Last month, n+1 reported that Netflix executives have been pushing writers to make characters announce their actions and rehash plot points for the benefit of viewers only half paying attention as they clean or scroll. It’s not a difficult claim to believe, given the bland, stilted nature of so many streaming originals. Call it the Madame Web school of moviemaking, where “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died” is a dense burst of information worth aspiring to, not a clunky mouthful that should be avoided like, well, a dangerous Amazonian spider.
Mock such executive meddling all you want, but there’s a disconnect between what we say we want (a 2024 National Research Group study found that 69% of moviegoers supposedly desire more original content) and what we actually consume: last year’s top 15 box office hauls all belonged to sequels and preexisting properties. We want to be challenged, but then life gets in the way and we just throw The Gray Man on while we fold laundry instead.
