From zeitgeist to zeitghost: How Netflix kept a hold on viewers—but lost its spot in pop culture

Netflix has been pumping out original content for so long and at such an immense scale that it recently released its second original movie entitled War Machine. Although the Brad Pitt-starring first iteration sank like a stone in 2017, the unrelated new War Machine, led by Reacher’s Alan Ritchson, was reportedly a ratings smash, hitting 10th on Netflix’s all-time most-watched movies list, with 140 million views. So far, it’s the platform’s biggest movie this year. If the dearth of online chatter around it is any indication, though, it’s gotten all too easy to have zero interest in or opinions about Netflix’s biggest projects. Presumably, very few people got yelled at on social media for sharing War Machine spoilers, or felt slighted by a significant other for watching it without them. By all accounts, it’s a pretty good movie, but far from what could be considered an “event,” despite a sheen of event-ness being a reasonable expectation for any studio’s biggest film of the year. Instead, it feels more like a movie designed with the goal of capturing a Super Bowl number of eyeballs. That’s the main problem with 2020s Netflix: It gets eyeballs watching far more than it gets tongues w…

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