Streaming platforms (Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video) have more money than God. The mind reels at what they could accomplish with all the cash at their disposal. They could cure world hunger. They could supply movie theaters with a plethora of movies. They could ensure artists like Eliza Hittman, Dee Rees, Mike Leigh, Karyn Kusama, and others never have to worry about getting their dream projects off the ground. Instead, they spend this tremendous influence on titles like Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser's Balls Up, a Brazil-set comedy that Amazon just dropped a trailer for this morning.
It looks bad, because of course it does, it's a 21st-century Peter Farrelly directorial effort. Watching Wahlberg and Hauser scream through endless dick jokes and gunfire calcified a reality that had always lurked under my nose. Streaming services had no greater ambition than cranking out monthly Xerox copies of Jay Leno and Pat Morita's Collision Course. This is what cinematic Hell looks like. An endless string of buddy cop/mismatched duo action comedies where everyone talks like Ryan Reynolds and all the action sequences are inert.
But why? Why is this the specific mold of streaming TV movies? Why are spy movies focused on mismatched buddy comedy duos the de facto mold of Netflix, Apple, and (especially) Amazon cinema? What have we done to deserve this Hell? And to quote a wise fish from SpongeBob SquarePants, "Why am I asking you all these questions?"
The Enduring Popularity of Buddy Comedies
The comedic potential of mismatched duos has long been a staple of art, so of course, it would prove a fixture of cinema. Abbott and Costello comedies, for instance, were the precursors to Lethal Weapon or Men in Black. Ditto all those Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies. Modern theatrical movies have also gotten lots of mileage out of this cinematic storytelling mold. Deadpool & Wolverine was 2024's biggest live-action movie because audiences couldn't get enough of Ryan Reynolds making gay panic jokes while Hugh Jackman rolled his eyes. Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Red One, and The Accountant 2 have all kept this trend alive in the 2020s.
But what about the specific mold of the streaming buddy action comedy? This mold is defined by the following films (among many others):
Back in Action
Ghosted
Balls Up
The Instigators
The Wrecking Crew
Heads of State
Wolfs
The Family Plan
The Pickup
The Union
Jackpot!
Playdate
Brothers
My Spy
Jesus Christ, what a collection of cinema.
A key pragmatic reason why streamers are making these movies is simply that theatrical movie studios largely dumped the mid-budget movie around 2014 and 2015. Titles like The Other Guys were deemed no longer viable to recieve $100+ million budgets and theatrical launchpads. Amazon, Netflix, and Apple, hungry for projects that could fill up their respective original film libraries, were more than happy to fill up that gap. 16 years ago, Balls Up probably would've been an August Sony/Columbia Pictures release.
Still, even back in 2008, Universal and Columbia weren't cranking these titles every month like Amazon is doing now. The ubiquity of these titles now is tied to streamers' mandates to flood the marketplace with "content." You don't need to market these titles for months on end and delicately make sure they each do well. You just throw them onto people's Amazon accounts, hope they take off. Plus, these titles are designed to be background noise while people fiddle on their phones and fold laundry. That's why Netflix allegedly asks its writers and directors to make sure exposition is constantly rehashed.
Why buddy action comedies and not, say, superhero movies, remakes of old musicals, or other vintage molds of crowdpleaser cinema? My guess is that the buddy action comedy (almost always told with an espionage twist) is just a lot more practical and easier to realize for these streamers. All the big superhero IPs are tied up at Warner Bros., Disney, and Sony. Apple and Netflix, meanwhile, don't have extensive libraries of old movies to reboot and imitate. Just redoing the Lethal Weapon formula ad nauseum is an easier way to create lots of new crowdpleaser entertainment within these confines. After all, these were always star-driven projects (Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, together at last!).
That makes them perfect for streamers looking for enticing tiles and thumbnails on their home page screen. Look! It's Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa standing together! It's easy to tell viewers exactly what they're getting into by making Heads of State or The Union.
Hollywood Loves Making Action Movies Because "Boys Rule"
Let's also not beat around the bush here: the buddy action comedy is perceived as more "viable" to make in gigantic quantities because Hollywood always prioritizes "boys movies". Obviously, gender is a societal construct. People identifying as any genre can like any movie. I know plenty of women and enby's (including me, a bimbo lady who adores Hard Target) who are master experts in the history of action cinema. However, the big film studios don't think like that. These are, after all, the executives who saw Elektra and Catwoman bombing as reason enough to abandon women-led superhero films. They think in very simplified, arcane terms. That means movies with explosions are "for boys". In an industry where Rapunzel gets retitled as Tangled so boys aren't "scared away," the perceived tastes of male-identifying audiences get prioritized every single time.
Amazon and other streamers will totally make "girly" romantic movies like Merv, Relationship Goals, or the two Your Christmas or Mine features. They, however, don't make them nearly as frequently. In just the last six months, Alan Ritchson & Kevin James, Jason Momoa & Dave Bautista, and Mark Wahlberg & LaKeith Stanfield have all headlined action movies that dropped on Amazon Prime Video. It's clear these kinds of titles are also popular with streamers because they can make companion pieces to popular TV shows. Amazon especially has become famous for delivering basically CBS+ shows like Reacher, Cross, The Terminal List, Jack Ryan, and more. Movies like The Wrecking Crew and Play Dirty are "perfect" to flash up as "play next" options on these platforms when people are done consuming Terminal List mush.
Combining Hollywood's tragically persistent male-focused ambitions in Hollywood with the desire of streamers to just crank out "content" endlessly means the marketplace is flooded with Temu Shane Black movies. The prevalence of these movies on Amazon Prime Video especially perversely fascinates me because this platform wasn't always emphasizing these kinds of movies.
You Either Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain
It's no surprise that jingoistic action fare like Alan Ritchson's War Machine are the M.O. of Netflix, a streamer that started its existence with The Ridiculous Six. As I noted back in 2020, though, Amazon's initial original film ambitions were artsier and grander. In that original piece, I lingered on a declaration from then-Vice President of Amazon Studios, Roy Price, that went:
"We look forward to expanding our production efforts into feature films. Our goal is to create close to 12 movies a year, with production starting later this year. Not only will we bring Prime Instant Video customers exciting, unique and exclusive films soon after a movie's theatrical run, but we hope this program will also benefit filmmakers, who too often struggle to mount fresh and daring stories that deserve an audience."
Price also emphasized in another interview that Amazon Studios would be making titles that were more Miramax and Annapurna than Disney. Initially, Amazon's cinematic forays reflected these ambitions. In its first three years of existence, Amazon Studios handled new films from Spike Lee, Park Chan-wook, Jim Jarmusch, Kenneth Lonergan, Asghar Farhadi, Gillian Robespierre, Lynne Ramsay, Paweł Pawlikowski, and Todd Haynes, among others. Acquiring Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in 2020 (when the original theatrical film was sent to streaming because of COVID-19), though, sent Amazon in a whole new direction. The floodgates were open for more commercial, traditional fare. Originally just acquiring titles like Coming 2 America and The Tomorrow War from other studios, Amazon has quickly created a pipeline to create monthly action movies in-house.
Only the occasional title from Orion Pictures (a label Amazon bought in 2022 with its MGM merger) reflects those initial grander cinematic aspirations. Rather than distributing movies that challenge conventions, Amazon MGM Studios (its new name since 2023) is creating works like Mercy that lionize cops surveilling citizens all day and night. The Handmaiden and its exciting depiction of lesbian heroes is too icky and gross. Paterson's nonchalant chronicling of working-class existence is similarly off-limits. Now Amazon's committed to Red One and the absolute worst buddy action comedies you've ever seen. Oh, and heroic portrayals of cops, the CIA, and the FBI.
Why try? Why make something new or excitingly unpredictable? These are the declarations streamers often build their works on. These TV movies are derivative projects feeling as algorithmically driven as you'd expect from something with the Amazon brand name stamped on it. Buddy action comedies are the cinematic mold that Netflix, Apple, and especially Amazon have seized upon as a realm they can produce in mass quantities to keep people glued to their couches. Next month's Balls Up isn't the first example of this phenomenon, and it won't be the last. To be clear, the problem isn't every movie needs to be weighty or visually transgressive. The issue is streamers cranking out the laziest versions of buddy action comedy movies. These features can be enjoyable! Mightily so!
However, from the limp lighting in these productions to the stale writing to the inert action sequences, these buddy action comedies radiate mechanical laziness. This is the future streaming platforms want. They could bankroll more challenging projects that let artists express unique and vital visions. But they won't. Why would rich people do anything useful? Instead, Amazon and Netflix's vision of "peak cinema" is Mark Wahlberg's firing a gun and screaming profanities in features people won't remember the moment the credits begin rolling. So many streaming buddy action comedies, so little artistry or even just fun to speak of.
No comments:
Post a Comment