Category Archives: The Deep End

In-depth think-pieces about Movies, TV, and Games

In the Online Streaming War, Will the Machines Win?

Television, , , ,
Santa Clarita Diet, Netflix

This weekend, one of my favorite shows on Netflix bit the dust. Victor Fresco’s gleefully bizarre “Santa Clarita Diet,” about an undead realtor and her family murdering bad folks to keep her fed, was one of the strangest and most stylistically unique shows around. It was consistently hilarious in the way that audiences often appreciate, yet fail to properly value in a show until it’s ostensibly gone (see also: the fan outcry when the under-the-radar Brooklyn 9-9 was cancelled).

The cancellation was especially shocking, not just because the show ended on a major cliffhanger, but because nobody really knew it was in danger. We couldn’t, because Netflix famously does not share viewership numbers with anybody, even the people who actually create the shows. It’s easy to see why Netflix keeps this information close to the vest; if nobody knows how popular their shows actually are, then they can attract subscribers based on the perception that they have great, popular content. They don’t have to worry about failure narratives when their shows’ numbers start to dip the way that a series like The Walking Dead does.

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Is Netflix Saving Or Destroying Smart Cinema?

Movies

If you enjoy your studio films with a side of thoughtfulness, then you might want to start worrying. Last year, Warner Bros. stated that it wanted to move away from “auteur” directors who demand such things as final cut. Perhaps they were already worried about the release of Blade Runner 2049, which they distributed in the US. After that film’s inevitable box office failure (how they expected to profit on a $150 million budget with a sequel to a 35-year-old cult hit is beyond me), director Denis Villeneuve didn’t sound especially enthusiastic about the future either. “Let’s just say it would not be a good idea for me to make a movie like that twice,” he told The Telegraph. “It was only when I came out that I realized we had made a monster.”

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The Wild, Wonderful, and Extraordinarily Convoluted World of Digital Movie Ownership

Movies, Television

Depending on who you ask, we’re either in the beginning of a transition to a fully-digital media environment, or we’re already there. Services like Netflix and Spotify have given users access to an unprecedented array of entertainment options, and platforms like iTunes and Steam have made true digital ownership a modern reality. However, when it comes to digital ownership of films and television, no one platform has truly taken hold. There are dozens of storefronts, such as iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, Sony, and Vudu. But no store’s library is universally accessible from all devices, meaning digital owners often find themselves purchasing only on the storefront that is most convenient for them, or finding their libraries stretched out over a bunch of segregated storefronts.

In past years, the closest thing to a solution has been the Ultraviolet platform. While users can play back their movies and TV shows on Ultraviolet if they choose to do so, it’s true utility is in interconnecting various services and storefronts so that media is shared throughout. If somebody purchases a blu-ray with a digital copy or buys a movie on Vudu, that media will be shared with a linked Ultraviolet account which then redeems the same movie on studio’s storefronts, as well as other third party streaming services like (the now-defunct) Flixster. Even better, multiple Ultraviolet users can join together as a “family,” meaning all of their media is shared with each other across all platforms.

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Open-World Fatigue and the Importance of Release Dates

Video Games

Speaking purely in terms of entertainment, the first few months of 2017 have been spectacular. Peak TV has not let up one bit, with promising newcomers like Legion joining continuing successes like The Americans. Movies, especially more “popular” releases like Get Out, Logan, John Wick 2, and Lego Batman, have been exceedingly great.. But both still pale in comparison to the gaming landscape, which has seen a historically excellent slate of games, right in the middle of a period notorious for being a slow.

I already wrote about my love for Resident Evil 7, a game that is beginning to get left behind in the larger cultural conversation. February saw the release of Horizon: Zero Dawn, one of the greatest Playstation exclusives in Sony’s history and an enormous step forward for developer Guerrilla Games. But even that title, a massive Ubisoft-esque open world action game, was shortly eclipsed by the hype surrounding Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game that was universally hailed as an instant classic and one of the very best games ever made a full week before it even released.

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Does Final Fantasy XV’s Supplemental Material Go Too Far?

Video Games

In the weeks since i started playing Final Fantasy XV, I’ve had a number of conversations with fellow players. What did you think of the story? Did you like the characters? Were you okay with the switch to real-time combat? Why does Prompto take photos of his friends getting mauled by exotic beasts? But one question that keeps coming up is whether or not somebody watched the game’s supplementary materials: the CGI movie Kingsglaive, and the anime Brotherhood. Both of these help fill out the world, delving into lore and backstories that further the player’s understanding of the game. They vary in quality (Brotherhood is very good, Kingsglaive is merely passable), but are instrumental in understanding a few of the game’s major plot points.

On the one hand, the release of supplemental entertainment outside of the original work’s medium is not a new phenomenon. The print industry, for example, frequently churns out books meant to expand on the worlds of popular movie, TV, and video game properties. The Star Wars Expanded Universe, which was abandoned with the release of The Force Awakens, is one particularly popular example. Another is the series of Halo novels, based on the popular video game franchise. These books filled in the game’s universe and became a huge success with fans. In addition to these extensions, there are novelizations of popular movies, which has proven to be an enormous industry in and of itself.

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