Hacker Cinema
The Gray Man
2022 · Film · 128 min
Directed by Joe Russo, Anthony Russo
When a shadowy CIA agent uncovers damning agency secrets, he's hunted across the globe by a sociopathic rogue operative who's put a bounty on his head.
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6 comments on Hacker News
Tom Clancy was my favorite author, I think authors sign contracts that let some entity use their name and it turns into a brand. The Jack Ryan books after he passed or had other writers weren’t that good. How far can you go after the main character becomes President? I did stumble onto one of those authors, Mark Greaney, who wrote The Gray Man series of novels (the netflix movie is not a good representation at all). Spy/action thrillers, main character is CIA “ground branch” type, not a chess match kind of spy.
I've been listening to AM broadcasts a lot over the last few months. I can get good reception from 2-3 local stations on my crystal set. One gives me state and national news, interviews, the weather; useful stuff. From the other I've learned a lot about aliens, nutrition, debt and debt consolidation, Gray Man, World War III, psychedelic drugs, skinwalkers, Christian dating situations (ex: non-abstinent partners), the holiday/inflation deals on Smith & Wesson steel, various troubling situations involving Biden and his son...
What else. I don't know, I learn so much from my radio that it's hard to keep track! And it's so much more engaging than your typically maybe-just-as-sane Netflix documentary with its jarring interview style. The AM hosts actually let their guests talk, uninterrupted, and at length, so you can hear what their points are in the way that they meant to say it. The other night a caller phoned into this expert cryptozoological guy they were interviewing and related how a canid, "too big to be a dog but too small to be a wolf", planted itself on the road in front of his truck before morphing into a woman before him (at night!). And he and this doctor they had as a guest were able to work through the experience on the spot; it wasn't some high production story that cut back and forth through irrelevant fancy stuff for 20 minutes before finally explaining what the guy saw.
I'm only partly being tongue in cheek... This is how "information diet" + learn more about radio new years resolutions have been working out for me. All this crazy stuff has replaced the social media and news/opinion drama I would get wrapped up on before. It's free, actually enjoyable (because of the radio projects, not the broadcasts), mildly to thoroughly amusing (because of the broadcasts), and the insanity is gone as soon as I take the headset off. It should get better soon as well. I'm going to build an FM receiver next, and I hear they still play music on those channels!
This article said none of Netflix's competitors had positive cash flow. Well, at least Disney did. Disney+ is unlikely to have positive cash flow, but the Walt Disney company has a cash cow in parks and other media assets. This Stratechery article seems to conveniently ignore that unlike Netflix, other streaming services have revenue-generating assets to fund the streaming war.
It cost Disney $400 million to make the Avatar sequel and probably that amount for marketing. Yet it already has made $2 billion in box office. Netflix spent $200 million on the Gray Man. How much did the movie bring to Netflix? Disney and Warner Bros have incredible franchises. What does Netflix have in comparison?
I also don't see any mention on the fact that while competitors are increasing content spend, Netflix is doing the opposite. If it's the new content, rather than the old stuff, that attracts subscribers, should the fact that Netflix is decreasing content spend be a concern?
If Netflix's future is about creativity and content quality, why should we believe that Netflix will be better at creating quality content in the future than they have so far? What data shows that subscribers come back because Netflix content is the best? Or is it because they have the biggest catalogue? And what does it say about decreasing content spend when Netflix is stretched across markets?
I don't dispute Reed's achievements, but citing the launch of the ads tier is a bit premature and strange. Reed, for years, pushed back against the idea of an ads-supported plan. He only changed his mind only when he had to. Yes, Netflix launched the ads operations in a few months' time, but we haven't got any concrete data on it.
I don't completely disregard the user reviews. It helps me get a feel of the type of movie or series when comparing it to critics review. The Gray Man has low critics review but high user reviews on rotten tomatoes. So i expected it to be something i can enjoy without too much of an investment. And it did. Helped me get through my 14 hr flight
Nonstop action though. Also not sure MV’s story and characters really clear the hurdle you’re setting for gray man, it’s only saving grace perhaps being that it’s cousin to a TV show that filled out many cliches in full prime time glory 35 years ago or so.
The theory was one of economies of scale. For exclusive in-house content, you should have a positive feedback loop of "more users" -> "bigger content budget" -> "better or more content" -> "more users". And the theory was that with their headstart they could basically build such a large user base and content pipeline that nobody else could catch up.
It was a solid theory, and honestly it still isn't obvious that it's failed. Netflix still has an much larger user base than any of the competing services, despite charging much higher prices. But other than the stellar job they did with international content, they certainly haven't executed on this as well as people imagined. It's quite amazing how badly they have been spending that massive content budget, and how long the mismanagement has been going on.
(Their prestige "Hollywood movies at Hollywood budgets straight to streaming" projects are probably the most obvious example. Who the fuck greenlit Gray Man at $200M?)