Seeing good in movies that society thinks up.
Movie Defense Force
was a web series on The Escapist where Jim Sterling of Jimquisition fame tries to argue in favor of films which have been critically panned, those that fandoms that dislike it for varying reasons and see it as bad film, or just universally shunned by both. In the show, Jim defends one film per episode by talking about the good points, its history of production that may have tainted said film, among other things.
The series ran for 26 episodes, from 10th January, 2013 to 27th February 2014, making it one of the more obscure series The Escapist hosted on their channelnote . And while Jim has expressed interest in picking the series back up, nothing has come of it (largely due to rights issues with the name, as it still belongs to the escapist).
Films covered on the show (In order)
- Alien³
- Waterworld
- Freddy vs. Jason
- Mortal Kombat: The Movie
- Rampage (2009)
- Wild Wild West
- The Perfect Host
- Friday the 13th (2009)
- Showgirls
- Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
- Street Fighter
- Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
- Alien: Resurrection
- Transformers (2007)
- Brainscan
- Godzilla (2014)
- Daredevil
- Repo! The Genetic Opera
- Jason X
- Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
- Paranormal Activity
- Batman & Robin
- Hook
- Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Compare with Good Bad Flicks, a show that has an identical premise to this one (and it shares many tropes between them), and is also a former Escapist show that is still ongoing independently.
Movie Defense Force provides examples of:
- Accentuate the Negative: Averted. The whole point of Movie Defense Force is to evaluate unpopular movies and explain why they are better than their reputation from fans or critics suggest.
- Author Appeal: A lot of films on the list are personal favorites of Jims, with almost half the episodes being from the horror genre. The pilot episode is even Alien³, a film from a franchise that Jim has made quite clear that he adores in other shows he's hosted.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Mentions the Trope Namer in Street Fighter as an example of an iconic speech.
- Canon Welding: Part of the reason Jim defends Freddy vs. Jason is down to the fact the movie uses the lore of both franchises to its advantage to make a plot, without the use of Retcons.
- Chewing the Scenery: How Jim describes the performances of everyone in Wild Wild West, much to his delight, even attempting to define a so-called "Rule of Ham" for the show:Jim: "I offer the Rule of Ham; where a bad film can be save by at least one entertaining exuberant actor putting in the effort regardless of script, and making magic out of madness
- He uses the "Rule of Ham" again in Street Fighter to praise Raul Julia's Large Ham performance in said film.
- Continuity Reboot: Jim makes the point that while there are certainly bad reboots of films, they find the Friday the 13th (2009) film perfectly fine, and hating a film because it's a reboot is, while sometimes justified on principle, does not mean a film can be bad.
- Early-Bird Cameo: A bunch of the characters in the titles are later reviewed as part of the series; Film/Hellraiser and Jason Voorhees are seen and get the own episodes.
- Found Footage Films: In Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Jim praises the film for not using the trope as storytelling device, even explicitly destroying the old tapes from the previous film, despite many other people in the Blair Witch fandom disliking this change.
- Hate Sink: Jim points out that in Freddy vs Jason, Freddy is completely detestable because of his past actions, as well the current actions in the movie.
- Large Ham: Jim notes Dennis Hopper in Waterworld is "a joy to watch", even mentioning he holds the Idiot Ball in the film.
- Leitmotif: The background music is from the Deadly Premonition soundtrack, curiously enough. The Whistle Theme is used in the Aliens 3 episode, but the rest use FBI Special Agent, which is more befitting of a "defense force".
- Movie Superheroes Wear Black: Jim notes the aversion to Mortal Kombat that see's Scorpion don his yellow outfit, and praises the film for doing so.
- Rule of Cool:
- Jim uses this as the reason they love Wild Wild West so much. The inventions in the film don't make much sense, but they look cool.
- One of the few things he likes about The Phantom Menace is that the robots looks cool, as well as the podracing.
- Scenery Porn: A praise he gave Waterworld in the eponymous episode, praising its visual style of nets and rusty tubing to make a weird Steampunk aesthetic.
- Shown Their Work: Jim, naturally, has to find positives in films that otherwise may be perceived as bad, which means researching any
Executive Meddling the film came under, and reading critical responses. - Slapstick: As well as finding Jar Jar Binks not that annoying in The Phantom Menace, he found his shenanigans and tomfoolery genuinely amusing to watch, even praising him when he destroys battle droids through their own stupidity.
- So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe, these are a few of of the movies Jim reviews. The videos explain what gave the film a "bad" standing among the film community, and then Jim explains why they believe the film in question is "good".
- Stealth Insult:
- Jim notes that the Mortal Kombat film doesn't have much of a plot to ruin, the games have one, but it isn't the focus. Jim then says that means any plot the film had would immediately be better than the B-Movie storytelling of the games. They wholeheartedly state that it's the best videogame film because it kept to the tone of series in the film.
- To Showgirls as he admits "the film deserves every criticism it ever got", but the series being what it is, he tries to find good things about it: Jim finds it
So Bad, It's Good that it's a must watch on that alone.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Criticizes Michael Bay for leaning into this too much, but says that it's pointless to complain about it, because that's what he does.
- Take That!:
- Uwe Boll gets blasted in Mortal Kombat, as Jim dislikes his tendancy for turning videogame licenses into original films, while serving as an advert for that franchise, disregarding anything about the games. Inverted The following episode, which covers Rampage, actually praises him for making a serious and compelling film about a person going on a mass shooting.
- Jim insults George Lucas at the start of The Phantom Menace, for obvious reasons.
- The Stoic: Jim points out that he doesn't scare easily when it comes to horror films, and gives priase for Event Horizon for actually scaring him.
- Title Theme Tune: The song used in the opening is written by Joachim Sandberg specifically for the show.
- Unpleasable Fanbase: Invoked as a talking point in Freddy vs Jason, as Jim points out that the idea of a fans' respective iteration of a Crossover would be different to the film, and therefore, it can't ever please anyone on both sides.
- Video Game Movies Suck: An Invoked talking point, as he argues against this for both Mortal Kombat: The Movie and Super Mario Bros. (1993).
- The Voice: Jim never shows up in the videos, only narrating over film footage.
- Waxing Lyrical: His final words in Wild Wild West is Jim quoting the song lyrics.
