So I guess the answer to why Electric State is so bad comes down to: Netflix hired a lousy director? I actually wish they would court better screenwriters because imho that's where they're really falling flat. Friends who saw Electric State didn't complain about the acting or direction, they told me the plot was a mess and the dialogue was cliched. Maybe if Netflix started with a solid foundation of good writing they'd have better rating scores? But of course, that can be said of the theatrical film world as well. Writers never get their due, the studios just want famous actors and a director with a track record, and they think that's enough. It all starts with someone at a keyboard getting their ideas across. If you hire a mediocre writer and force them to do endless rewrites to satisfy some algorithm, you just end up with a tepid, confusing mess no matter how famous the cast is.
Most data you presented doesn't even look statistically significant. I mean, look at the IMDB rating comparison, 6.08 vs 5.97. Without looking at the data, I would guess this isn't statistically different, if you get the same ratings in 2-3 months this could even change in favor of Netflix, who knows. My point is that they are equal. Same thing in the leading actor comparison, maybe two of that are significally different. Good analysis, but I was hoping a more careful approach when interpreting this data.
And sorry if I was rude, I was writing without thinking further and might have not used the better approach! Still a good data analysis, important to mention, I just don't think I fully agree
Look — I watched The Vast of Night right after this, and it’s a terrific counterpoint that more money doesn’t necessarily make a better movie.
I believe that this script was at least partially produced w/ AI. The clunky product placement, the bizarre jokes, the nonsequiter everything is going on but nothing is going on plot, weirdly sexualized dialogue… no creative choices were made. It seems like an abdication of creative direction. I have the same feeling while watching Alien Earth.
This review so thoroughly contradicts my own impression of the film that I had to look it up to make sure I hadn't got it mixed up with The Endless.
First off, written with AI in 2019? GPT-2 came out in February of that year and it was NOT up to the task of writing anything coherent. 2019 LLMs couldn't even remember the names or genders of characters in DungeonAI.
What product placement was even in the film? I'm pretty allergic to things like that, and I don't remember anything of the sort. Are you referring to the part where the girl reads out a couple snippets from Popular Mechanics (or similar) which seems to describe present-day technologies, only to be dismissed as outlandish as a gag?
Overly sexualized dialogue? The young man mentions once that he sometimes gets into trouble with girls for not understanding them, which prompts a comical "I'm not mad... I just think it's funny how you-" response from the girl. Maybe I've forgotten some other lines and you can refresh my memory, but my own review spreadsheet does not mention anything of the sort.
As for the lack of creative decisions... I mean, the camera-on-a-skateboard shot which follows the character through the entire town to give a sense of its smallness, the slow-burn sequence of the girl at the switchboard as the lines get disconnected one by one, only to be drowned out by an ominous humming, the twist with the tape recorder.
I dunno, man. It's perfectly fine not to enjoy a movie--slow burns aren't for everybody, and that's fine--but, again, I had to make sure I was associate the right film with that title because your critiques come across as referring to some other movie. RedLetterMedia covered it in one of their Half in the Bag episodes, and they will of course have more and better commentary than I do on the subject.
Ohhh no, I meant all that criticism to refer to The Electric State, not The Vast of Night… everything you have noticed about Vast of Night was so refreshing and captivating to me, too. I just mean that they did alllll that magic on a micro-budget while The Electric State had more money than god and it was a flaming nothingburger
Also, the above accuses filmmakers of using AI in 2019, the original article ends with an AI-generated image of a graph (look at that fucked-up grid), everything is AI, inb4 I'm AI for writing more than two sentences and for using dashes.
I mean, I AM a weak artificial intelligence according to the definition put forth in the Chinese Room though experiment, but that's unrelated.
this was very interesting to read yet went nowhere. so is netflix bad because they don't invest in authorship, only presentability? is it the lack of media event? is it the chronic overuse of the medium that devaluates its emotional heights?
presenatability via the thumbnail is a good hypothesis. i bet they put more thought into thumbnail and title page than script and story.
that's because they know these are what influence their user's decisions, and they probably have data to suggest that most of their users will stick with a bad title once they've started.
The first thing to say about film budgets is, “Ye-e-es, we-e-ell...” It’s called Hollywood accounting for a reason; it’s why Paramount settled on “Coming to America” rather than opening their books for the court to see. It’s what means “Return of the Jedi” still hasn’t made a profit (according to Lucasfilm) and Sony thinks “Men in Black” hasn’t broken even yet.
A24 heavily backload their budgets: the main actors, directors etc don’t get much up front (maybe just scale) but can do well on the back end, and they get creative freedom to boot. I suspect Netflix does exactly the opposite, and because people aren’t getting (potential) points, they’re going to press for as big a payday as they can up front, hence the apparently bloated salary budgets, even without using stars (apart from the “looks good on the thumbnail” pix. Where the rest of the money goes, who knows?!
As to retaining directors, Netflix not so tacitly wants to crush theatrical and home video and to that end is very stingy in giving home video rights. But it’s also notoriously wayward in keeping things available for streaming or commissioning second series. Hence directors risk seeing their project not released theatrically, streamed for a limited period or cut short, and then not released on DVD/Blu -essentially making them unavailable, except by … well, anyway …. It’s why Mike Flanagan left Netflix.
As Netflix’s most obvious competitor, why no mention of Amazon? They do as many if not more pension-plan movies for the over-the-hill-now-non-stars. But they’ve had their fair share of silver screen success as well as some own-brand made modern classics - Paterson as one worthy example comes to mind immediately.
As for $80m to make Wuthering Heights? FFS. You only need couple of miserable buggers and some grubby costumes, Yorkshire will supply the weather for free. Are they building a time machine to get Emily Bronte to write in some gratuitous tits and arse scenes?:
“Cathy I love you…“
“Oh Heathcliffe, shut up and drop your trousers“.
PS. I have Netflix and hadn't heard of Electric State until reading this
good point — i think amazon has more of a disciplined and rigorous culture than netflix (for all reed's talk of excellence).
but yes, i'd like to see that comparison to test my hypothesis that film studios at streamers have fundamentally different incentives than traditional film studios, and that these can explain their content decisions.
Of the two, it’s Netflix that needs to up their game. Without a media arm Amazon will still do nicely flogging stuff, but that’s all of NF’s eggs in the one basket.
Also, I for one would keep Amazon over NF if I had to choose because of their free delivery offer for Prime members. Don’t see how NF can compete there.
Plus I don’t rate either of them at all for UX- I bloody hate dark themes and they’re both as dark as a DC superhero movie, atrotious. It’s not the 90s and I’m not 12.
I would also recommend looking into the contracts Netflix offers when buying a script or hiring a director. From what I've heard (because no one is actually posting a full contract online), you are basically selling your soul and all the rights to Netflix (above what is in a typical movie contract).
I would assume that big-name directors have it a little better, but it's telling that none of them are coming back to work for Netflix.
So Netflix often ends up with people (directors/scriptwriters) who REALLY need a job/money, and don't care about the final product itself. Because why would you care/put a lot of effort in something you won't "own" even partially afterward?
"In February of 2025, Netflix released The Electric State—a widely panned sci-fi misfire starring Chris Pratt and the actress who plays Eleven in Stranger Things."
Why would you name one actor but not the other? why kind of misogynist BS is this? Her name is Millie Bobby Brown by the way, in case you're too lazy to look it up.
I wonder whether we have returned to the era of B-movies. There was a time when studios cranked out hundreds of movies a year. Only a few were intended to be blockbusters. We ended up with a lot of mildly entertaining and forgettable films. A few, however, surprised everyone with their quality. Casablanca may be the most famous of these.
Thank you. I work in the industry and I haven’t found enough writers on here in the topic who I have managed to read all the way to the end of their article. This is well done.
content executives typically have a set of engagement goals that they care most about, and their thinking is almost always patterned around that. hollywood studios don't think about MAU, WAU, timespent, watchtime, churn, etc.
when you live by those numbers, they pattern everything — the whole culture gets anchored on them. netflix execs don't really care that much about the content that's supposed to be award-worthy. if they didn't have it their business would still be fine. and the stuff that's supposed to be award winning doesn't really move the needle on those numbers, so there isn't really a reason to commit a lot of energy to managing their production. it's a nice-to-have, and they have to overpay for all the reasons you mention.
at a big hollywood studio the "can't fail" attitude means that these films get a lot more internal scrutiny. at netflix, they can fail, so why spend your precious executive calories attending to them to make sure they're good or great rather than mediocre?
as is the case at any company, the performance management drives the culture which drives the products. the goals they're accountable to are fundamentally different than a hollywood studio.
Fantastic analysis, definitely on point about the decline in the content Netflix is rolling out lately. Interesting to read that film directors may be open to try Netflix but not commit to a deal, which it is understandable.
As much as people may like the convenience of streaming, going to a cinema offers a totally different experience in which our undivided attention is on what we are seeing and as a result we leave the cinema changed by it.
That's probably what directors and actors are going after, creating art that means something for people when they experience it. With some notable exceptions (Adolescence comes to mind), streaming operates in a way that makes it rare to feel that level of connection as we can stop watching at any point or multi-task when having a show on, which as you say dilutes the experience.
Perhaps that's also why we still associate a theatrical release with quality (even if that's not always necessarily the case): we subconsciously expect to be touched in ways that Indian Matchmaking, for all it's drama, can't achieve.
Netflix made the original Daredevil and punisher series. These were pretty good, at least better than anything Marvel has made. But lately, those have gone downhill as well.
A way to escape this local minima in poor film production is to do what universities are doing since forever: PhDs. Funding many emerging directors could prove to be a good bet in the long run (one good shot could repay hunderds): be bold Netflix!
So I guess the answer to why Electric State is so bad comes down to: Netflix hired a lousy director? I actually wish they would court better screenwriters because imho that's where they're really falling flat. Friends who saw Electric State didn't complain about the acting or direction, they told me the plot was a mess and the dialogue was cliched. Maybe if Netflix started with a solid foundation of good writing they'd have better rating scores? But of course, that can be said of the theatrical film world as well. Writers never get their due, the studios just want famous actors and a director with a track record, and they think that's enough. It all starts with someone at a keyboard getting their ideas across. If you hire a mediocre writer and force them to do endless rewrites to satisfy some algorithm, you just end up with a tepid, confusing mess no matter how famous the cast is.
Most data you presented doesn't even look statistically significant. I mean, look at the IMDB rating comparison, 6.08 vs 5.97. Without looking at the data, I would guess this isn't statistically different, if you get the same ratings in 2-3 months this could even change in favor of Netflix, who knows. My point is that they are equal. Same thing in the leading actor comparison, maybe two of that are significally different. Good analysis, but I was hoping a more careful approach when interpreting this data.
And sorry if I was rude, I was writing without thinking further and might have not used the better approach! Still a good data analysis, important to mention, I just don't think I fully agree
Look — I watched The Vast of Night right after this, and it’s a terrific counterpoint that more money doesn’t necessarily make a better movie.
I believe that this script was at least partially produced w/ AI. The clunky product placement, the bizarre jokes, the nonsequiter everything is going on but nothing is going on plot, weirdly sexualized dialogue… no creative choices were made. It seems like an abdication of creative direction. I have the same feeling while watching Alien Earth.
This review so thoroughly contradicts my own impression of the film that I had to look it up to make sure I hadn't got it mixed up with The Endless.
First off, written with AI in 2019? GPT-2 came out in February of that year and it was NOT up to the task of writing anything coherent. 2019 LLMs couldn't even remember the names or genders of characters in DungeonAI.
What product placement was even in the film? I'm pretty allergic to things like that, and I don't remember anything of the sort. Are you referring to the part where the girl reads out a couple snippets from Popular Mechanics (or similar) which seems to describe present-day technologies, only to be dismissed as outlandish as a gag?
Overly sexualized dialogue? The young man mentions once that he sometimes gets into trouble with girls for not understanding them, which prompts a comical "I'm not mad... I just think it's funny how you-" response from the girl. Maybe I've forgotten some other lines and you can refresh my memory, but my own review spreadsheet does not mention anything of the sort.
As for the lack of creative decisions... I mean, the camera-on-a-skateboard shot which follows the character through the entire town to give a sense of its smallness, the slow-burn sequence of the girl at the switchboard as the lines get disconnected one by one, only to be drowned out by an ominous humming, the twist with the tape recorder.
I dunno, man. It's perfectly fine not to enjoy a movie--slow burns aren't for everybody, and that's fine--but, again, I had to make sure I was associate the right film with that title because your critiques come across as referring to some other movie. RedLetterMedia covered it in one of their Half in the Bag episodes, and they will of course have more and better commentary than I do on the subject.
Ohhh no, I meant all that criticism to refer to The Electric State, not The Vast of Night… everything you have noticed about Vast of Night was so refreshing and captivating to me, too. I just mean that they did alllll that magic on a micro-budget while The Electric State had more money than god and it was a flaming nothingburger
So we've been in agreement the whole time. That's what I get for posting as the edibles kick in.
😂 now you can rest assured you still have excellent taste on edibles
Also, the above accuses filmmakers of using AI in 2019, the original article ends with an AI-generated image of a graph (look at that fucked-up grid), everything is AI, inb4 I'm AI for writing more than two sentences and for using dashes.
I mean, I AM a weak artificial intelligence according to the definition put forth in the Chinese Room though experiment, but that's unrelated.
this was very interesting to read yet went nowhere. so is netflix bad because they don't invest in authorship, only presentability? is it the lack of media event? is it the chronic overuse of the medium that devaluates its emotional heights?
presenatability via the thumbnail is a good hypothesis. i bet they put more thought into thumbnail and title page than script and story.
that's because they know these are what influence their user's decisions, and they probably have data to suggest that most of their users will stick with a bad title once they've started.
The first thing to say about film budgets is, “Ye-e-es, we-e-ell...” It’s called Hollywood accounting for a reason; it’s why Paramount settled on “Coming to America” rather than opening their books for the court to see. It’s what means “Return of the Jedi” still hasn’t made a profit (according to Lucasfilm) and Sony thinks “Men in Black” hasn’t broken even yet.
A24 heavily backload their budgets: the main actors, directors etc don’t get much up front (maybe just scale) but can do well on the back end, and they get creative freedom to boot. I suspect Netflix does exactly the opposite, and because people aren’t getting (potential) points, they’re going to press for as big a payday as they can up front, hence the apparently bloated salary budgets, even without using stars (apart from the “looks good on the thumbnail” pix. Where the rest of the money goes, who knows?!
As to retaining directors, Netflix not so tacitly wants to crush theatrical and home video and to that end is very stingy in giving home video rights. But it’s also notoriously wayward in keeping things available for streaming or commissioning second series. Hence directors risk seeing their project not released theatrically, streamed for a limited period or cut short, and then not released on DVD/Blu -essentially making them unavailable, except by … well, anyway …. It’s why Mike Flanagan left Netflix.
As Netflix’s most obvious competitor, why no mention of Amazon? They do as many if not more pension-plan movies for the over-the-hill-now-non-stars. But they’ve had their fair share of silver screen success as well as some own-brand made modern classics - Paterson as one worthy example comes to mind immediately.
As for $80m to make Wuthering Heights? FFS. You only need couple of miserable buggers and some grubby costumes, Yorkshire will supply the weather for free. Are they building a time machine to get Emily Bronte to write in some gratuitous tits and arse scenes?:
“Cathy I love you…“
“Oh Heathcliffe, shut up and drop your trousers“.
PS. I have Netflix and hadn't heard of Electric State until reading this
good point — i think amazon has more of a disciplined and rigorous culture than netflix (for all reed's talk of excellence).
but yes, i'd like to see that comparison to test my hypothesis that film studios at streamers have fundamentally different incentives than traditional film studios, and that these can explain their content decisions.
Of the two, it’s Netflix that needs to up their game. Without a media arm Amazon will still do nicely flogging stuff, but that’s all of NF’s eggs in the one basket.
Also, I for one would keep Amazon over NF if I had to choose because of their free delivery offer for Prime members. Don’t see how NF can compete there.
Plus I don’t rate either of them at all for UX- I bloody hate dark themes and they’re both as dark as a DC superhero movie, atrotious. It’s not the 90s and I’m not 12.
I would also recommend looking into the contracts Netflix offers when buying a script or hiring a director. From what I've heard (because no one is actually posting a full contract online), you are basically selling your soul and all the rights to Netflix (above what is in a typical movie contract).
I would assume that big-name directors have it a little better, but it's telling that none of them are coming back to work for Netflix.
So Netflix often ends up with people (directors/scriptwriters) who REALLY need a job/money, and don't care about the final product itself. Because why would you care/put a lot of effort in something you won't "own" even partially afterward?
"In February of 2025, Netflix released The Electric State—a widely panned sci-fi misfire starring Chris Pratt and the actress who plays Eleven in Stranger Things."
Why would you name one actor but not the other? why kind of misogynist BS is this? Her name is Millie Bobby Brown by the way, in case you're too lazy to look it up.
I wonder whether we have returned to the era of B-movies. There was a time when studios cranked out hundreds of movies a year. Only a few were intended to be blockbusters. We ended up with a lot of mildly entertaining and forgettable films. A few, however, surprised everyone with their quality. Casablanca may be the most famous of these.
Thank you. I work in the industry and I haven’t found enough writers on here in the topic who I have managed to read all the way to the end of their article. This is well done.
content executives typically have a set of engagement goals that they care most about, and their thinking is almost always patterned around that. hollywood studios don't think about MAU, WAU, timespent, watchtime, churn, etc.
when you live by those numbers, they pattern everything — the whole culture gets anchored on them. netflix execs don't really care that much about the content that's supposed to be award-worthy. if they didn't have it their business would still be fine. and the stuff that's supposed to be award winning doesn't really move the needle on those numbers, so there isn't really a reason to commit a lot of energy to managing their production. it's a nice-to-have, and they have to overpay for all the reasons you mention.
at a big hollywood studio the "can't fail" attitude means that these films get a lot more internal scrutiny. at netflix, they can fail, so why spend your precious executive calories attending to them to make sure they're good or great rather than mediocre?
as is the case at any company, the performance management drives the culture which drives the products. the goals they're accountable to are fundamentally different than a hollywood studio.
Fantastic analysis, definitely on point about the decline in the content Netflix is rolling out lately. Interesting to read that film directors may be open to try Netflix but not commit to a deal, which it is understandable.
As much as people may like the convenience of streaming, going to a cinema offers a totally different experience in which our undivided attention is on what we are seeing and as a result we leave the cinema changed by it.
That's probably what directors and actors are going after, creating art that means something for people when they experience it. With some notable exceptions (Adolescence comes to mind), streaming operates in a way that makes it rare to feel that level of connection as we can stop watching at any point or multi-task when having a show on, which as you say dilutes the experience.
Perhaps that's also why we still associate a theatrical release with quality (even if that's not always necessarily the case): we subconsciously expect to be touched in ways that Indian Matchmaking, for all it's drama, can't achieve.
Netflix made the original Daredevil and punisher series. These were pretty good, at least better than anything Marvel has made. But lately, those have gone downhill as well.
I gave up on Netflix about 5 years ago.
I actually rather liked ELECTRIC STATE. The problem is it cost so bloody much for what it was.
A way to escape this local minima in poor film production is to do what universities are doing since forever: PhDs. Funding many emerging directors could prove to be a good bet in the long run (one good shot could repay hunderds): be bold Netflix!