Taste is entirely subjective, and a glance at Netflix’s Top 10 most-watched list on any given day will make it perfectly clear that reviews from critics don’t mean sh*t to the streaming service’s 200 million subscribers. People want entertainment, which is why middling B-tier action thrillers always tend to play well, as do broad sci-fi and effects-driven fantasy movies.
Today’s Top 10 in particular sums up the notion in a microcosm. Steven Spielberg’s The BFG occupies eighth position to cover the fantasy crowd, threequel Skylines is in sixth as the sci-fi du jour, while Nicolas Cage‘s Jiu Jitsu has crashed onto the most-watched list in fifth place just 48 hours after being added to the library, and comfortably covers all three.
It’s not high art by any stretch of the imagination, but take one eccentric and Academy Award winning human meme generator, throw another unconvincing wig on top of his head, add in a dash of action hero prestige via Tony Jaa, Frank Grillo and Alain Moussi, wrap it all up in a thinly-veiled Predator homage where elite mercs battle against extraterrestrial invaders, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for instant streaming success.
Jiu Jitsu was originally released onto VOD last year, but it’s already found an entirely new audience on the world’s most popular platform. It’s not a great movie by any means, but it does provide roughly 100 minutes of reasonably diverting entertainment, and gives fans the opportunity to imagine how the Mortal Kombat reboot would have looked if Nicolas Cage had been cast as Raiden.
He’s a staff-wielding exposition machine, but he’s evidently enjoying himself given the zeal he puts into his scenes, and Jiu Jitsu could find itself sticking around the Top 10 for a while yet.
