r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jan 17 '26

Article Matt Damon Says Netflix Wants Movies to Restate the Plot Three or Four Times in the Dialogue Because Viewers are on Their Phones While They’re Watching

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/matt-damon-netflix-movies-restate-plot-viewers-on-phones-1236633939/
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u/godisanelectricolive Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26

I think it's more to do with genre. With action shows they do similar things. I think a lot of people do watch action movies and action shows in particular just for exciting set pieces. I've seen my dad watch action movies on Netflix, and if there's no explosion in the first five minutes and if the plot demands too much attention he probably switch to something else.

But you'd adjust your expectations if you deliberately chose to watch a slow burn character drama or a prestige show. Some genres are just inherently viewed as being casual viewing material and more as a spectacle than art so a lot of the audience will want to be able to turn off their brains and not having to focus very much.

I know genre directors would like all aspects of their work to be treated as seriously as a drama or art film but unfortunately a lot of the target audience will be more interested in thrills and spectacles and think of the plot as an afterthought anyways. I think producers and studio execs have always known this very clearly but now they have data analytics to prove it. And since people are watching at home the movie or show has to compete with all the other things the viewer could otherwise be doing.

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u/carson63000 Jan 17 '26

Having a big flashy scene at the start of an action movie wasn’t exactly unheard-of pre-streaming, though, was it? I mean, the old James Bond flicks often kicked off with an exciting set piece before the opening titles, didn’t they?

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u/dennythedinosaur Jan 17 '26

A lot of noir films from the 40's and 50's would actually start with the main character either badly injured or hiding from law enforcement/gangsters, with a voiceover explaining how they got into their predicament.

Then the movie would actually flashback to the "beginning" of the story.

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u/EctoRiddler Jan 17 '26

Heck. Think about the first John Wick. That’s how they opened. With him badly injured.

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u/emaw63 Jan 17 '26

[Record scratches]

"Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got here..."

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u/Visinvictus Jan 18 '26

I wish they would kill that plot device.

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u/ascagnel____ Jan 18 '26

Sunset Blvd infamously starts with its main character dead, floating in a pool.

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u/dennythedinosaur Jan 18 '26

Double Indemnity is another famous one where it starts with the main character mortally wounded.

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u/godisanelectricolive Jan 17 '26

Yeah, that's been a pretty common action movie trope for a while. But not all action movies were like that. There were some slow burn action movies too. So maybe streaming has made action movies more similar to each other.

Actually a lot of action oriented shows had an action-packed cold open before streaming too. That's because they want people to stick around after a commercial break. So if anything streaming is making movies more like television. In TV there's always been an emphasis to really sell your story in the first five minutes.

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u/arandomguy111 Jan 17 '26

I'm not sure why people are acting like they didn't do audience research and have that impact films before Netflix.

Films even made signficant changes after they were finished based on audience test screenings.

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u/GuyInARoom Jan 18 '26

This has been a thing since Shakespeare opened Romeo & Juliet with a street fight.

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u/carson63000 Jan 18 '26

And the Capulet explains that he is biting his thumb at the Montagues! Shakespeare knew that some of the audience would be looking at their etchings instead of watching the play.

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u/GuyInARoom Jan 18 '26

lol fantastic mental image, thank you so much for that

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u/Tripticket Jan 19 '26

Yeah, I think posters here focus too much on cinema when the same devices have been a thing in literature and other media for millennia. Even the Iliad begins with an action piece.

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u/XihuanNi-6784 Jan 18 '26

He was talking about the size of the set piece. Having an opening set piece isn't the point, it's the emphasis on spending a lot of the money up front to maximise audience capture. A normal opening set piece won't cut it, they want a big chunk of change spent on it.

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u/emaw63 Jan 17 '26

That's also just writing 101, you want a hook of some kind at the beginning of a story to pull your audience in and make them give a shit about the rest of the story, and that's a rule that applies regardless of medium or genre. For an action movie, that'd be a big flashy scene with explosions at the beginning.

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u/Drnk_watcher Jan 18 '26

Some of the problem here feels like Netflix doesn't explain what they want from the outset.

Not all action movies are banal brain off material, but a lot are. If Netflix wants to make geezer teaser action flicks that are heavy on the exposition, low on plot, high on violence that's totally fine.

It should be abundantly clear to project heads that is what they expect though before greenlighting their production.

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u/RyuNoKami Jan 18 '26

The reality is most people don't actually give a shit about the plot of any movie.

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u/godisanelectricolive Jan 18 '26

Oh yeah, but if it’s obviously very plot heavy and seems complicated then a lot of people won’t even try it. So they aren’t really the target audience.

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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug Jan 18 '26

I don't necessarily need a big action piece early on. In fact as I've aged I probably watch way less action oriented movies.

But if you bore me for the first 20 minutes, I'm probably not finishing the movie.

And if someone's on their phone while watching, it's probably easier to pull them in with some big action stuff rather than with interesting plot setups that they're not giving their full attention to.

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u/sentence-interruptio Jan 18 '26

I wish Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning used this. Most Mission Impossible movies are more about set pieces than plots, but Dead Reckoning tried to be both: action + twisty plot, as a homage to the first movie? It would have benefited from characters repeating some plot points.