Bob "Moviebob" Chipman, also known as "The Game Overthinker", is a self-proclaimed "Z-list internet celebrity" who maintains a vlog on YouTube and a Blogspot site,and also contributes to both The Escapist and Screw Attack. He rips apart bad movies, but his particular shtick is giving analyses of gaming culture and the industry, in a style closely reminiscent of college-lit-class style "close reading", overlaid with appropriate (and sometimes humorous) images. Bob's analyses are very much like you would see from a troper. Indeed, he's written an article that refers to "a genuinely wonderful website called TV Tropes". Bob loves what he loves and hates what he hates, so between his (admittedly) abrasive attitude and his tendency to belittle franchises with large fanbases - and those fans - he can be somewhat divisive. However, agree or disagree with him, his videos often provide ample food for thought.The list of the Films Discussed By Moviebob got so long, it's been moved to a separate page.
Alternate Reality Game: Seemingly parodied briefly (possibly specifically the Slender Man Mythos) with references to Wario's Woods and cryptic text after making an announcement proclaiming a realization that would change everything. The following video (while still showing brief influences from films like The Blair Witch Project and possibly Marble Hornets) however, confirmed it as an Evil Twin storyline. Also qualifies on kicking off a Story Arc.
The lack of Oscar nominations for The Dark Knight apparently made him so angry that he slipped into his native Boston accent.
Again in his Black Swan review. After spending around 2 minutes in a very fake English accent as part of a joke, he starts talking about the infamous lesbian scene in the movie with his accent thicker than ever before.
His "Game Antithinker" character spoke in a highly exaggerated Boston accent, peppered with stereotypical "bro" speak.
In "The Big Picture", he slips into this during the "Continanity Rebooted" episode. It's distracting to say the least.
And while he admits their obvious flaws, Nintendo is arguably part of this.
The word "douchebag" pops up heavily when regarding hardcores or Michael Bay, becoming his mainstay word to describe someone/something he really hates (naturly people call him this).
Author Filibuster (He opens his review of Jennifer's Body with a 2-minute rant about how much Megan Fox sucks as an actress and is completely boring and generic even as a sex symbol. It was awesome.)
In his review of Rango, he pretty much admits that this is the only way he can get that review over two minutes.
"You heard me, you half-cocked message board fuckheads, the Wiiis part of this console generation ... so can we please stop it with this tired shit about GameCubes and duct tape!"
Tyler Perry also counts.
As does Sam Raimi's departure from the Spider-Man films and the series' upcoming reboot.
He also Hates the new Transformers films, as well as the bulk of Michael Bay's output for that matter.
Brick Joke: His Do The Mario videos on the Escapist, the first one having a stinger showing SMB: Peach-Hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen and saying it's a story for another time (as in, not the week after the first). Two weeks later, Do the Mario PT. 2 was featured (showcasing said aforementioned Mario anime).
Breather Episode: If you follow all of his shows, the Game Overthinker episode Bat-Slap comes out with Bob stating he doesn't believe gaming culture as a whole is ready/deserves to be taken as seriously as it so-often claims to want to. Come the following Tuesday, the Big Picture episode Science has Bob making mostly non-serious statements like "Space guys, if you don't want to pretend you've discovered oil on Mars to trick some funding out of the Government, how about telling Glenn Beck there's gold on the moon and not letting him come back?"
Cerebus Syndrome: Somewhat. Early reviews felt slower, but they developed a more mature, and contemplative pace, dealing with more analytical subject matter.
Ah, finally. Just a good old-fashioned straight-up revenge movie. No post-apocalyptic bible salesman, no angels with guns, no connection to anything remotely spiritual, religious, church-related or anything else that gets people's panties in a twist whenever I mention it. Ah, good. Good. ...Hey, who's in this again? *Shot of Mel Gibson as he appeared in The Passion of the Christ* Aw, Mother F- * Theme Plays*
I'd love to tell you all the thoughts that went through my mind about Scarlett Johansson and her performance in this movie... but this is a family show, so I'll have to summarize. HOLY— *end credits*
Darker and Edgier: "Violence is Golden", "Complex Issues" & "Building a Better Gamer" focus on more complex issues than most of his usual Game Overthinker episodes. His humor is more subtle in those episodes, and he does it a less contemplative tone.
Did Not Do the Research: His "Combat Evolved" discussion on Halo asserted that the human marines look uniform in comparison to the diverse Covenant; in Halo 3, the humans are teamed up with a species of bipedal 8 foot tall aliens with brightly colored armor. He also mentions that the Covenant want to conquer mankind; their actual goal is genocide.
Bob also doesn't know the difference between a raccoon and a tanuki, among many other errors.
Distracted by the Sexy: The production of Salt foundered when it lost its star, but then Angelina Jolie signed up for the action, which is great. Really great. Mmm-hmm. Yeah...weren't we reviewing a movie?
False Dichotomy (Separating people into the If Jesus Then Aliens groups in a recent episode, labeling people as either 'thinkers' or 'believers.' There's a bit of Did Not Do the Research with using Lisa Simpson to represent the 'thinkers' group.)
In his Heavy Metal review, he notes that this was the only reason the movie was worth watching at the time, since boobs were hard to find back in the early 80's, let alone cartoon boobs.
Fast Forward Gag: He sometimes speeds up part of his voice-over in order to make the video fit the standard ~10-minute length while still including all the BIG WORDS he wants to use. It is usually accompanied by a graphic of a chipmunk and a cup of coffee.
Freudian Excuse: He admitted once that he was bullied in high school, and his comments seem to give away that his resentment from that era is one, if not the main reason behind his criticism to certain things. Like the "douchebag" video game crowd that came with the Play Station generation (especially Xbox Live FPS users), his hatred towards the 90's (the decade in which he went to high school), and his fondness for Magneto-like villains. He's also specicially done a Big Picture episode about nerd reactions to such actions and the mindset that if one was bullied, they can't in turn be a bully themselves. He admits that he's talking to himself as much as he is to the viewer.
The Great Comics Crash of 1996: Game Overthinker Episode 11, titled "Can It Happen To Us?", pointed out similarities between the current game industry and the pre-crash comic book industry.
Have I Mentioned Iam Heterosexual Today: Holy. Crap. Every female character in every movie gets ranked based on how much she appeals to Bob's carefully explained tastes.
Heavy Metal: Bob uses the metal fandom's rejection of neo-Nazi skinheads latching onto them as a model for how gamers should react to their medium's association with fringe whackos (like the Oslo killer) and disgruntled youth.
History Of Hollywood: He's done a series of episodes on this subject for The Big Picture.
Hypocrisy Nod: In the "Building a Better Gamer" video, Bob acknowledges the hypocrisy of a fat man telling people to get in better shape.
No Ending: Movie Bob/The Game Overthinker doesn't really find a conclusive point in "Who Will Be Remembered?" other than you will never rid the world of Kirby, and that he wouldn't have it any other way.
Played straight and averted, respectively, with his treatment of The Eighties and The Nineties. Bob is not a fan of the latter decade, frequently accompanying mentions of it with a stock photo of Randy "The Ram" Robinson with the caption "The '90s sucked." He states that this was because the '90s were his awkward, schlubby teen years that came in between his wondrous childhood in the '80s and his present-day success as an internet personality.
Averted, and examined, with his treatment of The Simpsons. While going over the older seasons, Bob noticed that most of the episodes he thought were comic gold as a kid didn't age well, while the episodes he thought were boring when they first aired became much better now that he was old enough to appreciate the humor.
A character who we're supposed to regard as the grounded rational and moral centre of the entire story proves that they're in the presence of the Devil by throwing a piece of toast in the air and seeing if it lands butter-side-down. [Reverb] I. AM NOT. MAKING. THAT UP.
Done constantly during his review of Street Fight- uh, "Future Cops" because of the films over the top nature.
Oscar Bait: He has accused The King's Speech of being this, even going so far as to make his video review of it into a "How To Make Oscar Bait" instruction video.
Overly Narrow Superlative: He listed Cars 2 as the best movie about a talking tow-truck you'll see this year. Probably true...
Political Correctness Gone Mad: Inverted. Bob hates people who use "PC" as a strawman to defend themselves from accusations of sexism and bigotry, and has frequently called them out on it. If anything, he feels that it's political incorrectness*
specifically, assholes using "political incorrectness" as a cover for being assholes
Rule Of Cool: Reviewing Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, he admits "I'm probably predisposed to liking anything that has a scene of a gorilla beating up a helicopter."
Running Gag (Shigeru Miyamoto showing up when God is mentioned)
Shout Out: While revisiting Metroid: Other M, he points out the first rule of internet gaming culture is to never disagree with the mass opinion. Then points out the second rule is never do a Let's Play of Bart's Nightmare. With a little subtitle saying he thought it was funny.
Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: Falls in the middle. While he'll deal with serious issues, or serious opinions, he'll usually be more serious, with some jokes thrown in. When he deals with something more silly, the jokes are more prevalent. His movie reviews usually fall under silly, with him giving his opinion in a easy-going tone, but can be more serious when going into complexity about the film.
Stealth Pun: In his review of Green Lantern, when Bob says that Warner Brothers "struck out" trying to make a superhero movie that's not Batman, he shows a picture of baseball player Jim Reynolds striking out. *
Small Name, Big Ego: Admitted in-universe when accused of picking on big names because it makes him feel big.
Take That: LOADS. The character The Game Antithinker is a parody of how Movie Bob perceives hardcore gamers.
Take That Me (Bob believes fat people to be amusing...citing himself as an example.)
"I'm well aware that there's at least already one of you out there itching for this to end so you can run to the forums and get busy firing off some oh so clever missive about how film geeks only like to shit all over marginally talented hot actresses like Fox because we're using them as proxy punching bags for all the women who wouldn't fuck us back in high school. Well, to you sir or madam, I say... So?"
Very Special Episode: "Violence is Golden" & "Building a Better Gamer" respectively deal with the Media Watchdog nature & portrayal of video games and the demonization of them in the media and getting & developing better habits for gamers. They are both some-what well done. "The Revolution" is also this, to a lesser extent, trying to convince people not to shop at GameStop for better retail.
Visual Pun (The word "but" will show a picture of Ivy's ass, the word "thing" will be a picture of The Thing, God will show a picture of Shigeru Miyamoto, among others.)
Sometimes played with. In ep6 he mentions "D-cups" and shows a cup with the letter D on it; the image then quickly changes to a photo of breasts with the caption "Just kidding. Here's boobs."
"Polarising": A polar bear. On the polar ice, you see.
Often when posing a question, he uses an image of The Question.
Batman: Arkham City: Loved it. While he disagreed with the idea that it carried sexist undertones, he felt that the gaming community's reaction to this idea was incredibly immature, and used it as a jumping-off point for a discussion about what he felt was a broader lack of maturity in gamer culture.
Bayonetta: Restricted himself to a detailed analysis of Bayonetta's character design. He describes her as the first game character specifically designed to be sexually intimidating (and pulling it off successfully) rather than childlike or an ice queen.
Bionic Commando (the remake): Hated it, and holds it up as an example of bad video game design in this generation.
Blackwater: The Game: Absolutely disgusted at the very idea of it, comparing it to Rapelay and Custer's Revenge in terms of vile premises for video games.
Dead Space 2: Felt that its "your mom hates this" ad campaign was distasteful, as it was directly marketing a violent, M-rated game to children and, thus, giving ammunition to Moral Guardians who accuse the games industry of corrupting children's minds.
Farmville and other browser games: Doesn't get why people view it as killing gaming, nor does he get the dichotomy between "casual" and "hardcore" games in general.
Grand Theft Auto: Likes the series overall, but hated San Andreas. He laments the inherent limitations of the genre.
Halo: Exhibit A for every problem that Bob has with modern First Person Shooters, particularly the genre's focus on online multiplayer. He also argues that there are Unfortunate Implications in the differences between the Covenant and the UNSC.
John Madden Football and other EA Sports titles: Dislikes how EA charges $60 a year for what usually amounts to a roster update and minor gameplay changes, things that, in an age of Downloadable Content, should be done via that route.
Kirby 64: Lamenting that his homophobic teen years caused him to miss it the first time around, and encourages viewers not to let biases keep them from things they might like.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Apart from believing that Fi will never appear in the franchise ever again, he comments about how the game treats the themes of romance and sexuality through several plot points, "like Nintendo's development teams just now discovered sex and they're really excited to tell everybody".
Mario Kart Wii: Not talking about the game itself, but about gaming romantic also-rans, inspired by the statue of Luigi dancing with Daisy on the Daisy Cicuit.
Mega Man: Did an Overthinker episode discussing the various literary, historical and pop culture sources (particularly Astro Boy) that the series drew its influences from.
Mega Man 9
Metroid: Other M: Defends the game from many of the common criticisms. He believes that game's portrayal of Samus Aran, while unfortunate, was due chiefly to a failure to translate old-school narrative mechanics to a modern game, rather than any deliberate malice or misogyny on the part of Team Ninja or Nintendo. He also states that trying to associate the game's perceived misogyny with broader gender issues in Japanese culture carries a ton of unfortunate implications in itself, going as far as to call it flat-out racist.
Modern Warfare: Much like Halo, he views it as representative of everything that he dislikes about shooters, often referring to the sequels as "map pack delivery systems". In particular, he is greatly put off by the series' (and other military shooters') gung-ho militarism and weapons fetishism, which he feels attracts whack-jobs like the Oslo killer and fringe militia types to gaming, thus inadvertently giving it its association with real-life violence.
No More Heroes: Used in his inaugural episode as an example of good, creative character design in modern games.
Rainbow Six: Patriots: Upon hearing about it and watching the trailer, he found its attachment of militia overtones to anti-corporate movements (at least in the marketing) to be very off-putting, and emblematic of what he feels to be a disturbing right-wing tendency in the FPS genre.
Resident Evil 5: Felt that Capcom went way too far with some of the racially charged imagery, and stated that objections to such content shouldn't be automatically dismissed as Political Correctness Gone Mad.
Soul Calibur: Bob doesn't find the cheesecake outfits worn by the female characters to be as sexist as other people do, noting that the entire franchise runs on a hyper-stylized, fantastic aesthetic that such fetishized outfits fit right in with. What he did find to be sexist, however, was a Japanese poster for the fifth game that featured literally nothing but Ivy'sAbsolute Cleavage with the tagline"Go big or go home."
Super Mario 3 D Land: Describes it as "happiness on a cartridge", and feels that it made the $250 Nintendo 3DS worth the money. His only regret is that he had to stop playing it in order to review Breaking Dawn - Part 1.
Uncharted: Describes the series as, basically, Indiana Jones with Dane Cook playing the protagonist.
,and also contributes to both The Escapist
11 reviews