Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread • Page 192

Idk, Netflix told me to watch Meyerowitz the day it came out (and I did)

Obviously they are out to make the most money possible. So is every single other film distributor? Not sure how that is a differentiating factor tbh. It’s not like Marvel is in this for the love of the medium any more than Netflix is lol

Even a darling like A24 still loves to bury a movie that they fear won’t perform well, it’s just the way it is

Still does not negate the fact they make things available to a wider audience and that will always be a good thing in my eyes

 

Pfft, a company trying to make money. What a bunch of jerkheads!!!

 

Yes. It does make them jerkheads. Particularly the $0 they paid in taxes this year.

There’s a discussion to be had about film distribution and accessibility, but Netflix is not a cool friend or anything. Be real about their motives.

 

Pretty much every single company is in it to make money, don’t kid yourself.

I hate corporations and the shit they get away with 24/7, but Netflix is possibly the best value of any product available in the world right now. It changed how entertainment is attained and consumed and is inarguably more convenient and cheaper than cable or whatever else was before it.

 

Whoa! Most companies are in it for the money??? What the fuck

 

Your tone and implications in your previous posts seemed clearly that you were complaining they want to make money more than anything else. Or that their motives to be profitable are some secret thing that people are having the wool drawn over their eyes or some shit.

 

All those things about Netflix changing entertainment are true, and can be true at the same time as their flaws are true. I don’t care who wins Oscars (all this controversy could be avoided if the award show just ended altogether), I care that they aren’t lionized as a champion of independent film even as they are making and distributing quality independent film, because I’m still suspect on their motives and model and think there’s more to what’s going on than “Spielberg is right, preserve the theater experience” or “Netflix is changing movies for the good”

 

Yeah, it’s not like I’m out here licking the boots of our corporate overlords. I’m just stating that they do a lot to make media accessible to people that may not otherwise have it and I’m sure my being able to legally stream the film was more beneficial than me torrenting it (which I otherwise would’ve)

 

I guess I come at it from a base that I understand that 99% of companies out there are ran by dicks and don’t line up with personally philosophies, so any time a company does something that revolutionizes an entire industry for the better, then I’m glad they exist.

 

The other thing that bugged me is how people complain constantly about some company and their motives but then go on to use their products daily, lol. And I’m sure I’m guilty of it in some way, too. It’s all a big pile of hypocrisy or laziness or whatever else you want to throw in.

But the attitude of someone thinking they are better than someone else because they call it out, while supporting said companies anyways, is annoying to me. Apologies if that wasn’t your intention, but it made those kind of thoughts pop in my head.

 

There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. I can pay $10 or whatever a month for Netflix and be rightfully upset that I paid more in taxes than they did this year when they made almost $900,000,000 more in profit than I did this year. I can be wary of any company who is changing the landscape so radically for consumers, because while yes, things get more convenient, there are also very real, very negative real world consequences when companies become that powerful (ie Amazon, Disney).

 

Disney, Netflix, and Amazon are entertainment services, so just not using them is an option.

 

Why should the response to corporate tax evasion/unfair treatment of labor be “you don’t have to use them” and not “the billion dollar corporations should pay taxes and treat workers like human beings”?

Anyway, a reminder of what this debate is really about: award campaign spending. Netflix is basically dumping infinite money into awards campaigns, hiring people like Lisa Taback to head these awards campaigns (she helped net Best Picture wins for such trailblazing, medium-defining masterpieces as Shakespeare in Love, the King’s Speech, and the Artist), and people like Spielberg are as upset with the amount Netflix is spending on campaigning as they are about the theater rule, which isn’t something that I’ve seen mentioned as much (Netflix spent an estimated $25-50 million on campaigning, not a luxury that most other foreign language film campaigns could afford).

Again, if the Oscars didn’t exist, this wouldn’t be a controversy, but anything that pushes Netflix towards more transparency is a good thing (another complaint cited is that Netflix doesn’t share their stats, which I don’t quite get as it pertains to the Oscars but which is something I’m interested in). Yes, Netflix operates very differently from traditional studios. Bumps along the road as they attempt to be a part of institutions who were built for those traditional studios isn’t crazy. A conversation is good. I don’t think it should be one where you’re rushing to defend the corporation that made nearly a billion dollars in profit and paid $0 in taxes as a champion of the ~arts~, but I don’t think it’s one where you should be upholding the existing models as sacred, since they have plenty of flaws as well.

 

Lol, nobody is defending the Oscars or defending Netflix and their taxes or calling them a champion of the arts, that’s all in your head.

 

I feel like this conversation took a weird turn that is a very separate issue to what was being discussed. Saying that Netflix makes films more accessible and is willing to take huge monetary risks that traditional studios aren’t and those are good things doesn’t mean that anyone is saying it’s fine that they haven’t paid taxes or risk creating a monopoly on content.

Both things can be true at the same time, and dealing with the major issues doesn’t mean having to deny that the positives exist.

 

What are the huge monetary risks that Netflix has taken?

You can see a lot of parallels to this and the way Walmart destroyed small businesses 15-20 years ago. It was cheaper and had a bigger availability, so why shouldn't the local stores go under? Of course, longterm it meant Walmart had control over what people could consume and how.

If all that is playing at the theater is The Avengers 7 and Batman 8, people wanting something for adults are going to be stuck with Netflix, which severely limits your options. How many movies before 1980 does Netflix even have?

 

They’re connected. The convenience of Netflix’s model is partially because they don’t have to pay taxes. The way they decide to spend their money has everything to do with the level of their profit. Acknowledging the real positives they offer is absolutely part of what I was saying, but I also want to acknowledge the wariness for its real world implications and where it could be heading.

 

It’s not! It’s a part of the conflict that people aren’t engaging in.

 

When Netflix has enough money that they buy superhero/sci-fi IPs and start producing those at the expense of independent works, the exact path notable current studios went down, where will we be? Netflix’s goal isn’t to make the next Roma or High Flying Bird, their goal is to make the next Aquaman AND the next Green Book AND the next Modern Family AND the next Breaking Bad.

 

The Irishman was what I had specifically in mind, but they’ve also backed lots of other shows and movies that wouldn’t have had much traction elsewhere, or wouldn’t have had as much of a push from a different company if they did get made.

And that’s still a separate argument about the theater. I love going to the theater, and more work needs to be done to make seeing great work in person available instead of just big budget major studio stuff. At this point that is much more on the studios who release everything theatrically and bury anything that isn’t a blockbuster. Netflix putting a few films in theaters along with them isn’t really the heart of that issue.

Netflix also does have quite a large catalog of old films and films for “adults” as well, so that argument just seems kind of judgmental against their user base and misplaced.

The monopoly issue has already been mentioned as a negative to tackle along with a lot of their other problems as a company, and certainly we have more to worry about when talking about something like Disney/Fox, but that’s still a separate discussion from what they have done for making things accessible in a new way for lots of people and choosing to give money to interesting projects.

 

I don’t think anyone in this thread would disagree with you about any of that, it just seemed to me like you were saying none of what we were discussing yesterday was actually true because they don’t pay taxes. They’re very much like Amazon in what they offer to a huge amount of people and how they offer it, and with most of the same ethical issues underlying that service.

 

I don’t agree that it’s a separate discussion. It’s tied to their profits. If they had to pay proportionally appropriate taxes, either they wouldn’t pay people like Scorsese/the Coens what they did, or they would overwhelmingly squash their independent film production/distribution (remember, they didn’t fund Roma, they bought it). They’d raise their monthly price and they would likely prioritize producing and promoting their original content over keeping stuff like Chinatown or Y Tu Mama Tambien in their library, if they’re trying to be a studio and content creator rather than a content provider. If Netflix had to play by the same rules as other studios, or had to pay reasonable taxes on the money they bring in, I think what they do for accessibility and funding/releasing interesting projects from interesting creators changes dramatically. So my interest, and I think what this discussion should lead to, is what do we have to change about the way corporations like Netflix and those who own big studios operate in the shifting landscape of film and entertainment consumption to allow independent/auteur cinema to grow, how do we amplify quality and truly boundary pushing cinema, while also holding these impossibly large companies to a morally responsible standard?

Like, for all the talk of bold risk taking, Netflix also produces Adam Sandler movies and Chuck Lorre sitcoms. Those are the opposite of risks. They’re not trying to create quality and make movies like Roma available to everyone, that’s the happy side effect of their model. They’re trying to make a shit ton of money, and the second projects like Roma, High Flying Bird, and the Irishman aren’t momentarily advantageous, I think they abandon those types of projects in favor of Adam Sandler, Chuck Lorre, and whatever blockbuster IPs they can get their hands on.

And again, this is partially hard to predict because they don’t share their ratings data.

 

Putting my current issues with him aside, this is an idea I’m completely down for. I would love to know that these films would have a consistent partnership and availability to give people the best options for them to view them. It’d need to include Bowtie for me to be able to really use it though, lol.

The Filmstruck/Criterion outcry gave me more hope for the independent market keeping a name for itself than I had felt for a long time. Adding in a theatrical component would be really exciting.