I wasn’t expecting much from Netflix’s Tudum. For one thing, it was called Tudum – apparently after the sound Netflix makes when it starts up – but it was also heavily promoted with a clip that began with Kevin Hart. I’ve rewatched the whole promo since and it seems there are a huge range of stars in the ad, but leading with Hart is a surefire way to dial my interest right down. Hello, Borderlands movie. However, Tudum turned out to be far more entertaining than I would have thought, and a large part of that is down to Nintendo. Though it ran longer, Tudum felt like a Netflix Direct.
It didn’t start out great. The three-hour show began with a bad sketch where Millie Bobby Brown – arguably the closest thing Netflix has to a mascot – loses the ‘tudum’ sound from her Netflix, which is a thing she cares about, for some reason. She also calls it ‘bubum’, which is presumably an inside joke following the boardroom debate of what to call Tudum in the first place. Anyway, turns out everyone – or perhaps just everyone who stars in a Netflix series – had lost their Tudum. The Money Heist people get it back and the show begins.
It felt, at this stage, more like the Oscars. A three-hour runtime crammed with unfunny bits that rely on star power and go on far too long? Sure sounds familiar. We like to brag that The Game Awards gets more viewers than The Academy Awards, as if it’s some kind of victory over Daddy Film. The truth is, it’s because the Oscars are shit. Tudum started off terribly, but thankfully it recovered once it actually started.
It kicked off – eventually – with what I suppose you might call Netflix’s newest triple-A. Red Notice, starring Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, and Dwayne Johnson (the latter of whom introduced the clip) is a new IP, if you want to stick with gaming terms, but is one of the most expensive and polished movies the streaming platform has ever produced. It could have rolled into its Stranger Things teaser, then Money Heist, then Ozark. Had it been an actual Netflix Direct, that’s exactly what it would have done. Unfortunately, while games companies have long since learned that humanity is an insatiable beast that craves content and only content, other forms of media still push the idea of connection. These teasers and trailers were interrupted by interviews with random strangers telling me their favourite show is Lupin. Why do I care? You’re not Millie Bobby Brown or The Rock; get off my TV.
Even when it was superstars though, things went on far too long. Dustin and Steve have the best dynamic in Stranger Things. That doesn’t mean I need to see the actors sat on the sofa debating which teaser they’re going to show. I don’t need Jason Bateman to tell me how good Ozark is – I just need to see it. While Nintendo often uses personalities, most of the time it’s “hello, here’s my game.” PlayStation often leaves the in-depth interviews and monologues until after the presentation itself, so that casual viewers get content, content, content, and die-hards can watch a 30-minute presentation on how shiny Kratos’ bald head is going to be.
It wasn’t all bad – The Harder They Fall’s presentation avoided trying to be funny and as a result was much more entertaining and heartfelt – but there were far too many breaks in what could have been an incredibly impressive 90-minute presentation. I can allow interviews with the Bridgerton cast – even if I don’t think a three-hour showcase of everything Netflix has to offer is the best place for it, I can understand some people enjoying it. I’m less convinced as to why we needed to see people making TikToks based off lines in Netflix shows.
Ironically, it was towards the end of the event when things became more interesting. It had burned through its aces, giving more time to quickly jump from Cowboy Bebop, to Emily in Paris, to the new League of Legends show, Arcane. Hailee Steinfeld, the star of Arcane, was not present, but such was Tudum’s reliance on big names, Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard and Caleb McLaughlin introduced it instead.
Then, like any great showcase, it knew exactly what to hold back. Just as PlayStation kept Spider-Man and God of War until the end, Netflix held onto the double-Cavilled reveal of Enola Holmes 2 and The Witcher until the final moments of the show. Again, Enola Holmes probably would have been better had it just been the clip, instead of trying to force Millie Bobby Brown – opening and closing the show, making her definitely the platform’s unofficial mascot – into dry banter with her co-star, but at least The Witcher’s clip was allowed some room to breathe. Like with any showcase, I saw a few things I already liked, some things I’ll give a miss, and some surprises I tell myself I’ll look out for, but in most cases probably won’t. It even had the patented showcase ‘unrealistic hype, disappointment’ cycle when the new face of Princess Peach, Anya Taylor-Joy, did not emerge to reveal that the limited series The Queen’s Gambit would in fact return for a second season.
At its heart, Tudum had some good ideas. We’ve seen production companies use fan conventions and the like to show off sizzle reels and trailers, but it’s hard to think of a company outside of gaming that has sat down with its audience for over an hour and said “here’s everything we do.” It brought the Spanish, Korean, and Indian arms of its back catalogue as well, and kept us interested with fresh information, new reveals, and a star-studded line-up. It probably went a little hard on the last one, over-relying on big names, but Netflix evidently has the content, both varied and vast, to pull something like this off. It just needs to pay more attention to Nintendo.
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