Transcription
If you're a fan of movies and TV, which I'm assuming you are because you clicked on this video, I have a question for you.
Does it feel like we're currently living through the decline of the streaming age of movies and television? Not in regards to how much money streaming services are making. They're doing fine, probably. Money is kind of fake now, so who can really say?
I'm talking more about the movies and shows themselves. What started as a bold and innovative new form of delivering curated entertainment straight to people's homes with interesting and provocative series and films has now basically become five to six conveyor belts rolling out content that barely makes any kind of impact, if at all. What do you mean you didn't watch "The Paper"? Everyone's constantly talking about "The Paper," America's favorite show, "The Paper."
One of the biggest culprits in this contentification of what's supposed to be entertainment is the streaming service that kind of started it all. Netflix, to be blunt. Other streamers are also guilty of some of the things I'll be talking about, but Netflix is for sure the biggest dog in the yard.
The former DVD delivery service came into its own when it transformed into a subscription service where you could watch some movies you liked, some you've never seen before, and became a tremendous success with original television series in 2013. "Orange is the New Black," "House of Cards," and "Hemlock Grove." Those massive hits were followed up by other popular shows like "Daredevil," "Narcos," "Sense8," "The Get Down," and "Mindhunter," just to name a few. We still talk about you. Miss you.
It was also the streamer that courted A-list directors with the promise of letting them make their dream projects with little to no introduction from the studio. Names like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Bong Joon-ho, Guillermo del Toro, Noah Baumbach, Ava DuVernay, Alfonso Cuarón, Jane Campion, Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh—a real murderer's row of some of the best filmmakers ever. And plenty of them have stuck around for the same reason.
But the past few years, Netflix and the streaming world at large feels like it's mutated into a carousel of diminishing returns, selling each other's libraries to each other just back and forth forever. While their original content suffers, and I'm not just talking about the "Stranger Things" finale, but I am [music] kind of talking about the "Stranger Things" finale. The, I'll say, not great final episodes of the platform's biggest show ever highlights that despite subscriber numbers going up, the quality of what you're watching seems to be going down and taking our attention spans with it. Allegedly. I'll be saying "allegedly" a lot.
But how do we get here? What horrible scenario has led us into this desert of creativity and memorable entertainment? Well, obviously, but there's a little more to it than just that.
Before we go any further, I want to address the elephant in the room. Yes, Nerdist is owned by Legendary, a studio that works with all of these streaming platforms to make various projects. But with this subject becoming more and more prevalent in our space, we would be talking about this regardless. And this video isn't going to be like a hot take convention where I'm just ripping everything apart. It's more of a "how, why, and how do we get back there" kind of video about the current state of film culture in our world. I love movies. I love watching them. I love making them. I love analyzing them. And I love what they can inspire in people.
And now comes the hard left turn because I can't think of a segue for this next part. The stretch of 2020 to 2023 in a few words was really rough. COVID being the biggest disaster, which was followed by much-needed labor strikes by the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America. If you missed all of that somehow, or you memory-holed it for whatever reason, the strikes were over contract negotiations to add more protections against AI, ensuring better contracts for actors and writers since royalties don't really exist in the age of streaming, and to get more transparency on the real streaming numbers behind movies and shows.
We'll touch on the strikes a little bit later, but I have another question for you before we get there. Have you been watching a show or movie lately and noticed that characters keep referencing a specific event or person or McGuffin over and over and over again in the span of its runtime? Like the movie is almost reminding you of said specific thing so it never leaves your mind the entire time you're watching. Almost like it's answering a question you were never going to ask.
"The princess was named after an ancient queen, Issa, the lifegiver. In the old stories of the queen, it [music] was said that she had the power to give life."
For example, did you know that there's a hive mind in season 5 of "Stranger Things"?
"Into the hive mind. To the hive mind. Into the hive mind. Fact that controls the hive mind. To the hive mind. The hive mind." [clears throat] "You've never been this close to the hive mind before."
That could be what you get when you probably use ChatGPT and Reddit to assist in your writing process. Or it could be a victim of terms you may have heard the past year or so. Those terms being "casual viewing" and "second screen," which the latter refers to the act of scrolling on your phone while something is already playing on your TV that you're giving half of your attention to. We've all done it. Sometimes the entree round in an episode of "Chopped" isn't really grabbing you and you turn your eyes to your email or Instagram or to answer some text messages.
"Wow. Cornish Game Hens and Rainbow Chard. So exciting, Ted. I know he doesn't choose the baskets. I'm just venting."
This type of movie watching isn't anything new. The habit of second screening seems to have really come into existence with the proliferation of smart devices in the early 2010s. And the number of people with smartphones in their pockets has grown astronomically since 2012, along with screen time. According to the Journal of Consumer Research, Americans went from spending an average of two hours and 54 minutes on their phones per day in 2022 to four hours and 30 minutes in 2025, a 52% jump. So, in short, we're on our phones a lot.
But we're not the only ones. Back in 2023, YouGov conducted a poll across 17 international markets to see where in the world people are most likely to second screen on their phones while watching TV. India is at the front of the pack with 60%, followed by the UAE and Australia at 57%, with the United States and the United Kingdom closing out the top five at 55%. It's pretty clear that streamers know how much time their audiences are spending half-paying attention. So from a business perspective, it makes total sense to produce shows that don't require too much [music] attention. "Your Face or Mine" nailed its circles, or that show where Scary Spice hid from Bear Grylls in the woods. That's real.
But the second screenification of shows about different kinds of inedible desserts seems to be breaching containment and afflicting anything it comes across, and it's been happening for a minute. Back during the SAG and WGA strikes in 2023, producer, writer, actor, and SAG technology consultant Justine Bateman talked with the "TV's Top 5" podcast about the hellish landscape of getting a show made in the age of streaming and generative AI.
"A friend of mine is a video artist, and he did all those violent cut scenes in my film 'Violet' that I have in the beginning credits and are interspersed through it. He was posting all this AI-generated animation in January or February. [music] I asked him how much of it he was actually drawing. His answer was none of it." [music]
"For a very long time, I have been dismayed at the amount of content. I've heard from showrunners who are given notes from the streamers that this isn't 'second screen enough.' Meaning the viewer's primary screen is their phone and the laptop. And they don't want anything on your show to distract them from their primary screen because if they get distracted, they might look up, be confused, and go turn it off."
"I heard somebody use this term before. They want a 'visual music.' When showrunners are getting notes like that, are they able to do their best work? No. And when these companies control the entire pipeline from beginning to end, then you wind up doing what they ask."
So I thought, when is tech not going to be center stage? When I saw my friend's animation, I got how content is going to end. AI is going to automate content. It can customize the project according to years of your viewing history.
"Be isn't the only person to allegedly receive the note that scripts need to be more 'tell than show.' And if possible, both at the same time doesn't really hurt."
"Well, if you think for one second that Herm's going to put you and me in that van and carry us on his shoulder, you're out of your mind."
Will Tavlin over at n+1 magazine published a pretty extensive article that dove deeper into how Netflix is pushing casual viewing over shows and movies that require a modicum of attention. Several screenwriters who've worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is, "Have this character announce what they're doing so that viewers who have the program on in the background can follow along." The screenwriting sources in Will's piece are anonymous, but what they said isn't too far-fetched if you've been watching a lot of shows and movies that are produced for streaming, which I have, and I'm totally not going insane because of it.
"The Lifegiver."
"But that's just one example from an anonymous source. It would be easier to believe there's some unofficial mandate if there was more evidence for us to sink our teeth into."
"The hive mind." "So close to the hive." "The hive mind." "Maybe when you tap into the hive, I have to be near the hive mind, right?" "Yeah. Okay. But I was hoping for something involving, I don't know, romantic vistas."
"We barely know each other. We spent a day together. I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain."
"Cool. Is there anything the union wants to add?"
"We work for the union."
"What union?"
"That was the union."
"That's the union."
"The union state."
"We set up the union."
"The union is out of the game."
"The union weren't my friends."
"And the union."
"Welcome to the union, Mike."
"Great. Um, 'Rebel Moon,' is there a villainous home planet that we may have forgotten about somewhere in your 204-minute runtime?"
"So, you were a soldier for the mother world?"
"The mother world's forces."
"The mother world."
"Your mother world."
"The mother world."
"The mother world."
"We're searching for soldiers for a fight against the mother world."
"Soldiers for a fight against the mother world."
Extremely unrelated to this whole video, but in "Rebel Moon Part Two," a character uses the term "balaclava," which means the Crimean War of 1854 exists in the universe of "Rebel Moon." And sure, I'm cherry-picking some of the examples I've come across as I've waded into these straight-to-streaming waters, but you get the idea. I'm not discounting the work of the hundreds to thousands of people it takes to make big-budget movies, even small-budget movies or mid-budget movies, which aren't really a thing anymore, and we should bring them back. Please, somebody.
I should clarify that there's a huge difference between the films and shows that Netflix acquires and the ones they produce. The rumor of this second-screen writing style being some kind of industry secret got blown out of the water while I was in the process of writing this whole script. On some weird guys podcast recently, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the fellas, were promoting their new Netflix crime thriller, "The Rip," which was directed by Joe Carnahan and isn't half bad, but I'm also a sucker for the Boston Boys. During the episode, Matt Damon says the not-so-quiet part out loud.
"Netflix. Um, you know, [music] the standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you know, you usually have like three set pieces, one in the first act, one in the second, and one in the third. And, you know, you kind of they kind of ramp up and the big one with all the explosions, and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act, that's your kind of finale. Um, and now they're, you know, they're like, 'Can we get [music] a big one in the first five minutes to get somebody, you know, we want people to stay"
"Yeah."
"tuned in. And and can and you know it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they're watching. [laughter] You know what I mean? I want to rip it. It's the [ __ ] rip."
"The size of that rip."
"Steal this [ __ ] rip."
"Dean's doing the rip."
"He's gone rogue."
"The rip."
"You get 20% of that rip."
"It's one solid rip."
But there's more to it than just that. Something I've been noticing more and more, aside from the repetitive writing, is that streaming movies don't really look like movies. At least not a lot of them. Anyway, if you're a movie fan, you're probably familiar with the term "the Netflix look." It's a term that applies to a lot of straight-to-streaming films and shows, but "Peacock ugly" sounds like a compliment from a sassy old lady. You know what I mean, though? Washed-out color grading that always leans to some depressive blue tone. Cinematic lighting is nearly non-existent, with everything being one color temperature with no shadows or contrast, or it's a scene set at night, which is nearly impossible to see if all the lights in your house are not turned off. Like, how the [ __ ] is this what a Shane Black movie looks like? Good god.
A big reason behind why certain shows and movies have such a specific look to them has to do with compression rates. JD Connor, an associate professor in Cinema and Media Studies at USC, talked about it in an interview with Vice back in 2022. "When it gets compressed and jams through the cable pipe or the fiber to get to your television, Netflix takes as much information out of that as they can through compression in order to reduce the amount of data that's going through so you have a smoother streaming experience. One of the weird things that happens when you have a very high-resolution image in general, when you shrink the amount of information, the edges get sharper."
I experienced both sides of this coin very recently. Actually, I was lucky enough to see Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" in IMAX in 2025, a film that's loaded with extraordinary colors, beautiful costumes, incredible practical sets, and a tall, hot monster—a fantastic theater experience overall, which is why it bummed me out when friends of mine watched it at home and talked about how bad it looked on their televisions. And some of you might say, "Well, they should have gone to a theater to see it." And I agree with you. But that's not how a lot of these choices are made. Streaming services have to cater to the way everyone watches things nowadays. That may be on a laptop, all different kinds of televisions, and of course, smartphones.
Which brings me to my third question of this video. Have you noticed that there's just a lot of center framing happening? A lot more in regards to construction of a shot. Just so many shots showing a character right in the dead center of frame. Not because it's emotionally motivated to get closer to the soul of a character like a close-up in a Jonathan Demme movie, or a dolly shot in Spike Lee's films that's used as a way to express the chaos or breakthrough or ethereal journey a character is experiencing, or because the frame is being used as a means of further illustrating the character's world without words in Wes Anderson's work, or because the director is discreetly guiding your eyes where they want them to go like David Fincher or Christopher Nolan and his love of back shots.
"I will break you."
I should probably rephrase that. There's none of that going on. Everyone's just always kind of there, either smack dab in the middle of a wide shot, most likely staring at the volume stage that they're on, or completely siloed off in their own frame during a dialogue scene, where you're not even sure if they're sharing the same space with the person they're delivering exposition to. For example, look at this scene from 2021's "Red Notice," starring actor Dwayne Johnson and Mint Mobile CEO Ryan Reynolds. They're both super rich. They'll be fine.
Do you like this framing? A simple shot-reverse-shot dialogue scene. Hopefully, you do, because that's how every dialogue scene is going to look in this globe-trotting action movie about master thieves. Nothing about how these two are framed does anything to heighten the emotions and tensions of the scene. You would never know that Ryan Reynolds is surrounded by a SWAT team with guns drawn on him if there wasn't this wide shot. He's more or less on the same level as The Rock in this scene, who is also not shot in a way that conveys his position of power.
Compare all of those to the single shot from Elaine May's "A New Leaf." Without even knowing the context of the scene, you immediately recognize that Walter Matthau is in an uncomfortable situation with Elaine May visually surrounding him while still making him the biggest thing in the frame to sell how reviled he is at her mere presence. It's a very funny movie, I swear.
Or look at this scene from Tony Scott's "Spy Game," which uses ever-increasing space and movement to show the growing gap in trust between Robert Redford and Brad Pitt's characters.
"Don't [ __ ] tell me that. You didn't look in HIS EYE. DON'T TELL ME THAT."
Or this scene from "The Social Network" between Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg.
"How about now? He's still wired in."
With Garfield shot from a low angle to help exaggerate the anger he's feeling and expressing in the scene. But my favorite part of it all is how the entire time their argument goes on, Eisenberg is alone in his own frame until Garfield breaks through to him emotionally at the same time he finally enters his frame. Small but effective stuff, you know, speaking with the visual language of cinema. Where the most we learn from this scene in "Red Notice" is that the continuity of Ryan Reynolds's jeans keeps changing.
Blocking, as a whole, seems to have become a lost art recently as well. If you don't know that term, blocking is the arrangement and movement of actors within a scene. It's used for a whole swath of different purposes and motivations: to help drive tension within a scene, to take the audience through the world so they become more immersed, to tell a story without words, illustrate characters' relationships to each other, to help make the geography of a scene easy for the viewer to understand, or just because it looks [ __ ] incredible. It's one of the things that makes movies feel like movies. They also grab and hold your attention. The best examples are the ones you don't even know are happening. There's a reason why the shark scene in "Jaws" is so brilliant, outside of being a really impressive wonder that doesn't feel like it's showing off, even when it is. Power dynamics, fear, love, action, comedy, loss—experiences and emotions that could become moments that live with you forever.
And that feeling is something I think a lot of these dream movies are missing, and instead are being replaced with boring cinematography, digital extras, degraded CGI, and generative AI, which is being used in productions without the majority of people knowing. And I'm not just talking about the opening of "Secret Invasion." Gross. Lionsgate, the studio behind "The Hunger Games" movies, "John Wick," and "Twilight," announced in 2025 they were partnering with generative AI studio Runway to allow them to use Lionsgate properties in their learning models and more than likely generate a full feature film. How's that going, by the way? H gotcha. Which, in my slightly tinfoil hat opinion, is a move that studios are implementing little bits at a time to get everyday audiences used to the uncanny valley nightmares that generative AI spews out. At least once a week, my mom shares a Facebook video with me that she had no idea was AI. I don't think this is too wild of a conspiracy theory. Literally, the day I'm recording this is the same day that Darren Aronofsky revealed his Revolutionary War generative AI movie, which looks really bad. I mean, McDonald's and Coca-Cola already went full bore and shoved really unpleasant AI commercials down our throats despite everyone being deeply put off by how hollow and upsetting they feel.
Admittedly, I am painting with a pretty broad brush in this video. I'm not saying that all streaming and Netflix movies are bad. That'd be ridiculous. I do think there are some great films they produced. "Wake Up Dead Man" comes to mind. "Nuremberg" is great. I'm also firmly on team John Ambrose. And "They Cloned Tyrone" is a real good time. And I mean, "Rebel Ridge" was in my top three movies of 2024. It rules. Go watch it.
But as someone who literally edits videos about shows and movies for this channel, I got to say that it sure feels like a lot of them are storyboarded and shot just so they comfortably fit on a cell phone screen, possibly to get us more on board with watching more and more on our phones and keeping you in some kind of never-ending content loop until movies are just like those weird vertical micro-dramas that feel like "Gomorrah" episodes, but the bad acting isn't intentional.
"I'm hit. I'm down. Yep. Got me in the leg. They'll be after you next. Bye."
But you don't have to take my word for it. Netflix's Chief Product Officer, Eunice Kim, said this in an interview with Fortune magazine in 2023. "After watching a show with a plot twist ending, viewers could receive a mobile push notification that directs them to an explanation of the series finale. Fashionincl subscribers could use Netflix mobile to browse on-screen styles. Netflix could incorporate ads on mobile rather than on the TV screen to avoid interrupting viewers as much. Subscribers watching a competition show could vote with their mobile devices. Enhancing the mobile experience also allows for more personalization compared to TVs, which tend to be communal devices."
And this brings me to the last thumbtack in this corkboard I've been putting together. Who exactly are these movies for? Netflix is actively trying to hit every single type of demographic and audience they can with their programming. But does that actually happen?
In March of 2022, Rachel Shukert, producer and writer of popular shows "The Baby-Sitters Club" and "GLOW," talked with Vulture after Netflix canceled "The Baby-Sitters Club" after its second season had aired. A cancellation despite the show being a critical darling, overperforming in regards to streaming numbers, and winning a few awards. This quote from Rachel's interview highlights something that's a bit concerning.
"Completion rates are a big deal, and our show takes longer to complete because it's for a younger audience. Parents don't necessarily let kids sit and watch six hours of television at a time, probably rightly, or they want to save it so they can all watch together. Our executives were certainly aware of this and tried to make the case for us. But at Netflix, it's more about if your show works on the platform than if the platform is working for your show. They want people to watch it a certain way. And they want shows that people will watch that way, not shows that people want to watch in their own way."
I highly recommend reading that entire interview because it gives more insight into one of the main factors that I think is linked to people losing interest with film as a whole, and that's the algorithm. We interact with at least one or two algorithms every single day: your social media feeds, search engines, your YouTube homepage, even things that are catered for you based on previous interactions and selections. I don't need to explain algorithms that much. You're an adult. And while that's fine for getting different unhinged sourdough recipes recommended to you, it's not the same when it comes to movies.
One of the most important elements about movies is their ability to challenge you. Few things that are as exciting as when you stumble across a film that makes you uncomfortable, genuinely scared, or emotionally devastated, or even broadens your horizons—an experience you can rarely come across by a computer telling you what you might like. In a day and age where so many things are at our fingertips at the push of a button, it's kind of shocking how shallow the depths of film history and film access is on these platforms.
In March of 2025, Benjamin at The Hollywood Reporter wrote about how out of the 4,000 titles available on Netflix, the oldest movie on there that wasn't a holiday film was 1973's "The Sting."
"Sorry I'm late, guys. I was taking a crap."
And as great as that movie is, there's still 50-plus years of cinema preceding that movie, which audiences are just not given access to, at least easily. German Masters, The Golden Age of Hollywood, pre-Code movies, The Birth of Color Film, post-war Asian cinema, French New Wave, the New Hollywood movement. Those and so many more films are just not available to people, which might not be a big deal for some. I'm sure that the majority of folks watching this video are not super upset that they can't easily stream a black-and-white Russian film about scientists on an alien planet that is identical to medieval Europe. Go watch it. It's weird.
But the lack of films and access to them is incredibly detrimental to filmmakers and film enthusiasts who love this art form. A lot of the directors who are coming up now came from a time when video rental stores were thriving. The sheer amount of movies that were available to people was staggering and introduced that generation of cinephiles to so many films without an algorithm pointing where to go. You usually relied on a friend's weird older brother with a pet snake to tell you what movie would blow your mind. Or you would stumble across something fascinating simply based on its cover art.
"That's it. That's the only tapes you have."
I found "Southland Tales" thanks to the bargain bin at Blockbuster when I was 17. A movie that has seemed to be essentially wiped from the collective consciousness of the internet.
"Did I just see two cars [ __ ] each other?"
"Indeed."
"It's also a weirdly prescient film right now. If a future generation of directors and writers is being constantly served movies that are just designed for people to not pay attention to, where does that land us 20 years down the road? Are we all just half-watching 'Extraction 7' and talking about it for 5 minutes like we're some kind of bored hive mind?"
"Hive mind. Hive mind. I'd be at the heart of the hive mind."
"The hive mind works in both ways."
"Hivemite."
"Every night I jack into the hive."
I don't know. The looming shadow of Netflix purchasing one of the biggest American movie studios and possibly shortening theatrical windows for their films has had me in a bit of a spiral, I'll be honest. Because whether you're a sometimes movie enjoyer or you love cinema down into your bones, there's nothing better that beats sitting down in a dark theater, putting your phone on silent, and letting a film take you on a ride. There does seem to be some hope out there, though, with younger generations spending more and more time at the multiplexes, so let's all cross our fingers. Also, you should be getting into physical media more. There's so much out there that just isn't available through streaming, but that's a rant for another video.
Anyway, that's how Netflix and other streamers are chipping away at our attention spans and making us worse and worse at watching films. But tell me, what do you think? Are you worried about the state of film and film literacy? What's your favorite movie that's not available to stream anywhere? And who is your favorite character on "The Paper"? I know you have one. We all do. I love—I want to say Crang. Let us know in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching. And for more panic over the future of cinema, keep it glued to Nerdist.com.