History WebVideo / TheDomReviews

Dominic Smith (b. 5 July 1987), professionally known as Dominic Noble, and formerly as "The Dom," is a [[SmartPeopleWearGlasses bespectacled]] [[note]]until he got laser eye surgery[[/note]] British-American {{review}}er of books, graphic novels, movies, TV shows, video games, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers a wall]] [[note]](he didn't like it)[[/note]]. His most popular series is ''Lost in Adaptation'', where he compares [[TheFilmOfTheBook films to the books that inspired them]].

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: During an in-video promotion for the audiobook seller Audible, Dom suggests that his beautiful watchers can use the service to listen to many of the books he has discussed in his previous videos. The examples he gives are: ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' by Frank Herbert, ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'' by Wu Cheng'en, ''Film/ForrestGump'' by Winston Groom, and ''[[Creator/ChuckTingle Pounded in the Butt by my Own Butt]]'' by Chuck Tingle.

* [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfDistance SciFi Writers Have No Sense of Distance]]: One of Dominic's nitpicks regarding ''Film/StarshipTroopers''.

* GrayAndGreyMorality: Dominic notes how author David Morrell intended for the original Rambo book, ''Literature/FirstBlood'', to portray Rambo and police chief Teasle as equally flawed people who equally contributed to the escalating fights that resulted in the blood bath. The film chucked this in favor of pure BlackAndWhiteMorality.

* RashomonStyle: He discusses this at the start of his ''House of the Dragon'' video. The original story is an in-universe historical text written by a historian after the fact, using three sources that were present for ''some'' events but absent for most, prudish and unwilling to document anything they found distasteful, and a horny jokester who wildly exagerated certain events for fun.

* RageBreakingPoint: Dominic completely loses it when the film adaptation of ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxyTrilogy'' misrepresents the Restaurant at the End of the Universe as a restaurant located at the ''physical'' end of the universe (something which should be literally impossible) instead of the temporal end of the universe, screaming and running away.

** [[invoked]]Is a little perturbed to realize that when ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' was first published in 1898, the British Empire had the strongest navy in history at the time, and their best weapons were armadas with cannons. When those failed to stop the invading tripods, Britain fell quickly. However, human warfare technology advanced ''so rapidly'' in the century that followed that every adaptation since (the 1930's radio drama, 1950's film, and ''especially'' the 2005 film) has had to amp up the aliens' armor and weapons so they can outmatch US rockets, missiles, submarines, tanks, and eventually ''nukes''.

** Having read ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' he believes that Stephanie Meyer got ''far'' too much flak for her sparkling vampires, considering that other authors have come up with ''much'' weirder vampire lore. He points out that "Quite late into her series, Anne Rice decided that vampires were created because [[spoiler:ten thousand years ago the ''founder of Atlantis was abducted by aliens, modified into a lizard man, became a spirit, and fused with the blood of a recently stabbed Egyptian queen,'']] and we gave '''''her''''' less shit than we gave ''Meyer'' for saying their skin twinkles in daylight."

* UnintentionallySympathetic: [[invoked]]Milady Du Winter might be presented as the FemmeFatale BigBad of ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'', but considering she doesn't do anything worse than the {{Designated Hero}}es, yet she's fiendishly intelligent and capable while they're self-aborbed and often incompetent. She's Dominic's favorite character in the book. He's also predisposed to be a bit sympathetic to her, given she's been mistreated by ''two'' of the main heroes for extremely flimsy and selfish reasons, one [[TilMurderDoUsPart trying to hang her to death after years of marriage just because he learned she was an ex-con]], the other using a BedTrick to engage in rape-by-deception and then bragging to her about it.

--->''They glued everyone's asses to their seats, presumably ruining their clothing, they sabotaged the other kids science projects that they clearly worked very hard on [...], they gaslit a teacher into questioning his own sanity, drove multiple members of staff into resigning their jobs, and spoiled the lunch ladies attempts to surprise the entire school with delicious muffins!''

** [[DefiedTrope Defied]] for ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers''. Not only do d'Artagnan and the titular three musketeers come across as sleazy, lazy, self-serving, and misogynistic by today's standards, but Dominic reveals that apparently even contemprorary readers found their behavior terrible when the book was first published, and Alexander Dumas used the now-familiar excuse "their behavior was acceptable during the time the book takes place in" (the 1610's) as an excuse even to 1840's readers.

** He fully admits to butchering the name of director Alfonso Cuarón several different ways in his ''Film/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' review. He says the same for Guillermo Del Torro.

* AccidentalNightmareFuel: [[invoked]] Dominic's often notes that Stephanie Meyer (author of ''Twilight'') occasionally shows great skill as a horror writer. The most dramatic example of this is when he realizes that Meyer has inadvertently implied that there is no meaningful difference between love and a predator's method of attracting its prey, and Dominic slowly realizes he is completely unable to refute this claim.

* AudienceSurrogate: [[invoked]] Dominic speculates that ''Literature/BloodAndChocolate'' never took off in popularity the way later supernatural teen romances like ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' and ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' did because the lead is an EscapistCharacter readers presumably wish they could be, rather than a relatable blank slate for readers to insert themselves into (like Bella and Ana).

** [[invoked]] As stated under CriticalBacklash, Dominic tried to give a charitable review of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}''. However, the best he could give for the first book was along the lines of, "It's not for me, but it had some redeeming qualities." [[{{Sequelitis}} And then the sequels attacked]].

* DerailingLoveInterests: [[invoked]]Brings up in his ''[[Literature/{{Twilight}} Eclipse]]'' review how Jacob, previously a NiceGuy and overall cool dude, is suddenly turned into a possessive, controlling jerk who graphically forces a kiss on Bella at one point without explanation, most likely because Myer didn't like that he and Bella were a FanPreferredCouple. For the same reason, Edward partway into the book suddenly goes from an unpleasant ControlFreak to a much more understanding and likeable person, a tonal shift Dominic found so jarring to where he concocted an elaborate BodySurf theory to explain it.

* TheOneThingIDontHateAboutYou: Dom isn't very fond of the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' saga, but he admits that Creator/StephenieMeyer does occasionally write some genuinely terrifying horror scenes.

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Discussed in his review of ''Film/AbrahamLincolnVampireHunter''. He said he wrote an essay comparing vampire mythology to Darwinian Evolution, with the traits people like catching on as canon, and those people view as stupid (e.g. [[Literature/{{Twilight}} sparkling]]) as dying out because nobody liked them.

** [[invoked]] Dominic, inspired by Creator/LindsayEllis' video on the series, tries to judge the ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' fairly. However while he acknowledges that a lot of the reasons people hated it back in the early 2010s were stupid (i.e., the audience being tween girls and the sparkling vampires), Dominic ends up concluding that the series ''is'' as awful as its reputation suggests.

* ProtectionFromEditors: [[invoked]] Discussed. Dominic notes that ''Literature/BreakingDawn'' was the most divisive of Creator/StephenieMeyer's ''Literature/{{Twilight}} Saga'' because she evidently intentionally missed many deadlines and didn't submit her final draft for editing until just before the publish date. By then, ''Twilight'' had become such a runaway success that they had to meet the deadline and make minimal changes before pushing it out the door

* {{Sequelitis}}: [[invoked]] Discussed. Doing his retrospective on the ''Literature/{{Twilight}} Saga'', Dominic accuses the series of suffering from this, as he found each sequel to be of worse quality than the last. By ''Literature/BreakingDawn'', Dominic admits that he considers the series just as bad as ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey''.

** Having read ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' he believes that Stephanie Meyer got ''far'' too much flak for her sparkling vampires, considering that other authors have come up with ''much'' weirder vampire lore. He points out that "Quite late into her series, Anne Rice decided that vampires were created because [[spoiler:ten thousand years ago the ''founder of Atlantis was abducted by aliens, modified into a lizard man, became a spirit, and fused with the blood of a recently stabbed Egyptian queen,'']] and we gave '''''her''''' less shit than we gave ''Meyer'' for saying their skin twinkles in daylight."

-->'''Dominic:''' ''(through forced cheerfullness)'' All of these characters are scum!

-->''They glued everyone's asses to their seats, presumably ruining their clothing, they sabotaged the other kids science projects that they clearly worked very hard on [...], they gaslit a teacher into questioning his own sanity, drove multiple members of staff into resigning their jobs, and spoiled the lunch ladies attempts to surprise the entire school with delicious muffins!''

* WhyDidYouMakeMeHitYou: Dominic multiple times throughout this reviews of it.

* {{Sequelitis}}: [[invoked]] Discussed. Doing his retrospective on the ''Literature/{{Twilight}} Saga'', Dominic accuses the series of suffering from this, as he found each sequel to be of worse quality than the last. By ''Literature/BreakingDawn'', Dominic admits that he considers the series just as bad as ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey''.

* MyNaymeIs: It's Terence the Douchebag, but [[SpellMyNameWithAnS viewers spelled it "Terrence" so often]] that Dominic eventually had to change it.

** Notes that in the original ''Literature/ThePrincessAndTheGoblin'' books the goblins weren't evil so much as AcceptableTargets because Victorian readers honestly thought [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman they were by default]]. Knowing this wouldn't fly for 1990's audiences, [[WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheGoblin the film]] went out of its way to make goblings evil, petty, abusive bastards who scoff at the absurd concept of being ''nice'' to others.

** Dominic would also greenscreen himself into the movie for gags early on. This would be dropped a few years in, with the Potterathon [[{{Retcon}} establishing that]] only wizards could do that. The greenscreen gags still remain, but it's now usually Dominic TalkingToHimself as different characters.

** JourneyToTheWest got a similar 'greatest hits' video.

* {{Irony}}: Notes in a number of his ''Film/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' reviews (especially ''Fifty Shades Freed'') how the films making changes end up conveying the ''spirit'' of what E.L. James was trying to convey better than she could, and than if they'd stuck to the scene by the letter. (Like the film making the architecht hitting on Gray an AdaptationalJerkass so Ana standing up to her ''actually'' comes across as a moment of "timid girl finally standing up for herself" empowerment rather than a case of mean-spirited employer-to-employee bullying like in the book.)

* PetPeeveTrope: Having admitted to being a victim of a controlling abuser at one point in his life, Dominic has a ''very'' low tolerance for tropes like, RomanticizedAbuse, TheMasochismTango, or even pretty modest BelligerentSexualTension, not only because they dig up bad memories and associations for him but because he feels that using them in stories is setting people up to get hurt via unrealistic portraits of what normal relationships look like. Even when they're portrayed as a strictly negative thing, that kind of controlling abuse often leaves him incapable of enjoying a story that utilizes them.

* AprilFoolsDay: For April 1st 2022, Dominic did a Lost in Adaptation "review" of ''Film/TheRoom'', of all things. Creating a story where Creator/TommyWiseau "adapted" ''The Room'' from a Polish novel ''The Room I Died In'', then goes on to explain that some of the movie's oddities, such as "I did not hit her! It's not true! It's bullshit, I did not hit her! I did not naaaght! Oh, hai Mark." was an internal monologue in the book and "Oh, hi Mark" was just Book Johnny noticing Mark there. Or "Haha... What a story, Mark." was the result of Johnny zoning out during Mark's story and trying to cover it. And yes, Claudette's breast cancer subplot was a proper subplot in the book. Then goes on to explain how the book was actually ''more'' off-the-walls than the movie with the least minute reveal that Johnny was a [[MythologyGag vampire]] and testing Mark and Lisa to make them his immortal companions ([[CaptainObvious which they failed]]).

* BilingualBonus: His April 2022 video about ''Film/TheRoom'' claims it was based on a book by an author called Prima Aprilis. Try translating that name from Latin.

* RetroactiveLegacy: His AprilFoolsDay video claimed ''Film/TheRoom'' was based on a Polish book from the '70s called ''The Room I Died In''.

In April 2019, he stopped using The Dom in his titles due to the AccidentalInnuendo it creates (since his subscribers were literally "subs" to the "dom"), rebranding hiis main cchannel to "Dominic Noble" (he was originally going to use his real last name, but as there's a Baseball player with the same name, he couldn't use it for branding purposes.

In April 2019, he stopped using The Dom in his titles due to the AccidentalInnuendo it creates (since his subscribers were literally "subs" to the "dom").

** RomanticizedAbuse, TheMasochismTango, and BelligerentSexualTension all infuriate Dominic. At best, he feels they're unrealistic portrayals of what a fulfilling relationship can be. At worst, they're genuinely harmful and set real people up to get hurt.