
Easy, they don't have to be a box office hit (Score:5, Insightful)
The big studios are an investment bank. They expect to not only recoup their costs, but a tidy profit, and hopefully that happens within the first week of the film's release. The studio inserts itself in the creative process to some degree. The pressure to return a massive windfall profit has become extreme, which is why we see so many sequels of big spectacles.
Netflix's goals are a little different. Yes, they expect to turn a profit on a film or series, but due to the nature of streaming, the movie itself is never a direct profit center. Under the Netflix model, a movie could have zero views and still be a smashing success if it induces more people to sign up or retain Netflix subscriptions.
The suits don't care (Score:3)
Just take a look at the 5 year stock chart https://finance.yahoo.com/quot... [yahoo.com]
As long as that line is a 45 degree slope the suits don't care what garbage is coming out.
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Just take a look at the 5 year stock chart https://finance.yahoo.com/quot... [yahoo.com]
As long as that line is a 45 degree slope the suits don't care what garbage is coming out.
I was going to say the opposite. When they throw budget at something the suits get too invested and start stepping on creative teams. You see it happen with giant Hollywood flops too. Once the money starts flowing, the executives seem to think that means their creative ideas are better than the folks actually hired as creative talent and shoving them around. Now, we don't know in Netflix's case, because nobody's really talking about it. But I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Netflix's bigger budget films
Risk Avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty much it. The pressure to do nothing unusual or, you know, artistic, increases proportionally with budget.
Regarding Electric State, they used the cutesy stuff from Stålenhag's novel and ignored the social commentary, aside from a few visuals. It had the standard one-button solution to make everything all better and no real stakes.
I don't know if this was studio pressure or the Russos' idea. Maybe we'd have gotten something decent from Cronenberg.
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I don't know, was it a really deep and meaningful movie probably not. It kind of did feel like a children's movie mainly because the protagonist was kind of a child. It did have a social commentary about living in the real world, and treating all sentient life as valuable. I just watched it and it wasn't bad and definitely worth more than the 15% that the critics gave it. The 74% user review is probably more accurate in my opinion not fantastic but above average.
But if you read the book its probably a bit d
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"usually the case with movies based on books"
Fair enough. But I'd contend that in this case they missed the point of the book. Like, they kept the hard candy shell but skipped the medicine inside.
If you don't have it, I'd recommend getting the book. The visuals are fascinating and the story is worth while.
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What juicy gossip did I miss about Chris Pratt?
Difference between critics and regular people (Score:2)
Probably since the start of the movie industry, there has been a disconnect between what some people enjoy watching, and what "critics" claim are good movies. When you break it down, you can see that there are many movies that are well acted, have great scenery, costumes, music, etc, so they will get praise from critics, but then, the audiences hate the story. This is why Rotten Tomatoes serves the purpose of showing how audiences feel as well as critics. There are the "cult classics" that by most mea
Entertainment vs art? (Score:2)
I liked it enough from a viewpoint of being entertained. Would I consider it something "great" or worth watching again? No.
The funny thing... (Score:2)
The funny thing to me here is that streaming companies dont seem to have this problem with their big budget shows. Sure, there are flops in the context of their shows as well but unlike with their movies there are a number of notable hits as well.
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I believe shows are their priority and focus. For about the cost of a single 2-hour movie you can have an entire season of content. The goal is to keep people watching as long as possible (especially in the ad-supported tiers).
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$300 million for a project that's low priority though? That doesnt feel like a low priority price tag.
From a creative standpoint... (Score:2)
The bigger the budget for a project, the more fraught the decisions, the worse the consequences for you if you f it up.
So the greater the budget, the more conservative your creative decisions (yeah, saw that above: good point), AND the more scared you are to change things with a lot of high-budget sunk cost.
'Is this the right decision? I'm not gonna rock the boat.'
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And that is why these studios need to produce more content. As long as the overall results are good, there is room for things that don't do as well, or for the occasional experiment that has an interesting concept, but may or may not do well with audiences.
If you look at the original Star Wars, there was a lot about the plot and scenes that really were NOT very good, but considering the 1970s, those type of special effects were so new, it generated a lot of attention. We saw something similar with the s
Bad content + unlimited resources !== Good content (Score:2)
Of the three examples in the summary: I haven't see The Electric State, but Red Notice was absolute garbage. It was 105% celebrity - and 0% quality/story. and it didn't matter. All 3 leads brought their own A-game style you'd expect from each of them, but Ryan Reynolds's wit grew tiresome really fast, and The Rock and Gal Gadot could've been swapped out with any other two handsome/hot bodies. (If Red Notice doesn't prove that celebrity alone doesn't carry a movie, nothing will.)
The Gray Man was better, but
Critics Watch Too Many Movies (Score:2)
Professional movie critics don't represent your average Netflix viewer and thus their opinions are not directly correlated to the profitability of a film. Historically, SciFi/Fantasy films get bad critic reviews, but SciFi/Fantasy has carried the film industry for the last 30 years.
* Comic Book-Based Films
* Harry Potter
* Lord of the Rings
* Star Wars
* Avatar
* Jurassic Park
* Hunger Games
Not a good fit (Score:2)
Millie Brown was not a good fit for Electric State. Pratt and Brown simply had no chemistry. She really isn't a very good actor in my opinion. The movie was an ok Friday evening watch but within the first few minutes you pretty much had the plot line figured out. The premise had the potential for a good movie but as usual Netflix made it boring. Using a kid's brain to power the world's VR was just strange as hell too.
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Because... (Score:2)
...the larger the project, the more complex it gets and unless you get a solid team in ALL vertical aspects of production, it will fail miserably. You don't just get a handful of big names such as Zack Snyder to put on the poster and call it a day.
Next question.
Hollywood math (Score:2, Troll)
I mean yeah a lot of Nepo babies got a lot of cash I have no doubt of that. But there is no way the electric state cost $320 million to make in real money. It's Hollywood math and it's nothing we didn't already know about. I don't know what makes people think Netflix would be immune to it.
simple (Score:2)
Adverts.
Uncertainity (Score:2)
Ever noticed how ever season of a Netflix show ends with a scene that could both be the start of the next season or be the final one? Because nobody knows if Netflix will pay for another season. So they also cannot dare to create a larger story arc, as they don't know if it can be finished.
Algorithm (Score:2)
It's a good movie. (Score:2)
I watched the Electric State last night, and was thinking, wow that's a good movie. I would pay to see it in a theater on the big screen.
The critics must have watched a different movie.
Marketing stunt (Score:2)
If anything, it's a success of the marketing department. Once you've spent your money/time on watching a title, they no longer care about your opinion.
Good movies start with a great script & castin (Score:2)
Millie Bobby Brown is 10-20 years too young for Chris Pratt. Maybe try pairing her with an actor with whom she has chemistry.