Netflix’s Most Popular Movies Are Mediocre At Best
Let’s be real. Netflix’s 10 most popular (dare I say it, most-watched) list of movies is not that impressive. Of course, I’m talking about the movies that were released in Q2, with the most recent addition The Old Guard taking spot number 6 on this list.
And yes, it’s a decent movie (watchable to be honest) but not much else. And just by looking at the list of most-watched movies, I can say the same about the rest of the movies. Yes, I can even say the same for some Oscar-nominated movies like The Irishmen. If they’re most watched, doesn’t have to mean that they’re god, but I suppose that’s a topic for a whole another post. The difference between good/high in quality and popular.
And I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t watched all 10 movies on this list, but I have watched the majority of them. So, to have better objectivity, I’ll be guiding the positive or negative acceptance of the movies in question, partly on their Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic scores.
However, for the movies that I have seen, I’ll be bringing along my personal opinion.
With that in mind… Why are the recent Netflix movies so mediocre at best and plain horrible at worst? Let me just start by saying that only one of these 10 movies is a movie with non-English speaking parts. That’s right! And only two of these movies (Bird Box and The Old Guard) are directed by female directors.
But I’m sad to say that more than half of them are mediocre or downright terrible in their critic’s consensus. Most of them are in the pretty meh 60% of acceptance on Rotten Tomatoes and they’re not doing all great in other algorithm run sites.
Furthermore, do you have any idea which is the movie that occupies the number 1 spot? Extraction. Now, I’ve seen extraction, and I personally hated it. I hate the filters on the lenses, I hated the plot and I hated the direction. Why is this movie on the Number 1 spot? OK, I get that this is my subjective opinion, and I’m probably being too harsh. And you’d be true on that. But even if I go easy on the movie, I’d still say that it’s not good. It’s just not.
Has our collective good taste been decimated in this pandemic setting? Has the Coronavirus dulled all our senses? Including the good taste? Or is it the lack of other options?
Yes, I know that most of the movie theaters are closed and streaming services are our only option, but come on! Surely Netflix can do better than The Wrong Missy. If you take a closer look at David Spade’s face on the poster, you’ll probably notice his deep deep regret forever participating in this movie. I’m telling you. His face says a lot.
But don’t think that the seemingly better movies (let’s call them that) are actually good. They’re not. They’re just better than the rest, which is setting the bar so low, it’s actually 6 feet under and it’s terrifying. And it’s a wild bunch in the director’s department. There’s the Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese, the acclaimed Susanne Bier, Peter Berg, and oh my god there’s Michael Bay there.
Yup. That explains this mediocracy perfectly. And to be honest, I tried to watch 6 Underground some months ago. Emphasis on the tried. I got a massive headache after about half an hour and abandoned the movie.
What’s going on? This list of the most-watched (and therefore best movies) on Netflix is abysmal. It’s not even half-decent. What happened to quality? Is it just part of our distant memory or is there hope that we could actually watch a decent (dare I say) an excellent movie? I hope so. We’re half-way through his horrible year, so there’s hope. Although my hope is in short supply these days.
I completely agree with your commentary. It’s gotten so bad that I will no longer watch any movie that has the big N on it showing it was made by Netflix. They remind me of the made for TV movies of old. Netflix should cut the number of movies they make by half and try to increase the quality; maybe that would help.