YMMV / Movie Fights

• Adorkable: Mike Carlson is endearingly quirky, and has some shades of childishness that makes him even more adorable. His giddy look of joyous surprise when Andy told him that he won the "What movie needs an all female spinoff movie?" round in episode 29 really sells it.
• Anvilicious: The episode "Movie Fights Extravaganza Benefiting Women in Film" message of how the film industry still discriminates against women is delivered in an extremely unsubtle way.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • By the producers' own admission, the first episode that featured Jeremy Jahns (episode 17) is, at the time of filming, the craziest episode they have. It features an unprecedented team-up between Jeremy and Kristian, leading to the Screen Junkies tag team raising a peanut gallery throughout the rounds as they try to argue from the couch, and constantly dispute with the host's ruling.
  • Episode 45 was this as well, what with Nick Mundy being the host and going crazy with the rounds, such as "Pitch a buddy movie starring Nick Mundy" and "Bang/Marry/Kill: 90's Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis"
  • Episode 64, a New Year's Eve episode inexplicably set in 1999, from the perspective of the challengers' teenage selves, with topics such as "Pitch the Ideal Sequel to The Matrix", "Fantasy Cast the Inevitable Live-Action Beavis And Butthead Adaptation", and "Pitch a Movie About the Impending Y2K Disaster".
  • Episode 69, starring Max Landis, Rob Fee, and Dan Murrell, who is forced to argue Mike's points because Carlson is Late for School. Part of the way into the episode, Mike joins in via Skype (with the video upside down) while he's still driving through LA traffic, and only physically makes it to the set in the middle of round four.
  • Episode 76, which followed a Last Man Standing format. The way Andy judged the rounds was that he eliminated the person that had the weakest argument, which brings in the next person to battle the two winners. The match goes through eight contestants until there is only two left that duel in a normal Speed Round.
    • Last Man Standing makes a return for Episode 112.
  • Episode 82, where all of the fighters (Spencer Gilbert, Ken Napzok, and Dan Murrell) and Andy Signore get drunk.
    • The drunk episode was brought back in Episode 89, featuring Hal Rudnick, Alicia Malone and Marc Andreyko with Ken Napzok returned to comment on the participants during the Bathroom Break segment.
    • Drunk fighting is then brought back again for Episode 115. Only this time around, it's used for the championship match between Alicia Malone, Ken Napzok, and Dan Murrell.
  • Invoked in Episode 88, which was actually labelled "Weird Movie Fights". Resident Cloudcuckoolanders Mike Carlson and Nick Mundy was brought in (alongside first-time fighter Joe Starr, who is no less weird) to debate topics such as "Pitch a Cars 6 movie" and "Which two movie characters would have the best sex scene" and "What scene in a movie would be better with a man playing saxophone in the rain?". Even the Speed Round questions were... extremely unconventional, to say the least, with questions like, "If you have to eat any actor, who would it be?"
  • Episode 92, the Classic Film Fight, not only asking questions only about classic movies, but was also shot entirely in black and white.
    • Brought back again for Episode 116.
• Broken Base:
  • Regarding Episode 45, or the Mundy Fights, Andy wonders if letting Nick host the show while he and Dan went off to Chicago was the best or the worst decision he's ever made. Fans agree with this dilemma, with some enjoying the craziness of the episode as a whole and others hating the obvious bias of some of Nick's winning picks.
  • Episode 79 which Alicia served as judge, not for any particular dislike for Alicia herself but over the fact that the fandom perceived that she was biased and did not do a good job. One of the sticking point is the fact that she eliminated the strongest argument in the fifth round from Roth Cornet because Alicia (wrongly) thinks that it is necessary for the game to proceed to the Speed Round (Roth already has 2 points while the other contestants have 1, which would prompt a tie-breaker if Roth had received the third point and gained a huge lead over the person she competed against in the Speed Round) and led to Roth lost the game to Clarke Wolfe 5-4 in the Speed Round, a result that makes the fans think the former was robbed. However, some do appreciate another all-female episode of Movie Fights and Roth is especially like for her logical, strong, well-spoken argument, especially for her first fight.
  • The new format change that came post-Andy Signore's firing has stirred up many fans. Everything from two fighters to the new set to the mere fact that the fighters are standing at podiums.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Nick frequently loses his rounds by pitching very weird ideas when asked to give a dream concept, such as the "Game of Thrones animal kingdom massacre" or "porno Harry Potter" suggestions he made during the championship bout. No one on the panel takes his crazy ideas seriously, but fans seem to love the creativity and enthusiasm to defend those concepts, illogical as they may be.
  • In one of the speed rounds, Andy asked "What is the best movie with the word 'Night' in the title?". Mark answered Night of the Living Dead (1968), while Kristian made up a fake movie called Nightfalls. The judges gave a slight edge to Mark's answer, after which Kristian revealed that his pick was something he came up with on the spot. This revelation both shocked and impressed the crew and viewers alike.
  • Despite Max Landis coming off as a huge Base-Breaking Character to the viewers, hardly anyone can deny how awesome his Man of Steel 2 pitch turned out to be.
  • Mike Carlson falls under this trope as well. While his Cloudcuckoolander ideas can confuse those around him frequently, and his obsession with Botanicus is the stuff of legend, he's also able to fight Dan to a standstill.
  • Episode 17, particularly the part devoted to The Hobbit debate, received criticism from fans, with some accusing Screen Junkies (who make no secret their absolute scorn for those movies) of mocking and belittling those with different opinions (with Hal laughing in Jeremy's face for suggesting that the movies are good), and of not even allowing the other time to talk (Hal talking over them, and Screen Junkies ending the discussion before they even got a chance to express their opinions).
• Cross the Line Twice: Application of this trope from the crazier / desperate fighters tends to create some of the most memorable moments from the show. Special mention should go to the infamous fake movie Nightfalls Speed Round answer by Kristian Harloff, Cody Decker naming a character Silky Cock in his pitch of the next Austin Powers movie Hymens Are Forever as well as the Weird Movie Fight and both Drunk Movie Fights.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Chris Stuckmann is not a regular fighter, and has only made a handful of appearances, but is considered one of the best fighters of the entire show (he's even beaten Dan twice). In the 1-year Anniversary episodes, where the most popular fighters are brought in to ask the fight questions, he was included in the list.
  • Amy Nicholson who many believe to be the best female fighter the show has ever delivered, and has proven to give Dan a run for his money to take his place as Movie Fights champ.
  • Another fighter that was included to ask the questions in the 1-Year Anniversary list was Mike Carlson. He's got himself a lot of fans for his endearingly quirky nature and introducing the popular #Botanicus meme, whilst still having many moments of badassery, including being one of the few people to beat Dan, and ending up as a very close runner-up on the Movie Fights championship.
  • Another fighter that is also extremely popular is Alicia "Red Fury" Malone for not being biased toward comic book movies in her arguments, her Australian accent and also an extremely competent fighter to the point of beating Dan in the Last Fighter Standing Movie Fight and yes, she was included to ask the questions in the 1-Year Anniversary list. She was so popular to the point that she has hosted three and is the most appeared female fighter.
  • Amirose Eisenbach for holding her own against Dan and Alicia for her first battle and extremely extensive knowledge on film despite her only appearance in episode 66 and the other two Curb-Stomp Battle her with Amirose only had 1 point.
  • Ken Napzok shot up to this trope for his appearance in the Drunk Movie Fight episode for actually fighting better when he was drunk. He was so popular and memorable to Drunk Movie Fight that Ken returned in episode 89 the second Drunk Movie Fight after popular fan demands to comment during the Bathroom Break segment.
  • Judging by the comments from episode 79 thinking that she was robbed, Roth Cornet is also one for being a formidable fighter and her memorable Precision F-Strike when Clarke Wolf mentioned the movie Black Swan. Viewers were incredibly happy when she returned in episode 87 and Curb-Stomp Battle the other two guys with the score of 5-2-1 to the point of citing her to be the the only memorable part of both episodes she appeared in.
  • Joe Starr, frequent fact checker and Honest Trailers writer, was adored for his witty comments during fact-checking that he was added to the fighting roster in episode 88. Said episode made him even more popular for managing to hold his own in weird questions against Mike Carlson and Nick Mundy.
  • Cucumber and Chunk, the puppets (or, rather, "felted-Americans") who fought Mike Carlson in the "Movie Fights Extravaganza Benefiting Women in Film," definitely qualify as this if YouTube comments are anything to go by. Everyone was expecting their segment to be no more than a total joke (including the judges themselves), but, in addition to being hilarious, Cucumber and Chunk proved themselves formidable opponents. Cucumber even beat Mike to win the Movie Fights championship belt
  • Greg Alba is a fairly new addition to the Movie Fights roster, and had only made four appearances as of this writing, but he's already considered a worthy opponent to the long-time champion, Dan Murrell. The fact that he is the first, and currently only, person on the show who's ever made a clean sweep (he won 4-0-0 in his debut, and almost did it again in his third appearance by winning all the regular round's questions, even though he lost a speed round question) gives him something of a Memetic Badass status.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Apparently the fanbase ships Joe Starr / Marc Andreyko, which was made into a Running Gag in the Drunk Movie Fight Championship round.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Any old episode that involves Andy Signore (the vast majority of them, given that he was the main judge) became this after he had been accused on multiple accounts of sexual misconduct. Said accusations resulted in his termination from the show on October 8th, 2017. Especially painful is any episodes that involve fans, as several of the released messages and testimonies from his accusers indicate that invites to the Fan Cam were used as pretenses or bribes for his inappropriate actions.
  • The episode Dumbest Movie Premise of All Time? has JTE argue for Rhinestone. Part of his argument was that the idea of having sex with someone due to losing a bet is disgusting. This is much harsher knowing Andy's sexual harassment of his girlfriend.
  • Hal's rant against Bill Cosby in the Last Fighter Standing episode becomes this after knowing that he
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Just a few days before Episode 40 was released, a fan created a fake Honest Trailers for the Movie Fights series, which called out the Screen Junkies crew for their apparent DC-hate and excessive Marvel fanboyism (even redubbing the show as "Marvel Fights"). Episode 40 is a DC-centric episode, and features one Marvel movie related question that two of the three fighters weren't on board for.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The first Star Wars vs. Star Trek episode only ran for 30 minutes (less than half of the usual episode length), and most of the fight played out like Speed Rounds even though the Speed Round had yet to be implemented. As a result, many people contested the game's conclusion, complaining that the contestants were barely given the time to defend their picks, especially Hal's.
• Les Yay: The three ladies in episode 80 bathes in this dynamic constantly. Jen Yamato and Amy Nicholson even jokingly utters "love" to each other at different points.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Nightfalls^Explanation The aforementioned movie that Kris pulled out of his ass. Many people have created fanmade posters, DVD covers and even fake movie trailers, while others (including Andy himself) considered it as one of the best moments in the entire Movie Fights history. A dedicated fan even sent the staff a legitimate, full-sized poster material of this completely made up creation.
  • #botanicus^Explanation Introduced by Mike Carlson referring to E.T's friend from the E.T. ride at Universal Studios.
  • Marvel Junkies^Explanation A nickname created by the fans towards the show that is usually used as a means to call out the Screen Junkies crew for always being pro-Marvel while always throwing DC under the bus in their questions and debates.
  • Comic Junkies^Explanation Another common nickname for the show amongst viewers who are sick of the focus being on comic-book movies.
• Never Live It Down:
  • In an unusually positive example of this trope, Kristian Harloff will, from now on, be fondly remembered as the one who created Nightfalls.
  • Hal Rudnick said "iconic" around four times in separate fights but he will forever be known as "That guy who said Iconic a lot".
  • Towards the show, Dan has always been a bit bitter about the "Fun or Failure" question for the Jurassic World fight due to how one-sided it was. It's a lot easier to point out why a movie is fun despite being a bad movie over trying to explain why the movie was a complete failure.
  • In this show, Brett Ehrlich is most well-known for his "blowjob ghost" debate in episode 68, with the question: "You're doomed to be haunted by one movie ghost, who do you pick?"
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Sasha Perl-Raver's second appearance in episode 103 made many other fans' warm up to her, even those who dislike her initial appearance. It helps that she didn't bring her own contact like the last fight.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • While people have continued to get over it as time passes by, changing the amount of fights from 7 to 6 before the Speed Round got some flak when the switch happened at Episode 28.
  • Another fight decrease from 6 to 5 happened at Episode 69 due to the show wanting to avoid 2-2-2 tie-breakers, which was happening often. The backlash this time around is from people who find that the normal rounds go for way too long; sometimes being stuck on the same question for around 20 minutes.
  • Many viewers weren't a fan of the post-revival show due to the format switch from 3-fighters to 2-fighters. Such criticisms were noted by Screen Junkies since they returned to the 3-fighter format after 11 episodes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Often happens when the crew engage in team battles.
  • The Screen Junkies have received a lot of requests to bring in Jeremy Jahns in Movie Fights, which they did. During the show, Jeremy pulled off the infamous Jahns-Harloff team-up, where Kristian ended up doing most of the talking. Let down fans complain that this is one of the worse Movie Fights episode because of it.
  • Happens again during the showdown between Screen Junkies vs. CinemaSins, where Andy Signore and Jeremy Scott ended up taking over most of the debate, somewhat sidelining their respective team mates: Dan Murrell and Chris Atkinson. Particularly with Chris since Dan, at the very least, is seen throughout Movie Fights.
  • Happens once more with the "Fun or Failure" team-up episode for Batman v Superman. While the Marc Andreyko / John Campea team did a decent job balancing the talk between each another, the other team, Dan Murrell / Harley Morenstein, wasn't as balanced. Dan did a large majority of the talking while Harley stayed Out of Focus.
  • Despite positive reaction to her appearance for being a formidable fighter (to the point that she advanced to the Championship Round on her first fight), the show hasn't invited ComicBookGirl19 for another appearance.
  • The same thing can be said for Amy Nicholson, who only appeared twice after the Championship round. For those who keep track, that means 2 appearances in 52 episodes. In fact, some fans of the show complain that Movie Fights tend to have fan-favorites (like Chris Stuckmann, Jeremy Jahns, the aforementioned Amy and ComicBookGirl19) Out of Focus while keep inviting back Scrappies like Kim Horcher and Alison Haislip whose spot could go to the above people or new guest stars.
  • Adam from Yourmoviesucks DO Torg appeared in one episode, and did his absolute best to be funny and give legit answers, but was also the first episode with Spencer Gilbert as the judge, which meant Adam had to argue for a judge that was radically different than the others. As a a result, Adam's fans were greatly upset at how Adam lost the Lightning Round due to technicalities^Explanation These were things like not knowing a certain director and his movies, which marked an auto-win for his opponent, which seems unfair given how not all fighters have the prep-time to know the questions, and thus the question should of been discarded for the sake of fairness., in addition to Adam being asked questions outside his normal movie comfort zone. Not helping was that Adam couldn't be his usual comedic self because he needed to be more serious, thus meaning he came across as very restrained. He has yet to reappear.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Andy tried his best to avert this in Episode 76. The question, "Choose an actor to punch in the face" got some very interesting responses from the panel. Andy actually disqualified Spencer for focusing his argument entirely on the actress' personal life (while not even knowing any roles the actress in question have ever played) and warned everyone else not to repeat the same.
• The Woobie: Poor Spencer Gilbert just can't seem to get it done. He's proven himself to be a decent fighter that gets him through the early Movie Fight rounds, but has always been shown to struggle to come out on top in the Speed Round. Then he blew up his chances in the Last Fighter Standing episode, where he got a little too political in his answer choice for the question "If you could punch one actor in the face, who would it be?" and was immediately disqualified before he had the chance to argue properly. He's gotten better in recent years, even winning the Showstopper in the "Dumbest Movie Premise of All Time" Last Fighter Standing in November 2016 culminating in him cashing it in seven months later at the end of the lengthy "E.T. vs Jaws" Championship, overcoming an exhausted Dan to become only the second ever Movie Fights Champion.

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