VSHow can you have so much money and still be so poor? Faced with the deafening explosions ofAgent Stone or the sickening wedding cake of My Dear F***ing Princefeature films at the top of the rankings of their respective platforms, Netflix and Prime Video, the question is nagging.
As different as they are, the two films have in common a contempt for the intelligence of their audience, which the means made available to these productions attempt to mask. Whether it’s the action flick that sees Gal “Wonder Woman” Gadot attempt to do as well as Tom Cruise or the transatlantic, gay rom-com, the storylines seem spewed out by a machine at which the first term of the The phrase “artificial intelligence” would do a lot of honor.
Of course, Agent Stone is a huge production built around the star status that wonder woman conferred on Gal Gadot, while the young people who embody the lovers of My Dear F***ing Prince (Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine) are almost unknown, which suits a film with a more modest budget, but still capable of touring its lovers between Washington, Austin (Texas), London and Paris.
If they’re lumped together here, it’s because they seem symptomatic of one of the most worrisome damage the streaming economy inflicts on cinema: the race to the bottom in viewer expectations and tastes.
Perpetual motion
Produced by Skydance, David Ellison’s company, as Impossible mission. Dead Reckoning Part 1, Agent Stone has other similarities with the latest exploits of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), which makes it possible to carry out a comparative test between an old Hollywood production and content intended for streaming. Either way, the MacGuffin is an artificial intelligence capable of monitoring and modifying all the activities of human kind; once again, the salvation of the latter depends on a group of secret agents operating outside the laws and institutions.
On Netflix, spies from all countries have come together in a transnational organization that tries to limit the blunders of their respective governments, thanks to The Heart, a small name given to the artificial intelligence mentioned above (in Impossible missionAI is a weapon of mass destruction).
In the name of freedom, we celebrate the permanent surveillance of everyone by a small group (each agent has the code name of a playing card, so there cannot be more than 52). But who cares, as long as the screen is in perpetual motion? We recognize the figures of contemporary thrillers – the car chase in an awkward place (Lisbon), the representation of digital virtuosity (a nerd slides images in space), the choreographed fight.
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