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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

I laughed pretty hard after reading this blog post.

Netflix movies have been on a horrific downhill trend in quality (though their documentaries have remained great). After the Adam Sandler flicks, Bright, The Cloverfield Parodox, and especially Mute, it's become clear that Netflix's film department has no fucking clue what they're doing. It's getting to the point where people I know who are avid Netflix bingers would literally rather rewatch a show or film they just saw than watch the latest Netflix film.

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What I don't understand is how Netflix ended up this way. They attributed the success of a show like House of Cards to their data science capabilities - why would they produce bad movies unless that's what the data points to. Then maybe no matter what, the truth is that the content that gets eyeballs, and why Hollywood makes shallow broad movies is the same: they make money.

If you want to watch some actual quality filmmaking, visit a film festival or watch some Criterion films. Everything else will be "trash". If you want to expand your cinematic palate, explore American noir (The Maltese Falcon), melodrama (Douglas Sirk), musical (Singin' in the Rain), Western (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), epic (Lawrence of Arabia). Italian neorealism with The Bicycle Thief, French New Wave with Jean Luc Godard (Breathless). Want to go modern international, City of God, Gomorra, Wong Kar Wai, Park Chan Wook's Oldboy (advisory warning), or my favorite Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu.

Any of the above films are considered cinematic gems. Recommendations brought to you by my degree in Cinema and Cultural Studies. The true beauty of filmmaking is conversation over time. Films and directors talk to each other like authors and artists, they write love letters. They become self-aware of their medium (Fellini), "postmodern".

Great film can not fall in the limited boundaries of popular filmmaking. That's why Hollywood films tend to be so broad and shallow, to be palatable by all, no alienation, unless when it comes to race or gender. On the other hand, that problem is not unique to Hollywood or filmmaking.

This seems like a short-term problem. It would be like saying Netflix doesn't have content worth streaming, besides documentaries. A lot of people originally had this opinion of Netflix streaming services, and over time they fixed it.

Fixing movies is a bit more difficult. It requires in some cases larger and maintained budgets, and possibly even eventual increased subscriptions costs, or new revenue models to sustain it. However, all indications seem to indicate this is a path they are willing to go down.

In terms of quality material though, or gaining knowledge in how to improve it, or updating the interface to highlight bigger must watch films vs smaller films, I don't think this is an unsolvable problem for them.

What is wrong with Mute? I actually really liked how they captured the feeling that goes with living with the kind of liberal arts studiers (it's a bit of a generalisation, but I think it holds) that make a group of people like that. They pretty much nailed the ambiance and the personal interactions, even if they were occasionally a bit overblown. That is something movies do.

Oh, many things. Bad acting, bad dialogue, bad directing, bad editing, undeveloped characters, inconsistent characterization, tonally inconsistent, logically nonsensical. It wanted to be film noir, or some sort of bizarre satire about immigration, but did neither well. The sci-fi aspect of the film was also shoe-horned in at the last minute.[1]

The visual effects were good though.

[1] Per the post-premier interview by Rian Johnson, this was apparently the first script Duncan Jones wrote. It went undeveloped for 15 years because no studio would touch it. After Netflix agreed to produce the film, Duncan updated the film to a sci-fi setting because Netflix wanted a followup to Moon and was also shopping around for sci films. Originally, Mute would have been set in the 1980s or roughly modern day.

Holds for some of the first shows too. House of cards was a disaster even before the Kevin spacey thing, Orange is the new black has been going downhill (I blame that on Jenji Kohan), etc.

They are making up in volume with new shows though.

I would say that Netflix is making up for anything with volume, the quality of their own shows seem to be rather low in general. Their plan seems to be to make as many shows as possible and kill them of as soon as possible if they don't become sufficiently popular.

Other may disagree, but to me "Netflix Original" is a warning that the show is going to be poorly written. Production quality is usually pretty good though.

Sure, I come from a point of view that the inaugural seasons House of Cards and orange is the new black were terrific. If you disagree with me on that, then Netflix is an even lower bar for you.

I also think Black Mirror, while still good, dropped a notch after moving to Netflix.

It's been my experience that the first season of a Netflix show is usually worth watching, but each season the quality of the show declines.

However, I would agree with you that their drive for quantity has resulted in a very low-quality slate of new shoes over the past two television seasons.

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