Happy Monday!
I’ve had it. Truly. I’ve goddamn had it.
I recently watched The Rip on Netflix, starring the longstanding duo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (along with the excellent Teyana Taylor and the invincible Steven Yeun), and I’m convinced we’ve officially hit the ceiling of low-effort, low-intelligence filmmaking.
If you’re not catching my drift yet, let me explain just like Netflix’s dialogue, plain as hell: Netflix operates under the assumption that its audience is either glued to their phones or too dim to connect two dots together.
Click Read Online to see my point visualized in our thumbnail.
Matt Damon confirmed it on Joe Rogan’s podcast: Netflix reportedly asks that plot points be reiterated three or four times per film because viewers might be on their phones. That says less about society and more about Netflix’s perception of its audience. If your story can’t engage people from the first frame, you start treating them like brainless consumers instead of human beings.
This problem isn’t new. It’s why so many people turned on the final season of Stranger Things. It started as a show drenched in violence and ‘80s nostalgia, clearly made for 16+ audiences, but by the final season, it applies the same formula used for children’s programming. Nothing can sit there, nothing can be inferred, every idea is restated until it loses all impact. I’m vocally groaning with every delivery.
Not to mention the theory that went around about a secret episode 9, where people were so dissatisfied with the finale that people thought a new post-finale episode would appear. The so-called #ConformityGate is a response to this low-effort attempt at appeasing their audience with simple storytelling rather than the leaps it took to begin with.
We’re living in an era of fast, disposable content. Like those AI-generated food-animal videos, “which bed would you sleep in?” clips, endless scrolls of brain rot. That environment absolutely affects us, but it doesn’t excuse being talked down to. Films shouldn’t be part of that delusional BS.
Yes, people work hard and sometimes need to turn their brains off. But there’s a difference between comfort viewing and intellectual surrender. When entertainment treats us like brainless animals, some part of us starts to accept it, and companies like Netflix exploit that. “Cut to action. Make that CGI. Throw in a celebrity. They won’t notice the rest.”
Meanwhile, beautiful films like Sorry, Baby and Sentimental Value struggle for wide release when celebrity-driven spectacles dominate theaters. Don’t get me started on that new Chris Pratt AI flick that’s being forced into theatres…like come on.
I’ve had it. And I worry for young filmmakers trying to break into mainstream entertainment. Going against the grain has never been harder, and the industry doesn’t seem eager to reverse course. That said, thanks to those beautiful films I mentioned, there’s hope that the best of artistic filmmaking still has its relevance and place in cinema worldwide.
HAVE A GREAT WEEK AND DON’T LET SOCIETAL GLOOM GET YOU DOWN. WE’LL GET THROUGH THIS!
Pat and the Marquet Films Team.