Matt Damon has claimed that Netflix pushes directors to reiterate the plot for viewers who are watching while on their phones.
The actor has just released new action film The Rip on the streaming platform, which sees him reunite with frequent collaborator Ben Affleck.
During an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast alongside his co-star, Damon spoke about collaborating with Netflix, saying they want bigger action earlier in such films, and push for the plot to be repeated to accommodate attention spans.
“The standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you usually have three set pieces,” he said. “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.
“And now they’re like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes? We want people to stay tuned in. 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.’”
Affleck went on to praise Netflix series Adolescence, which became a huge success last year, and the fact that it “didn’t do any of that shit”.
“And it’s fucking great,” he added. “And it’s dark too. It’s tragic and intense. [It’s about] this guy who finds out his kid is accused of murder. There are long shots of the back of their heads. They get in the car, nobody says anything.”
Damon said the series was “so masterfully made that it feels like the exception”, his co-star suggesting it “demonstrates that you don’t need to do any of that shit”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Damon suggested that some people who have been cancelled would prefer prison to being publicly shunned.
After Rogan argued that one perceived misstep is “exaggerated to the fullest extent” and a person is “cast out of civilisation for life”, Damon responded: “In perpetuity. Because I bet some of those people would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever, and then come out and say, ‘I paid my debt. Like, we’re done. Like, can we be done?’
“The thing about that getting kind of excoriated, publicly like that, it just never ends. And it’s the first thing that… you know, it just will follow you to the grave.”
The actor drew backlash a few years ago after revealing in an interview that he stopped using the F-slur “months ago” after his daughter gave him a “treatise” on “how that word is dangerous”. He later shared in a statement that he had never used the word in his “personal life” and did not “use slurs of any kind”.