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Tag: Leave the World Behind

  • The 8 Biggest Takeaways From Netflix’s Latest Ratings Dump

    The 8 Biggest Takeaways From Netflix’s Latest Ratings Dump

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    The Crown; One Piece.
    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Netflix

    Another six months, another Netflix data blast — this time dumped unceremoniously in a blog post on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend. Still, more information is better than no information, and the streamer’s second “What We Watched” engagement report, compiling views between last July and December 2023, is its latest officially zoomed-out picture of how Netflix movies and TV shows are doing — despite the shortcomings of crunching the numbers in aggregate on a spreadsheet that, combined, is nearly 16,000 rows long.

    The biggest movie of the back half of 2023 wasn’t a major awards contender nor a bombastic blockbuster — it was an adaptation of Leave the World Behind, which despite an apocalyptic premise often feels more like a stage play than it does a feature film. And the biggest single season of TV wasn’t buzzy awards bait or even one of a revived catalogue hit like Suits — it was an American-produced, live-action adaptation of a Japanese comic full of superpowered pirate antics and snot-nosed crying. Both were notable titles, to be sure, but it would have been hard to predict that either of them would wind up as chart-toppers.

    One new wrinkle in the new report: It’s now accounting for a title’s runtime, incorporating it into a “views” stat (time spent watching divided by a title’s length). This evens the field somewhat between movies and TV shows, something that Kasey Moore, founder of the pioneering tracking site What’s on Netflix, finds useful. “Incorporating the new views metric highlights the two purposes of movies and series in my eyes,” he tells Vulture. “TV shows still suck up the majority of viewing hours, but lots of people do come in for the movies, contrary to popular belief.” Moore was also struck by the continued popularity of children’s programming on Netflix. “So much of the top 100 (views or viewing hours) are family, kids, and animated titles,” he says, noting that the most popular titles are from outside studios such as DreamWorks, Illumination, Moonbug, and Nickelodeon, “which must be a source of concern.”

    Moore also noticed how the premiere of a new season of a show brings new attention to past installments of the series. “When new seasons of Sweet Magnolias and Virgin River both released, it saw meaningful bumps in those earlier seasons. You can see it, too, with Squid Game: The Challenge giving a bump to Squid Game.”

    With considerations like those in mind, we’ve combed through the sheet and pulled out the eight most noteworthy highlights therein.

    Maybe all you really need to engineer a global hit on Netflix is Julia Roberts and an argument for physical media. But even accounting for her star wattage, Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind, which topped the second half of the year’s film charts in just three weeks (it was released December 8), is a curious worldwide hit. (The last movie Esmail directed made less than $20,000 at the box office.) Consider the three runners-up that its 121 million views eclipsed: Gal Gadot’s blockbuster Heart of Stone (109.6 million views across more than 20 weeks), a host of family-friendly fare including Adam Sandler’s Leo (96 million views in 40 days), and the dystopian Spanish-refugee saga Nowhere (86.2 million views in over 16 weeks).

    The movie that beat those movies is an anti-blockbuster that — some shocking imagery and set pieces aside — remains a mostly quiet adaptation of a mostly quiet book that never escapes the Long Island suburbs. In some ways it feels closer to The Killer or May December than a traditionally explosive title like Zack Snyder’s first Rebel Moon entry, which debuted December 21 and by the end of the year had not yet beaten longtime Netflix library title Paw Patrol: The Movie.

    One Piece, based on Eiichiro Oda’s long-running manga, notched 71.6 million views globally — almost 20 million more than the runner-up, Germany’s Dear Child. Netflix’s track record with live-action adaptations is spotty at best (Cowboy Bebop’s second-week viewership fell like a rock and it was swiftly canceled), but it’s still cultivated an anime fanbase with high-profile legacy acquisitions like Pokémon and Neon Genesis Evangelion, as well as new simulcasts like Vinland Saga — to say nothing of the 41(!) separate batches of licensed One Piece anime episodes on the platform that added up to 50 million views globally in the second half of 2023. Those numbers are linked; the question going forward will be what Netflix can do with a Japanese title not named One Piece.

    One of the first big moves Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos made on the feature-film front was signing Adam Sandler to a multi-picture deal in 2014. A decade later, that pact is still bearing fruit: Two of the Sandman’s movies — the animated Leo (96 million views) and the teen comedy You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (60.6 million views) — ranked among the streamer’s 15 biggest films in the second half of 2023. But Sandler’s value is not just in his new material. Three other Netflix-produced movies featuring the former SNL legend (2019’s Murder Mystery and its spring 2023 sequel, as well as 2020’s Hubie Halloween) managed to draw more than 10 million views years after their releases, as did both of Sandler’s Grown Ups movies. And proving once again that critical acclaim and audience taste aren’t always in sync, some of Sandler’s more acclaimed roles didn’t do quite as well: Uncut Gems notched a relatively modest 3.1 million views during the report period, while Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) managed a mere 900,000 views. On the other hand, both did better than the critically panned Sandy Wexler (600,000 views).

    Last month, a New York Times story about new Netflix film chief Dan Lin carried a rather ominous headline for fans of the streamer’s more prestige plays, warning its new strategy was “more about the audience, less about auteurs.” If that’s the case, it’s quite possible Lin could be reacting to the underwhelming performance of some of Netflix’s most acclaimed films last fall. For instance, despite near-universal raves for Colman Domingo and Rustin, the film generated a meager 2.6 million views during its first two months on the platform. The Todd Haynes–directed May December did better, but its 6.8 million views doesn’t even place it (or Rustin) among Netflix’s top 400 (that’s not a typo) movie titles during the second half of 2023.

    And while the much more high-profile Maestro came out too late in the year (December 20) to get a fair read on its overall audience, Bradley Cooper’s opus never once landed in Netflix’s weekly top ten lists, and its overall audience during the last 11 days of the year — 6.7 million views — suggests that the film did not go on to become a blockbuster once its seven Oscar nominations were announced in January. By comparison, the Annette Bening/Jodi Foster team-up Nyad, with 16.3 million views (and a two-week run on Netflix’s global top-ten list in September) was a relative smash. But even it ended up with far fewer views than Love Is in the Air, a Hallmark-style rom-com from Australia (tagline: “When skies clear, hope shines through”) that tallied up an impressive 27.3 million views — and likely was produced at a fraction of the cost of those other movies.

    Matt Rife and Shane Gillis might not be universally beloved by comedy critics, but they’re very popular with Netflix subscribers. Despite coming out late in the year, Rife’s November release Natural Selection generated 12.7 million views, making it one of the year’s biggest comedy specials on the streamer, while Gillis’s Beautiful Dogs wasn’t too far behind, with 12 million views (though, since it came out September 5, it had more time to build an audience). Tom Segura’s Sledgehammer, released in July, was another comedy over-performer, generating 11.8 million views.

    But in another example of how much timing matters when looking at Netflix’s engagement report, consider the performance of Dave Chappelle’s last special, The Dreamer. It dropped on the very last day of 2023, giving it very little time to generate views that count toward the semi-annual rankings. It nonetheless managed a solid 2.2 million views during that 24-hour frame. But per Netflix’s weekly top-ten lists, the special would go on to amass at least 12.8 million more views during its first two full weeks on the platform, for a total of at least 15 million views — bigger than the specials from Rife and Gillis. Those numbers might explain why Netflix execs keep making deals with Chapelle, despite his fondness for making anti-trans remarks during his sets.

    The sixth and final season of The Crown did not go out with a bang: It generated a modest 25.2 million views in Netflix’s new engagement report, which is slightly less than season one of Young Sheldon (26.1 million) generated, despite not being available in every Netflix territory and it not landing on Netflix U.S. until late November (it had been on the platform in smaller countries before then). To be fair, The Crown released its final season in two batches, giving its final episodes just a few weeks to amass eyeballs. But the show also disappeared from Netflix’s global top ten by early January 2024, hinting the show didn’t exactly stay on fire once the window for this engagement report closed. No doubt there will be a long tail for The Crown as some viewers finally catch up and some die-hard royalists rewatch. But the intensity of audience interest that greeted past seasons of the show definitely seemed to cool as things wrapped up.

    In a sign that people really, really love Wednesday, the fall 2022 release generated a total of 98.4 million views in 2023 — including 23.9 million views just in the second half of the year. Needless to say, that’s a bigger audience than 90 percent of Netflix’s original scripted series, including ones which actually premiered during the last six months of 2023. Case in point: Big Mouth, which in its early years felt like one of the hottest shows on Netflix, amassed a surprisingly small 8.5 million views for its seventh season, which dropped in October. The fact that year-old episodes of Wednesday drew three times as many views as brand-new installments of Big Mouth probably explains why the latter show will debut its final season next year.

    What’s on Netflix has helpfully added up viewing data from both of Netflix’s 2023 engagement reports, allowing for a better look at how titles performed for the full year. And while Leave the World Behind remains popular no matter how you look at it, it’s clear that for Netflix, J.Lo really is mother: Her May 2023 release The Mother ended up generating a phenomenal 153.7 million views for the full year (25.5 million of which came in the second half of 2023), making it the biggest title on the streamer last year. It was followed by Extraction 2 (151.7 million) and Murder Mystery 2 (129.7 million) as the most popular movies for all of 2023.

    But once again, the weirdness of how Netflix releases data means you need to be careful in drawing conclusions about a title’s overall popularity. While Mother was the No. 1 movie of 2023 for Netflix, lots of people waited until January (or later) to catch Leave the World Behind, allowing it to eventually pass Mother on Netflix’s top-ten movies of all time list.

    In terms of series, while One Piece ruled the second half of 2023, it pales next to several other releases from earlier in the year. The Night Agent, for example, snagged 99.2 million views last spring, then tacked on another 19 million last summer and fall for an annual total of 118.2 million views — by far Netflix’s biggest series last year. It’s followed by Wednesday (98.4 million for the year) and Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (89.6 million). One Piece is certainly still generating views, of course, and its tally will jump once the next engagement report comes out. But it’s unlikely to catch Night Agent or even Wednesday.

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    Josef Adalian,Eric Vilas-Boas

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  • Let's Break Down All the 'Leave the World Behind' Easter Eggs We Can Find

    Let's Break Down All the 'Leave the World Behind' Easter Eggs We Can Find

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    Throughout the entirety of Leave the World Behind, viewers get the feeling that there’s some kind of ungraspable hidden meaning just below the surface. The nailbiting journey to crack this mystery, to understand what terrible catastrophe is impacting these characters’ world, is heightened by writer/director Sam Esmail’s liberal use of smaller mysteries throughout.

    Leave the World Behind is full of easter eggs and sly references that reinforce the film’s messages and overall tone of mystery and disaster.

    ***Spoilers for Leave the World Behind ahead***

    General symbolism

    The term “easter egg” refers to a hidden or otherwise obscure message in media, dropped as a little gift to those with a deeper knowledge of the content or genre. The phrase has become pretty inflated over the years, and lots of people use it to refer to, say, general symbolism, of which this movie has a ton. Personally, I wouldn’t consider something like the mystery of the deer to be an easter egg, but I know some feel different.

    I also wouldn’t consider this a true easter egg, but there’s some cool stuff being done with visual symbolism in the movie that viewers might easily miss. (There are also numerous direct references and broader homages to iconic cinematic masters of suspense throughout.)

    In Leave the World Behind, the Sandford family takes a last-minute vacation to a rental house on Long Island. The upscale house is filled with large art pieces—which actually change throughout the film to reflect what’s happening. The large wall art in the house’s living room becomes more chaotic as time goes on. Similarly, there’s a mural in the bedroom depicting a seascape, with the waves growing larger and choppier as the action of the movie gets more frenzied.

    Scroll through the photos below to see for yourself:

    In Leave The World Behind (2023), the large wall painting changes over the course of the movie to symbolise the increasing chaos and disorder, while the bedroom mural changing represents the impending peril the characters are experiencing and how overwhelmed they’re becoming.
    byu/Sad_Bat_9059 inMovieDetails

    A piece of symbolism and a direct reference I would definitely consider an easter egg is the name of the ship that runs aground when the Sandfords are at the beach. The ship’s name is prominently displayed without comment. But those in the know would have remembered the White Lion was also the name of the ship that brought the first African slaves to the United States. America’s (and humanity’s) penchant for racist ugliness is a core theme in the film.

    Beachgoers run as a large ship comes dangerously close to shore.
    (Netflix)

    Pop culture references

    There are a ton of pop culture references in Leave the World Behind, most notably Rose Sandford’s (Farrah Mackenzie) obsession with Friends. The West Wing and Donnie Darko also get shoutouts. I wouldn’t consider any of these actual easter eggs, but they do offer commentary on how we use pop culture to cope during a disaster, as we have all experienced firsthand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Edging closer to real easter egg territory, some of the clothing worn by characters offers an unspoken look at their personalities. Ethan Hawke’s character Clay is an aging professor who clearly sees his own identity as a guy who “gets it.” He’s a “good guy,” a feminist, a cool, hip Gen X-er, as perfectly summed up by his Bikini Kill t-shirt, referencing the legendary riot grrrl pioneers.

    Clay’s need to put that identity on display belies its fragility, though, as we see with his refusal to think beyond a language barrier to help a woman in need, and Ruth’s insistence that he can’t have a conversation with her without mentally sexualizing her.

    Clay’s children also wear their personalities on their clothing. Rose’s NASA shirt reflects her desire for escapism and Archie (Charlie Evans) wears a t-shirt by Obey Clothing, which takes themes and images from John Carpenter’s film They Live—a movie that’s all about secret messages in media used to subdue the general population and the extremely shady behaviors of the social elite.

    While not a pop culture reference—just culture culture, or political/historical culture—one of my favorite little not-so-subtle easter eggs was when the Sandfords’ car radio is briefly set to 1619, an undoubtable reference to Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project, which reframes the concept of American history around its inextricable relationship with slavery.

    There are also some literary easter eggs in the movie. At the very start of the movie, as Clay wakes up to find his wife packing for their inexplicably sudden vacation, eagle-eyed viewers might note that the book on Amanda’s nightstand is Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, which is all about “thinking without thinking”—the snap judgments and split-second decisions we make without realizing all the information we’ve processed to make those choices.

    A shared universe

    Speaking of books, Amanda’s vacation read, as seen on her nightstand later in the film, is a book titled “Beach Towel” by Otto Irving, a character from Mr. Robot, which was created by Leave the World Behind’s writer and director Sam Esmail.

    For those wondering: Beach Towel – A Novel
    by inMrRobot

    That’s just one hint that these two pieces of media exist in a shared universe. When we meet Kevin Bacon’s prepper character, he’s loading up his pickup truck, which contains a number of large yellow “E Corp” containers, referencing the giant evil corporation at the center of Mr. Robot. An E Corp laptop can also be seen in the house’s kitchen at one point. And a discussion of hackers nearly causing a meltdown at a power plant is a direct reference to the show.

    What easter eggs did you find in Leave the World Behind that weren’t mentioned here? Let us know in the comments!

    (featured image: Netflix)

    Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

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    Vivian Kane

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  • On the Grinch Finally Being Vindicated For His Misanthropy

    On the Grinch Finally Being Vindicated For His Misanthropy

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    In the past couple of years, some variation on a meme that goes, “The older I get, the more I understand why the Grinch wanted to live alone with his dog” has cropped up every Christmas. This sudden “empathy” for the green creature is not only an about-face from perceptions past, but a clear sign that humanity has become so insufferable that there’s finally some vindication for misanthropes and why they might be “that way.” Which is to say, contemptuous of all human contact. Of course, the Whos aren’t human, but, for the Grinch’s purposes of hiding in a “cozy” (or heinous, as the Grinch calls it) lair on Mount Crumpit, they’re equivalent enough for inspiring his hikikomori existence. 

    Although it used to be the case that the Grinch was a prime example of how not to be, he has become something of a hero to the masses. Particularly the post-Covid masses who, of late, might be missing the excuse that lockdowns gave to avoid all social contact (oh, how quickly people can romanticize something they hated once it’s in the past). Despite the Grinch not being anything remotely human, he has, before this recent meme, typically been held up as an exemplar of what humans should avoid “aspiring to” at all costs. In fact, his trusty dog, Max, is the one whose heart seems big enough for the both of them, what with the Grinch’s heart being “two sizes too small.” And, besides, how could it not be when he was simply reflecting back the love he received. Or rather, did not. At least according to the 2000 version of the film, directed by Ron Howard. 

    In contrast to the original (and classic) animated film (you know, the one Kevin McCallister [Macaulay Culkin] watches in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York), the live action edition presents the (formerly) villainous (turned heroic) Grinch with a backstory that “explains” his current state of curmudgeonliness. In effect, it set the precedent for the later ongoing trend of giving villains “origin stories” that (supposedly) shed light on how/why they became “evil” (e.g., Maleficent and the Joker). Except that the Grinch was never really evil, per se—or “rotten,” as the famed song about him likes to tout. He was simply a misanthrope. And, in 1957, when Dr. Seuss’ original publication, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, was released, there was nothing more menacing or “dangerous” to American society. By 2000, when Ron Howard’s adaptation (written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman), it seemed that was destined to remain true, as Bush conservatism took hold of the nation again. Taking even more hold after the 9/11 attacks of 2001. And so, to be a “grinch” a.k.a. people-hater was not exactly chic; instead, considered “unpatriotic.” A sign of being “off.” Worse still, one of the “enemies.” 

    But the Grinch suddenly falling into fashion at a time when misanthropy has arguably been more accepted and embraced than ever (largely thanks to the driving force that is the internet), well, that’s no coincidence. His moment to shine, as it were, has arrived in an era of extreme dissatisfaction with and mistrust in humanity as a whole. Hence, the resonance to more and more humans when they hear the Grinch utter, from the cold comfort of his cave, “I’ll tell ya Max, I don’t know why I ever leave this place. I’ve got all the company I’ll ever need right here.” He points to himself, and then proceeds to engage in a “conversation” wherein his words echo back to him from the walls. 

    The Grinch’s resentment of more “socially acceptable” misanthropes posing as jolly “givers” prompts him to seethe, “Talk about a recluse! [Santa] only comes out once a year and he never catches any flak for it! Probably lives up there to avoid the taxes.” And yet, in the end, the message of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is that you, too, can become a socially acceptable misanthrope. Soften yourself around the edges to become more palatable. Conform more willingly to the warm-and-fuzziness expected of you despite inhabiting a world so unapologetically cruel. Founded on a system that’s designed to harden you and make you immune to anything resembling empathy. And yet, that very system can continue to create docile soldiers by releasing content that has the type of self-awareness of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, which acknowledges that misanthropy is to be expected, to some degree, but that, in the end, we should all go back to loving our fellow man who fucks us over on a daily basis. 

    Even from the outset of Howard’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, there is an immediate foreshadowing of the Grinch’s eventual surrender to being “one with humanity.” Or “Whomanity,” if you prefer. That glimmer arrives when he says, with menace and malice in his voice, “I guess I could use a little…social interaction” just before going out to wreak undercover havoc on Whoville. But that line is ultimately designed to emphasize the idea that, yes, humans are social creatures who will wither and die on the vine of existence without enough socialization. And, in the Grinch’s case, he was really only made to feel so isolated because of the early ostracism he experienced as an “othered” child. Which is why, while on that undercover outing to wreak havoc, of course, even then, his “teddy bear stylings”  flicker in and out, as he ends up “saving” Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen, before she was Jenny Humphrey) after placing her in the mail sorter himself. It is only the Grinch’s true conscience, Max, who stops him by pulling violently on his cloak to keep him from leaving the mail room without rescuing her. So it is that the Grinch unwittingly stumbles upon someone who “believes in” him. Someone who, for the narrative’s sake, has to be a child…because they’re the only ones with a shred of enough innocence not to be so jaded. 

    Thus, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, like another beloved Christmas story, A Christmas Carol, wants to reinforce the trope that misanthropes aren’t all “bad,” they just need the right person (or scenario) to “draw them out.” The ultimate fallacy in that statement being that it’s bad to despise humans in the first place. But it’s become less and less taboo to do so in an open manner. Case in point, the recent adaptation of Leave the World Behind, during which Julia Roberts as Amanda Sandford declares from the outset of the film, “I fucking hate people.” By the end, however, she experiences her own kind of “Grinch transformation” when she tells Ruth (Myha’la), the girl she’s been “saddled with” for the end of the world, “I know I say I hate people, but I’d do anything to have them back.” 

    Thrust into her own extreme circumstances that force her heart to become “three sizes bigger” after it’s already too late for such revelations, Ruth is the one to inform her, “As awful as people might be, nothing’s gonna change the fact that we are all we’ve got.” But that’s really not true if you have a dog like the Grinch’s. As time goes on, and the meme about finally understanding the Grinch continues to hold water with more and more people (in short, as misanthropy becomes more “mainstream”), it bears remarking that the reason for such comprehension is that the “collective veil” regarding so-called humanity seems to keep being pulled further and further back to the point that, indeed, why wouldn’t we all want to hide in a cave by ourselves with a dog who loves and understands unconditionally? No matter how inherently rotten his owner might be.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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