Matt Damon Says Netflix Wants Movies to Restate the ‘Plot Three or Four Times in the Dialogue’ Because Viewers are on ‘Their Phones While They’re Watching’
9 months ago by Skavau to c/television
That doesn't sound very streamlined or profitable to me.
I dunno man, I can't get my friends to watch some stellar movies because their attention span has been shot over time.
Believe it or not, they'll watch crappier movies because they don't need to pay attention.
Can't right now, ow my balls is on.
Part of it is the movie, but a large part is that short form video trains your brain to need frequent dopamine fixes. A 5 second video does that, while a 90 minute movie might not give it until the climax.
It's not much different than a smoker taking a break during a movie.
If someone starts a movie and immediately pulls their phone out or starts cleaning, that’s on them.
And movies absolutely should not be made to cater to addiction. Nothing should, except for something explicitly designed to help people recover from addiction.
When movies have a good idea and are given the proper attention to make them well, regular people won’t be checking the time or reading blogs when they become bored. The problem is that studios say that, good idea or not, proper attention to the craft or not, we’re making this many movies this year. We’re lucky if a few of those movies are something future generations would consider good.
Matt Damon is suggesting that movies be made even worse than they already are.
Matt Damon is suggesting
It definitely reads more as "Netflix execs suggest and Matt Damon complains about"
I can't stand short videos. I won't even watch videos that aren't an hour or longer myself. I don't get these shorts, it's so unsatisfying.
We get our short attention span jones from reading headlines and comments.
My wife said that the Wire was hard to follow and boring, but she also checked her phone every 5 minutes and was carrying on a conversation there with her friends. She also impulsively pulled out facebook and scrolled a bit. I pointed all this out but Its still the shows fault somehow.
That’s the problem they don’t want to discuss. Writing has gotten seriously shitty.
If you watch shitty movies, yes. There are still plenty of good movies being made.
I've watched through ‘Severance’, which is very popular afaict. It's chock full of protracted shots padding the runtime. Either the directors (mostly Ben Stiller) think they're new Kubricks, or the directive was to make the show longer. Idk what Netflix gets from a longer show, when a season is dumped all at once anyway — presumably more space for ads, which are apparently there now. I wouldn't feel much guilty about checking the phone in between any meaningful action.
The only new film that really gripped me in the past few years was ‘The Substance’, which felt like oldschool Cronenberg stuff. Ironically it's comparatively long, and doesn't even have much dialogue.
First and foremost, you're complaining about pacing, not writing. Second, that's your opinion and that's fine. Personally, I don't think every single second needs to move the plot forward. I'm perfectly fine with sections of it being transicions or world building or other stuff.
Your opinion's fine though. Just go watch something else. However, you not liking something doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad, nor good.
If the substance really is the only film that gripped you in the past few years, then you either are terrible at picking movies or you just don't really like cinema all that much.
lol yea, toootally nothing to do with it. That's why nobody ever talks about great movies, and movies toooootally aren't getting longer nad longer... yep, totally not a quality to attention thing.
Not like there are legendary movies that are several hours long that people still watch... Yep, quality has nothing to do with how long people stay engaged with movies!
The fact that classics exist has literally nothing to do with this discussion. Also, no, movies aren't getting longer. Source.
There are plenty of great films still being made every year. If you don't watch or like them, that's a you problem.
I find shows and movies that show something happen clearly and then restate it in the dialogue immediately quite annoying. Very common in anime.
Metal Gear????
!
To be fair, that can be necessary to make the action understandable, especially when you're adapting a game that you don't expect the viewers to be experts in. (Which is always because these shows are usually supposed to be advertisements.
Imagine an MtG-themed show where battles looked like this:
Player A: "Okay, your turn."
Player B: "Untap, draw... In my precombat main I play Isochron Scepter with Pongify."
Player A: "Fold."
Spectator: "Yeah, that was obviously unwinnable."
...without even bothering to explain the cards, much less why player A's game couldn't stand up to a questionable use of an Isochron Scepter.
(Of course a particularly egregious case was Yu-Gi-Oh, which needed these explanations because the card game as shown on the show made no sense.)
Some YouTube channels do this and I started to hide them in the recommendations because it pisses me off so much.
Same here, I know why they do it, but they will lose me as a viewer.
I wonder if its due to how closely Anime attempts to animate Manga? I feel like you can kind of "explain" what happens in text alot more smoothly than on a TV show due to how much faster you ingest knowledge.
Often it’s a localization issue too. Japanese dialogue doesn’t translate easily to English, it’s usually longer and has more layers of formality that English can’t express. And they often aren’t allowed to cut the content, so they have to make the English super wordy and explainy to match the long winded mouth flaps.
That’s a good point, I agree for anime it is probably stylistic like some comic book movies are comic-y.
Make content that makes people put their phones down.
This is what kills any articles on the web. The first three paragraphs repeat the question you're looking to get answered and the last paragraph vaguely answers it.
I feel like an old person now but I've started watching movies from the 90s/2000s and I can't believe how much worse movies have become over the years.
SEO was a mistake.
Also the more repetition the more room on the page for ad spots. Same reason so many Youtubers restate the same shit almost verbatim over and over and over; it pads the video so Youtube can cram in more ad spots.
Writer insight : if people start pulling their phone when they should be watching your movie, it means your movie is shit, not that it should be made even sloppier. Watered down shit is still a shit cocktail.
I think re-explaining things that happened in previous seasons is a different issue. They're worried that you don't remember what happened because it has been so long.
And that's fair. I know I watched Season 2 (and it definitely had my full attention, because I'm incapable of doing two things at once), but the only thing I can actually remember about it is the episode where El went to Chicago and met some shadowrunners. And something about tunnels. Everything else is a blur.
The last season being a big mess aside, it was 100% guilty of re-explaining the plot, not just the recaps. Together with those unnecessary "LET ME EXPLAIN" scenes, like Robin using vinyls to explain a very basic concept. They really treated us like idiots.
The entirety of the show is like that. It's not like a deep thinky clever show, it's a series of 80's horror movie references tossed in a blender.
Yes and no. This season has been pretty weak in the writing department, so some of these ideas that worked before were overused/used poorly this season. And for an 80s-throwback series, it ends rather depressingly, no matter how you spin it. But it's par for the course these days for the final season/finale to shit the bed, I guess.
I was complaining to my family about how El getting a bloody nose was originally used to indicate how she severely over exerted herself while using her powers. In this last season they turned it into the "I used magic and am trying to look cool" sign. I found it belittling.
I agree with what you're saying (aside from comparing that really awful episode to Shadowrun), but that's not what went on in Stranger Things. It was just....
From the very first episode, I asked if they had changed writers because the dialogue was so different, so bad, and so predictable--all of which only grew worse with each passing episode. And when each character had their turn to explain who they are and how they feel, it fit the same exact pattern every time. It was just really bad writing.
All that said, I don't think the last season was terrible. I expected it to be a lot worse than it was. The actual plot and ending of the story, I thought were perfectly mediocre and fine. It was ruined by the dialogue.
All that said, I don’t think the last season was terrible. I expected it to be a lot worse than it was. The actual plot and ending of the story, I thought were perfectly mediocre and fine. It was ruined by the dialogue.
I agree with you, it was better than I expected (although I had extremely low expectations to be fair). The most miserable parts of the final season were the long "emotional" character moments with the most juvenile/amateur/unrealistic writing. I don't skip as a rule, but I really felt like fast forwarding through some of that stuff, it was so cringe.
Pro tip: VLC has the option of running the video at a speed of choice, where 110% is good for pretty much everything. I wish I knew of this feature when I watched through ‘Harry Potters’ and the ‘Matrix’ trilogy.
That was definitely part of it, but I think they also wrote themselves into a corner in previous seasons by not properly laying the groundwork for any of the supernatural stuff. In Season 5, they had to constantly infodump the viewers in those "plan" scenes to keep up.
Fucking train wreck of a season. It was garbage full of useless dialogue between every character. I couldn’t watch past the first few episodes.
Or we are on our phones because the movies repeat their themes over and over and over again
i dunno, most people i see watch netflix seem to use it as just another mode of stimulus because they need to always be completely inundated with flashing screens at all times to feel calm
It’s the big tech social media disease.
Everyone, frigging everyone who steps away from fb/insta/twittler/yt/tiktok/… says the same “holy shit my mind is so peaceful all of a sudden.” And somehow it’s not substantially part of the daily discourse. Somehow between that and EVERYTHING else these mfrs are responsible for (protecting pedos, encouraging insurrections, …) just flies.
It’s a disease, an addiction, a plague and we gotta start naming it as such. Talk to your loved ones and carefully try to get them off that shit.
Does that include Lemmy?
You tell me:
-are you getting ads/shorts/brainrot shoved in face every single second?
-is the public on lemmy tolerant of sexoffenders? Nazis?
-ads? (Yes, I initially misspelled it as “adds” this guy right here)
-do you have superfluous bs following you around?
I think not.
You forgot:
- Is an algorithm shoving political divisive rage bait down your throat?
But thanks for listing why I like it here
I think if no public bathrooms are available, then we should be allowed to urinate in public.
So people having discourse equals advertising?
-are you getting ads/shorts/brainrot shoved in face every single second?
No, but I don't get that elsewhere either. You may need to update your adblocker. Or install more than one (one for web stuff and sponsorblock to get YTers doing their own ad reads).
I think we define the list differently.
There is a difference between let’s say ads and shorts (which are indeed blockable to a certain level). But then there’s the brainrot. Which to me envelopes a bigger problem.
On fb for example to me this was promotion of influencers, meme pages, … patronising stuff that annoys me endlessly.
I don’t think you can steer Facebook in a way that they don’t display certain content you don’t want. In fact I’ve has the opposite happen a few times.
“Oh you’re trying to tell the algo you want less of this content? How about some more, twice as much?”.
At that point I’m done with the platform, no thx. And just in general, I’m throwing away as much big tech accounts as I can and it feels like a relief, good riddance.
Lemmy/Piefed is an echo chamber, and has some structural issues like Reddit. But there's no algo, no advertising, nor constant phone notifications.
And, uh, no billionaires warping "open" discourse.
To me, it's a time black hole, worse than old forums. But it's not nearly as bad as (say) Discord or anything Facebook owned.
nor constant phone notifications.
Until emails broke on our instance I used to get email notifications for replies, which would send a notification to my phone, which would get forwarded to my smart watch.
So, uh, yeah.
I don't use FB, Instagram, X, or TikTok, but on YT, the last few things I watched was a video by ElectroBoom on electric showerheads, some other video about how ancient Egypt made things so flat, a couple of episodes of the 50s TV show The Lone Ranger, and a video about the Eiffel Tower.
If you're watching things on YT that's making your mind unpeaceful, watch something else. Getting off of YT isn't going to help. No matter where you or your loved ones go, there they are.
🏴☠️
I guess that's why ‘Severance’ is full of padding shots with nothing happening in them.
People will leave if they don't like what they see. People won't like what they don't understand. People won't understand what isn't either simple or redundantly written because they don't pay attention.
80% of “plot holes” people online complain about is just them either being in their phone or absolutely not understanding subtext or anything implied.
good stuff needs to go hardcore enough some people will cringe away and not making cringe is more important than making good, because getting the anthill of these people will not give me money to give you money is more important than keeping the mountain of people who will give you money happy.
Good stuff is a hard marker to hit.
Going back to 54% of Americans read at or below the 5th grade level (in terms of functional capacity and reaching comprehension), they need it spelled out.
And this good is slowly being eroded away.
Alien hardly explains anything. Alien Romulus isn't as bad as much modern cinema but explains too much sometimes
Not really, no. There have been plenty of tv shows for example that have been cancelled due to low audience numbers, despite being excellent. For example, In The Flesh, Mindhunter and Pushing Daisies.
Pushing daisies was absolutely great, was gutted we never got to see how that played out
It's not just me, right? Modern movies and shows have less things happen in same duration of time.
I would actually argue the opposite. Modern movie plots are an ADD fever dream. There are so many things going on that keeping track is an absolute chore.
I think you're both right, somehow.
Films maybe, but Netflix appears to pad shows' runtime without shame.
Depending on what shows you watched, plenty from the 90s/00s assumed viewers wouldnt make it for the airing once a week. So they did fluff a bunch and rely on "this week's monster" rather than dense series plots. I remember despising dragon ball z (my brothers favorite) because multiple episodes would go by with fuckin NOTHING happening.
I was always mad that Goku would finally make it to Namek, then for some reason next week they would time jump backwards and he'd be back in the hyperbaric training chamber. It felt like DBZ groundhog month. If you are mad about missing the actual meat of the show like I was, I highly recommend "Dragon Ball Kai" - it's DBZ with the filler removed!
You need to relax my dude
Modern shows are lazy, they are like 6, 10 episodes tops. The simpsons in the 90s before they sucked did almost 30. They would take summer off, then breaks on xmas and spring but a show a week otherwise.
Dude.... That was annual, too. These modern day 8-episode shows will have YEARS between seasons. Like, motherfucker, half your scenes are green screen in a big sound studio -- what the fuck is taking you so long?!
They have to wait for Ai tokens to replenish.
Go away! Bait'n!
Ow my balls would be a step up.
I think Netflix manufactured this problem first. Originally they were going for volume so they added a lot of padding to their og shows. To the point I stopped watching (torrenting) any Netflix originals. So people got in the habit of doing other stuff while waiting for the plot to start moving again. Now they claim that their shows are meant for second screens. Motherfucker: we are in the golden age of TV, so there's plenty of engaging content being produced. Marvelous Mrs. Maisle is so fast paced and brilliant I never felt the need to pick up my phone.
Marvelous was great. Always attentive to that show.
Bad movies need to do this. You know, the average movie Netflix signs off on.
That stupid and reminds not to watch Netflix movies or shows.
You could absolutely do it in a funny way like Kronk (Emperors New Groove) or Luis (Ant-Man).
Now I'm curious, am I checking my phone after they've repeated the same thing 3 or 4 times and now I'm bored / annoyed?
The amount of reciprocal effort art is socially allowed to demand from the audience changes. The art form gets refined and people respect that and are willing to invest more attention, then at some point it's opera and nobody goes because it requires too much attention and respect. Netflix might suck but on the other hand Christopher Nolan is making movies with inaudible dialogue and Game of Thrones has invisible fight scenes because they got out of hand with it and think they can demand you only watch their thing alone in a soundproof HDR screening room.
Seems helpful. I’m probably watching Netflix, driving a ride share right this very moment AND cooking my family a nutritious dinner all at this very moment
Good thing we canceled our Netflix subscription last year when Trump threatened to invade our country the first time.
Even greater that now that he is threatening to do it again, and seemingly is more serious about it, we are one year into being back on physical media and we fucking love it. Dvds and blurays are so much better than shitflix.
Canceling Netflix wil certainly compensate for the brilliant decision of our EU clowns to get 70% of our gas from the US to own the Russians.
As if the price isn't killing the EU industries already the orange clown now has another massive leverage tool.
netflix should just buy the entire back catalogue of The Archers and be done with it.
Talk about the wrong response!
If they want people to not look away or do something else while the movie is playing you gotta keep it interesting.
Ya know, like perhaps making movies that aren't just rehashes of the same old stories.
Make movies and shows that keep people on their toes!
Making a crime drama? Throw in some traveler from the future or a demon or both! Give the judge two heads because of a "merging accident" or something!
Putting together a horror movie? Throw in some romance among the monsters! Have them feed each other eyeballs or something!
Making an anime? Try something totally radical! Like a male protagonist with non-dark hair that has a personality, or make a couple—in love—who get stuck somewhere together, alone have actual sex (like normal teens would) or something!
Making a K-drama? Add a black guy and make him one of the main characters... Haha, just kidding! That would be too radical! That'd be just as extreme as making an anime that covers the time period a few years after "the hero" formed his harem!
Wow... I dont want to see any of those potential movies you just pitched.
I'm pretty boring. I like depth of writing, artful cinematography, expert acting all the way down to two-line roles, least amount of cgi/green screen as possible (fake fire doesn't look real, and cgi car chases look cheesy af), not the same actors ive seen in stuff for the past 20+ years (but i do like famous actors who absolutely slay a completely new type of role for them -- like Jim Carrey did in Truman Show), fantastic dialogue that doesn't spoon feed exposition and subtext, skilled editing that makes the aforementioned cinematography serve some subtext, and directing that can masterfully weave it all together. Ya know -- a quality film.
Meh. If I have to watch an Oscar winner that has all those things but it's the same old story that I've seen redone a thousand times forget it. I don't care that the acting was fantastic or that the cinematography was absolutely the best. I still know what's about to happen.
Comedy can be great no matter who is in it and the cinematography doesn't matter. That's because the dialogue needs to be fresh and clever or it just won't be funny 🤷
Give me more weird and interesting sci fi and fantasy! Throw the fantastic writers and cinematography at that instead of "guaranteed minimum sales/viewers* like we're currently living with for 90% of all movies and shows.
Netflix movies are pretty crap for doing these because we ourselves are to blame. I admit I have done this couple of times while watching movie or TV at home.
I've seen quite a lot recently saying a particularly distracting aspect of phones isn't that they're a screen and a visual stimulus, but a tool and a haptic stimulus.
An increasingly popular way to combat checking your phone while watching TV is to busy your hands with something. If this works and is widely adopted, we won't need shows to have second-screen writing repetition; our brains tell our hands to use the tool, and it just so happens that the tool is full of text and speech and occupies the language center of our brains, meaning we stop listening to the show.
Also, a whole separate thing I often think about, before 2010, there were very few high budget TV shows. TV was made on a much smaller budget than film, and the writing often took a hit too, and that was just the reality of watching TV. They were also designed to hook people who were clicking around channels with lots of recaps and narrative refreshers, for people tuning in halfway through, this is like the second-screen writing issues we complain about now on steroids, straight to TV movies were also terrible for this.
Movies that were designed for Cinema revenue weren't impacted by this or course, but even DVD revenue movies often have simpler plots and reiterate their narratives for people who are half watching while chatting or stoned or whatever.
I decided to work from home and put fury road since I haven't seen it. 10 minutes in i logged off work early because it was good.
Ppl will not focus on what gives them the most enjoyment. If its the phone or Netflix.
I don’t see anything wrong with this. Have them wear crazy outfits that no one will see either.
Sorry Damon but Thats just the world now, we all watch while on our phones when we stream and you aren’t going back ever
@piefed.social
Welcome to Television
This community is for discussion of anything related to television or streaming.
Other Communities
- !casualconversation@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social
- !animation@piefed.social
- !trailers@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Television Communities
A community for discussion of anything related to Television via broadcast or streaming.
Rules:
- Be respectful and courteous to all members.
- Avoid offensive or discriminatory remarks.
- Avoid spamming or promoting unrelated products/services.
- Avoid personal attacks or engaging in heated arguments.
- Do not engage in any form of illegal activity or promote illegal content.
- Please mask any and all spoilers with spoiler tags.
go to feed...
@piefed.social
Welcome to Television
This community is for discussion of anything related to television or streaming.
Other Communities
- !casualconversation@piefed.social
- !movies@piefed.social
- !animation@piefed.social
- !trailers@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Television Communities
A community for discussion of anything related to Television via broadcast or streaming.
Rules:
- Be respectful and courteous to all members.
- Avoid offensive or discriminatory remarks.
- Avoid spamming or promoting unrelated products/services.
- Avoid personal attacks or engaging in heated arguments.
- Do not engage in any form of illegal activity or promote illegal content.
- Please mask any and all spoilers with spoiler tags.
go to feed...
Make movies that are engaging enough to keep people from checking their feeds while they wait for something to happen.
save