Awesome / Lindsay Ellis

• Lindsay analyzes why Starscream is so memorable in Loose Canon, explaining that you can have the deepest backstory ever, but if a character doesn't want something, then they're useless. The difference between Starscream and the other Transformers is that he has a Goal in Life, where the other characters are just For the Evulz-type minions.
• Her huge rant on Oz the Great and Powerful, and how can she take a lot of shitty things that the movie does, but she cannot stand that the reason why the Wicked Witch is wicked is because she's Woman Scorned.
• Her 45-minute long review of The Phantom of The Opera, where she uses all her film-school expertise to theoretically and academically explain why the film failed.
• In a similar way, she takes a good 37-minute long look at Hercules to properly explain the movie's fundamental flaws with motivation, tone, and plot.
• After threatening to do so for years, Lindsay put together a video essay in 2016 tearing into RENT full force, and not just for themes she's already touched on in other reviews (divorcing yourself from the system while enjoying its benefits and acting like you're above it all). Lindsay tore into RENT because it's a work set against the AIDS epidemic. But unlike the ACT-UP protest that directly engaged the system, demanded the government do something about the problem, and fought tooth and nail to gain acknowledgement, the cast of RENT... just divorces themselves from society and mainly sits on righteousness.
  Lindsay: It reinforces a worldview that in which the only way to rebel against the system is to reject it, and it might feel good to throw it on the ground, and throw the rest of the cake too. It gives you a sense of power in a world that makes you feel powerless. But in reality, the only thing it fosters is actual powerlessness, because in rejecting the system, you are not only failing to take it down, you are also forfeiting any voice within it. RENT takes an inherently political issue and depoliticizes it to create something comforting and consumable. RENT looks pretty, and does as little as possible.
• She demolishes the theory on how Beauty and the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome, while addressing an issue with Disney and their focus on heterosexuality and because people keep focusing on the damn Stockholm thing, they all miss the other factors - how society rewards bullies as long they fit a certain criteria; how otherwise decent people will dismiss or punish those who are nonconformist; and how important it is for people can see the good in others.
• Lindsay's episode of "The Whole Plate" on Male Gaze in the Transformers Film Series is strangely cathartic. Instead of tackling the often-hotly-debated subject of its relation to Michael Bay's lack of respect for women in his films, she instead goes onto discussing its relation to his lack of respect towards men as well. Specifically, Lindsay calls out how blatantly disdainful Michael Bay is against his own protagonists by framing male characters as either pathetic or just plain contemptible, yet still in a way that's meant to be sympathetic and relatable to his own audience, because that's how Michael Bay sees them. It's both remarkably refreshing to hear and just awesome.
  • Then, in her video where she actually talks about Megan Fox's character, Lindsay talks at length about how Fox's character is (in the first film, at least) "the most well-rounded and worthwhile character in the Transformers movies" and has far more depth, agency, and relevance to its plot than its actual protagonist, but is most commonly just seen as a "whore" because it's all undermined by Michael Bay framing her as just a piece of eye candy. Calling out Bay for treating not only her character, but the actress herself as a disposable, replaceable object just adds to it.
• Her pointing out that for all the flak Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame adaptation gets for "changing things", it still manages to have some really good points, including pointing out that it's the first adaptation to really explore how abusive Frollo and Quasimodo's relationship is and how Quasi eventually overcame that.
• The "Dear Stephenie Meyer" video takes a retrospective look at The Twilight Saga, and concludes that while there are indeed things in the books that should be looked at critically, the series and Meyer herself really didn't warrant the sheer vitriol they amounted.
  • Lindsay points out the Double Standard in how brainless Wish-Fulfillment forms of entertainment aimed at males rarely, if ever, get the same kind of scrutiny that their female-aimed counterparts get.
  Lindsay: Both [The Fast and the Furious and Twilight] franchises are dumb cheese, but they are dumb cheese targeting different markets. So why is one dumb cheese the object of so much pearl-clutching over who's a good role model for teenage girls and the other, you know, it's fine?
  • Her calling out that plenty of so-called "strong female role models" can have elements of internalized misogyny in them as well.
  • Also pointing out how Stephenie Meyer never took any sort of action on Fifty Shades of Grey, which she would've had every good reason to be ticked off over, was a genuinely admirable move on Meyer's part, stating that if Meyer really was the petty, vindictive and thin-skinned narcissist her detractors made her out to be, the very legality of fanfiction itself could've gotten dragged into court, something absolutely no one in any fandom would want.
• Lindsay's Loose Canon video on Hillary Clinton getting a shout-out from the AV Club.
• Her video essay about screenplay structure, by her recollection, was the first time she's ever seen the comment section be actually interested in the subject.
• After making it clear she was tired about talking about her past with Channel Awesome, she decided to start a "swear jar" where if she mentioned Channel Awesome on social media, she'd donate $50 to charity (specifically Puerto Rican relief). She even tweeted pics of the receipts to show she wasn't kidding.
• Her three-part analysis of the The Hobbit trilogy and its shortcomings. Besides giving credit where credit is due while also giving it fair criticisms, Lindsay goes into full detail about why adapting a relatively short fantasy book into three, two-hour-plus long films will inevitably have issues. But she doesn't just stop there. Lindsay also tackles Executive Meddling, Troubled Production, and the little-known controversy that occurred during filming regarding how the New Zealand-native employees on the team were paid less than that of their coworkers—even topped with an interview with an actor from the movies! All intertwined with Lindsay actually going to New Zealand and the set of the films.
  • Speaking of the interview with an actor, John Callen's Brutal Honesty about the production of the film is so refreshing.
  • This essay has gone on to be nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Related Work.
• The entirety of "That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast", a brutal yet concise and incredibly satisfying dissection of a film Lindsay very clearly feels strongly about and its failings, from its pandering attempts to "correct" the source material, to its insulting attempts at "cheap, safe, Hollywood liberalism", to the highly cynical approach the entire film was made in, which she argues goes against the philosophy of Walt Disney himself.
  • There's also her repeated callouts towards the crowd of overly-nitpicky and horribly bad-faith internet film critics that the film greatly kowtows to and ultimately suffers from. Considering by her own admission, she considers herself to have "enabled that atmosphere of pedantic f#####y" during her time as the Nostalgia Chick, hearing her call out just how terrible of a thing it is feels like a massive breath of fresh air.
• The moment in her The Producers essay where she proves the point that comedically satirizing the world's atrocities can sometimes be more effective in robbing them of their power than portraying them seriously through drama.
  Lindsay: American History X is a great example of The Satire Paradox for something that is not satire. The text of the film is explicitly anti-fascist, a cautionary tale that unmistakably condemns white supremacy. But you know what group loves the imagery in American History X? Neo-Nazis. Neo-Nazis love the imagery in this movie. The text shows Neo-Nazism and white supremacy as bad, but isn't it also kind of bad......ASS? Isn't it kind of cool, the way he's framed? Isn't Edward Norton a badass when he's an uncucked Neo-Nazi alpha? And then there's Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds, who has become more of a symbol for fun, and charm, and charisma than of evil. And you might argue that that's the point, but how valuable is that point if what people remember the most about the movie is how fun the evil Nazi was? Audiences may have lost the thread of the intended point. And then there's "Tomorrow Belongs To Me," a chilling moment from the film version of Cabaret, which has recently been adopted by some White Nationalists as an anthem... but you know what hasn't? (Cut to "Springtime For Hitler" in all its glorious contrast.)
• Her video for Game of Thrones, “The Last of the Game of Thrones Hot Takes”, is her laying down pretty much every single poor decision the writers made with the primary characters in the final season. It is so damn cathartic. Her main point of contention essentially is that, in what’s likely a case of working from the ending backwards, the writers and showrunners sacrificed established and nuanced characterization in order to make the plot work the way they wanted it to instead of working with it. This resulted in characters like Tyrion and Varys making numerous nonsensical decisions despite being regarded as the two most intelligent characters on the show.
  • She also directly calls out a double standard that Dany was treated with, arguing that while Tyrion, Jon and Ned all do things that are monstrous (using explosives to kill scores of men in the Battle of the Blackwater or executing several people) these events are portrayed as either awesome (Tyrion) or sad but necessary (Jon and Ned). Dany meanwhile, smartly uses her dragons to lay waste to her enemies and it's somehow presented as going just one step too far, just because she's using... fire.
• Her "Woke Disney" video articulates what a lot of audiences have generally felt about Disney's live-action remakes of their classic films; that it only gives lip-service to progressive politics while doing nothing to address unfair power structures (big business, monarchies, prejudices) because that would mean capitalism is bad, and Disney can't have that. In particular, she notes how Disney has given their Princess films an ironic feminist bent, because that's easier to market.
  • While talking about Dumbo (2019), she makes note of how the singing crows were excised completely because Disney didn't even want to deal with discourse on the racial stereotyping in the original, despite the crows being the most famous characters besides Dumbo himself, sing the best-remembered song, and give Dumbo the magic feather that helps him fly. Lindsay argues excising them was actually worse, because it wasn't just Disney re-writing their history, but acting like that history didn't exist, warts and all.
  • Remember in the original how the crows gave Dumbo one of their feathers? It doesn't escape Lindsay's notice that the feather is white in the remake. May seem like a small detail, but it's another symbol of exclusion.
• Lindsay spends about the first twenty minutes of her Cats essay talking about how the original stage version got so big, and manages to make the show's massive success seem less out of nowhere then the public perception thinks it was, even talking about how some of its problems became strengths^note  Can't get any big stars to appear? Just means cast changes aren't going to affect the box office. Got no plot? Turns out that non-English speaking tourists can now enjoy the show just the same as everyone else. Awful reviews mean you can't put any quotes on the poster? Don't need them when you have a poster that speaks for itself . What's more, at no point does Lindsay tell you her personal opinion about Cats. Rather than say whether she likes or hates it, she talks about how Cats ultimately became a success, because that's the subject right now.
  • Her closing statements about how the failure of the film version might end Oscar Bait attempts at adapting stage musicals. Her assessment? Good. Musical theater is doing fine on its own and doesn't need legitimacy from Hollywood, especially since Hollywood can't seem to understand what makes musicals work in the first place.
  "Popular musicals adapted to film because Oscar Bait is a disease. Let it burn!"
• Lindsay Ellis is now "Lindsay Ellis: New York Times Best Selling Author"
• Despite Lindsay's extremely uncharitable perspective on Addison Caine in her Omegaverse video, she still tries to be the better person and explicitly tells her audience not to harass Caine — and when one of them did so anyway by telling Caine that they bought her books just to give them one star reviews, she makes sure to call them a "fucking asshole".
  • When Caine tried to issue a DMCA takedown to her video, YouTube looked at the claim and did nothing about it, which is highly unusual considering that they tend to just take the video down and let the creator sort it out.
• When "Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia" inexplicably got flagged for violence, Youtube quickly admitted that it was a mistake in their algorithm and removed it. Between this and the above victory over Addison Caine's DMCA claim, fans were seriously asking "Who did you pay and how much?" Lindsay responded with how weird it was to feel like getting what should be the bare minimum treatment is so special.
• Mask Off. Lindsay's response to yet another online cancellation. While she asserts it's neither an apology video nor a cancel culture video, it is a thorough analysis of online culture and mob-mentalities that go into the pile-ons when someone becomes a Twitter 'villain of the day', and analysed through the lens of her repeated online harassment. While she starts off by analysing the origins and impacts of online cancellations, she then thoroughly dismantles the bad-faith actors who go out of their way to take part in a cancellation for clout, and takes aim at them with a seriousness and severity that is palpable. And though it absolutely shares a land border with Tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel territories, it is thoroughly cathartic to see her take a no-fucks-given approach to addressing people who put her through the wringer for their own entertainment.
  Lindsay: Global fascism is on the rise worldwide faster than ever, are you really so short on actual racists and bigots that you feel the need to go after the My Little Pony youtuber!?
  Tweets: JENNY NEXT! JENNY NEXT! JENNY NEXT! JENNY NEXT!!!
  Lindsay: So don't give me this horseshit about "accountability"! This is obviously just entertainment for you! Just fucking OWN it!