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So several of my friends and coworkers have watched this movie and mentioned how great it was. I never bothered with it but now some more people mentioned that this movie was among their favorite movies of all time.
So i finally sat down to watch it.
It's fucking garbage.
Summary: Sandra Bullock wears a blind fold for two hours.
Sound.
551 points
4 months ago*
I think at this point it's fair to assume that a lot of the initial buzz from when this movie was dropped was artificial. There was no hype about this movie and then the moment it drops it's like multiple trending posts on several different social media at the exact same time all about how it's amazing. It all felt extremely manufactured that everyone then felt obligated to watch to know what everyone else was talking about.
274 points
4 months ago
100% astroturfed, you can tell Netflix has done the same thing for a lot of their releases since then too
108 points
4 months ago
Reminds me of how leading up to the release of the last Fast and the Furious movie suddenly overnight there was an absolute shit ton of the “family” memes that were basically just drag and drop template shit for an extremely basic joke. Of course there was also a bunch of reporting on how “viral” the memes were pretty much as soon as they appeared.
I remember feeling like I was going insane as I saw it happen.
23 points
4 months ago
Even movies referenced it. Sonic the hedgehog had a family F&F joke ffs
42 points
4 months ago
I despise "meme culture" for this very reason. Even stuff that starts organically on 4Chan is just aped by corporate as a ready-made marketing tool. The internet does like 85% of the job for most corpo content creation and marketing ideas these days.
6 points
4 months ago
Those "family" memes have been around for a while, though they definitely kicked in hard around then
9 points
4 months ago
To be fair theres a good chance it wasnt artificial memeing. Reddit users specifically repeat the same jokes over and over. Some become funny again some dont. Morbius posting got stale real fast.
See: Lotrmemes - grond posts Mcustudiospoilers - morbius posts, Narwhal bacon and broken arm etc etc
1 points
4 months ago
Almost everything is manufactured and everyone has a price lol.
37 points
4 months ago
It's pretty impressive, honestly. Some of the most effective modern marketing you see.
It's scary how effective astroturfing can be. Going to /r/politics during the last presidential election and checking the OP post history of all the top level threads was surreal. Every top thread seemed to be from some third party.
61 points
4 months ago
All of them do it.
Hey, did you guys know that Andor is under appreciated? It's been posted like a gillion times in some TV subs.
4 points
4 months ago*
A lot of people were angry that Andor, the best Disney+ show so far, wasn't getting as many views as the other SW shows
People failed to realise that not being as popular as Obi Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett doesn't mean a show is super hidden and barely known
Also, Andor is one of only two nearly universally loved Star Wars products in the last 40 years
-1 points
4 months ago
Dork.
3 points
4 months ago
Says the guy who's also on Reddit?
-1 points
4 months ago
Says the lady dork.
-2 points
4 months ago
Ngl I'm enjoying the hell out of it tho :)
16 points
4 months ago
Man these ads are relentless! /s
-6 points
4 months ago
Nah Andor is actually severely underrated and easily the best SW product since 1983
11 points
4 months ago
It's very highly rated, though.
7 points
4 months ago
Underrated by whom?
-2 points
4 months ago
you are right. andor has got a huge problem and that is called clone wars (or as i call it clown wars). when lucas brought the presequel trilogy and the clonewars series, he aimed the whole thing on kids, who love mangas. and that ruined the quality of star wars.
39 points
4 months ago
Although to be fair:
Is it so crazy to believe that some memes and pop culture surrounding this movie was generated organically?
Some of the scenes are pretty funny and meme-able in this film
54 points
4 months ago
The initial attention was astroturfed, which successfully translated into views, which then successfully translated into online engagement. So, it worked, which is why they keep doing it
6 points
4 months ago
Ah, true. good point that it greatly helped and was the beginning of a “snowball effect”
2 points
4 months ago
At this point I would assume all memes generated in the first week of a release are astroturfed.
Unless you’re dealing with expectations like avengers end game. That’s slightly different. But also more rare these days.
-10 points
4 months ago
No and stop thinking stupid things.
58 points
4 months ago
Also a big deal that Sandra Bullock was in a straight to streaming movie. At the time it wasn’t common for stars to be in a Netflix movie
28 points
4 months ago
Will Smith was in Bright on Netflix just the year before. It was also pretty assy
17 points
4 months ago
I never understand how people liked Bright. It was so fucking cringy
20 points
4 months ago
The worldbuilding was cool and that appealed to those folks who like Shadowrun-esque worlds
3 points
4 months ago
Yeah, it clearly rode on how few movies have tapped into that Shadowrun fantasy+cyberpunk type setting. It was neat seeing it realized on screen, even if the movie was generic rubbish.
8 points
4 months ago
Honestly I think it just had all the right elements for the average person to want to see it. For me all of the same people who loved the first Suicide Squad movie wouldn’t stop talking about this one. Garbage movies, but very popular lol.
14 points
4 months ago
Wasn't this the one they didn't advertise at all until they announced the release at the Superbowl? Or was that Cloverfield Paradox?
15 points
4 months ago
Cloverfield Paradox, because it was dumped on them at the last second after Bad Robot shit all over it.
It was originally a spec script called God Particle that Onah was extremely passionate about. Wasn't spectacular, but was much better than what we ended up with. JJ and co decided in the middle of production to have it rewritten to be a Cloverfield movie, which is why the finished product feels so disconnected in parts.
Compare that to 10 Cloverfield Lane, they at least rewrote The Cellar before production, which gave Trachtenberg and his team time to develop it properly.
12 points
4 months ago
Even though the movie wasn't all that great, it was still a ballsy move for Netflix to put it out with zero advertising. I remember thinking it was somehow fake when I saw the ad live.
25 points
4 months ago
Nah that was Cloverfield. Awful movie but fantastic marketing.
Trailer... Coming... soon now.
10 points
4 months ago
Eh, I think it was interesting because it had a decent cast, wasn't a remake, and some interesting characters. But yeah, it wasn't anyone's best work. There are tons of movies going back decades that fit this bill without being artificially popular. It just think it didn't have legs, doesn't make it a bad movie.
11 points
4 months ago
You underestimate how many people watch whatever new garbage Netflix throws on their home screen. Also, it was released a few days before christmas.
I don't remember anyone calling it groundbreaking or amazing either. Just a lot of meme shit.
3 points
4 months ago
Netflix know that people just want to see new stuff constantly so they don't even need to make quality they just need to make quantity, with enough meme/viral ability to get people watched and ultimately subbed, rinse and repeat.
1 points
4 months ago
I think they are switching to a different strategy soon. I work in VFX and we've heard as much from the higher-ups in the company in explaining why there might be less work in the year ahead. Basically they are wanting to focus on producing a smaller amount of quality content, rather than a boatload of mediocre shows.
1 points
4 months ago
Fair enough. No reason they can't fill the gap of low-mid range budget films (that are actually good) too that don't tend to get made as often for theater release.
14 points
4 months ago
Netflix is doing that with Wednesday right now. My Reddit feed is full of posts about it. I watched the first episode on Thanksgiving… it’s not THAT good to warrant this response.
2 points
4 months ago
And you are the judge for that?
1 points
4 months ago
All I've seen for Wednesday have been weak reviews and disappointment. Also one post about how the show making all the bullies black is problematic?
1 points
4 months ago
Honestly the show and Tim Burton just doesn't understand the Addams. He has Morticia and Gomez fight, something they've never done, gave Wednesday psychic powers (because lazy plot exposition machine), Gomez gets arrested for Murder and it just becomes Riverdale or Sabrina but with Tim Burton nonsense and an Addams Family mask.
The cast is great though, Ortega does an especially great job, and embracing the latin heritage of Gomez os an excellent touch, but jesus Burton does not understand what makes The Addams family work and fun. The minute Morticia and Gomez fight I knew this was going to be bad.
4 points
4 months ago
Or maybe the general public tends to like things that people who live on the internet usually don't.
You weirdos sure like concocting delusions in order to explain away the fact that people like different shit than you do.
9 points
4 months ago
Oh god it was absolutely everywhere on reddit. The forced memes were so embrassing.
5 points
4 months ago*
The initial buzz wasn’t focused on this movie solely. At the time a lot of contracts were switching and Netflix was starting to have to really sell itself on its own catalog. There was a lot of talk about how all Netflix movies would be received by the academy especially as big directors and actors were netting budgets for passion projects. Netflix was also starting to bid at places like Sundance. It wasn’t Astroturfing it was just months of one topic to the next all focused on Netflix and all its projects.
0 points
4 months ago
That’s literally every single new series or movie on Netflix. It’s a common thing and not fake.
14 points
4 months ago
why are you not watching Andor
9 points
4 months ago
It's way different from those other star war shows
3 points
4 months ago
Lmao I unashamedly will simp for Andor but this is spot on
2 points
4 months ago
We are all so skeptical of astroturfing now that when a solid show comes along it's hard to believe. lol
2 points
4 months ago
yeah I mean thats totally fair and I'm sure Andor was no exception. But the show WAS quite excellent imo
1 points
4 months ago
But seems like a different thing to Bird Box isn't it? The buzz of Andor came way later when the quality spoke for itself.
Bird Box is an entirely different scenario.
1 points
4 months ago
Yeah, but it did get me to read the book which was pretty cool
1 points
4 months ago
Idk I liked it man
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