Authors Saving Throw / The Nostalgia Critic

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• He made a lot of derogatory gay jokes in his early days. But when Doug started making use of Ho Yay and Female Gaze, these died out. In his crossover review of The Wiz with Todd in the Shadows, he said he hates Joel Schumacher for his storytelling and adaptation skills, making it clear it's not because he's gay.
• Also sorted out with the Critic himself. Characterization Marches On and suddenly a lot more focus is put on his sissiness and patheticness, but with good writing, good comedy and Doug's charm and actually decent acting skills, he's a much more interesting character than he was in the beginning.
• Santa Christ is still a Big Good who everyone squees over, but he was made less of a Parody Sue by having him display Beware the Nice Ones and the ability to hold a long (if well-deserved) grudge. By reboot he's outright Fallen Hero, and while he's still a Base-Breaking Character, at least he's more interesting.
• A few people complained that he over-relied on film clips instead of jokes, so Doug made this a character trait. When the Critic got called out on the above in Star Trek month and couldn't use footage from other stuff, he had no idea what to say.
• Attempted but failed in "Top 11 Dumbest Lord of the Rings Moments", as he tells anyone "about to have a heart attack" at his putting "Sam and Frodo's gayness" at such a top spot that if they were actually gay he'd like that, but it doesn't really help that he spends the rest of the section making disgusted faces at the two's emotional moments.
• Because of the reception Sailor Moon got, from Les Misérables onwards Critic was lampshaded to be awful a lot more, and bigger focus was given to consistent Sanity Slippage instead of what looked like letting him do bad things while glorifying them. He still does bad things, plenty of them, but at least comes off like less of a Designated Hero and more people call him out.
• With all the complaints that the Photoshop title cards were scary (like The Cat in the Hat, The Master of Disguise and Why Do We Love Zombies among others), getting the Chick's artist on board◊ feels like this. Still frightening, but easier to take in cartoon form.
• Changing the original Face/Off review had to be done because Doug accidentally deleted it, but the quick farewell Rachel got in the retake was much nicer compared to the Female Misogynist-sounding original story.
• He got a lot of criticism for In-Universe Factoid Failure rant directed at Michael Bay in Pearl Harbor, and so went back to it in "When Is A Movie Just A Movie", explaining that while he went too far on the Eagleland, the fact that soldiers couldn't swim was still just glanced over in a line. He goes into detail on this much better criticism, and compares it to Titanic (1997), as that had multiple scenes talking about the lack of lifeboats before the crisis.
• The Alice in Wonderland (2010) review can feel like an apology for bad moves in The Cat in the Hat and AI; the former with Malice threatening to stab Critic for hitting her and not crying like Evilina did, and the latter with Burton giving a similar ending speech to Critic (with musical spoilers for To Boldly Flee and Demo Reel) about how directors can make mistakes but Critic doing a Redemption Rejection.
• Doug got a lot of upset people after his vlog reviews of Avatar's two You Go, Girl! episodes, mostly for him saying he hates the trope because it's been done to death and not needed. In “Top 11 Worst Avatar Episodes”, he gives a better explanation (that he realizes there's a load of misogyny still around, but the trope will usually turn the girl into a statistic than a character) and notes this is just an opinion from a boy's perspective.
• At least attempted in Mamma Mia!, as he talks about the Chick Flick as not always being awful and there are a lot of good ones with effort put in, just that he hates the ones that he thinks wants to empower women but don't, and the It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars excuse. He's still not quite there with "(older especially) women can like easy crap made for them and have it as a Guilty Pleasure", but it's better than the Sailor Moon debacle. He fixed this with the "Aw Girls", and explained them as not totally positive characters, but own their right to escape from reality with fluffy media.
• The second reiteration of the reboot credits was accused of being especially obnoxious with all the screaming and people getting abused, so the third Evolving Credits, while still having a barrel-load of skit clips, massively toned down the sound effects and are better for it.
• In Last Action Hero real review, he clarified all the complaining about political correctness in Demolition Man was less whining about not being able to be Dude, Not Funny! and more that he has Nostalgia Filter about violent 80s films and hates tame PG-13 movies.
• In the Phantom commentary, Doug says even though he really loves the Hocus Pocus review, he listened to "if I haven't watched this then I won't get it" criticism, and tried to explain things more in POTO, if still in a Show, Don't Tell sense.
• In Jem, he talks at the end about how we all have our nostalgic franchises that are made to sell toys but are still meaningful, he has his (showing TMNT) and "you have yours (showing Pokemon) and that's fine". After Pokemon fans attacking him for mocking comments, and him trolling them, it feels like extending an olive branch.
• The Canadian commercials Running Gag was criticized as him coming off like he didn't care about what the PSA was about, just was more interested in calling them "killjoys", but in "Battle Of The Commercials'' he clarified that he did care and was scared of what was happening, showed a nice Canadian commercial and saved his upset for a British ad where they literally showed a dead body.
• If you want to have the world collapse in on itself from how meta it is, here's Critic's review of "The Review Must Go On," which, even with Critic praising it because it's all about him and how unstoppable he is, still mocks it pretty ruthlessly. Quite satisfying for fans who disliked it so much. Both Donnie and Critic being pissed off with the choice, even with all the Postmodernism that implies, helps a lot too.
• The 2013 Sailor Moon episode was... not loved, with abuse jokes, not doing the research and The Talking Dick Scene, so people were nervous when in 2019 he did Toonami, obviously including the show. Not to fear! Heather explains the show, talking about the queer and feminist themes, and Critic himself is perfectly happy to hear about it.
• Allison and Lindsay didn’t like how Doug/Rob wrote them in the movies, and while there is plenty of other issues besides this point, Doug apparently tries very hard to be better at this, as according to Rachel and Tamara in the 2016 Unlimited Beers vlog (and Malcolm said at a later con he gets the same), they always get asked anxiously if lines are okay and they don’t have to say anything they think is sexist.
• Why Is Loki So Hot was so bitter and problematic that even Rob asked what the fuck in the Lorax behind the scenes. Doug did far better in his 2019 editorial on why Marvel villains have improved, relating to Loki being attention hungry and kind of pathetic, commenting that he's hot in a feminine way, and happily acknowledging fangirls on why the good Marvel villains are like that because they took traits from Loki.
• In the review of Cool World, Ralph Bakshi's changing of Saruman's name to Aruman in his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is listed as an example of why even very creative directors have to be reigned in by the studios sometimes. However, this was actually an example of the reverse since the Aruman name was actually an executive mandate due to Saruman's name sounding too much like Sauron, and Ralph Bakshi was even able to partially reverse this decision by having him referred to as Saruman in some of the lines which were recorded later. When the Critic gets around to reviewing Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings, Bakshi instead blames the Aruman name change on studio interference.

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