Büge wrote:Then there was all that negative publicity about the film when they refused to cut out horrible racist jokes and the Native American cast walked off the set.
I haven't seen it but the
AV Club review suggests the final product is actually really bland and inoffensive.
There were reports during production of Native American actors walking off set after their complaints about demeaning or racist jokes were ignored; this may account for the final film’s relatively good-natured attitude toward its Native American characters, but it’s there nonetheless. The Apache tribe that raises Sandler’s character is depicted as a supportive and honorable, with many more of the jokes coming at the expense of white dudes.
One of the reviews quoted in Geo's link suggests otherwise:
@AdamSandler The inaccuracies in Native American culture in #TheRidiculousSix are nothing to laugh about. #MoreThanAFew of us are offended.
— Winny Simon (@muddererth) December 11, 2015
but the trouble with one-sentence reviews of controversial products is that it's hard to tell if the reviewer actually saw it or is just responding to the controversy.
(I am not suggesting that the movie is good. Just that I've seen people suggest that the earlier controversy seems to have led to most of the racism being removed from the final cut.)
Well, because one of them is quoting the CEO of Netflix -- who has a bias in favor of putting a positive spin on the straight-to-Netflix Sandler movies (of which there are still
three more which Netflix has
already paid for) -- and the other is a month-old article from a UK gossip site whose research consists of looking at Netflix's homepage and some user reviews.
The $60 million movie, a comedy take on classic westerns like The Magnificent Seven, has been branded ‘unwatchable’ by critics and viewers alike.
Poor critical reception is not, inherently, a barrier to financial success. I could make a list of examples, but instead I'm just going to link to
Michael Bay's IMDb page.
Netflix have removed the Western from their main carousel in exchange for Bradley Cooper rom-com Aloha, which definitely means the situation must be very bad indeed.
This sentence is a crime against journalism, logic, and the English language. Fuck the person who wrote it, fuck the publication that printed it, and fuck the British press.
"Which definitely means the situation must be very bad indeed" -- no, it does
not definitely mean that. Just
saying something
definitely means something is not an argument. It is not supporting evidence. It is making conjecture and then dressing it up as irrefutable fact.
Is there any alternative hypothesis for why Netflix might remove a film from its carousel after three days? The author does not produce one, because why would you when your existing hypothesis is
definite? But here, I'll come up with one right now: Netflix changes out the movies in its carousel every three days.
Is that
definite? No, but it's a testable hypothesis. Let's see. Today I'm seeing Making of a Murderer, Family Guy, and Sherlock at the top of my Netflix homepage. My wife's has Battle Creek, Cutthroat Kitchen, and The Great Food Truck Race Collection. Oh, would you look at that? Different people don't even get the same carousel.
Let's check back in three days and see if those carousels are still the same, or if those shows have been replaced with different ones (which definitely means the situation must be very bad indeed).
Grath wrote:For the sake of my sanity I'm going to choose to believe that your link is the more accurate one.
Hastings could be full of crap and exaggerating the popularity of a poorly-received movie to try and salvage other movies he's already on the hook for.
HOWEVER, the Metro article is, and I cannot stress this enough, the worst piece of entertainment journalism I have seen since a UK tabloid printed what it claimed was an interview with Britney Spears's husband but which quoted him using words like "gobsmacked" and "mum". If you read that article and think "Wow, this is a well-researched, factually-based piece" then you do not know how to tell the difference between accurate reporting and making shit up and then looking at the Netflix homepage to cherry-pick a few details to (poorly) support said made-up shit.
The Verge article comes across as the more reliable article just by default. Because the Metro article is terrible in every conceivable way. It is the journalistic equivalent of an Adam Sandler movie.