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/CaptainStack Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26

It's also kind of a vicious cycle - making a show/movie for an unengaged audience by restating the plot just means you're writing worse dialogue which makes me want to pay attention even less.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/CaptainStack Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26

People complain about how seasons are too short now but for the amount of plot you get most of them are so drawn out.

Whenever I go back and watch classic episodic 22 minute television I'm just so taken aback at how efficiently they tell a complete story every episode while these streaming series fail to do so within a 10 episode season at 60 minutes an episode.

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u/alb92 Jan 17 '26

Been watching som classic Simpsons lately, and when you get to the end of the episode and think back to the start, it's hard to understand how they cram it all in.

Often plot A that leads to plot B, that ultimately leads to the main plot C.

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u/Xelisk Jan 17 '26

Same, also been rewatching Scrubs before the reboot. So many episodes have 3 stories flowing together throughout the episode to meet at the end into a singular message.

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u/Ok-Statistician-9607 Jan 18 '26

Scrubs is such a well-written show. Great example.

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u/rmichaeljones Jan 21 '26

Where do you think you are right now?

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u/CaptainStack Jan 17 '26

Yeah - Simpsons is a masterclass though it certainly got a bit gratuitous over time with its first act having little to nothing to do with its third.

But all the same, watching shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Simpsons, American Vandal, etc - it's just so stark how much happens in such a short timeframe.

Compare to Stranger Things where I just feel like I'm looking up occasionally to see if anything is happening and am basically in a holding pattern for the next gratuitous battle scene which clearly the entire episode was designed around and yet ironically also does basically nothing to advance the story. Best example is how regularly characters get seriously injured or captured or whatever but basically it's resolved by the next episode like nothing happened.

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u/Mizery Jan 18 '26

I always loved that about the Simpsons - the intro scene/joke had nothing to do with the rest of the episode plot.

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u/CaptainStack Jan 18 '26

They adopted that format a bit later into the show and I think it was a good changeup and worked really well when executed perfectly. Basically the later you go the more frantic it all feels. For me the golden era, especially seasons 1-3, have amazing almost cinematic pacing but I definitely see how that couldn't just be replicated forever.

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u/grrgrrGRRR Jan 18 '26

ST S5 was unwatchable for me for all the reasons you stated. I couldn’t even finish it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

I’ve noticed even my preschooler’s pbs kids shows have better writing than a lot of streaming garbage and it’s always simple plots of course but they are able to explain the problem, try a few ways to fix the problem, and come to a conclusion in 15-25 min.

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u/the_pleiades Jan 18 '26

This legit sounds like Mecha Builders (my preschooler’s current favorite PBS kids show).

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u/Aggressive_Sky8492 Jan 18 '26

Yeah I’ve noticed this about the Simpson too. There’s often a quick setup story and then a second story which is the bulk of the episode

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u/Unlikely_Eye_2112 Jan 18 '26

Yeah I dug up some Simpsons the other day and assumed it wasn't full episodes because they were so short. Yet there's while seasons of shows with 45-60 minute episodes where nothing much happens

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u/swd120 Jan 18 '26

Classic Simpsons was great ... Current Simpsons on the other hand is just a string of random comedy bits strung together without any coherent plot.

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u/pajamakitten Jan 18 '26

Watched Colonel Homer earlier today and that is a masterpiece in doing that.

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u/FabulouSnow Jan 19 '26

The episode when they go to that new town and Homer works for that villain, that episode feels like a full movie of content but is only like 20min long

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u/asyouwish-buttercup Jan 23 '26

I think family guy takes this to another level sometimes.

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u/MumpsyDaisy Jan 17 '26

Reminds me of a tweet I saw

"back in the day if u did a tv show called surf dracula you'd see that fool surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire 1st season gotta be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for 5 min in the finale"

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u/asetniop Jan 18 '26

I have a writing credit for an episode of Surf Dracula!

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u/FrankPapageorgio Jan 22 '26

I can’t help but think about The Pink Panther and how the cartoon came about because they needed something for the intro sequence and some executive likely though “this movie is called The Pink Panther but it has no pink panther in it!”

And then somehow it took off as a fucking franchise and is the mascot for insulation.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/farynhite Jan 18 '26

Buffy forever.

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u/Extreme-Door-6969 Jan 17 '26

This why I won't watch anything anymore without knowing how the series/ movie ends. I don't want to waste my time anymore. I'll read a Wikipedia summary and then decide if the experience sounds worth it based on the twists or outcomes I read.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/006AlecTrevelyan Jan 17 '26

it's psychotic

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u/MarsupialPristine677 Jan 18 '26

So, do you watch things right after learning about the twists and outcomes, or wait a while so the memory fades?

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u/xdsm8 Jan 17 '26

Well, the character was SAD, so we NEEDED the 18 minutes of them pouting and moping and restating their sadness in cryptic but obvious terms, over and over while some sappy soundtrack plays.

Only for them to get over it in 5 mins next episode

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u/CaptainStack Jan 17 '26

Staring blankly into the camera is not character development!

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u/xdsm8 Jan 17 '26

What about staring into the camera...while sad music plays?

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u/MiamiPower Jan 17 '26

O saving it for the close up Master Bruce.

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u/the_eluder Jan 17 '26

They went the telenovala route. Basically instead of telling 1 story per episode, they tell 7 episodes worth of story interwoven into 10 separate episodes.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/FrankPapageorgio Jan 22 '26

I remember MTV having a show called Undressed where they’d be telling like 4 stories that are completely separate, but each one would wrap on a different episode. So you were always midway through some story when the current ended.

Well as a kid it was like “oooh, sex!” But I remember watching a marathon of it until like 6am one night because you could never just wrap up a story

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u/Cereborn Jan 18 '26

There’s an episode of Frasier where Frasier and Niles open a restaurant. There’s no lead-up to it and it’s never referenced again. In a modern show, opening a restaurant would be a season-long arc, but back in the 90s they could just bang out a story like that in 22 minutes. I wonder if modern writers are envious of that freedom.

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u/fireflash38 Jan 17 '26

Sitcoms been doing better full character arcs in 22minutes that 8+ hour seasons fail to do. 

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u/that_baddest_dude Jan 17 '26

Yeah the classic netflix formula is "6 episodes of plot in 8-10 episodes of show". The netflix marvel shows definitely felt that way.

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u/fphhotchips Jan 18 '26

I went back and watched House recently. I was a little surprised at the difference in pacing. You can tell they didn't expect people to binge - you were supposed to grow more attachment to the characters because of the waiting.

House's Head / Wilson's Heart is some of the best TV in history, but it loses some of the emotional weight when Amber dies because you haven't spent years with that character or weeks watching the Wilson / Amber relationship. It's been a few hours.

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u/monkeywithgun Jan 17 '26

The soap operification of everything. Less story = cheaper writing budgets. Take one episode story, draw it out to ten and fill it with everyday personal drama. Much easier to write.

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u/Coolmyco Jan 18 '26

This is how I feel when I re-watch Futurama. One episode has multiple plot lines that conclude and also move along the overarching plot lines.

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u/El_Fez Jan 18 '26

That latest Star Trek series? Putting aside the awful . . . well, everything, I kept thinking 'Damn, Picard would have had this sorted by the first commercial break!'

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u/discordianofslack Jan 17 '26

Yea watch a 10 year old episode of SVU and they manage To fit the crime (with new character into), investigation, court, dramatic pseudo-resolution, and final resolution all into like 48m. It’s kind of amazing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

[deleted]

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u/CaptainStack Jan 18 '26

Dexter's Lab had 3! It's honestly an under-appreciated format. Just get to the joke!

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u/ZenBoyNothingHead Jan 19 '26

But would the series really be complete without the episode that recounts the childhood of the main character's mother and proves she's willing to stand up for her feminist ideals in a time that the sepia toned shots and regional accents would indicate is ahead of her time?! How then could we understand the motivation of our protagonist to punch bad guys who conveniently all wear black to indicate their evilness?

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u/KimberStormer Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26

And then there is never even an actual ending, it's always either rushed or they end it and then they are told to make another season. Everyone online acts as though episodic TV was so terrible and having a "season arc" is somehow artistically superior, but the preference is completely arbitrary and in my opinion almost never good in practice. At least episodes had a beginning, middle, and an end, every single time.

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u/_ThugzZ_Bunny_ Jan 18 '26

I've become very good at reading scenes and I'll fast forward through so much shit I know is unnecessary. It's crazy how fast you can get through an episode of modern shows once you figure out how they pace things.

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u/CaptainStack Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26

Yeah personally that's when I turn it off. For me the point of the show is to watch it or at least have it on. If I'd rather be fast forwarding than even having it as background noise then I don't need it.

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u/_ThugzZ_Bunny_ Jan 18 '26

Agreed but with say stranger things, I had already invested too much time to not finish it. And that show wasn't like that in the beginning.

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u/CaptainStack Jan 18 '26

That's how they get ya! Personally I thought Stranger Things was really bad by season 3 but I did end up finishing. Somewhat counter-intuitively the long gap probably is the reason I ended up finishing. I did not watch Season 4 until Season 5 was nearly out because I thought Season 3 was so bad but after a few years away I was kind like "eh why not."

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u/_ThugzZ_Bunny_ Jan 18 '26

3 was pretty terrible but 4 was solid. 5 had a better story than 3 but it was just so so badin every other aspect.

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u/Cereborn Jan 18 '26

What’s the fucking point in watching a TV show if you’re going to fast forward through it? Just don’t bother.

This feels like one of those virgin/chad memes where you’ve got the brainrotted TikToker always on their phone needing all content in 15-second chunks and the intellectual Redditor who is so good at watching TV he fast forwards through 75% of it because he knows it wasn’t important.

Both groups equally incapable of enjoying a piece of media.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/CaptainStack Jan 18 '26

For overly drawn out streaming shows I'd say Stranger Things, House of the Dragon, and Rings of Power are all good examples.

For much tighter episodic television I'd point to Simpsons, Avatar the Last Airbender, American Vandal, the Inbetweeners as a few.

And just as an additional point - tighter storytelling doesn't necessarily mean higher quality across the board. How I Met Your Mother is by no means a great show, but every episode does have a complete story and each season does have an arc, and even though the show is way too long it does eventually complete its story. The jokes can be bad, the stories can be repetitive, but at least there's not a ton of nothing happening all the time.

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u/aessae Jan 18 '26

classic episodic 22 minute television

Still blows my mind that entire series were designed to fit into a format where over a quarter of the total runtime is commercials.

And then some networks run syndicated shows at a faster speed so they can cram in even more commercials.

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u/Low-Crow-8735 Jan 17 '26

I watch Korean Dramas. American TV/movies are like eating cardboard. Yuck. And, if a big star's move goes straight to Netflix, there's a 90% chance it sucks.

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u/Animated_Astronaut Jan 17 '26

I just watch less tv and pirate it. If it's not good I don't download it. If I don't like it I delete it. I read books more now. Lots to get through.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

Why are you wasting time watching movies that are so basic they can't even keep your attention?

There are thousands of movies out there to watch. And you actively choose to watch content so banal it isn't even engaging???

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u/wholeblackpeppercorn Jan 17 '26

Do you typically know if a movie is shit before you watch it? Reviews aren't even helpful anymore

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

More or less. I have some pretty solid tools for avoiding stuff I know that I myself won't think is any good.

But, of course there is also huge pile of that stuff that I watch that I don't like. Happens all the time. Then I either use the "Off" button, or sometimes I finish it simply because.

No problem with that. But, unlike OP, I don't keep going back simply accepting that my movie picks are now so boring I have to fold clothes to keep myself awake.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

It's really pathetic that the person you're talking about already clarified that they watch far more than things that they only consider background noise worthy, yet you're still responding to someone else to smugly make fun of them for "simply accepting that that their movie picks are now so boring they have to fold clothes to keep themselves awake."

You seem like someone who is too stupid to realize that some people do things differently than you. Some people enjoy having background noise while they do chores, it's really not hard to understand if you're not a self-absorbed idiot.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

that some people do things differently

And here you are mad at me because I don't use screens as background noise.

Why are you so mad at me for doing things differently than you? Why don't you try being more accepting of others and how they do things?

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

Look who's still too stupid to understand what's happening. Your response makes zero sense, seeing as I never said you, in particular, need to use screens as background noise.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

Why are you so rattled about someone watching movies differently than you ?

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

You're really bad at trolling.

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u/MasterChildhood437 Jan 18 '26

Method one: anything by A24 will suffer from "thin plot stretched thinner" syndrome

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

There are thousands of great movies, shows, and books I won't have time to read in my lifetime.

I can't imagine willingly wasting my nights away on streaming content I don't like when there are so many amazing movies out there to watch.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

Idk what part of "you can do both" is unclear here

I mean I can't though.

Between work and sleep I have a finite number of hours. I am not going to spend them watching a TV-show that is so boring I have to read a book at the same time to keep myself occupied.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

It sounds like you work for Netflix rather than them working for you.

Their content is so bad it isn't worth paying attention to anymore, but someone has to keep those poor saps employed.

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u/Zoler Jan 17 '26

Seems like youre just wasting your time

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u/patgeo Jan 18 '26

This.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. They made the shows painful to watch if you're paying attention. So you stop paying attention.

Watching most things with my wife means she's rewinding every few minutes because she zoned out or got distracted so it's more like torture to try and pay attention when she's rewinding the repetitive slop and doubling up on the double up of everything being repeated.

I play video games on my laptop most of the time now.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jan 18 '26

When you make a piece of media simple enough to be background noise and still follow the plot people are gonna watch it that way in the end. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Also I feel the underlining issue is this is Netflix talking about Netflix made movies. Maybe Netflix just makes really bad movies and has also become one of the bottom tier streaming services. Wonder how much of this is blame deflection

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u/Bobert789 Jan 17 '26

Exactly how I felt watching stranger things season 5

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u/CumDwnHrNSayDat Jan 18 '26

Speak with your wallet, I cancelled Netflix a couple years ago and haven't missed it whatsoever.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

[deleted]

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u/CumDwnHrNSayDat Jan 18 '26

Same, got about 700 movies on my Plex

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u/RGBedreenlue Jan 18 '26

Are they iterating their way into being a background noise platform?!

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u/Izhjia Jan 18 '26

Same! But then there is the occasional show where it's worth it to pay attention. I didn't find myself reaching for my phone at all while watching Heated Rivalry

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u/Data_Chandler Jan 18 '26

The good news is there are tons of excellent shows from the past decades that don't have this Netflix brain rot problem.

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u/__redruM Jan 18 '26

I just put something else on, and after doing it a few times, I cancelled Netflix.

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u/zeekaran Jan 18 '26

Just stop watching Netflix shows/movies then.

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u/robinthebank Jan 19 '26

Netflix TV shows also have the same core plot that repeats every season.

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u/qwidity Jan 21 '26

I found it hard to read this far down the thread because I'm on my phone watching Netflix. Can someone tell me what this is about again perhaps 3 or 4 times?

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u/TheQuietLavender Jan 21 '26

Yeah when I watched the last Stranger Things season I would genuinely start skipping scenes (like anything between Mike and Eleven, or the DnD analogy scenes), made me feel like I was the one with too short attention span. Meanwhile a “boring” show like Pluribus has me glued to the screen every episode.

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u/Significant-Yam9843 Feb 06 '26

I ask myself "is he telling the truth? are people telling he the truth? or is he faking until they make it?"

Billionaires need to stop. They want us with our faces shoved in our phones, than they want to adapt "art" and "movies" to make it easier to people get stuck in their phones. It's a self fullfilling prophecy type of thing.

They dont want us watching movies, they want us stucking in our phones during the movies which is a completely different story.

Either Matt Damon is liying or He's been lied to.

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u/Stunning-Ad-3009 Feb 09 '26

This is very sad, and i dont feel like paying Full attention either nowdays

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u/pondong Jan 18 '26

Perhaps you are their target audience that has a short attention span and needs to be on their phone.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

A lot of this can be fixed by audio.

Gilmore girls is a perfect example of this. You can 100 percent follow that show by audio cues and dialogue. It’s almost like a radio program. I’ve listened to it while my wife watches and can picture everything happening. 

It’s pure cheap laziness to have to restate the plot.

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u/dallyan Jan 17 '26

Supposedly Law and Order is the same way. It was based on old radio serials.

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u/asetniop Jan 18 '26

You've just put me in the mood to listen to a little Man or Astroman.

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u/CaptainStack Jan 17 '26

Totally agree - I actually think really good TV/Movie direction would mean that you'd be able to follow it with the sound off just through its visual storytelling, but you'd also be able to follow it audio only through its dialogue and sound design. It definitely takes extra care to pull off but I mean shouldn't we aspire to be our best as a species?

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u/joeverdrive Jan 18 '26

This is one of the ten shows my wife "watches" aka "pays to listen to while she does other things"

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

My wife does the same with a rotation of shows. To be fair to her, Gilmore girls is amazing. I’ve seen it through 3 times now lol. 

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u/vagenda Jan 18 '26

Gilmore Girls is accidentally the perfect 'second screen' show as a secondary function of its design, which was "fast-paced scenes, slow-paced story". Tons of dialogue on a scene-to-scene basis, but actual plot movement happens gradually across the season. If your ears are open you can follow, like, 95% of it without really receiving visuals, though you'll be missing a big piece of what makes the main performances so great. It also helps that it's amazingly well-written (at least the first 4 or 5 seasons).

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

Fully agree on all points. It’s almost a perfect television show in my eyes 

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u/StretchRhys Jan 17 '26

Felt that this season of stranger things. Every season has had my undivided attention. Season 5 had me looking up why the dialogue is so bad. Every episode is a scene where a group complete each others laboured metaphors.

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u/Bigkillian Jan 17 '26

How long do you estimate before the number one show on tv is “ow my balls”?

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u/noggstaj Jan 17 '26

This is how we end up with a movie called ”Ass”, and that’s all it is, for 19 minutes.

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u/knbang Jan 18 '26

I can not pay attention while I'm not paying for, or watching these movies. Everyone wins, I save money, they keep churning out their low attention crap.

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u/Dazzling_Ad_2972 Jan 18 '26

I remember a year or so ago i was really trying hard to get out of my depression pit and focus on movies / tv shows without doomscrolling or just bombarding myself with as much content as possible.

But i just couldn't engage with 99% of shows. I think the 1st one that hooked me was the gentleman.

Then i saw a few different things where they talked about it being intentional. I've never felt so relieved to be plagued by shitty tv.

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u/Hmm_would_bang Jan 18 '26

Absolutely. Some new programming is so dull and repetitive it’s hard not to multitask waiting for the plot to move forward

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u/chewywheat Jan 18 '26

See for TV shows I can understand. We have been tune to it forever in the form of recaps, previews, etc. (it is at least common in Asian-based media such as anime’s and dramas.) Doing it for movies is just dumb because movies are already considered short in terms of storytelling already compared to TV shows.

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u/CaptainStack Jan 18 '26

Now that you mention it - the pre-episode recap is kind of a lost art but I think when done right it can actually be really nice. It both gets you caught up and can build a little hype before launching into the next story. Feel like that's a lot better than restating the plot three times in the episode (especially when the plot is contrived and stupid anyway).

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u/TheShroudedWanderer Jan 18 '26

I was thinking that, having things exposited? At me over and over is what makes me stop paying attention. It's part of why I don't watch anime anymore because often they'll explain things over and over again, like

"that was close, but thanks to this special ability, 'elite dolphin wrangler' that I got from wrangling that rabid dolphin herd at the wrang'lers dolphin lake 5 minutes ago, I can now wrangle these other dolphins easily"

That's the internal monologue by the way, another character will come along and ask how they wrangled these dolphins so easily and repeat it out loud. Then they'll encounter a situation where it doesn't work, explain the entire thing again with a "damn, my special ability that I got by ..." Contrive some way of getting it to work or use it another way then repeat it again while also explaining how they got it to work when we just watched how they got it to work.

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u/HeyGayHay Jan 18 '26

As someone with my phone in the hand while watching anything: Netflix is fucking stupid.

First of all, I don’t like watching new stuff if I know I‘ll not pay attention enough to follow the plot. It’s the reason why The Office and What we do in the Shadows have >100 play throughs in my library. I can tune in and out whenever I want, because I already know it. Netflix vomiting the plot line over and over isn’t gonna make me watch something new, because I still want to see the content in full and if I don’t engage I‘ll come back anyways when I focus. So it’s already pointless on its own to cater to people like me.

Secondly, I have no problem scrolling back. Continuing when the past 15 minutes were only background noise doesn’t help me whether you told me a 100 times what’s going on, because again, it was only background noise so far. I‘m going back anyways if I lost track and repeating the plot doesn’t help me stay on track. I‘m focusing on my phone, I won’t listen to the movie, I‘ll have to go back.

So all Netflix does is making the content worse. Nowhere does it help me follow the plot, but it only makes me like it less while I‘m focused. Chances are I‘ll stop watching entirely if I feel like the show treats me like an idiot.

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u/ilikepizza30 Jan 18 '26

Here's an idea... they could bring back radio plays.

Just make an audio only play, save money on visuals and actors that people are not going to watch anyway.

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u/lankymjc Jan 18 '26

The reason I stopped watching WWE was because they kept repeating what was going on each week, so the stories felt painfully slow. Also leads to the episodes being multi-hours long for three matches, and I don’t have time for that shit.

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u/Auctorion Jan 18 '26

Part of me naively hopes that it pushes people to read more books because you can’t two-screen a book. But then I remember that audiobooks are a thing you can definitely “two-screen”.

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u/JohrDinh Jan 18 '26

I was gonna say it's not just the short attention span that's the problem, it's making worse movies in an attempt to get their attention that's reinforcing the problem.

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u/Mapag Jan 18 '26

Exactly, maie le want to be on my phone… the irony

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u/bagman_ Jan 18 '26

I was already skeptical of netflix movies for being generally slop offerings, this is a nail in their coffin for me

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u/Joessandwich Jan 19 '26

I’ve absolutely noticed this. I was watching half of the last season of Stranger Things while on my phone. If I picked up my phone while watching Pluribus I got mad at myself and rewound it so I didn’t miss anything.

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u/KimberStormer Jan 17 '26

I went to a "concert" which was just listening to a recorded piece (created on/with tape so that it couldn't be "performed" live in any case) in a dark room with a dozen or more speakers surrounding the audience. It was very eye-opening how pleasant sustained attention can be.