Funny / Lindsay Ellis 2017 Episodes

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Planting and Payoff - Featuring Mad Max: Fury Road

• In demonstrating how the film doesn't need to flat-out explain Nux's intentions through dialogue and instead through already-established planting (just before, a unnamed War Boy is fatally wounded, sprays his mouth chrome, yells "Witness me!", and goes out in flames), Lindsay's example of something Nux doesn't need to say for the audience to know what's going to happen when he's the last one left is "It's suicide-bomb time!"

Are Disney Villains Going Extinct?

• "So if you follow me on Twitter, then you know that when I'm not being cranky, or angry, or sad at the state of the world, or... ceaselessly disappointed in James Woods, or... cranky... you know I really did love Moana!"
• While talking about how Disney villains are some of her favorite elements in their films, she goes into a brief aside Squee about her time in Club Disney and sharing her various collected pins.
  • Of note is when she shows her many Hades pins, where she says with a completely straight face "Hades is the only Disney villain who is voiced by an actual heartless person."
• Her totally accurate statement in Disney villains are so appealing because as opposed to real-world villains, we actually like them.
  Lindsay: Like sure, they're bad, and maybe they want to own this lady, but hey, at least they give her a choice ("Choose me, or the fire.") Or maybe they killed a brother, but maybe you know, they're not that bad, they wouldn't kill a kid, they outsource that! You know, they let the hyenas do it! Or the crocodiles do it! Or their well-meaning lunkhead assistant do it! Or... okay, maybe they do kill a kid, but it's only implied and offscreen, and hey, it was war China.
• Lindsay's annoyance at the title of Disney's Gigantic, referencing a Missing Super Trope to Verbed Title, Tangled, and Frozen (2013).
  Lindsay: Disney, we really need to have a sit-down about these adjective titles, because it's getting kinda silly.

The Whole Plate: Transformers and Film Studies

• Lindsay’s introduction to this new series… followed up by the scene of Bumblebee peeing on John Turturro.
  Lindsay: Feels like yesterday.
• Lindsay listing off how the various theories of film can be applied to the Transformers Film Series, including feminist theory (Megan Fox), critical race theory (Jazz), and Marxist theory (Mark Wahlberg messily chugging a Bud Light, all while Lindsay is herself drinking from a Starbucks mug), all while giving the most simultaneously awkward yet gleeful smiles as she plays the clips.
  Lindsay: Transformers has everything!
• The fake YouTube screen shot representing her channel focusing on film theory in the eyes of those more skeptical, including entries such as:
  • Film Theory but all of the theory is replaced with transformers
  • Why Cinema Has Actually Been Dead Since the Reagan Administration.
    Video Description: You know I’m right.
  • Jean-Luc Godard but with farts
  • Jean Cocteau? More like Jean Coct-No!
    Video Description: HAHA HIS MOVIES DON’T HAVE COLOR, LAAAAAAAME!
• The video concludes with Lindsay explaining how "Hollywood cinema is less a window on the past than a screen reflecting the preoccupations of the beholder; a canvas for interpretive dexterity and polemical praxis." Cut to Anthony Anderson's character bragging about having eaten a whole plate of donuts.

The Whole Plate: Auteur Theory vs. Michael Bay

• Lindsay explaining her general distaste for The Auteur Theory, explaining how it came across to her like a celebration of egomania, worshipping self-impressed director and how only their vision matters for a film despite it being such a collaborative effort, and building a field of academia around it to justify it.
  Lindsay: I say "it came across to me like that" because that's what it is.
• While going through Andrew Sarris' criteria of what defines a "true auteur" and how it applies to Michael Bay, one of the questions asked is "Does the director have a distinguishing personality?" Cut to Agent Simmons' thong, Mojo humping Frankie, Simmons saying "What you are about to see is top secret... do NOT tell my mother," and Glen Whitmann saying "I ate da whole plate."
  Lindsay: Yes.

The Whole Plate: Why is it So Hard to Remember What Happens in Transformers?

• The intro story serving the sentiment of the title: Two days after first watching Transformers (2007) in theatres with her then-roommate, her roommate suddenly asked "Did a robot pee on John Turturro in that movie?". Lindsay denied that it happened despite her roommate's insistence, but then she saw the film again, confirming that indeed, Bumblebee peed on beloved indie icon John Turturro and she somehow completely forgot about it.
• While presenting the title question, Lindsay does so using marble busts of Plato and Socrates deciding to engage in a philosophical query, with Socrates massively growing and shaking while asking "WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENS IN THESE F*CKING TRANSFORMERS MOVIES?"
• Lindsay's quick rundown of the technical aspects of Michael Bay's aesthetic: "Helicopters at sunset, wide parallax, standing into the frame, helicopters at sunset, robot helicopters, street lamps, high Color Contrast, frequent rapid cutting, and helicopters... after sunset."
• In order to demonstrate the problems of retaining focus in a frame with points to focus onto, Lindsay gives her explanation in the bottom half of the frame as a rather suggestive Starscream X Megatron High School AU Fanfic scrolls in the half above her.
  • Later while explaining the difference between affinity and contrast, she demonstrates using desaturated and high-color-contrast versions of a Starscream body pillow.
• Going through the inconsistent affinity of continuum of movement in the Transformers film, she first plays a scene where it's very good and the focus remains on the same place in the frame between shots, then she plays another that goes all over the place, prompting an entire wall of question marks to fill the screen.

Mel Brooks, The Producers and the Ethics of Satire about N@zis

• "The year was 2004."
  Napoleon Dynamite: You gonna eat your tots? (awkward pause)
  • "The United States government had just invaded Iraq, The Black Eyed Peas were "getting retarded in here", Zach Braff was at his artistic peak...
• Her take on Hitler Rants:
  Hitler: Michael Crawford was NOT too old to play the Phantom in the film version! It's called Phantom of the OPERA! Only IDIOTS think Gerard Butler has the chops!
• While illustrating the present-day "nazi-adjacent idiots", Lindsay simply plays a clip of an alt-right rally where as the presenter is blabbing about white power and the audience applauds, a visibly obese man is prominently seen leaving the front row.

The Whole Plate: Genre

• Lindsay's clear bitterness at the fact that "genre films", typically speculative fiction like sci-fi, are mostly deemed as "Films that don't deserve awards," placing the posters of Arrival and WALL•E behind her.
• Lindsay presents some results of an informal Twitter poll she ran about what genre the Transformers Film Series fall under, and one of the results is "It's a coming of age movie, it's a boy and his first car."
• In delving into the shifting of genres for different audience over time, she cites The Mummy franchise, the original being straight horror, the remake being more of a fantasy-action-comedy, and the newer reboot as...
  Lindsay: ...god, honestly, I have no idea what they were going for, but I think the intent was more to lump it in with Transformers into this nascent genre of big-budget nostalgia-based... action-fantasy... camp. The... "B.B.N.(???)F." genre. (Beat) I dunno, you have a better name?
• In the exploration of how even directors could be considered a genre, Lindsay mentions the often-used defense of Michael Bay, how "It's Michael Bay, it's not supposed to be good!"
  Lindsay: Would you say that about food? Like "Some food's not supposed to taste good, okay? Just... eat it!"

The Whole Plate: The Problem of Lady Robots

• Lindsay is fully aware of how touchy feminist theory is on the internet, especially in YouTube, and the intro makes it clear how "interesting" making a video on it is going to be for her, especially since her main subject is Transformers.
• That said, while she goes through great lengths to explain that fundamentally, feminist theory is not the problematic subject it's known for on the internet, she still has some jabs at that perception.
  Lindsay: In essence, the whole of feminist theory as it pertains to media study is not to destroy all men... though that is certainly a priority.
  • As she says this, on screen is a to-do list reading:
    Pick up eggs :)
    Topple the patriarchy
    Pick up tampons
    Listen to tnya
    KILL ALL MEN
  • Right afterwards, when she explains that feminist theory is more for questioning the role of gender in society and the portrayal of women in media, she states the rest of "this 26-part series" will be nothing but exploring its various nuances.
    Lindsay: I'm kidding. I'm kidding. (Beat) Only 23 will be that.
• After a lengthy explanation of the basic principles of how feminist theory is applied to works, she then moves onto Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" — the "ground zero" for most feminist media studies — as such:
  Lindsay: The Mulveyan view involves a theoretical combination of semiotics, Althusserian Marxism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. (the visuals combine and explode) I hope that clears up any confusion!
• Since it's such a vague, complicated subject, Lindsay only explains the basics of Postmodernism and only its relation to feminist theory. She then goes on to say how we can expect a more in-depth deconstruction of Postmodernism in Transformers in her 12-part series "Directly Beneath the Enemy's Scrotum," coming Christmas 2019. She even presents a mock title card for it.
• Her also explaining the birth of modernism through the rise of Objectivism, giving "Psycho" Strings (then "Turn Down For What" with MLG meme JPEGs) to a picture of Ayn Rand. The same effects are given later to a scene of Ironhide's polite interaction with Chromia with added "FEMINISM!" and "80s feminist hero ironhide" captions.
• The introduction to the ongoing debate of female robots in Transformers is accompanied by footage of a newcomer to the fandom ("beleaguered editor") becoming increasingly horrified by her Google searches on the subject until it leads her to "gender wars".
• A subtle one: While reading off a quote from Transformers co-writer Bob Orci as to why Arcee was written out of the film (his explanation being that having a girl Transformer requires its own explanation and it was apparently pandering to female audiences to include her), the quote is denoted with "Bob Orci, hack and 9/11 truther"^* The latter of which he apparently is..
  • Lindsay's incredulity at this excuse is also pretty notable:
    Lindsay: I mean... (laughs) Megatron accidentally etching coordinates to the MacGuffin inside another MacGuffin I'll buy, a magical glowcube that's the progenitor for all the alien robots that turn into chimeras I'll buy, but that one of them displays female secondary sex characteristics and is pink? Hmmm... I dunnoooooo, man... I'm going to have to absorb more of Optimus' robo-pecs and enjoy his deep, manly voice while I smoke on this for a little while.
• Going through actual female robots in the Transformers Film Series, who are either expendable or duplicitous, Lindsay gets to Alice and the scene where she tries to kill Sam.
  Lindsay: You know, sometimes I think Michael Bay has issues with women.
• Lindsay's clear annoyance of Movie!Arcee's blink-and-you'll-miss-it presence and death, pushing #justiceforarcee. The Stinger is said hashtag with a cover of "Angel" modified to be about the Transformers Film Series.

Pocahontas Was a Mistake, and Here's Why!

• Lindsey opens the video by pointing out that the currently-shunned Pocahontas bears quite a few similarities to the recent critical darling Moana. And ends the pitch with asking, "That's never been done before, has it?"
• Lindsay's snark at how almost self-parodic Pocahontas is, wondering why Meeko didn't have a cute snarky one-liner to plaster landfills-worth of merchandise.
  "Rabies? More like HEYYYYY-bies!"
• Lindsay notes that the most sexualised Disney heroines were Pocahontas, Jasmine and Esmerelda. As in, all the non-white ones up until that point.
  "Funny that."
• After discussing the developmental process of Pocahontas and the questionable legacy it left behind, in order to explain what it ultimately means, Lindsay has to tread into some pretty controversial territory:
  Lindsay: So, cultural appropriation! (smile awkwardly falters) RIP comment section.
• As Lindsay explains how even after the backlash against Pocahontas Disney has since made 4 more films about indigenous peoples, she realizes how two of them involve their protagonists turning into large mammals to learn a lesson.
• "Colonialism has had an incalculable impact on human civilization. That's why it's so difficult to parse out the impact of 'Group A being portrayed by dominant cultural Group B'. In Disney movies. But that's why we're here. We're here to fix colonialism, y'all." (screen gets imposed with flashing MLG JPEGs to airhorns and "Turn Down For What", with a flashing sign "WE DID IT, COLONIALISM SOLVED")

The Complex Feels of Guardians of the Galaxy v. 2

• Lindsay's repeated Inelegant Blubbering at Yondu's Heroic Sacrifice, his funeral, and Gamora and Nebula's reconciliation.
• While pointing out how weak of a villain Ronan from the first film was, she points out how regular-sounding his name is to anyone from Ireland, then draws comparison to Tim the Enchanter.
• Lindsay's speculation that with how ridiculously overmerchandised Baby Groot was, the landfills of Baby Groot Funko Pops will become currency in the post-apocalyptic hellscape of the future.
  Lindsay: That loaf of bread is gonna cost you five-and-a-half Baby Groot Funko Pops, please.
• Her very long, annoyed and beleaguered sigh at the very common misconceptions surrounding the term "toxic masculinity".
  • Further, realizing that most of the contention seems to be from the term itself and not the actual meaning, Lindsay proposes alternate terms like "detrimental dick-wagging", "patriarchal frown-frowns", or "machismo no bueno".
• Right as Lindsay moves onto a serious, more somber section about "Abuse", we get a brief clip of a sped-up clock with an overlay of Bad Boys 2 and Lindsay saying "Dang, is it time for shit to get real already?"

The Whole Plate: The Male Gaze vs. The Men

• The thumbnail for the video is a thing of beauty: A collage of Sam Witwicky, Cade Yeager and Agent Simmons making stupid expressions as Lindsay herself is making goofy glasses using her fingers.

The Whole Plate: Framing Megan Fox

• Lindsay breathlessly calling Megan Fox's character as the most well-rounded and worthwhile character in the Transformers series.
• While discussing Maggie Madsen's framing and notably neutral portrayal, Lindsay has to disregard a really big fact that since in the first film nobody knows there are robot aliens yet, her hypothesis as to what could possibly be hacking the NSA is completely insane:
  Maggie: What if it was an organism? A living organism, maybe some kind of DNA-based computer?
  Lindsay!Maggie: What if it... was a witch? What if this is all a projection, what if we're in The Matrix? If the moon was made of ribs, would you eat it?

The Revisionist World of Disney: Mary Poppins, Walt Disney and Saving Mr. Banks

• Going through the film's themes of maintaining artistic integrity to selling out, Lindsay briefly mentions how it's likely for the greater good, pulling up a shot of a teary-eyed Travers hugging a big Mickey Mouse plushie in bed.
  Lindsay: That's right, you get in the bed with the mouse, Pam. GET IN BED WITH THE MOUSE.''
• Her talking about the portrayals of Travers and Disney. How she calls Emma Thompson doing a great job being charming and relatable "while being an abject unequitable jerk", while Disney by Tom Hanks is well, "It's Tom Hanks."
• Her brief mentions of the odd Socialism-curious-ness within Mary Poppins.
  Jane: Please let me feed the birds!
  George: Whatever for?
  Michael: I have tuppence from my money box!
  Jane: Just this once, please!
  George: Waste your money on a lot of ragamuffin birds? Certainly not!
  Lindsay!Michael: (with a thick Cockney accent) But I want to redistribute the wealth, faaather!
  • Not long afterwards, she mentions the film's subtle satire on the bank system, where taking the tuppence of a kid who just wants to feed the birds causes a bank run.
    Michael: Give it back!
    Lindsay!Michael: The people shall seize the means of production! Feed the birds!
• Lindsay points out how in spite of the common criticisms of the movie polishing Walt Disney's edges, that's not what the film is about.
  Lindsay: I mean, did we really need a scene where he takes a break from the filming of Mary Poppins to discuss the evils of communism?
• Lindsay goes through how Disney tends to be more associated with a brand than historical accuracy, citing Beauty and the Beast and how it's only roughly set in France, but not in a way that makes you go "Oh, Beast and/or his descendants are going to meet a grizzly fate in a few years," followed by footage of someone being guillotined and a shot of Lumière, Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts mourning.
• The subtle, unspoken joke of Lindsay discussing how "Cultural appropriation and historical revisionism are kind of integral to the Disney brand" while wearing a giant sombrero at Disney World.

The Case for Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

• Lindsay's incredulity at Jason Alexander in an Entertainment Weekly article naming Esmeralda "babe of the year", while also nicknaming her nearest competition Pocahontas "Pokey".
• When Lindsay briefly asides to talk about modern historical preservation, she ends up going on a long ramble about "this s*** m***f*** named Robert Moses", which is apparently so long it gets interrupted with three We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties-style signs apologizing for the "Robert Moses Tangent."
• At one point, Lindsay's reflection on Victor Hugo's motivations for writing the novel that would become The Hunchback of Notre Dame in front of the building itself are interrupted when a guy walks up behind her, stuffs a rather suspicious-looking package into the bushes, and nonchalantly walks off without paying her or her camera any notice whatsoever. All the while Lindsay is just watching in bemusement.
  Lindsay: Did he just, like, hide a stack of cocaine there?
  • This is even more amusing if you followed her Twitter, where she shared this clip a week early while labeling it an "outtake". Evidently, that changed.
• While going through adaptations of the novel in between the Disney version, she goes into the success of the 1923 live-action version starring Lon Chaney, which kickstarted future live-action adaptations and is "why you'll eventually have to sit through the Dark Universe version of Hunchback starring Ansel Elgort in 2021. I hope. Please, god, let it happen..."
• As Lindsay defends the Disney version's decision to not have Quasimodo get the girl in the end, instead encouraging her to follow her actual love, and how thematically important this is, she also offhandedly mentions how said love was "basically an accessory to genocide up until about five minutes ago". Then she proceeds to awkwardly say "He's fine with it. It's fine! He's fine!" over and over again to the point where it starts sounding like Suspiciously Specific Denial.
  • She then briefly asides with "Don't worry, they give him a hot, clumsy girlfriend in the sequel."
• The brief comparison in themes to Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is shown with footage of the stage musical, with a brief caption of Lindsay gushing "lord, we will never be good enough to deserve colm wilkinson".
• While praising the new additions Disney put into their film on the story and how remarkable it is to have a protagonist in a children's film to have an actual (not "beastly") physical deformity, she mentions the only other film that did that was arguably Shrek, "and well... Shrek looks like 90% of stand-up comedians."
• The ending of the video features an "in memoriam" for the knockoff Hunchback movies, featuring clips from the Golden Films, Good Times, Burbank, and the Dingo Pictures versions.
• When she mentions Hugo's thing for inhumanly strong protagonists, it's accompanied by a crappy photoshop of Quasimodo and Jean Valjean down the gym together.
• "I'm losin' to a BIRD!"
  • Lindsay playing the audio clip with a Hugo hand puppet.
• Behind the scenes, Lindsay and Angelina describe the end of the Paris trip being such a sitcom moment. The entire trip was going so well, so by the end of it they refer to themselves eating continental breakfast and savoring in the great content they had collected...before realising they'd made a mistake with Google Calendar and forgot to account for the time difference between France and America - and their flight home was in 45 minutes! Angelina recalls having to stay in Paris an extra day, and getting a connecting flight to Portugal of all places. The plane went into turbulence so she drank everything in sight.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Genres Tell No Tales

• The soundtrack for a good portion of the video? "Jack Sparrow" by The Lonely Island.
  • And when the Keith Richards comparisons start? The Westworld orchestral cover of "Paint it Black."
• In the list of bad business decisions Disney made during Michael Eisner's run as CEO, Lindsay lists Pearl Harbor as such:
  Lindsay: Oh, how Pearl Harbor was going to blow up records, it was going to machine-gun those records into oblivion! Man, Pearl Harbor was going to be a game-changer, y'all. Peaaaaaaaaaaaaarl Harbor. Mmm-hm. So, Pearl Harbor was a disaster, stalled more than a few careers, and irreparably ruined Michael Bay's relationship to star-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and almost made Bay a Hollywood pariah until...
  (cut to Bumblebee peeing on John Turturro and Anthony Anderson's character announcing he ate "the whole plate")
  • Shortly after, she states how Disney needed genuine hits during the time and its own epic franchise, like its own Harry Potter or Lord of the Ri—
    Lindsay: No, no, not that...
• Lindsay!Eisner's reaction to the original proposal to make a movie based on the Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Lindsay's summation of the multiple potential interferences Disney made with Johnny Depp's then-offbeat, Keith Richards-inspired interpretation of Jack Sparrow: "Can't you just be pretty, Johnny Depp? Just... don't. Please don't."