Featured Image Credit: Arturo Holmes / Staff via Getty
It's time to accept that we've broken our brains, constantly scrolling and swiping as we can't concentrate on a single subject for a few minutes – let alone sitting through a three-hour Avatar movie. As phones have gotten smaller, and then bigger, and always more powerful, they've become pint-sized computers in our pockets.
We've come a long way from the chonky days of the Nokia 3330, and with better internet connections now spanning the globe with Starlink, it's possible to stream whole movies at the press of a button. Whether that be up a mountain, flying on planes, or even diving deep in the ocean, it's almost possible to watch your favorite shows and movies wherever you are.
That's all well and good for keeping us entertained on long flights or the morning commute, but as James Cameron has angrily declared about his movies, you don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars making a movie just for it to be watched on an iPhone.
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More than this, others are glued to their phones as they watch from home, with even the most bombastic action movies struggling to keep our attention as we scroll through TikTok.
This doesn't seem to bother Netflix, with rumors that the streaming giant effectively 'dumbs down' its original movies because it knows it won't have the full attention of its audience.
There have been recent complaints about what Netflix will do with some of the world's biggest IPs, as the looming Warner Bros. Discovery deal would likely upend theatrical releases in favor of streaming from home.
Leonardo DiCaprio isn't the only Oscar-winning actor who's been painting Netflix in an unfavorable light, with Matt Damon inadvertently throwing the media Goliath under the bus as he promotes The Rip.
In 2025, an essay published in n+1 mag picked up the rumor that Netflix hires writers specifically to appeal to 'casual' viewers who aren't paying attention, with Will Tavlin saying this is proven by characters who "announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this programme on in the background can follow along."
Speaking to Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Damon pretty much confirmed this as he revealed Netflix's inner-workings.
The Good Will Hunting actor explained: "The standard way to make an action movie, we learnt [years ago], is you usually have three set pieces.
“One in the first act, one in the second, one in the third. You spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That’s your finale."
"[Netflix] are like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes? We want people to stay’."
Quoting the movie overlord, Damon continued: "‘And 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’."
Seeing an obvious problem with how this could affect Hollywood, Damon admitted: "It’s really going to start to infringe on telling stories."
The Rip co-star Ben Affleck chimed in before Netflix came to hunt them down, adding: "But then you look at Adolescence and it didn’t do any of that sh*t. And it’s f**king great."
Even if not every Netflix production is aimed at the casual viewer, Damon maintains that the likes of Adolescence are becoming outliers: "That feels like more the exception though."
Affleck somewhat agreed when he concluded: "My feeling is that it demonstrates that you don’t need to do any of that sh*t."
There's been a lot of talk about Netflix bending to so-called 'second-screen viewers’ who have phones in their foreground and a streaming service in the background, and while it's never confirmed this as gospel, Affleck and Damon don't do much to dispel these grumbles.
