Weekly Top 10 lists of the most-watched TV and films
top10.netflix.com
top10.netflix.com
> Due to the film's $200 million production budget and Netflix's global film chief Scott Stuber saying that the company's "big-budget tentpole films [need] to draw an audience of more than 70 million viewers within the first 28 days of availability," The New York Observer estimated Red Notice would need to total around 200 million hours (about 83 million household viewers) to be deemed a success
I guess by this definition, it can be deemed a success.
I'm aware that the accounting methods presumably aren't completely comparable but considering Dune apparently cost about $165 mil to make I am perpetually amazed how expensive some films have ended up being.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2021/10/21/red-n...
I think Cruise has the former but doesn't really do any of the latter, so his total potential audience may not be as large.
Personally, I like the diversity he brings in all aspects.
Though given some of the other choices, not sure The Rock is that far down the list really..
Movie itself was meh. I can’t get the 2 hours back :(
This number is so large that it makes me question the accuracy. The movie is 115 minutes so this is 77.6m views if we assume that everyone who streamed it watched the entire thing and only watched it once. It looks like the most recent numbers say Netflix has 209 million subscribers. That would mean 37% of the global Netflix subscriber base watched this movie in the first few days after release. That is literally unbelievable.
It isn't directly comparably to theatrical box office numbers, but the total viewers would likely translate to at least the 2nd biggest opening ever for a theatrical release. That would be a ridiculous accomplishment for an original movie. There is not a single non-franchise movie in the list of top 50 biggest openings ever[1].
And before anyone responds, yes I understand that the assumptions I made would impact these conclusions, but the assumptions are working in opposite directions, at least partially cancel each other out, and are mostly just used to show approximate magnitude.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_openi...
“Biggest opening for a theatrical release” is a matter of revenue, not number of viewers. Every single existing Netflix user watching it corresponds to as little as $0 in marginal revenue, which is very far from #2.
Number of tickets sold and total box office receipts are two measures of the same thing. Yes, with Netflix there is no marginal cost to watch a movie, but just the idea that in the first week after release more people saw this movie than any Star Wars movie is baffling regardless of the specific revenue numbers.
Is it? It's much easier than going to the movies. You could literally watch it on the toilet.
I can imagine that if, for $20, you were magically and instantly transported to a personal showing (in which you didnt have to wear pants and your cat was there), movie theaters would have a lot more users.
A better number might be star wars theater+home video, but even then that'll be depressed because it's not "free" with a subscription.
The first one opens to $103m[1] which equates to 11.5m viewers. The new one was released simultaneously both in theaters and streaming. It had an opening of $17m or 1.8m viewers plus 38m hours streaming and roughly 14.9m viewings. Let's subtract the sequel's theatrical run from both totals and we have 9.7m theatrical vs 14.9m streaming which equates to a theatrical performance being 65% of the streaming performance (assuming they should both have similar openings which is another arbitrary assumption done to simplify everything and because there are multiple factors pushing in opposite directions).
Let's dock the previous Red Notice numbers of that 35% inflation and that gives us 50m streams. That would knock it out of the number 2 spot, but it would likely still be top 10. Once again, this is an original movie and no non-franchise movie is in the top 50 biggest openings. I still don't buy these numbers.
[1] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl578455041/
[2] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt7126948/
[3] - https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/wonder-woman-1984-hbo-...
Yeah, but that was on HBO max. That had, at the time, less than 1/5 the users of netflix. Wonder Woman was clearly a marquee title designed to get signups, but that strategy is always risky and not super effective as a one-off - registration funnels are very hard. So, it's not as much a 1:1 comparison as you thought it was.
14.9 wonder woman streams * 5 increased audience = 74 mil. That puts it well within the realm of netflix' numbers. I mean obv that's not perfect because not everyone wants to watch it.
Also, using wonder woman as an example isn't great, because the general buzz on its release was that frankly, it wasn't a good movie. Critical and audience reviews suggest it's a markedly "less popular" movie than red notice.
The numbers are well within the realm of possibility. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find out netflix is being very favorable to themselves - in fact, I'd expect it.
>14.9 wonder woman streams * 5 increased audience = 74 mil. That puts it well within the realm of netflix' numbers. I mean obv that's not perfect because not everyone wants to watch it.
WW84 was the biggest HBO Max exclusive to date. People did signup to watch that movie and therefore their subscribers were a self selected group who are not a representative sample that we can just multiple by 5. Also we already factored in the theatrical release which provided the opportunity for non-HBO subscribers to see it. And to be clear, I wasn't directly comparing WW84 viewer numbers to Red Notice. I was comparing WW to WW84 numbers so the difference in size between Netflix and HBO Max is less of a factor.
>Also, using wonder woman as an example isn't great, because the general buzz on its release was that frankly, it wasn't a good movie. Critical and audience reviews suggest it's a markedly "less popular" movie than red notice.
But it was also a sequel to a beloved movie and an iconic character. Plus the original had a lot of word of mouth success that caused people to predict that WW84 would open bigger. It was one of the most anticipated movies of the year.
Also you are just flat wrong when you say Red Notice received better critical reviews. Both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes have WW84 with mediocre scores and Red Notice with awful scores.
>The numbers are well within the realm of possibility. Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find out netflix is being very favorable to themselves - in fact, I'd expect it.
So it sounds like we agree that Netflix is probably bending the truth with these numbers in the same mold of how Facebook was lying about the number of people who watched their videos.[1]
[1] - https://fortune.com/2019/10/07/facebook-lawsuit-settlement-i...
im not sure that's a comment in your favor ;) ww84 was pretty bad. i imagine it drove some signups, but not as many as hbo would have hoped for
> People did signup to watch that movie and therefore their subscribers were a self selected group who are not a representative sample that we can just multiple by 5.
Yeah, my bad. It's actually * 12.
"HBO Max accounts jump to 17.2 million"
At the time, netflix had 208 mil. So, it gets even more believable that netflix is accurately representing their numbers - their audience is so much larger than competitive streaming services, that they can in fact drive record breaking traffic.
Once again, I will point out it received a better critical response than Red Notice did despite you saying otherwise.
>Yeah, my bad. It's actually * 12...
You are comparing a domestic total for HBO Max to a global total for Netflix not to mention you ignored the rest of my comment explaining why this comparison isn't as important as you think.
Aren't Netflix subscriptions notorious for having multiple users on the same account? I've been using an account shared with 4 other people, for instance. The true number of users could be 2-3x that number.
- if there are multiple users per netflix account, you underestimate the total number of netflix users.
- if the total hour-count includes users that have only watched 10% of the movie, you over estimate the number of users that have actually watched the entire movie. (by counting in the ones that haven't)
In both cases you end up over estimating the fraction of netflix users that have watched the entire movie.
If you assume that there are two users per netflix accounts on average, and that 10 users out of 11 will drop the movie after 10% then your estimated percentage will be 4x higher than the real percentage. So, its probably more around 9-10% of netflix users that have seen the movie.
The number Netflix gave us was total time watched. If the average watch time was less than the runtime, that means more people watched the movie for at least some period. That is the number I was highlighting, total viewers and not the number of viewers who watched the entire movie. The existing metrics for theatrical releases is revenue and tickets sold, not people still in the theater when the credits roll.
EDIT: To use your numbers, if 10/11 dropped after 10% and 1/11 watched the whole thing, that would mean the average time watched was around 25 minutes. That yields a total of 364m streams. At 2 users per account, that is 182m accounts or 87% of Netflix subscribers watched at least part of the movie. That is obviously a huge increase to that 37% from my prior estimate.
I'm suggesting some of this total watchtime is not meaningful (<1 min watch time) and may still contribute to a significant proportion of the total watch time.
You assume all the watch time is meaningful.
You also assume there are no users with multiple accounts.
I think these two assumptions are not very reasonable, and can explain why you find your own estimate "literally unbelievable".
How does this contribution a significant proportion to the total watch time? Even the last example that had 90% of users not finishing the movie required 87% of subscribers to at least watch some of it. Do you think the number of subscribers who watched even a second of this movie is higher than 87%?
>You also assume there are no users with multiple accounts.
Do you mean a person with multiple different Netflix accounts or multiple people sharing a single Netflix account? I have no idea why someone would do the former and I would be shocked if there was any sizable number of people who do that. If you mean the latter, my previous comment used the assumption that each subscriber equals two users like you originally suggested.
>I think these two assumptions are not very reasonable, and can explain why you find your own estimate "literally unbelievable".
Ok, why don't you throw together some numbers on the estimated percentage of Netflix subscribers who watched any part of this movie?
If the second I would say I’m very likely to turn off movies at 10 minutes in. That is the point where I realise that a movie is not what I imagined it to be, or that I’m not feeling like watching something after all. That being said maybe I’m the odd one out so I can’t say what masses of people actually do.
I would imagine many people stop during this first act or during the last one when you can tell how everything is going to be tied together.
For people who don't like these type of movies, there are plenty of other 'films' (not movies) out there, that cater for the times when something popcorny isn't what you want.
With Red Notice, it's clear from the stills/trailer that it's a simple actioner, you are going to know if that's your thing even before you press play.
Not saying Netflix is doing this but if the general consensus is that the watch time is too high, perhaps they're not doing simple hours streamed, but trying to guess how many people are in the room watching it too?
So on a phone/ipad it might be one viewer, but if its watched on a TV maybe they're multiplying it by 2 (or some other number 1.5, 2.5, etc) because on average maybe two people watch so its technically two hours watched per hour streamed? That could for sure explain higher then expected numbers while still not faking viewership numbers.
>>These lists rank titles based on weekly hours viewed: the total number of hours that our members around the world watched
Guess it depends on whether "member" means only the paying subscriber, or if "member" counts as anyone in the family who might be in the room at the time of it playing.
Won't competitors see what works and attempt to copy the formula?
Is Netflix so confident in its content strategy that it doesn't fear competition?
Of course this all hinges on Netflix paying enough money for the rights that the lost cost of traditionally sold movie tickets is covered.
I imagine more and more Netflix properties will start to include product placement over time. I also expect a cheaper tier that's "ad-supported" sort of like what Hulu does.
Given that Netflix will have verrrry precise insights into how much of a stream was delivered to a given viewing instance, I'm inclined to accept it.
It would include people who've put on Red Notice, forgotten about it, tried to watch it again, got distracted, managed to finally watch it, then their partner / kids, also watched it, all on the same account.
That was basically the estimate for Squid Game that I recall. Estimated about 1/3 of Netflix subscribers viewed it in the first month.
Here’s a statistic showing the average viewing time of UK Netflix subscribers to be 8 hours a week https://www.statista.com/statistics/979048/netflix-weekly-co...
Do you really find it so hard to believe that a third would spend 2 out of those hours watching a new movie?
why? and some people will watch it multiple times, also if hours watched is just the straight calculation of all the time spent watching the people who go back and watch a scene over again would also count.
I would expect it to be a straight calculation of all time watched, easier and probably the best calculator of value for Netflix.
>but the total viewers would likely translate to at least the 2nd biggest opening ever for a theatrical release.
I would expect that streaming movies get a larger amount of the available audience to look at them if they look reasonably enjoyable than movies in theatres.
It's not possible to know how many people watched a single stream. Therefore, why would Netflix be inclined to imply less people watch it than did with 1 person per stream.
They have the data, they know who's popular, what genre is popular (brain dead action comedies), they specifically designed a film to appeal to the most netflix subscribers, and could easily get 1/3rd of their subscribers to watch it.
A big budget film or series eats up capital, so if it is to contribute to the total view-hours count, it must do so at a rate that is better than making several, smaller series at a lower budget.
When I open Netflix in my browser Tiger King starts playing in the background. If you click on a film to read the synopsis often the film starts playing.
I wonder how many of those hours are people repeatedly watching for 20 seconds in the background before moving on?
Which returns tomorrow.
Considering people skip heart meds when they can't afford em, it feels like we're all playing.
At the same time, I feel American shows are too politically correct, too safe. Doesn't make for good tv.
And it's always the rich widow and never the creepy janitor who ends up being the murderer. Can't "punch down"!
This is a great example of being too politically correct and playing it safe.
IDK, I hate capitalism as much as anyone on this site, but UGH what a boring take.
Honestly, "You" is a much better satire on the platform right now.
When American movies deal with sex it is always made into something tantalizing. Something to sell and excite. American media quickly sweep under the rug anything unpleasant.
Broadcasters invest a lot of resources into a single production that they'll prize for a year or to, or even a decade if it's a hit - but as they've got a TV audience sized in the multiples-of-hundreds-of-millions-of-people that's also socially/politically/culturally polarized they won't take many chances with controversial material.
If you ignore the (largely bland, invariably unoriginal) "mass-market" media in the US and look at smaller, local and independent broadcast media in the US (back when local TV stations were a thing) you'll see more... interesting material, but the production values aren't there which makes it harder to watch.
The original movie was so fantastic. I assume the American remake ... wasn't.
Similar story with The Vanishing.
(I'm an American, fwiw)
Of course, the assumption is that Norwegians will always be 100% faithful to all source material.
To paraphrase Michael Haneke: Violence must shown in all its vicious detail, The truth is obscene
For example, it's largely sufficient to the plot and character development to know that Batman's parents were killed by a mugger when Bruce was just a boy, and that Uncle Ben was killed by a petty criminal whom Spiderman had the chance to apprehend (but declined to do so). Nothing is added by showing entry/exit wounds, slow pans over puddles of and spurts of blood, or any other sort of gore porn.
I haven't watched any of Squid Game, I just didn't want to miss a chance to share Folding Ideas's work.
It seems to be saying that defending objectionable content by appealing to the consistency of the world in which it takes place is a weak argument. For instance, the speaker says that it's unreasonable to object to gratuitous violence in a show by saying "that violence is part of this world."
I think that it's totally laudable (and often leads to better stories) to exercise some restraint, or to remove the most jarring content that might bring viewers out of the story, but I disagree with the argument that doing otherwise to preserve the integrity of a fictional world is bad.
If a storyteller wants to build a world which isn't aligned with our own concept of obscenity, I think that that's also a totally fine form of art. If a writer creates a world in which there is plentiful violence (or racism, or sexism, or cannibalism, or any other atrocious thing you can think of), I think that those stories are also totally valid. If, as the speaker mentions, a tribe of warrior women wears chainmail bikinis, that is totally fine if it's actually rational within the fictional world (the video sets up what feels like a strawman here, as "that's just what they do" feels like a very weak argument for any content in a fictional world).
I'd argue that it's totally fair to criticize why an author constructed a world the way they did, or to say "I don't want to read a story that takes place in this world".
In terms of criticizing specific content within that world, though, I'd say diegetic explanations are actually one of the best defenses for storytelling choices (essentially, the opposite of the "Thermian Argument", if I'm understanding it correctly).
> it's totally fair to criticize why an author constructed a world the way they did, or to say "I don't want to read a story that takes place in this world".
I very much agree with you. In my view, the point of the Thermian argument is not that the critic is too much of a prude for disliking the violence or sexism, the point is that the apologist is unable to express any storytelling purpose or emotional impact of the violence, so they just reiterate the diegetic. "The violence is in the movie because the is villain is violent". The Thermian argument is not that the artist should self-censor to remove these things, but that they should be able to express how it achieves their artistic goal.
> a tribe of warrior women wears chainmail bikinis, that is totally fine if it's actually rational within the fictional world
> I'd say diagetic explanations are actually one of the best defenses for storytelling choices
I could agree with this too, but I guess it depends what kind of media you and I are watching and how much rationality is involved. Besides, if an artist wants chainmail bikinis with no rational explanation whatsoever, that's also fine in its own way as an expression of sexuality. But we should just admit that we think it's sexy instead of pretending there's actually some tribal traditional reason for it. There's just no way that's rational when the enemy is shooting arrows at you without rewriting all laws of physics just to make this work.
The comment chain here is "I'm tired of TV shows using so much violence" -> "We shouldn't hide the truth of violence" and that's a Thermian argument because there was no truth until the authors wrote it, unless it's a documentary. But still I haven't seen SG so I can't comment re: how it uses the violence.
Thanks for the rebuttal, I like talking about this. And much respect to everyone involved of course.
That makes a lot more sense, thanks for taking the time to explain!
Because the video isn’t about diegetic explanations, but the practice of using diegesis to defend against criticism.
The titular Thermian Argument doesn’t come up unless criticism is levied, so “good diegetic explanations” bear no relevance. Dan’s point is that it is a weak defence.
It's an important show, but yeah really brutal
I'd agree that gratuitous or cheap violence is kind of disturbing or at least the implication of what is says about the viewers is. But I think categorically saying that depiction of violence is disturbing isn't true.
It's only now that we get to live in comfy little bubbles. They're still occasionally punctuated by moments of the grim truth.
If anything too much gore placed too gratuitously can actually provoke the wrong response and unintentional hilarity since we known it's a complete fiction.
On the other hand, I would assume that it desensitizes viewers to violence. I'm not sure how or if that translates in any way to real life violence. I wonder if there are any studies out there on the subject?
Part of this is due to lack of standards of where the content is appearing (network TV used to have more red lines one couldn't cross, cable and others don't), but also because of the increased volume of content, shock imagery is certainly effective in pulling people in.
Another commenter said it's normal because they were desensitised due to video games and so on, but I don't think that's the case. There's a huge difference between the cartoon violence of something like GTA5 or even obviously synthetic shooters, and the graphic gory detail that show runners seem to want to include now.
That being said, one of the most recent Mortal Kombat ones though really went out of their way to make it graphic - I enjoyed the originals back in the 90s, but this was too much for me so I switched it off.
We very heavily censor media in our household. Screen time is extremely limited, and even then only a filtered set of content. It's necessary as the natural content guardrails that were present when I was a kid are completely gone now.
On a related note: we've been watching some Hercule Poirot mysteries recently - all movies, some were made for TV in the 80s, and even though they are murder mysteries, they handle it really well with no graphic gore or anything. If you're looking for something for this weekend!
These days, I don't watch horror movies, I talk through my problems with NPCs rather than use violence.. overall I agree with you that basically I stay away unnecessary violence as much as possible, because it disturbs me. Squid game falls into that category.
Separately, I will also add that I did not buy the premise and didn't like the opening at all. I am clearly not the target demographic though based on its popularity.
The old days where baddies died without a drop of blood were pretty bad. It was just cheaper.
The show is good. It's not amazing, but it's good and it wouldn't have made sense to use olden style of "no blood, ever".
And I'm actually quite squeamish, so understand that.
The plot itself feels like someone made their own version of the Liar Game manga, which does almost the same thing, but far more intelligently.
The most intelligent thing that happens in Squid Game was the guy who is effectively an extra who just happens to know something about one of the games, but conceals this in a way that screws himself over pointlessly. That appears to be the main theme of the show so far, because nearly every character does something like that.
I have a bet with myself that the next installment will be the MC suddenly discovering that they could've been cooperating against the people running the game the entire time.
I was also a fan of L&O SVU but there is a lot of violence, more than what you would think would be permissible on network TV. There is a scene where the detectives walk in midway as a spouse being stabbed to death by her partner. Had to have a think about continuing with the show after that.
I have been watching more Amazon Prime lately. It seems to have older shows that I find more interesting plus some new ones I like too, but the same thing of 18 to 24 months for season 2 of eight shows. But this paying to rent inside a streaming service you are already paying for is incredibly stupid.
Disney+ was so easy, I accidentally signed up it! For one month at $1.99 then jumps to $11.99. Worth it I watched Free Guy which Amazon wanted $25 to rent while paying for Amazon Prime already. now I'm going through all the Star Wars and Marvel movies and shows.
I tried to sign up for Apple TV holy what a mess. I have an Apple ID, I had a Mac but it died. Try to sign into my AppleID and my password is rejected. Try to recover my password "check your Mac" no, it died. Use your new Apple device, nope. Use someone's iPhone, no again. Make a new apple ID, nope my gmail is already in use. Recover? Text is sent (Samsung phone) but the recovery page kicked me off when I read the text. Finally got it to work and was told 7 days to recover. Got an email and was told 14 it's days to recover my AppleID password. So Nov 27 I may make some progress.
Tangentially, I still prefer Netflix solely based on viewing experience for web and mobile. The other services all have super awkward tradeoffs or issues.
That's a good thing, tbh.
Too many good show concepts get ruined by the legacy (and very outmoded) American TV syndication business-model which forces producers to make 20+ episodes per year which really compromises the quality of a show. Netflix's business model was/is fantastic for original showrunners because if they want to make a miniseries or 8-10 episode season then that's more than fine with Netflix, because the better the overall quality the more people will be willing to pay for Netflix (also, why Netflix is fine with showing ample non-US content licensed from other countries' media industries which would never get TV air-time in the US because they (rightfully) don't want to compromise their shows by padding them out to 20+ episodes a year.
That said, I stopped watching Netflix like... 4-5 years ago and I'm still paying for it, argh.
Only the big 4 networks do this. And the people that watch them are usually too stupid/lazy to find better quality shows.
Originally, my intention was to join friends to watch Netflix together and spend the money on snacks to share, but Covid...
I’ve also been going to Prime to watch and often even rent movies. There definitely seems to be a more stuff from other decades there.
On the whole, there’s such choice paralysis with all the streaming services I have now that I waste a ton of time just bouncing around looking for something to watch.
Same, except I don't pay for Netflix, my partner does.
Anytime I have a moment of weakness and try browsing Netflix I end up wasting 20 minutes and feeling worse than before. Frustrated, drained, and annoyed.
The worst part of it is I strongly suspect they do have some content I would like to watch somewhere in there. They just make it impossible to find.
Particularly an episode where Jerry inadvertently makes several racist remarks in front of a Native American character while the laugh track is going nuts just left me speechless.
You have to measure it with the standards of that time, but this kind of obliviousness to any kind of ethnic character is just off-putting now.
To your point about the show, watch the clip yourself [0] and see how you feel. To me, this plays in pretty bad taste.
I understand that this episode was made 28 years ago and was probably fairly on par with attitudes at the time, but just like our attitudes to race have changed so has my attitude to comedy. Watching this today I react with cringe rather than laughing anywhere near as hard as the laugh track seems to imply I should be.
I'm also not singling out one particular episode, there are other examples of this. Another episode featuring a Pakistani-American character called "Babhu" also plays poorly to me today [1].
If you can watch these clips and think they're still benign then that's ok, we'll just have to agree to disagree, but I don't think you can watch them and still find it incomprehensible why someone might have an issue with them.
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGwaupBdiSU [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUPH5OhXC1A
My criticism would be that a scene where the main character of a show makes a series of demeaning remarks about someone's race to the point where they are so offended that they leave the apartment isn't funny. The fact that Jerry is trying to get laid and blows his chances is beside the point.
The Winona character is humiliated and the episode gives this no weight at all. The only consequences for Jerry and Kramer's racism is that Jerry doesn't get into a relationship with Winona.
Looking back on this from 2021, it hasn't aged well for me.
One is pro-racism, and the other is anti-racism.
This show portays being racist as something stupid and worthy of ridicule.
Additionally Winona comes off as an oversensitive snowflake when she accuses Jerry of lowkey calling her an "Indian giver." In other words, maybe Jerry's a little racist, and that's wrong and silly, but being sensitive about it is equally wrong and silly, is the message. Fortunately Winona breaks it off and the show can go back to forgetting Native Americans exist as anything but a foil to Jerry's gang.
Furthermore, because real-life Jerry is so "brave" as to skewer character-Jerry's racism, real-life Jerry gets to congratulate himself for being woke.
To sum up, Jerry Seinfeld scores points for himself at the expense of native Americans, is one way to interpret what happened.
Seinfeld himself has conceded that the episode didn't age well, so whether or not you agree with parent poster, it's not like he's really being so "odd" and out-there in his reasoning.
(https://www.huffpost.com/entry/seinfeld-offensive_n_59d8d036...)
I really can't wait until we move past the current cultural zeitgeist. It's insufferable.
I disagree that it does.
Also in the link you've provided Seinfeld only says "You could never do that today". You've interpreted that as him conceding that the episode didn't age well. That's a stretch. (To be fair, the title of the article suggests he's admitting it's offensive but there doesn't seem to be anything to back that up).
I only saw periodic episodes as a kid (had no TV), but watching it now, the physical comedy really stands out to me- a genre I've never been into, but Kramer, Elaine and George are great at it.
On one hand he's guilty of everyday racism (and doesn't even notice it) and on the other he tries to be ridiculously cautious to the point of paternalism (avoiding saying "dinner reservations" to a native American).
I think a lot of big name comics think they're "owed" the laughs, and some people think that their personal taste is the only comedy. It's all subjective, but if you get the laugh, that's the only thing that matters in comedy.
Not true. Ricky Gervais makes the case that making animal jokes (e.g. where you tell a funny story, but the characters are animals having people-like problems) is too easy and so doesn't count as much.
(Actually, I'm not sure he said this on Comedians in Cars, or in a different show)
Maybe comedians are people too and have varied points of view on comedy gasp
There's a difference between feeling uncomfortable because someone is being misogynistic & feeling uncomfortable because of the realisation that--regardless of specifics of personal situation--anyone in that demographic benefits from systems of oppression.
You're reading this in part because not everyone in your life told you that you should seek an interest outside of technology & entrepreneurship to which you would be "better suited".
Disclaimer: Have stood on a stage with a microphone and made a paying audience laugh.
Are you saying that nobody who is not a straight, not trans, white, male considers being uncomfortable to be unacceptable?
What data are you using to support this claim?
It is so incredibly disrespectful of your fellow human to assume that "uncomfortable = illegitimate" by default, which is absolutely what your comment does.
Seinfeld absolutely has a lot of pretty blatantly sexist humor that would, sure, not be acceptable on TV today, but was also shitty, then. We just didn't do a particularly job of caring about it.
> Being uncomfortable isn't acceptable in 2021.
Says who? Watch Squid Game. Watch Parasite. Watch... I dunno, Big Mouth. These are just random things that come to mind, but they're huge, mainstream pieces of media that are actively challenging to watch and use that uncomfortable feeling to an end, without punching down.
If those are the examples you have to offer you make my point stronger. Where is the 2021 crying game?
Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones made people uncomfortable in 2021. Have you seen it, most popular comedy standup special on netflix? Do you consider it as shitty of Seinfeld?
I can see how someone might find that kind of material sexist, especially if they've only encountered a few episodes where it seems like he's basically saying women are worse than men.
Personally, I don't have a problem with it because over lots and lots of episodes, whether he's punching down at men or women balances out. I'm not sure if the writers made a conscious choice to make it that way after maybe some initial criticism as I never followed the show when it was on air originally.
I wanted to like it, but it was just so unlikeable. Half of that for me was Zach Snyder's cinematography (which he did himself).
I watched Army of Dead for just the one lock picking character, hoping he had a bigger role, and was sorely disappointed that I wasted as much time as I did.
I was on shrooms for the first movie, that might have biased my reception of it, but it was at least better than the second.
It has a 75% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so either most folks liked it or the people who wouldn’t like it opted out of watching it.
Myself and my friend circle lean more towards film snobbery than mass market interests. It's not a critical masterpiece that's for sure. But it is fun to watch mass market movies like this and riff on them.
Setting expectations? I have low expectations for most action films, so I always tend to enjoy them more. I suppose watching the Matrix sequels without knowing the first film even existed, might have meant more people enjoyed it, but knowing the first film existed, everyone had high expectations for the sequels.
Apropos of nothing - saw "The Irishman" on there, which I confused with the "The Foreigner" - that is worth a watch. I'd say it has Jackie Chan's best English language performance. FWIW the original book is "The Chinaman" by Stephen Leather which is a good pulpy read.
I’ve seen only a few things in the last few years that go beyond just using tricks to hook you.
Newsroom on HBO is an example of writing with a bit of substance.
I'm 27 and don't care to watch new TV shows, whether it's prestige or Netflix thing-of-the-month shows. I prefer films and reading. I don't feel proud for not watching them though. It's just media consumption at the end of the day.
I just love information, so I watch a lot of documentaries.
Outside of the top shelf of TV (Sopranos, Wire, Succession) it's all incredibly formulaic and boring.
That's an odd thing to be proud of :-/
I would not say they are covering niches very well, which I'm fine with. Not in an elitist sense, but in a "most of it is trash and Netflix's recommendation engine is nightmarish" sense. So I wouldn't want to accidentally click on something and mess up my whole recommendations for one-country's bottom barrel media.
I'm always on the border to close my Netflix account precisely because of that - a side effect of the Netflix interface is that it makes it hard to manage content; I'm staying just because I need to learn a new language.
¹=I don't imply that there is no good content at all.
I say this accepting that some Netflix content is really good and, overall, the cost per month is reasonable value - especially considering I sometimes pay more for one single series via Prime.
But to my knowledge this may not always work anymore, Netflix is supposedly cracking down on it.
I do not understand why this is so popular. Any thoughts?
A bot clicking play a million times I'd imagine could easily bring stuff to the top of these charts if the data collection and aggregation wasn't built with that in mind.
Now, I don't know the details of how long the viewer has to watch a show before it counts as a view. But people stopping early is treated as a downvote, if I understand correctly.
To my defence he never looks like he wanted to be in that movie.
Weekly Top 10 lists of the most-watched TV and films ON NETFLIX.
I think the closest that comes to actually knowing what's probably being watched across all media in aggregate, would be TorrentFreak's Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week list[1].
But even that is really not completely accurate because not everybody that pirates necessarily consume what they pirate. Some just hoard for hoarding's sake.
Honestly I'd rather have the inverse - Top 10 least watched TV and films. I don't want to see what everybody else has already seen. I want to find the less watched rare stuff, quicker.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-torrented-pirated-movie...
Many of these films are low quality. They will not be winning any awards.
Now consider that the "tech" industry is, with few exceptions, 100%-focused on popularity as a measure of relevance. If something is not popular it is not going to attract interest from advertisers or investors and thus, to the "tech" company intermediary website/app, it is of little utility.
For a bad show where you want to get who you can to just binge through, the Netflix method of dumping all content and making it available works better for keeping you interested.
Arcane seems to go in the middle and each episode ends pretty well, but also the first two sets of 3 episodes do feel like mini-movies to me. Each ends at a particularly compelling point and keeps you looking ahead.
I hope Studio Fortiche and Riot Games keep it up in future stories because I have really enjoyed Arcane so far!!
Isn't success measured in subscribers?
I'd be curious to know if viewing hours per user is correlated with total subscriptions.
Viewing hours is a pretty good proxy for how much value the subscribers might have perceived from a particular title.
It is. Their main metric is viewing hours because it's a really good proxy for whether someone will continue their subscription.
That seems to penalize tv shows and shorts.
Unless this is meant for Wallstreet to convey hours eyeballs are spent on Netflix.
This seems to be aimed at investors more than anyone else.
> Figuring out how best to measure success in streaming is hard, and there’s no one perfect metric. Traditional measures like box office or share of audience (which was designed to help advertisers understand success on linear TV) aren’t relevant to most streamers, including Netflix. Having looked at the different options, we believe engagement as measured by hours viewed is a strong indicator of a title’s popularity, as well as overall member satisfaction, which is important for retention in subscription services. In addition, hours viewed mirrors the way third parties measure popularity, encompasses rewatch (a strong sign of member joy) and can be consistently measured across different companies.
Years ago, Netflix got a lot of flak for using "users who saw atleast 5 minutes of a series" as an indication people watched it. Quantifying video performance based on watch time has become more industry standard (especially on social media which loves autoplaying videos) as it accounts for retention.
Either way, since TV and Films aren’t listed together I’m not sure either one is “penalized” really.
Perhaps for the latter, they reason that the leaks kept the employee protest in the news more than it would have otherwise, and by proactively sharing some basic metrics there is less ammunition for leakers.
What is Red Notice? They made another Jumanji? They're still making Transformers?