Extraction, released in 2020, stars Chris Helmsworth (AKA: Thor) as a mercenary hired to rescue the son of India’s top drug lord who has been kidnapped by Bangladesh’s top drug lord. On May 4th, Netflix announced that Extraction would be viewed by 90 million people in its first four weeks of release.
Is the movie good? Is 90 million views good? I would say yes and yes, but let’s qualify this a bit more below. Also, not to spoil the last half of the column, but the answer to both of these questions don’t matter. The real magic of Extraction comes from recognizing the Netflix secret sauce in action.
Is Extraction good? Action fans will be sure to enjoy the film and admire the quality of the stunts and action sequences. Does this movie have great substance? No. The story is transparent, but since they show you five minutes of the climax at the opening of the film, Director Sam Hargrave essentially concedes this point. They are not trying to make high brow cinema. They are taking us on a ride. This is like our favorite roller coasters – no real surprises, but boy does it deliver a fun time.
Extraction was written by Joe Russo, based upon a graphic novel developed with his brother Anthony Russo and comic book artist Andre Parks. The Russo brothers have been the directors who delivered Captain America: The Winter Solider, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game. No matter what you think of the quality of these Marvel movies, the box office pedigree of these films is enormous.
Although this is the first feature film for director Sam Hargrave, he also has an extensive background in big movies – notably in the stunts. Prior to Extraction, Hargrave performed second unit directing duties on Avengers: Endgame, Deadpool 2, Avengers: Infinity War, Atomic Blonde, The Accountant, and Suicide Squad. He also performed stunts and choreographed stunts in those movies and other high profile movies such as the last three Hunger Games movies.
Thor + The Avengers + Mega Stunts? What a formula for success in America! This entire movie feels like it could have been within the Marvel universe except for a few key bits that also reveal the true magic of the Netflix success formula.
First, Chris Helmsworth is the only star of the movie that is white. There are other Caucasian characters (more on this in a moment), but they have relatively small and unimportant parts. The rest of the major cast could have, and for the most part did, step right out of a Bollywood movie.
This makes perfect sense for a company trying to improve its market share from 3.1% of the Indian market. Of course, that percentage reflects an estimated user base of over 10 million subscribers with hundreds of thousands of additional viewers in Bangladesh (~200k) and Pakistan (~150k). With millions of people of East Asian descent across the world, Netflix is tapping into a huge existing market.
To further appeal to this market, a large portion of the movie is filmed in Hindi and Bengali and presented with English subtitles. Will this impair the US market success? Somewhat. There will definitely be some people turned off by having to read. However, the action sequences that make up the meat of the movie don’t require any translation.
The action makes the film more or less universal, but the huge subtitled sections broadcast an under reported tactic for Netflix: International appeal may be as important, or even more important than American appeal. This will be something for a future column, but a significant portion of Netflix’s budget goes towards creating native-language projects filmed within the international country such as Finland, Turkey, Belgium or Iceland. Any appeal outside of the original country is simply a bonus that Netflix is happy to embrace.
Second, when a second major Caucasian character enters the film, the actor is David Harbour, also known for his popular role as Chief Jim Hopper in Netflix’s Stranger Things. While Harbour’s role does little to offset complaints that the movie propagates “White Savior” stereotypes, his character delivers a shot of action and helps provide Helmsworth’s character with a clarifying moment to resolve to save the kidnapped boy.
Marvel + Awesome Stunts + Bollywood + Stranger Things? Pure formulaic gold. Am I making this up? I might be. I have no inside information. However, there are hints.
Netflix’s Bollywood content has been steadily increasing and Netflix has created a large number of Indian-language comedy specials including the three extremely entertaining multi-lingual comedy specials featuring Vir Das. They definitely are targeting India.
Secondly, the graphic novel, Ciudad, upon which this movie was based, was set in Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. If they didn’t want to target India specifically, why change the locale? Brazil and Latin America are also very large and important markets for Netflix, and yet they move the city to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Perhaps the reasoning was as simple as: there are plenty of Sicario movies and other ‘Latin America = hell’ movies so we need to do something different. Perhaps, India is more important to them in 2019 when they greenlit the film. Only Netflix can confirm their reasoning, but it sure seems to reflect a trend.
In any case, this was a fun ride. Some might call it predictable; I call it reliable. This is one of the first movies I have seen aimed at straddling the Bollywood and US markets. I’m sure substituting the Indian dancing for martial arts will be a huge disappointment for some, but not in my house. We look forward to watching the sequel which has just been announced…
I saw this film. Violence in its many forms is threaded in society. The most common form is economic. This film is perfect for someone who has put in a long day, is dead tired, and cannot think anymore. Feeling violent? Sit back, and enjoy the ride. It really is cathartic, which is a boon to society!