Duncan Jones established himself as one of the finest and most talented young filmmakers in the industry right out of the gate, but the disappointing reception of Netflix's dystopian sci-fi Mute saw his hot streak come to an end, and it's been half a decade since he last directed a feature.
Moon was a stunning debut that revealed a distinct new voice, with the atmospherically isolated cosmic tragedy receiving enthusiastic reviews from fans and critics alike. He followed it with Source Code, another highly acclaimed box office sensation that easily ranks as one of the greatest time loop films ever created.
In movies, Warcraft may have failed to make a profit, but it remains the single highest-grossing video game adaptation of all-time, so a victory is still a victory. Mute, in contrast, was dragged almost to death by comparisons to Blade Runner, with a 21 percent Rotten Tomatoes score underlining that Jones had missed a step for the very first time.
Even now, critics of the star-studded crime caper haven't subsided, with a Reddit thread currently attempting to find out where it all went wrong. As fate would have it, the top-voted comment simply and straightforwardly explains that the reason it crashed and burned when it came on Netflix was because "it's dreadful."
Regardless, we can't wait to see Jones step back behind the camera whenever that might be, but Mute was just one of many examples of how Netflix's near-limitless creative freedom isn't always a good thing.