I was rewatching Die Hard with a Vengeance the other night, and weirdly.
Even though it’s been years since I last saw it, I realized I remembered almost every single beat. I knew exactly when the payphone was going to ring. I remembered the rhythm of the "Simon says" riddles. I could feel the tension building before the characters even spoke.
Then, just out of curiosity, I tried to remember the plot of a massive blockbuster I had streamed maybe three weeks ago. I drew a complete blank. I could remember some loud noises and maybe a CGI explosion, but the actual story? Nada.
At first, I thought my attention span was just entirely broken. But the more I thought about it, I realized the difference isn't just in my head. It’s in the way we used to approach the screen.
Part of it, I think, is just the novelty of how we used to watch things. When we were younger, watching a movie was a deliberate act. Going to the theater was a planned event. Even if a movie was just airing on TV, you had to check the newspaper to see what time it started, and you made sure you were free and on the couch when it did. You had to intentionally carve out the time. You committed to it.
Today, all that friction is gone. We have so many options at our fingertips that it’s almost paralyzing. We sit down, aimlessly scroll through endless grids of thumbnails, and eventually just pick something so we can vegetate. We aren't really choosing a film anymore; we're just filling the silence.
And the people making these movies know this.
There is an industry term that that I read about called "second-screen viewing." It is the reality that when you sit down to watch a movie or a show, the studio assumes you are probably looking down at your phone. You're checking an email, scrolling through Instagram, or texting a friend, while the movie just plays in the background.
Because creators know we aren't really looking, they’ve started to change the way they tell stories. They’ve started over-explaining everything.
If you watch a modern movie, notice how often the characters simply announce the plot out loud. They spoon-feed the narrative, explaining their feelings, their plans, and the stakes, sometimes three or four different times. They do this so that even if you never actually look up from your screen, you won't get lost.
But think about that scene in Die Hard with a Vengeance. John McClane and Zeus are standing in a park, staring at a three-gallon jug and a five-gallon jug, trying to figure out how to measure out exactly four gallons of water to stop a bomb from going off.
The movie doesn't stop to have a narrator explain the math to you. Nobody gives a long monologue about how high the stakes are. You just have to sit there and watch two guys panic, argue, and frantically try to figure it out in real-time.
If you look away from the screen to check an email during that scene, you miss the tension. You miss the stakes entirely.
Those older movies didn't accommodate our distraction. They demanded our presence.
And I think there is a profound lesson in that, one that goes far beyond just making better movies.
When we assume our audience, whether that’s our team, our clients, or our customers, isn't really paying attention, our instinct is to over-explain. We dilute our message. We strip away the nuance and the tension because we want to make sure it’s completely foolproof to consume. We try to make our work function perfectly as background noise.
But when you design something to be easily ignored, you shouldn't be surprised when people inevitably forget it.
The things that actually stick in our bones, the things we remember decades later, are the things that trust us enough to let us figure it out. They leave room for silence. They let the tension build. They ask us to put the phone down, look up, and actually participate in the story.
Maybe the opportunity isn't learning how to compete better with the distraction. Maybe it’s just having the quiet confidence to demand that people actually pay attention.