by Zachary Kauz
The divide between major blockbusters glistening with investment and self-made arthouse expressions has largely fallen into an abyss. The digital streaming market managed to disrupt the entertainment industry in ways that neither YouTube or social media truly could.
The ability for Roma, Paddleton, and Triple Frontier to occupy the same platform from their release date onwards directs all respective audiences to a singular vault. Each film is accessible with no strings attached, a privilege earned through a monthly fee giving you access to a library full of its contents available all at once. The mere presence of Bird Box in your Netflix feed on a quiet December night is enough marketing. You are, reeled in with the film’s occupancy of your laptop and TV screen rather than a three-month theater residency. Not to mention, the flood of memes and screenshots quickly trailing behind it upon its release, generating a lot of buzz.
The multi-media rollout of ad campaigns and talk show appearances has lost its importance, the new appeal is convenience. I found myself disappointed by Velvet Buzzsaw and Mute, but any true frustration was negated by the knowledge that I had lost nothing but time. I was delighted with Paddleton and Okja, and questioned if they would even be given a chance in theaters. Annihilation’s swift arrival to Netflix two weeks after its theatrical release read as a disservice to the film’s theatrical flair and general quality, but also the film’s reigning hope of making a profit as theatergoing becomes an increased investment. In a theatrical environment where The Beach Bum is in direct competition with Captain Marvel (with a fifteenth of a budget), streaming platforms are perhaps a middle ground for experimentation.
However, compromise begets compromise. The year where the Oscars nearly failed to televise their cinematography awards, is also the year where a major difference between Netflix distributed and Netflix produced films were established. Though any difference in craft between Roma and the annual Cannes lineup is fabricated, there’s a cynical efficiency favored by Netflix in assembling the films they produce for immediate visibility. The digital filmmaking favored by Netflix and forced on cinematographers flattens colors in a way that’s more aligned with their television than even films with much lesser budgets.
Their ability to salvage director’s passion projects and give them free rein is deeply admirable but a double-edged sword. Netflix originals often appear a bit unkempt; they are criticized for pacing issues, tonal whiplashes, and gaps in narrative logic by many.
Nonetheless, this is most forgivable in a home environment where attention can wander freely and films can be binge-watched as background entertainment. There’s no consideration of a fifteen dollar ticket and no consideration of an audience around you. Each moment can count for less when it can all be ignored in favor of your nearest device or personal commentary.
Our monthly fee goes not towards a specific movie, but the prospect of being entertained by an arsenal of them all. Working within a platform’s curation under the promise that we will find entertainment within it. Allowing our standards to fluctuate as we indulge in a library where no viewing directly bears the brunt of a premium. With value removed from the individual film, it rests on no particular film to stick with us. As long as one of them clicks, the investment was worth it, an ideology that cuts both ways.
It’s become a running gag that a film has to be unprecedentedly awful for Netflix to decline distributing it. Each film produced by Netflix is in service of its exclusivity to the platform. More than ever before, a need for quantity outpaces the need for quality. Netflix is a service as much as it is a studio, its reputation is not dependent on the quality of its original content.
A level of decadence is reached by streaming platforms where the production of entire films are merely the final pirouette, the fleeting garnish on top for a business with greater priorities. It would be a tough feat for Netflix to produce to a film so singularly terrible you unsubscribed from the platform, and as long as you’re supporting Netflix’s service monthly, you’re supporting their content indiscriminately. The cushion of past achievements separate from their original filmmaking empowers Netflix to make whatever they want, however they want.
Whatever They Want: The window for success in the theatrical film industry is narrowing from every angle. As film budgets increase and theater attendance dwindles, there’s something liberating about Netflix’s ability to invest in smaller-scale projects which often lay host to stranger ideas, or work within genres that aren’t currently profitable. If we are to believe Netflix’s report that Triple Frontier was viewed in 52 million households, we are then left to consider the cases of style-adjacent films Hotel Artemis and Captive State, snuck into theaters without notice and left to catch dust by distributors who could not catch up financially. An entire class of films neither legitimized through licensing nor produced at a low budget is largely best destined for streaming platforms. It is on a subscription-based streaming platform where audiences can be more adventurous, allowed the freedom to give any movie a chance without the burden of direct investment.
However They Want: It is perhaps only in this climate that the largely forgotten—occasionally deemed “outright socially irresponsible,” according to Chance the Rapper in a tweet about—Bright can have a sequel in the works declared within the same month of its release. Despite being lambasted for having dialogue like “fairy lives don’t matter” coexisting with a resoundingly shallow understanding of systematic racism, enough people tuned into the film at some point for it to register as a success. The combined prowess of Netflix being a powerhouse platform and the star power of Hollywood elites like Will Smith or Ben Affleck is more than enough to attract viewers to a film they’d have no attachment to otherwise. A film’s opening week can be largely apathetic, no investment in a 10 dollar ticket or journey out of the house required. Mere availability may be enough of a selling point. Netflix films align A-list cast members with B-list production measures, and it all unfolds on a small enough screen with small enough stakes to make for adequate viewing. Yet considered on a wider-scale, adequacy being the be-all and end-all goal of an art form mostly sounds like a dystopia.
Now with Disney+ entering a crowded ring with their own lofty exclusivity deals, the streaming dynamic resembles the golden era of cable TV.
A pay by the bulk system where financial allegiances are the entryway to a bundle of content, a bundle that is hefty enough for some of the content to fade into the background. Be it TV, film or wherever Netflix Originals lie, it’s all just entertainment at your demand, consumed at your own pace with your own set of standards. An open-ended opportunity to keep yourself entertained, with no one film responsible for doing so. A continuum of original content, past hits, and forgotten relics where the few that stand out account for the entire collection, and the majority only needs to take up space.