The Love Triangle was there because of the said-later Character Development. It had been going on forever in Chick's, Todd's and Lupa's videos, and the former two needed to get over it in order to become better people.
As for SOPA, Rob admitted he let his anger over the Washington trip sink into his writing, and even put direct quotes from the officials into Clodd's mouth. Sure it was anvilly, but things like SOPA are still going.
Lastly, Zod and Turrell. Shallow admitted reason? Doug wanted more Ho Yay. Character admitted reason? Turrell was someone who could be actually be considered as someone who Critic accidentally hurt but not really, leading into his whole self-esteem drama. Or something like that, I'll need to listen to the commentaries again.
On your first point — that does make some sense. The only videos I watch on a regular basis are the Critic's, so it sounds like I missed that bit. Love triangles still annoy me to some degree, but at least it sounds like it's not so out of place if one keeps up on all the videos. (Though given the number of reviewers on that site that's a nigh-impossible task...)
Still am rather meh about the whole video, though.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind
In fairness the character Jessi turned into was Ed from Cowboy Bebop, which is one of Doug's favorite characters. So I can see why he'd want to put that in.
There were so many subplots because Doug realized that in previous years he'd reduced some of the contributors to mere running-gag delivery services and wanted to make sure that everyone had an honest-to-god story going on.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Leave a Comment:
Wanted to like it so much, but...
I'll begin by saying I really WANTED to like this special. I've loved every other anniversary special put out by TGWTG — the Brawl was short but hilarious, Kickassia was hilariously over-the-top and awesome, and Suburban Knights managed to combine great humor with an epic fantasy storyline. So when the fourth special was announced to be a sci-fi "movie," I had high hopes. But in the end, I found the special to be boring, and found myself having to force myself to finish it.
My main problem with the special is that it tries to be a parody of sci-fi tropes and stories, but doesn't quite make it. The plot feels like a patchwork of stolen plot points from Star Wars (specifically Revenge of the Sith), Star Trek (specifically Search For Spock), Flight of the Navigator, and others, with references and characters from Judge Dredd, Battlefield Earth, Superman, etc. While references and parodies have long been part of many of these reviewers' work, here they practically took over the story and dragged it down — we came to see something new, not something we've seen five times before.
The heavy-handed SOPA plot rather reeked of Anvilicious as well, and while that could have been interesting it ended up amounting to almost nothing in the end. It was as if the story couldn't decide on a plot and so hopped around between five different ones.
That and there were a few things that could easily have been cut from the film — did we really need Turrel and Zod among the villains? Did we really need the love triangle between Todd, Nostalgia Chick, and Lupa? Did we really need Jessi's sudden transformation into an anime character? What was the point?
There were many good points to the film, and it wasn't entirely bad. It was nice to see relationships develop among the reviewers, and to see them gain character development. I liked the callbacks to Suburban Knights and Kickassia. The special effects, while understandably not on par with ILM, are greatly improved over previous installments. And the Critic's dramatic sendoff brought a tear to my eye.
All in all, however, I was disappointed by the special, and unlike Kickassia and Knights "To Boldly Flee" is probably one I'm not going to re-watch. I can't complain too much — it WAS free and made by relative amateurs — but I still was disappointed and bored.