So apparently we’ve reached peak cinematography dystopia. Matt Damon just confirmed what many of us suspected: Netflix is actively asking filmmakers to restate the plot “three or four times in the dialogue” because viewers are watching movies while scrolling through TikTok.
I’m sorry, WHAT?
Matt Damon went on Joe Rogan’s podcast on January 16th to promote his new Netflix film The Rip, and just casually dropped this nuclear bomb: “They’re like, can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get somebody… and you know it wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.”
I need you to sit with that for a second. Netflix—the platform that has fundamentally reshaped how the entire world consumes entertainment—is engineering movies to accommodate the fact that you’re not actually watching them.
The Death of Storytelling As We Know It
Consider me ignorant or old fashioned – but here’s what used to happen when you made a movie: You introduced your story. You established characters, built tension, developed themes, and trusted your audience to pay attention because that was the social contract. You showed up to a dark theater, sat down, and watched the movie. That contract is dead now. Netflix killed it.
According to Damon, the traditional action movie structure was three set pieces—one in each act. But Netflix doesn’t want that anymore. They want the big spectacle immediately, in the first five minutes, to “hook” you before you bounce to Instagram. And then they want the dialogue to constantly remind you what’s happening because they KNOW you’re not paying full attention.
This isn’t filmmaking. This is literal babysitting.
Think about what this means for storytelling: No slow burns. No subtle character development. No complex plots that require sustained attention. Instead, we are being force-fed front-loaded action regardless of whether it serves the story.
This is network television soap opera logic applied to films. You know how daytime TV constantly recaps what’s happening because people are doing laundry with the TV on in the background? That’s what Netflix wants movies to become. Background noise with occasional explosions.
It used to make me angry when directors and screenplay writers would craft a clever twist as they brought the movie in for a landing… and then they explained the twist for those that didn’t get it. That’s one level of stupidity, but this new Netflix mandate is something else entirely.
We’ve Broken Our Brains and Netflix Is Profiting From It
Here’s the thing that makes me want to throw my laptop out the window: This is our fault.
Netflix isn’t doing this because they’re mustache-twirling villains who hate cinema. They’re doing it because their data shows that we – collectively, as a society – cannot watch a movie without simultaneously doom-scrolling through our phones.
We’ve destroyed our own attention spans, and now the entertainment industry is adapting to our brain rot. And when you design for distraction, you get forgettable, formulaic, lowest-common-denominator entertainment. Movies that are fine. Movies that you can half-watch while texting. Movies that don’t ask anything of you because they assume you’re not fully there anyway.
This Affects More Than Just Netflix
When Netflix is telling A-list actors like Matt Damon “hey, can you restate the plot three or four times because people aren’t paying attention,” what do you think that does to filmmaking culture broadly? Other streamers are watching. Studios are watching. Everyone sees Netflix’s data, and everyone is adapting.
We’re talking about a generation of storytellers being trained to assume their audience is distracted. To build that assumption into the very DNA of their work. That’s not a Netflix problem. That’s a ZEITGEIST problem.
Cinema Demands Attention—And That’s The Point
Matt Damon drew this beautiful contrast between theatrical viewing and home viewing. In a theater, you show up at an appointed time. You sit in the dark with strangers, experiencing something together. You’ve made an implicit commitment: I’m going to pay attention to this.
At home? “The lights are on, other shit’s going on, the kids are running around, the dogs are running around.” You’re in a distraction-rich environment. And Netflix has decided that instead of asking you to focus, they’ll just accommodate the distraction.
But here’s the thing: Art is suppsed to demand your attention. That’s part of what makes it art. It’s supposed to pull you out of your daily life and make you engage with something beyond yourself. It’s supposed to challenge you, confuse you, make you think, make you feel. The movie that created this blog (The Prestige) had me thinking about it for A MONTH before I figured it out. Literally a month. And in my humble opinion, that is the greatest movie of all time… not the worst! Movies should make us work, think, grapple with the concepts… learn something, explore spaces.
If we engineer entertainment to work for people who are half-watching it, we lose the transformative power of storytelling. We reduce cinema to content—background noise to fill the void while we scroll.
What Do We Do About This?
We deserve movies that trust us to pay attention. That challenge us. That assume we’re intelligent, engaged viewers capable of following a story without constant recaps.
But more importantly: Filmmakers deserve better. They deserve to make art without having to engineer it for distracted viewing. They deserve audiences who show up—mentally and emotionally—for the experience they’re trying to create.
So the next time you sit down to watch a movie, ask yourself: Am I really watching this? Or am I just streaming it while I do something else? Cinema demands more. And we owe it to the art form—and to ourselves—to give it the attention it deserves. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch a slow-burn arthouse film with my phone in a drawer three rooms away.
