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"Hello, my beautiful watchers!"

Dominic Smith (b. 5 July 1987), professionally known as Dominic Noble, and formerly as "The Dom," is a bespectacled note  British-American reviewer of books, graphic novels, movies, TV shows, video games, and a wall note . His most popular series is Lost in Adaptation, where he compares films to the books that inspired them.

The channel has a few supporting characters also played by Dominic Smith, including Reginald, the clone butler, and Terrence, the Douchebag from Ravenclawnote .

In 2014, he was picked up by Channel Awesome, though he has since left as of April 2018. You can now find all his videos on his YouTube channel.

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


This show provides and discusses examples of:

  • Accidental Innuendoinvoked:
    • Dominic's old moniker. He was going for a Spell My Name with a "The" vibe, à la "The Todd" from Scrubs. He says he didn't make the connection to the other possible meaning until Doug Walker made a joke about needing a Safe Word to watch his videos.
    • A blooper in the Fifty Shades of Grey review shows him trying to use the word "dom" casually in the other context, only to stop when he realizes it's too awkward; this is why he instead uses "dominant" throughout the review.
    • In order to avert this trope, he's since dropped the moniker in favor of "Dominic Noble" as of April 2019.
  • Accidental Nightmare Fuel: invoked Dominic's often notes that Stephanie Meyer (author of The Twilight Saga) 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.
    This story about two people who don’t make each other very happy, or don’t even seem to like each other very much but are drawn together by an involuntary mutual magnetism... is a love story. There’s... nothing special about love. There never was. Love is just a nonconsensual result of things.
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
    • Dominic is frustrated with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Ella Enchanted films for dumbing down the intelligent book plots and adding more goofy comedy, but admits each film had a few scenes that got a slight chuckle out of him.
    • When reviewing Fifty Shades Freed, he reacts with shock at an actual funny joke. When Ana offers to cut Christian's hair, assuring him she has experience from cutting her father's, Christian's response of, "I don't want to look like your father" gets a "What?!" sound effect and the words "A FUNNY JOKE?!" appear on the screen from Dominic.
  • Adaptation Displacement: In-Universe examples crop up frequently in the Lost in Adaptation videos.
    • The most notable example is in The Neverending Story. Out of the 20 people Dominic asked, 18 had seen the movie, but not a single one even knew there was a book.
    • Lampshaded in his episode on Who Framed Roger Rabbit with his statistics. People asked: 30. Saw the film: 30. Read the book: 1. Surprised to hear there WAS a book: 11.
    • Lampshaded again in his episode on Die Hard: Saw the film: 24. Read the book: 0. Had to be convinced there was a book: 19.
  • Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: These tend to piss Dominic off the most. He feels that if they're going to make changes, the least they can do is have changes that make sense within the context of the film's own universe. The Percy Jackson films and fourth Harry Potter movie are probably the biggest offenders to date.
  • Adaptation Overdosed: invoked
    • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy has had so many adaptations over the years, many of them based on multiple other adaptations, that Dom had to create a separate video just to explain their connections to each other, complete with flowchart.
    • The Three Musketeers has had too many film adaptations to count so Dom focused on only five of them; four of them selected by his patrons and the fifth one selected by the specific patron who requested the adaptation episode.
    • For his review of A Christmas Carol, Dominic ended up formatting his video as an awards show where instead of reviewing all of the countless adaptations, he went through certain criteria (Best Scrooge, Best side-characters, etc.) and analyzed which adaptation handled them the best (based on votes from his Patreon supporters).
    • Journey to the West got a similar 'greatest hits' video.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Almost inevitable with Hollywood, but some peeve Dominic more than others.
    • Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Most noticeably Clarisse the six-foot, body-building athlete, and Tyson the tall, homeless, unhygienic cyclops in The Sea of Monsters.
    • Dr. Calvin in the book I, Robot is a plain 65-year-old woman. In the film, she's a gorgeous 30-something year old who doubles as Will Smith's Love Interest.
    • Harry Potter: Dominic cannot get over how book Hermione is bushy-haired and buck-toothed, while Emma Watson is gorgeous enough to be on Cover Girl (much as he admires the actress). He does, however, feel that Dolores Umbridge going from looking like a toad to a sweet grandmotherly type only serves to highlight her Sugary Malice.
    • In The Princess Diaries, while the book leaves it ambivalent how attractive Mia is pre-makeover (she's down on her own appearance, but other characters seem to think she at least looks nice), the movie does the standard Hollywood thing of casting a beautiful actress and adding just enough unfashionable hair and clothing so the makeover will seem like a difference. Dominic snarkily suggests that Mia and Hermione form a support group.
  • Adaptational Badass: Dom has a trope he calls the "Legolas Effect" where a character becomes more badass and gets to accomplish things that were originally done by another character. Legolas and Hermione Granger are infamous for this.
  • Adaptational Dumbass:
    • Light and L in the Death Note (2017) American adaptation are so rock stupid Dominic finds their existence to be an insult to the original fiendishly intelligent characters.
    • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is either this or a case of Adaptational Heroism. In the comics, he's very sharp, witty, observant, and sardonic, and willfully unaware of or indifferent to how his selfish actions hurt the people around him. The film keeps his selfish actions, but frames him as an oblivious Nice Guy.
    • Artemis Fowl is turned from a genius criminal mastermind who single-handedly discovers the existence of The Fair Folk through his own ingenuity, to an average kid whose father discovered the existence of The Fair Folk and informed Artemis, and Artemis' supposed intelligence is informed to the viewer in the very last scene.
  • Adaptational Heroism: Dubbed "The Anne Hathaway Effect," due to her appearing in every film thus far where a noteworthy example of a thoroughly unlikable parental figure is significantly more likable in the film. To date:
    • The Princess Diaries: Mia's horrible, selfish father and grandmother (who both constantly use, neglect, manipulate, and strong-arm her in the book) are depicted as fiercely loving and compassionate in the film.
    • Ella Enchanted's selfish, greedy, con-artist father who often marries rich women to get himself more money is changed in the film to be a loving, kind-hearted father who is forced to marry rich in order to keep their tiny cottage.
    • While not an Anne Hathaway example, Dominic notes that all the characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit are significantly more likable than their book counterparts in Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which is a very gritty, hard-boiled Noir detective mystery.
    • Bastian becomes an example by omission in The NeverEnding Story, which cuts out the book's second half in which he lets his powers go to his head and starts a civil war in Fantasia.
    • Dominic is particularly horrified by this treatment being given to the Witch of the Waste from Howl's Moving Castle, who was an irredeemable murderer in the book.
    • Most of Severus Snape's relentless psychological torment, abuse, and mean-spirited bullying toward all non-Slytherin students (particularly Harry and Neville) is gone in the films, and the third film even added a scene of him selflessly shielding Harry, Ron, and Hermione from a werewolf for good measure. Dominic calls bull on that.
    • Christian Grey, while not a good guy in the film, is light years better than his book counterpart. He devotes an entire segment of the review of the final film to describe all the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which the character is changed to make him a more likable and sympathetic person compared to his counterpart.
    • Rebecca: Maxim de Winter is not only not a murderer in the film, but he's shown to be a generally much more attentive and considerate husband to his second wife, whereas in the book he was cold, detached, and selfish.
    • Rambo from First Blood, who goes from killing everyone to going out of his way to not kill anyone.
    • The dwarves (particularly Thorin) from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit are much more concerned with honor, dignity, and courage than their book counterparts, who often acted more like petulant children with a knack for greed and cowardice.
    • The film version of Scott Pilgrim is either this or an Adaptational Dumbass. In the comics, Scott is very sharp, witty, and sardonic, and willfully unaware of or indifferent to how his actions hurt others. The film kept his despicable actions but portrayed him as an oblivious Nice Guy (they also shorten the age gap between himself and his 17-year-old girlfriend so he seems like less of a cradle-robber).
    • When covering the different adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera, from book to play to movie, Dom notes how Raul gets progressively more likeable with each adaptation.
    • All film adaptations of The Three Musketeers make the main characters significantly more heroic. D'Artagnan in particular is so radically changed that Dominic said that none of the film d'Artagnans were a good adaptation of him because they were all far too likeable compared to the rapist douchebag of the book.
    • The film version of Artemis Fowl, the movie's detriment.
    • Rob from High Fidelity is described by Dom as less of a prick than his counterpart in the book.
    • invoked George and Harold in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, presumably as a way to avoid the characters coming off as Unintentionally Unsympathetic like in the earlier books.
  • Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Adaptational Villainy:
    • Pointed out in the review of Jurassic Park, where lawyer Donald Gennaro is given, as Dominic puts it, the "full asshole makeover". Dominic also points out the invoked Unfortunate Implications of changing the story so that Gennaro is eaten by a T. Rex, given that in the book Gennaro talks about planning a birthday party for his young daughter.
    • Likewise, in his Die Hard review Dominic notes that book Gruber could very well have been a Well-Intentioned Extremist Anti-Villain who firmly believes Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters in regards to his goal of exposing the corrupt and illegal activities of a huge oil corporation. In the film, he got the "full asshole makeover" where Gruber is definitely a straight villain.
    • Teasle and the police force in First Blood got the "full asshole makeover" in the film, which stripped all their sympathetic qualities and then gave them even more despicable actions and characterizations for good measure.
    • Both Thranduil and the Master of Laketown for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. In the book, they were greedy but ultimately Reasonable Authority Figures who only acted against the dwarves due to the dwarves' own shenanigans (in Threnduil's case, they trespassed in his kingdom and then refused to tell him why. For the Master of Laketown, they became The Things That Would Not Leave until he had to move them along).
    • While Dominic finds Book Gabriel from Blood & Chocolate to be a sexual harassing cradle-robber, he still laments that he went from an otherwise honorable leader who tried to protect his pack and minimize violence between humans and werewolves, to a ruthless crime lord who regularly kidnapped humans that he and his pack hunted down for blood sport.
    • While examining the film adaptation of Fifty Shades Freed, he points out that the architect Gia is significantly meaner and more villainous compared to her literary counterpart, more condescending to Ana, more seductive to her husband, and starting out proposing a wasteful architectural plan for their new house that was originally Grey's idea. But he then argues that this actually improves the story compared to the novel, since it makes Ana's confrontation with her come across as the formerly-shy-girl-standing-up-for-herself scene it was originally intended as, rather than the mean-spirited bullying of someone she has in her power it feels like in the book, and he congratulates the filmmakers on adapting the spirit of the scene better than the original artist, whose abilities he has a very low opinion of.
    • Notes that in the original The Princess and the Goblin books the goblins weren't evil so much as targets of mockery because Victorian readers honestly thought they were by default. Knowing this wouldn't fly for 1990's audiences, 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.
  • Adaptational Wimp:
  • Affably Evil: Jim Carrey as Count Olaf in the film adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Dominic doesn't feel Carrey was the right casting choice since Carrey always comes across as a "lovable, overacting dope," while Count Olaf is supposed to be a Hate Sink. He seems to be even harder on the Netflix version of the series for this, repeatedly pointing out how cartoonish Neil Patrick Harris' version of the character is in comparison to the novels' characterization of him.
  • All Just a Dream: Feels that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is the only story that can get away with this ending, since book Alice encounters so much wackiness yet never seems to feel anything beyond mild curiosity, like how many people act in dreams.
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees: In-universe, during his review of Who Framed Rodger Rabbit, he notes how, due to Book Jessica being the toon equivalent of a porn star, all those Rule 34 pics of Movie Jessica are technically canon.
  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation: invokedDiscussed in regards to A Series Of Unfortunate Events. Dominic mentions that some of his viewers believed the books were sending a message about never giving up, but he didn't get the same message:
    "...While it is true that the Baudelaire orphans never give up, and are always there for each other, the books are also constantly reminding you that they won't ultimately get a happy ending after all this, so, the message you're left with isn't Never Lose Hope, it's....Hope Won't Save You."
  • Anachronism Stew: The film version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which involves a mix of technology and items from different decades, makes Dominic feel this was strange adaptation choice for the seemingly timeless setting of the book.
    Dominic: The weird mix of technologies, wherein a car would have a phone and wireless locking system but also have an analogue clock, and people would have modern sunglasses and drive speedboats but trains would still run on steam, isn't really in the book. That is to say, the book did exist in a weird timeless setting, but it preferred to avoid mention of decade-specific items... The film went the opposite route by intentionally flaunting the contradictory development in your face all the way through.
  • April Fools' Day: For April 1st 2022, Dominic did a Lost in Adaptation "review" of The Room (2003), of all things. Creating a story where Tommy Wiseau "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 vampire and testing Mark and Lisa to make them his immortal companions (which they failed).
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Dominic and Calluna reenact some scenes from The Hobbit in order to show how minor some of the film characters really were.
      Calluna: ...This is a recreation of how much Azog the pale orc featured in the Hobbit originally:
      Gandalf: Hey, remember how your grandfather was killed by that orc?
      Thorin: Oh, yeah. That guy sucked.
    • Dominic is not pleased with how Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events keeps finding excuses to bring back Mister Poe.
      I must confess, I never would have predicted Mister Poe would ever be the recipient of the Legolas effect.
  • Audience Surrogate: invoked Dominic speculates that Blood & Chocolate never took off in popularity the way later supernatural teen romances like The Twilight Saga and Fifty Shades of Grey did because the lead is an Escapist Character readers presumably wish they could be, rather than a relatable blank slate for readers to insert themselves into (like Bella and Ana).
  • Bait-and-Switch: When Terrence casually reveals he's cheated on Calluna and is now dumping her for Thrandruil from The Hobbit films, she's devastated... but not for the reason you think.
    Dominic: Hey, I warned you he was a douchebag.
    Calluna: Aw, I can't even be mad! They make such a cute couple.
    Dominic: (does a Double Take)
    Calluna: Yeah, I ship it.
  • Bait-and-Switch Comment:
    • When Dominic discusses Mass Effect 2: Arrival, he says: "I'm not saying that Arrival was the worst DLC. It's not even the worst Mass Effect DLC. It's the worst thing ever!"
    • Also crops up in the Dune review, when Dominic is describing how his fans had given him dire warnings about the movie when they requested it for a Lost in Adaptation episode.
      "But now that I've seen it, I've got to say, you guys... To be completely fair to the film, you really didn't warn me enough!"
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Dominic discusses how he considers this a Pet-Peeve Trope of his, because he sees it as an unrealistic representation of actual relationships at best and actively encouraging toxic ideas about love and romance at worst. If a story uses jealousy or bickering as a sign of romantic spark, he can be relied upon to point it out and complain about it.
    • Dominic prefers the romance between Howl and Sophie in the film to their romance in the book because it doesn't use this trope.
      "Howl and Sophie's romance is in the book, but I was actually tempted to put that in the next section (What they changed) as they have much MUCH better chemistry in the film. In the book, I could've sworn the romance came out of nowhere at the end until I remembered the 'they really annoy each other so they must love each other' trope. Attention writers and screenwriters everywhere! I know you guys love that shit, but in the real world NO ONE OVER THE AGE OF THIRTEEN DOES THAT!"
    • Likewise, Terrence finds the book version of Ella Enchanted's romance to be refreshing because it portrays love as two people getting along instead of hating each other, and is annoyed by the movie dumping this in favor of the overused cliche.
    • invoked Dominic literally growls his frustration with the 2002 Walt Disney film version of Tuck Everlasting for making Winnie and Jesse's relationship not just a Romantic Plot Tumor, but...
      "The film takes it upon itself to add in my least favorite of all the tropes, the romance that starts with instant dislike and hostility between the two participants. (growls) I would like to politely remind authors and screenwriters that that Never. Actually. Happens in real life and I'm more than a little sick of seeing it in EVERY FUCKING STORY."
  • Berserk Button:
    • Dominic is not a fan of Orson Scott Card, and spends quite a bit of time going off on his homophobia and other questionable values which make themselves apparent in Ender's Game and its sequels.
    • Dominic is also not a fan of tedious prose. He had difficulty reading Goldfinger because every action in the story was written in such excessive detail as to kill any sense of pace (However, compare this with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where he finds the extreme level of detail to actually serve a purpose in the story). Similarly, he found The Princess Diaries interesting (while admitting he was not in the target audience) because of the way it mimicked the speaking style (and not the writing style) of a stereotypical teenage girl.
    • He also really hates the Percy Jackson films as a big fan of the books. Expect the Calm Intellectual Filter to be used a lot in his reviews of them.
    • Films making pointless changes from the book that also harm the quality of the film. While Dominic can understand practical changes for things like time, pacing, technical limitations, etc., altering parts of the book that don't need to be altered that also make the film worse overall will usually invoke a Calm Intellectual Filter moment.
    • Romanticized Abuse, The Masochism Tango, and Belligerent Sexual Tension 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. He has admitted that it's partly due to personal experience with a very toxic and abusive relationship putting him on a very sensitive hair-trigger for that sort of thing.
    • Film adaptations that intentionally dumb down genuinely smart, subtle, nuanced stories seems to be fast becoming this for Dominic, given his Ella Enchanted and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) reviews.
    • Every time Catelyn Stark appears on screen, Dominic can barely contain himself from bursting out "FUCK YOU, CATELYN STARK!"
      • Without the all caps, it's now become his official name for her even in a recent review of an episode where she's actually reasonable and helpful.
    • Correcting him on Twitter when he makes a grammar or spelling mistake (which happen frequently due to his dyslexia) will cause him to mute your account on-sight.
    • Adults who emotionally abuse children who've done them no wrong, especially when the adults are taking out their anger over something their parents did on them. As such, he will not cut Severus Snape or Catelyn Stark any slack.
    • Played for Laughs, ascots will usually elicit an angry "Fuck that ascot!" from him, lampshading how often villains wear them in movies.
  • Bestiality Is Depraved:
    • In his Q&A video, Dom is asked whether he'd rather have sex with a goat and nobody know about it, or not have sex with a goat but everyone thinks he has. After giving it some thought (while a superimposed goat wanders around the background) he starts removing his shirt. While sobbing.
    • In his Harry Potter reviews, Dominic takes full comedic advantage of Aberforth's in-series love of goats.
  • Better by a Different Name:
  • Bilingual Bonus: His April 2022 video about The Room (2003) claims it was based on a book by an author called Prima Aprilis. Try translating that name from Latin.
  • Black Guy Dies First: Suspects this to be the reason Hallorann is killed off in the film adaptation of The Shining, whereas he survived and became a surrogate father/husband for Danny and Wendy in the book.
  • Blatant Lies:
    • "No, baby. I'm really looking forward to spending the evening with your mother. Yes, I do know she's really into cross-stitching now."
    • In his review of The Prisoner episode "The Chimes of Big Ben", Dominic mocks Number Six's blatant passing off of a wooden BOAT as "modern art".
      Dom (as Number Six): (standing in front of a biplane) It, uh, represents our fear of the unknown...
    • In "A Very Brief Recent History of Westeros", he mentions newborn Daenerys Targaryen being given the appellation "Stormborn", which "would almost certainly be the only title she would ever pick up in her life."
    • In the opening of his review of Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023), Terrance gives a recap of his previous appearances for newcomers to Lost in Adaptation. Among other things, he claims that he was "super crazy popular with everyone all the time" at Hogwarts and was "absolutely not traumatized at all in any way" by the events of that series.
  • Brain Bleach: invoked During the Half-Blood Prince review, when Terrance realizes that love potions are basically magical roofies, he finds the revelation so traumatic that he'd rather give himself Laser-Guided Amnesia via Obliviate.
  • Bring My Brown Pants:
    • After an encounter with the Wicked Witch of the West, Dominic decides to go visit the Wizard of Oz to request some new trousers.
    • After describing the Eldritch Abomination that Coraline could sense but not see or hear in the corridor between the Other Mother's world and her own, Dominic remarks, "I don't care who you are, that's brown trouser time my good friend."
    • In his The Hunger Games: Catching Fire review he points out how the book mentioned that the first Quarter Quell involved each District being forced to vote on who got sent to the Hunger Games, remarking that it's "brown trouser time for the ass-sod in the community."
  • British Accents:
    • Dominic, himself a Brit, cannot mimic Sean Bean's Sheffield accent while he discusses The Lord of the Rings in an episode of Don't You Think That's Fucking Weird?
    • Being a Brit, Dominic recognizes Tom Riddle's fan dub accent as Yorkshire for Voldemort: Origins of the Heir, and has a good laugh with his fellow Brits over this.
    • Terrence's accent sees Dominic put on a more Posh version of his own to play him and make him seem smarter.
  • Broken Aesop: Since the Tuck Everlasting film mimicked Titanic's lesson that it's better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable too closely, Amus Tuck's sudden "living forever sucks" speech at the end not only comes out of nowhere, but directly contradicts how awesome living forever seemed for the entire film before that.
  • Broken Pedestal: J.K. Rowling is this for him due to her anti-trans statements. This really hit Dom hard as he mentions Harry Potter was pretty much the reason for the creation of the series. As such he made a video stating he refuses to cover any more Wizarding World adaptations and content further and stricken any mention of Harry Potter from his merchandise, replacing it instead with Percy Jackson. The video ends with his Hogwarts persona, Terrence, destroying his wands and getting a note from his father (voice by Dom's real-life father) who sends him a package with a shirt to one of the Greek camps from Percy Jackson.
  • …But He Sounds Handsome: In his review of Homeworld 2, Dominic suddenly finds himself on the bridge of the Hiigaran flagship. He is then tackled by the Hiigaran Lieutenant invoked (also played by Dom). His reaction? "You punch as hard as you are handsome!"
  • Call-Back:
  • The Cameo:
  • Camera Abuse: When Dominic gets into a firefight with some passionate fans of Homeworld 2, a stray bullet hits the camera lens, shattering it.
  • Caps Lock, Num Lock, Missiles Lock: The trigger for Dominic's chest-bomb (see Disproportionate Retribution) has been implanted in his left palm. He accidentally arms the device while making an emphatic gesture.
    Dom: Cancel! Cancel!
  • Catchphrase: Hello, beautiful watchers!
  • Cerebus Call-Back: Terrence wears sunglasses at all times. Initially this seems to be just part of him being an arrogant arsehole until the Deathly Hallows: Part Two episode reveals that he wears them because he lost an eye during the Battle of Hogwarts.
  • Character Development: He freely admits he has grown and developed as a reviewer. Where once he held the book as sacrosanct and minor derivations needed to be called out, he now understands to better fit the intent of the story, sometimes movies need to do their own thing. They are different mediums and cannot be wholly the same thing.
  • Chivalrous Pervert: Pervert in that he admits in the Fifty Shades of Grey reviews that he is a porn consumer and has briefly dabbled in BDSM. Chivalrous in that he understands the concept of mutual consent and rips Christian for his abusive treatment of Anastasia.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Dominic's reaction to seeing a navigator from the Spacing Guild and pus-faced Baron Vladimir Harkonnen flying in Dune (1984).
  • Compressed Adaptation:
    • Terrence berates the people behind Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for, in his words, "hacking and hacking" away bits of the book's storyline until they were left with a more bare bones story in comparison, which he claims makes the film make not a lot of sense. To him, not only was it a bad idea not to split the book into two films like they considered, but the filmmakers didn't help by indiscriminately cutting away at random plots both big and small to create a jumbled mess, instead of cutting fairly inconsequential side plots but keeping the foreshadowing and chekhov's guns contributing to a strong central narrative and climactic finale.
    Terrence: The possibility of splitting the story across two films was strongly considered by the studio, and... this would be the one time that I was okay with that. There's just NOWHERE NEAR enough time in a single film that they can do justice to the fourth book, and that REALLY shows. They cut the good, they cut the bad, they cut the essential to the plot. This movie cut its own legs out from underneath it and then was surprised when it fell flat on its face.
    • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is another example of this, since it's the longest book in the series, but the shortest film adaptation.
    • The series overall also didn't fully adapt Snape's storyline and character arc until it became a plot point in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth movies. He credits Alan Rickman's performance with being able to not mind it as much, but the story arc for him is a bit less impactful without some of the more crucial moments from the earlier books. Peeves the Poltergeist is also left out of all of the films based on the books he appeared in, which Dominic and Terrence feel lets the reworked scenes they wrote around his absence feel like a bit of a letdown in comparison to the books' versions of events.
    • Terrence and Dominic even remark that the final two Harry Potter films were the metaphorical Judgement Day where the filmmakers' sins came back to haunt them. Every bit of Foreshadowing and Chekhov's Gun they cut for time became important in the final book, so they now had to cut it or introduce it during these films just to have any kind of payoff since they didn't show it before.
    • Dominic predicted and is thrilled that the film version of Fifty Shades Darker played up the few semi-interesting plot-advancing scenes that came and went really briefly throughout the book, and cut out all the incessant fighting, fucking, and "Ana giving Christian his way"-ing that made up 90% of the novel.
  • Continuity Lockout: invoked Talks about how the later Harry Potter films were made most likely for the readers of the books first and everyone else second, with how much was left out of them in the end at the end of the Harry Potter-athon. He states that the producers most likely chose this route because they didn't want to have to adapt the books for an audience comprised mostly of people who'd read the books already and wanted to get the important stuff in the films over extraneous details.
    • However, one detail from the third Harry Potter film he notes is that they never took the time in any of the later films to point out who Mooney and Prongs were. Peter Pettigrew was called Wormtail in several of the films and Sirius was called Padfoot in the fifth film, but good luck guessing who the other 2 are without a glance at a Wiki page, or reading the book.
  • Continuity Reboot:
    • Reviewed both the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and its reboot, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, first as separate videos, then he uploaded a combined version after.
    • Notes how A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017) is not only a reboot of the 2004 film, but of the books as well, since they have many elements of what would go into reboots, with tweaked storylines and plot points from the books, like introducing the VFD stuff early on and tweaking characterizations and other things seemingly just to be different from the books most of the time.
  • Control Freak: Dominic hates both Christian Grey and Catelyn Stark for being this. Christian because of the Corrupt Corporate Executive abusvie tendency this gives him, and Cat because of the My Beloved Smother Know-Nothing Know-It-All it makes her.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Even though it's Dominic's favorite of the books, he admits that the plot of "Goblet of Fire" was needlessly complex and that Voldemort, by all accounts, should have been able to get back his body in the first week of class.
    Fake Moody: Okay, welcome to the first week of term. Potter, hand me that book, will you?
    Harry: Huh? Uh, okay.
    (Harry is instantly transported to the graveyard)
    Fake Moody: LOL!
  • Could Say It, But...: For The Princess Diaries episode, Dominic admits upfront that he's not the book's target audience and hence that "it would be unfair to categorically say that I'm convinced that the only people who could possibly enjoy this book are teenage girls... so I'm just going to imply it heavily."
  • Critical Backlash: invoked Discussed. Dominic mentions that he desperately tried to avoid this when doing his Twilight reviews even saying he was hoping he could be the guy to say "Twilight wasn't that bad" only to end up falling into it when he read the books for himself and felt they actually were that bad.
  • Damned by Faint Praise:
    • Dominic notes in his Harry Potteraton that he finds himself saying, "At least it's better than nothing" a lot regarding book material that made it into films, and argues that he shouldn't have to say it all the time to give it positive adaptation points.
    • In his Ella Enchanted review, Terrence acknowledges that the book's author praised the film, but notes that she went out of her way to praise Anne Hathaway's performance, rather than stating that she thought it did justice to her story, so it doesn't improve his opinion of The Film of the Book.
    • Dominic concedes in his Fifty Shades Darker review that the second book was marginally less painful than the first one - that it feels like being repeatedly kicked in the arse rather than the genitals — but argues it's still a painful experience.
    • Then in the Fifty Shades Freed review, he states that both versions of Christian Grey are horrible and he wants to run them over with a combine harvester... He'd just be more inclined to do it quickly with the film version.
    • invoked As stated under Critical Backlash, Dominic tried to give a charitable review of The Twilight Saga. 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." And then the sequels attacked.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Dominic suggests that Hollywood needs to create a remake of The Neverending Story which includes the second half of the book.
    • Dominic and Calluna, however, do not feel this approach works for the film adaptations of The Hobbit, since the book is a whimsical comedy, while the films have an very dark, serious tone. Keeping the comedic antics of the cowardly dwarves from the book but giving them more somber and honor-obsessed attitudes just clashes.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Notes that the film version of Blood & Chocolate sets Vivian up as the lead, but quickly shifts its focus to her (creepy, entitled, stalking, sexist) human love interest and spends most of its run-time glorifying what a badass he is.
  • Derailing Love Interests: invokedBrings up in his Eclipse review how Jacob, previously a Nice Guy 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 Fan-Preferred Couple. For the same reason, Edward partway into the book suddenly goes from an unpleasant Control Freak to a much more understanding and likeable person, a tonal shift Dominic found so jarring to where he concocted an elaborate Body Surf theory to explain it.
  • Designated Hero: invoked Discussed on several occasions.
  • Designated Villain: invoked Dominic remarks that while The Princess Diaries presents the two aristocrats who'll inherit the Genovian throne if Mia declines as if they're the bad guys, but doesn't show why they're bad apart from wanting the throne and being jealous that Mia is better-looking than them.
    • invoked Dominic notes that Milady Du Winter from the original The Three Musketeers novel is presented as the Big Bad, but she doesn't do really anything worse, morally speaking, than the four main characters, and she's at least competent and Gets Shit Done while they aren't, and don't.
  • Devil in Plain Sight:
    • Dominic doesn't mind Henry Selick changing Coraline's Other Mother from being this to a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who becomes increasingly creepy as her plans unravel, since it didn't make sense for Book Coraline to trust her at all then.
    • Terrence spends a lot of the Ella Enchanted review riffing on the film's characters for not catching onto Prince Char's Obviously Evil Uncle, since all you have to do is look at him to see that he's the villain.
  • Didn't Think This Through: When covering the theater version of Phantom of the Opera, Dom points out an obvious flaw in Raoul's plan to use the Phantom's own play to lure him out and capture him; since the Phantom wrote the darn thing, it means he knows the placement of all the characters and thus, know the best time to get close to Christine whilst in disguise.
    • In the Crimes of Grindlewald review, Terrence points out that the writers didn't think through the implications about Nagini actually being a south korean woman trapped in a curse, specifically the part where, in the present day of Harry Potter, she's owned as a pet by a white british man and treated as just another thing.
  • Different World, Different Movies: The Lost In Adaptation episode for Twilight ends with Dom saying the movie would be vastly different in a parallel universe where they'd gone with the early concept where the FBI chase the Cullens on jet skis. He then pulls out a Rick and Morty portal gun to visit this universe, he comes back saying the movie was interesting but in that world humanity is enslaved by koalas so it's not worth the trade off.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Dominic is so incensed by the inanity of Mass Effect 2: Arrival that he has a 16-megaton bomb implanted in his chest.
    "When one of your favourite game series disappoints you, surely the only logical course of action is to threaten to destroy the world."
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Dominic finds the Blood & Chocolate werewolves' sense of racial superiority toward humans, the males werewolves' Entitled to Have You attitude toward the heroine just because they're the same species, and the "stick to your own kind" message at the end very reminiscent of pro-segregation, white supremacist mentalities.
  • Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Dominic is not a fan of this, as shown in his reviews of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Forrest Gump.
  • Dull Surprise: Dominic's impression of film Katniss Everdeen. He argues that keeping her The Stoic might be a faithful adaptation choice, but it's not necessarily a good film choice since the audience is left staring at a lead who doesn't seem invested in her own struggles.
    • Mocked in the fan-made movie Voldemort: Origins of the Heir, where the actors look bored or calm but the dubbed English voice actors make them sound emphatic.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • It took a while for the purple void to become the regular background. In the early reviews, Dominic would greenscreen different backgrounds related to whatever he was reviewing (ie., a T-Rex's stomach in the Jurassic Park review).
    • Dominic would also greenscreen himself into the movie for gags early on. This would be dropped a few years in, with the Potterathon establishing that only wizards could do that. The greenscreen gags still remain, but it's now usually Dominic as different characters.
  • Ear Worm: The theme song from The Neverending Story.
    "Well, that's going to be stuck in my head forever."
  • Entitled to Have You: Dominic scathingly rips into the 2005 film version of Arthur for (among other things) passive-aggressively grilling Trillian about her decision to date Zaphod instead of him, arguing that she shouldn't have to defend her right to date whomever she wants just because Arthur wants to date her.
    • Dominic is also revolted by Blood & Chocolate male werewolves acting entitled to the heroine's romantic affections just because they're the same species, and them riding her for dating a human because they feel she's "giving him something" she should reserve for them.
  • Escalating War: In the Harry Potterathon, Terrence's attempts to hijack the show and Dominic's attempts to steal it back, which begin with them knocking each other unconscious and escalate to the threat of deadly force and further to the point where Dominic goes after Terrence while driving a tank.
  • Everybody Hates Hades: Dominic is not a fan of the film version of Percy Jackson and the Olympians portraying Hades this way. Especially since the book series is one of the precious few in modern times not to depict Hades as evil or the lord of the Christian Hell.
  • Everybody Has Standards: While Terrence may be an insufferable braggart, he is revolted when he realizes that Fred and George are selling what are essentially magic date rape drugs to teenagers.
  • Fair for Its Day: invokedDiscussed with his review of the book version of Cape Fear, which was surprisingly feminist and anti-racist for its time. Far from being a helpless white damsel (like most 1950's heroines, like in the film), the protagonist's wife is a smart, confident, part Native American woman who is not only in on her husband's plans to protect her and their daughter from a convicted rapist, but often picks up the slack where other incompetent men fail, and the narrator often proudly attributes her fierce spirit and intelligence to her "Indian blood!" ... Which can be a tad uncomfortable wording by today's standards.
  • Fan Community Nickname: "Beautiful watchers."
  • Fascinating Eyebrow: Dominic is a master of this.
  • Female Gaze: Notes that in the Fifty Shades films, what little we see of Ana's boobs is shown very briefly and matter-of-factly, while Christian's chiselled abs, buttocks, and workout routines are depicted with almost religious reverence.
  • Female Misogynist: Discussed for both versions of Blood & Chocolate, oddly enough.
    • He finds book Vivian unlikable because she mentally brags to the reader that she doesn't get along with other girls because she thinks they're just jealous of how incredibly hot and big-boobed she is.
    • He's surprised to learn the director of the film is female, given how the film makes Vivian an Adaptational Wimp while glorifying the male characters acting macho, creepy, entitled, and sexist.
  • The Film of the Book: Features prominently in his series Lost in Adaptation. Typically, he discusses three things: What was the same, what was changed, and what was left out entirely.
  • Flanderization:
    • Dominic is not impressed with how the villains from Dune made their way from the book to the movie. In particular, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is changed from a complex, scheming, invoked Magnificent Bastard to a one-dimensional, flying thug with no indoor voice and a serious case of space herpes.
    • HBO really played up the "party boy" aspect of Tyrion's character for A Song of Ice and Fire, replacing scenes of him being dignified and bookwormish with yet more scenes of him getting drunk and sleeping with sex workers.
    • Actually discussed in his Tuck Everlasting review, where he notes many incidental character traits get pumped up to their most logical extreme in the film. Winnie's family is a little better off than the rest? Now she's Blue Blood! Winnie thought playing in the forest would be more interesting than playing in the yard? Now she's trapped in a Gilded Cage! The man in the yellow suit wanted to meet the Tucks to see if immortality was real? Now he's a crazed, obsessed, phantom-like stalker who's been on their tail for months! Nice Guy Miles was sad his wife and kids left him? Now he's angry, bitter, and a total dick to everyone because of it.
  • Formally-Named Pet: Sir Terry Pratchett, a ginger cat named after Dominic's favourite author.
  • Franchise Original Sin: invoked Discussed. Dominic remarks in his final Fifty Shades Freed review that the chemistry, dialogue, and sex scenes between the two leads was always wooden and awkward, so the films always tried to make up for it by bombasting pop song after pop song in every scene to try to compensate for it. However, while it wasn't that noticeable or distracting in the first films, it's become so bad in the third that he finds it almost unwatchable.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Though you can see them when they're on-screen, pay attention to the Harry Potter reviews hosted by Terrence after Prisoner of Azkaban if you rewatch them, specifically when the Marauder's Map appears. Terrence's name will appear and he'll be doing something hilarious. Mostly while other stuff you'd most likely be paying attention to is going on.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Invoked for the Alice in Wonderland review. Dominic finds it odd that Dinah, the cat from the supposed "real world," noticed odd things and waved... until he remembered that Alice was already asleep by that point.
    "Well-played, Disney. Well-played."
  • Fridge Horror:invoked Dominic can't stop thinking about the horrific implications of The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith (the otherwise harmless children's book that inspired Babe) giving animals sapient intelligence yet making them fully aware of (and okay with) being raised for slaughter.
    Dominic: "I may be ewe, I may be ram.
    I may be mutton, I may be lamb.
    But on the hoof or on the hook.
    I ain't so stupid as I look."
    I mean, WOW, right? "On the hoof or on the hook"? The sheep's password is all about how they're going to be killed and eaten someday. And they mention they teach this to lambs as soon as they're old enough-- Oh, no. Lamb chops. These poor sheep have to watch some of their CHILDREN being slaughtered for the sake of slightly nicer meat for picky humans! THESE FARMS ARE DEATH CAMPS! WHAT HORRORS HAS KING-SMITH CREATED?!
    • Terrence's revelation about Love Potions in Harry Potter being essentially Date Rape drugs.
  • Fridge Logic: (In-Universe) Don't You Think That's Fucking Weird?
  • Getting Eaten Is Harmless: In the Jurassic Park episode, Dominic is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. He then does the rest of the review from inside its stomach.
    "I've just got to figure out how to set up a green screen in here now."
  • The Ghost: Reginald, the clone butler who mans the Calm Intellectual Filter.
    • Lampshaded by Terrence, who feels it's a shame Dominic never gives him any screen time.
  • Gray-and-Grey Morality: Dominic notes how author David Morrell intended for the original Rambo book, First Blood, 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 Black-and-White Morality.
  • Guilty Pleasures: Dom admits that Murder on the Orient Express (2017) is this to him, a movie he knows is far from a perfect adaptation but he greatly enjoys anyway.
  • Hate Sink:
  • Have a Gay Old Time: Comes up in his video on The Silver Chair where there are several passages that take on a very different meaning in today's context.
  • He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: (In-Universe) In the Lost in Adaptation: Starship Troopers video, we find out that fans of Homeworld 2 did not appreciate Dominic's scathing review in an earlier episode.
  • Hidden Depths: Terrence is a Douchebag, but the final Harry Potterathon reviews reveal he participated in the Battle of Hogwarts, where he lost several friends and an eye, has a few Pet the Dog moments throughout the series, and accidentally confesses in a drunken rant that the real reason he still wears Ravenclaw robes is he's still traumatized from the Battle of Hogwarts.
  • Hilarious Outtakes: Several episodes have outtakes played during the end credits, showing Dominic flubbing lines, fumbling with props, or just messing around while in costume for a skit.
  • Hollywood Homely: invoked Discussed when it comes to quite a few examples of Adaptational Attractiveness.
    • Feels this way about Emma Watson playing Hermione Granger, especially in the fourth film where Hermione's plainness ties into the plot.
      "It was a bit off-putting that she was leagues prettier than the girls who were supposed to be the mind-bogglingly hot ones, Krum's attraction to her seems perfectly understandable in the film, and the makeover that shocked everyone at the ball doesn't seem all that different from her usual look aside from her hair. Book Hermione was not excessively ugly, but she did not have the potential to be a Cover Girl like Emma Watson."
    • Though to give Emma a fair shake, Dominic later acknowledges that Daniel Radcliffe shouldn't have hit the gym so hard since his ripped muscles don't fit with book Harry's signature skinniness.
    • Also rips into the film adaptation of The Princess Diaries for trying to portray Anne-freaking-Hathaway as ugly just because of some glasses, eyebrows, and curly hair.
  • Idiot Plot: invoked Discussed. Dom savagely lambasted the plot of Mass Effect 2: Arrival for making no goddamn sense and essentially Rail Roading the player into committing a war crime that is barely touched on in the future and happened only to justify Shepard being in Alliance custody and relieved of duty at the start of Mass Effect 3.
    • Adaptational Attractiveness notes the whitewashed American film version of Death Note's Light and L are so rock stupid that the only reason they get away with half their moronic plans as long as they did is because everyone around them is even dumber.
  • I'm Standing Right Here: In the LIA of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, Terrence points out that the scene where Ron and Harry talk about Dean Thomas takes place after bedtime, while they're in the room they share with Dean Thomas, meaning he was probably within earshot. Terrence mentions he can sympathize with that and the scene then smash cuts to a bunch of Ravenclaws badmouthing Terrence regarding how much of an insufferable prick he is and how they wish they could transfer him out of Ravenclaw. When he indignantly points out he's sitting right there and can hear them, the rest yell "GOOD!".
  • Improbable Infant Survival: In both versions of Jurassic Park Hammond's two grandchildren survive, but in the book some raptors managed to sneak onto the mainland. Dominic proceeds to CG a raptor walking out of a maternity ward and burping up a teddy bear.
    • In his final The Hunger Games: Mockingjay review, he notes that in the book Katniss sees a toddler get mowed down by bullet fire while wailing over the body of her mother following a first-wave bombing attack. In the film, he notes they chose to omit that.
      Dominic: I mean, I wasn't hoping to see it, but still.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Dominic's reaction to seeing Sting's futuristic Speedo scene from Dune (1984) is to drink an entire fifth of Southern Comfort, all in one go. He then passes out.
  • In Name Only: Frequently Discussed, seeing how he works with adaptations:
    • I, Robot. The Three Laws of Robotics from the book are used in the movie... more or less. Other than that, very little of Isaac Asimov's original stories remain. Dominic points out how problematic it is that the movie involves a robot uprising, considering that Asimov wrote the original book specifically to subvert this idea.
    • Dominic references this trope by name in the Who Framed Roger Rabbit review, when he invokes the In Name Only Clause: since the book and the movie have so little in common, he's forced to dispense with the normal format of his show (What They Changed/What They Didn't Change/What They Left Out Altogether), instead summarizing each version separately.
    • The Ella Enchanted book and film are both about a young girl named Ella (who lives in a Standard Fantasy Setting) being cursed with the "gift" of obedience by a foolish fairy named Lucinda on the day of her birth, and her falling in love with a prince who goes by Char in her teens... and that's about it.
    • Ironically, in spite of Blade Runner being one of the main examples Dominic had in mind when he came up with the "In Name Only" clause, he found out to his surprise that the film had just enough in common with the book to avoid invoking that clause.
    • Blood & Chocolate was a "no fucks given" adaptation.
    • A good deal of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is this to its Scott Pilgrim comic counterpart, since the film squeezes six books into one average-length film. Some parts of the film have only 7 or 8% of an entire comic book's parallel storyline in them.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: In the review for The Thing:
    Dom: For the first time in a while, this is a film that I've never actually seen before, mainly because of my aversion to horror. But I'm sure I can handle this one. Let's do this!
    [walks off screen]
    [5 seconds of offscreen Thing noises]
    Dom: [flees screaming]
  • Irony:
    • Notes in a number of his Fifty Shades of Grey 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 Adaptational Jerkass 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.)
    • In his review of The Missus, he notes that by writing a novel where not much actually happens and most of the characters' problems are easily solved, E. L. James has actually ended up portraying the lead couple as having a healthy relationship and showing the importance of good communication skills.
  • Jerk Jock: Terrence the Douchebag... The name says it all, really.
  • Juggling Loaded Guns: In an interstitial in the Die Hard video, Dom tries a bit of Gun Twirling then sticks the gun down the back of his pants like a badass who doesn't need a proper holster... and it goes off, resulting a panicked expression from Dom.
  • Just a Kid: Dominic tends to forgive Sansa from A Song of Ice and Fire for being a Poor Judge of Character who constantly gets people killed just like her mother Catelyn Stark, since Sansa is 11 while Cat is a grown woman who should know better.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: Terrence the Douchebag, in the Pseudo-Crisis at the end of part 1 of the two-part Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince adaptation review.
  • Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: Dominic reviews of an episode of The Prisoner which features a character named Cobb (played by Paul Eddington), who is brainwashed by the Village. Dominic suggests that Cobb was subsequently sent undercover as Jerry Leadbetter to keep tabs on some "anarchists" (Tom and Barbara Good). We then get a caption that says: "1000 Awesome guy points to any non-Englishmen who got that reference".
  • The Last Of These Is Not Like The Others: 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: Dune by Frank Herbert, Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, Forrest Gump by Winston Groom, and Pounded in the Butt by my Own Butt by Chuck Tingle.
  • Last-Second Word Swap: Dominic's ultimate opinion of The Lightning Thief, due to Reginald's activation of the Calm Intellectual Filter halfway through:
    "That's why this film sucked, and that's why it can kiss — its reputation goodbye."
  • Less Disturbing in Context: invoked Dominic describes the Captain Underpants books as "the heartwarming tale of a middle-aged man who constantly undresses infront of two preteen boys".
  • Love Martyr: These tend to drive Dominic up the wall. Looking at you, Anastasia Steele and unnamed narrator of Rebecca.
  • Malicious Misnaming: He hates Catelyn Stark so much that, in A Dom Of Ice and Fire, he only ever refers to her as "Fuck You, Catelyn Stark!" By the nineth and tenth episode he says it calmly, and occasionally uses the nickname "F U, Cat."
  • Moral Luck: Discussed between Dominic and That Movie Chick in their joint review of The Thing (1982). In both the film and short story, the humans are driven to paranoid madness and turn on each other thanks to the alien that can impersonate humans, resulting in a few murders. In the film, one of the poor souls is proven human, highlighting the tragedy of how humans can become just as animalistic and monstrous as the alien they're fighting. In the original short story, the only people killed turned out to be the alien after all, thereby "justifying" the murder, and in-universe the ones who did the killing get let off the hook due to their victim turning out to be the alien (even though for all they knew it could have very easily been a human coworker).
  • Morton's Fork: Dominic sees the Death Note (2017) American filmmakers as putting themselves in this situation by adapting Death Note: If they make changes, they'll piss off the very fanbase they were trying to attract, and if they don't make changes they're just adding another mediocre addition to the huge Adaptation Overdosed pile.
  • MST3K Mantra: invokedOccasionally has to remind himself not to over-analyze fiction that's meant to be enjoyed, though especially in his Babe review (since it was based on a harmless children's book).
  • My Future Self and Me: The Lost in Adaptation review of Total Recall guest-stars two future versions of Dominic, one who has travelled back in time to prevent himself from just doing the 1990 version and skipping the 2012 version, and one who has travelled back in time to make sure he still reviews the 1990 version as well.
  • My Nayme Is: It's Terence the Douchebag, but viewers spelled it "Terrence" so often that Dominic eventually had to change it.
  • Network Decay: Soundly within the Major Shifts that Fit category, but as time goes on the channel has come to also include book and audiobook reviews and reviews of audiovisual spinoffs to various adaptations alongside its usual mission statement.
  • Never My Fault: Dominic tends to hate characters who have this attitude that we're supposed to find sympathetic.
    • He absolutely hates Catelyn Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire for being this (according to him). She refuses to take any responsibility for her many stupid decisions throughout the series, always reasoning that her love for her children justifies her every action, no matter how many people (including said children) get hurt as a result of her decisions.
    • He completely loathes Christian Grey from Fifty Shades Of Grey for constantly blaming Ana for his abusive, possessive, controlling behavior toward her.
    • He is disgusted with Film Adrian from Blood & Chocolate sexually harassing, stalking, and refusing to take "no" for an answer from Vivian (who tries to flee in an alley and scales a building to get away from him) until he finally wears her down into agreeing to date him, then after finding out she's a werewolf he blames HER for dragging him into her world and claims she should have avoided him.
  • Nightmare Retardant: invoked "HEDGES ARE NOT SCARY!"
  • No Accounting for Taste: invoked Discussed in his The Princess Bride review, as the Lemony Narrator comments that Westley and Buttercup getting together is probably an Esoteric Happy Ending, speculating that once Buttercup's looks start to go Westley will lose what little enchantment he has with her (since they only ever snipe at each other when they're actually in the same room together), and start to realize what a useless, self-absorbed sycophant she is.
    • Rips Fifty Shades of Grey apart for this, naturally. He especially finds it damning that Anastasia has to keep verbally justifying why she and Christian are together (to the reader and other characters), as when you take away the Character Shilling it's clear that they have nothing in common and can barely stand each other.
    • Comments this to be the case between Christine and Raoul in the original The Phantom of the Opera novel, surprisingly enough. He comments that Christine and Raoul never seem to actually enjoy being in each other's company, as Raoul clearly has an idealized version of his childhood friend in his mind and is constantly angry with the real Christine for failing to live up to his idealization of her, and that Christine is "clearly settling" since her only other option is an "ugly, smelly man who lives in a sewer."
  • The Not-Love Interest: Nearly every Girl of the Week that the unnamed protagonist encounters in The Prisoner, since the lead actor adamantly refused to go along with the writers' desires for romances and sex scenes.
  • Obligatory Joke: When Dominic mentions The Spanish Inquisition in his review of The Vile Village, he naturally makes a "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition" joke — but it's got a bit of a twist on it.
    Dominic: I just didn't get a Nazi vibe from the vile village [...] it's all way more "Spanish Inquisition" than "Fascism". Oh my goodness, I suspected the Spanish Inquisition! No one suspects the Spanish Inquisition!
  • Oblivious to Love: While Dominic is not against this trope in principle, the trend of YA heroines like Katniss from The Hunger Games and Mia from The Princess Diaries remaining steadfastly oblivious to the fact that a guy likes them even though it's so obvious Everyone (Else) Can See It, and expressing extreme bewilderment to what the guy can possibly mean by it when he spells out that he loves her, tends to annoy Dominic a bit.
  • Old Shame: Everything but his most recent videos.
    “I am horribly ashamed of all of my old work and I classify anything more than a week old as “old” so…life is hard for me…” (Source)
  • The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: Dom isn't very fond of The Twilight Saga}}, but he admits that Stephenie Meyer does occasionally write some genuinely terrifying horror scenes.
  • Only the Creator Does It Right: invoked Dominic used to believe every film should be required to by law have every still-living author screen write (or at least have a huge say in the writing process) to ensure adaptation loyalty. He's since relaxed on this view after seeing a few disappointing film adaptations written by the original authors.
  • Orphaned Series: His retrospective on The Prisoner (1967) has officially been abandoned eleven episodes in, as he felt he couldn't do the series justice. He's also since abandoned the Game of Thrones and A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017) reviews.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Discussed in his review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. 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. sparkling) as dying out because nobody liked them.
  • Paddinginvoked: Dominic feels that most of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit is this.
  • Periphery Demographic: invoked Dominic was astonished to realize that he was kind of drawn into the social drama between teenagers in Vampire Academy.
  • Periphery Hatedom: invoked
    • Discussed and contentiously averted in his The Princess Diaries and Blood & Chocolate reviews. Dominic admits that even though he didn't like them, he understands they were never meant to appeal to him to begin with, and admits when he thinks someone within their Target Audience might like them.
    • invoked In fact, whenever Dominic reviews a work he's clearly not the intended audience for (especially teen romance and fantasy stories, being an adult male sci fi fan), Dominic is usually great about admitting he is NOT the work's target audience, examines whether his feelings toward a work are due to its own merits or his own preferences (only Fifty Shades really falls short due to its abysmal writing and Romanticized Abuse), and discourages viewers from invoking Reviews Are the Gospel regarding fiction that was clearly never geared toward him to begin with.
    • invoked Dominic, inspired by Lindsay Ellis' video on the series, tries to judge The Twilight Saga 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.
  • Pet-Peeve Trope: 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 Romanticized Abuse, The Masochism Tango, or even pretty modest Belligerent Sexual Tension, 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 or relationship friction often leaves him incapable of enjoying a story that utilizes them.
  • Pivotal Wake-up: Dom, in character as a vampire, does one at the beginning of his review of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
  • Promoted Fanboyinvoked: Dominic spends the beginning of one of his videos squeeing over the fact that he has been picked up by Channel Awesome, as he is a big fan.
  • Protection from Editors: invoked Discussed. Dominic notes that Breaking Dawn was the most divisive of Stephenie Meyer's 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
  • Rage Breaking Point:
    • Dominic completely loses it when the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy 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.
    • Played for Drama in his Fifty Shades of Physical and Emotional Abuse video, where a clip of E.L. James claiming that Fifty Shades is a "love story" pushes him over the edge and causes him to break the screen behind him.
      Dominic: I don't care that [Christian] calls it "spanking." The words [Ana] uses are, "Please don't hit me." THIS IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM A LOVE STORY!! (smashes the glass screen behind him)
  • Rapid-Fire "No!": Dom's first attempt to watch The Thing quickly leads to him fleeing across the screen shouting "Nope nope nope nope nope". He has the same reaction at the end when guest reviewer That Movie Chick suggests that he should do The Fly next.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Not regarded as such in-universe, but when d'Artagnan rapes Milady Du Winter via deception by posing as her lover in a dark room (so she thinks she's consenting to sleep with her lover when she's not), Dominic loses what little respect he might have had for d'Artagnan and considers him pure scum from then on.
  • "Rashomon"-Style: 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, and all of them frequently give different accounts of the same events.
  • Retcon: Remember in the early Lost in Adaptation episodes that had cold openings where Dominic appeared in parodies of films or TV shows? Apparently, as of the Harry Potter-athon, that's a thing only wizards can do, never mind that Dominic's reviews take/took place in Channel Awesome's Review-verse, where everyone who was on the site or had crossovers with those people are established as living in a universe where these kinds of things happen all the time.
    • Parodied in the Deathly Hallows Part 1 LIA's cold opening, with Dominic having a tank out of nowhere, justifying it in that the Harry Potter films, as a result of different directors and writers over the years not knowing what was important in the books and, thus, had to add in things that are important in the later books that were left out of the earlier movies as if they'd been established rather than giving them any kind of setup when they're introduced.
  • Retroactive Legacy: His April Fools' Day video claimed The Room (2003) was based on a Polish book from the '70s called The Room I Died In.
  • Reviews Are the Gospel: invoked Actively discourages this, especially whenever he has to review a work he is clearly NOT the target audience for. He'll say whether he thinks a work can be enjoyed by a Periphery Demographic if it worked for him, or its own Target Audience even if he didn't personally enjoy it, but otherwise makes it very clear that his opinion toward something that was never meant to appeal to him to begin with should be taken with a grain of salt.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder: From the I, Robot review:
    Announcer: We designed them to be trusted with our homes. With our way of life. With our world. But did we design them... to be trusted?
    Dominic: YEEEESSSSSSS!!!! Yes. The answer is yes.
  • Right for the Wrong Reasons: Dominic starts the The Twilight Saga reviews by admitting that when he was younger he judged the series for the typical reasons (i.e., the audience being tween girls and the sparkling vampires). He tries to give the series a fair look, only to end up concluding that the series is as awful as its reputation suggests, just not for the reasons he thought when he was younger.
  • Romanticized Abuse: Dominic rips into Fifty Shades of Grey for this.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: invoked Arthur's crush on Trillian in the radio show and books becoming a full blown Will They or Won't They? major plot of the film.
    • Finds the 2002 Disney Tuck Everlasting film to be less compelling than the book, partly because the aged up Winnie's relationship with Jesse completely replaces her bonding with the rest of the Tuck family, and bumps the Who Wants to Live Forever? lesson right on the sideline until the last minute.
  • Rule of Funny: Discussed in Dominic and Calluna's creator commentary for their first The Hobbit review. Calluna is bewildered as to why Dom wanted her to be Gandalf and Beorn while Dom played the shorter character in the comedy skits, when she's shorter and a girl. Dom tells her that's exactly why he chose her; it's just funnier that way!
  • Running Gag:
    • "I may be paraphrasing a little bit..." from the Lost in Adaptation: The Wizard of Oz episode.
    • "DURRRR!" from the Mass Effect 2: Arrival review.
    • The Harry Potterathon, in which all the Harry Potter movies get the Lost in Adaptation treatment, had its own running gag where every even-numbered movie review began with Terrence the douchebag wizard hijacking the show and doing the review in place of Dominic, only for Dominic to steal the show back at the beginning of the subsequent review.
    • "Azkaban!" in the Lost in Adaptation: Harry Potter episodes whenever the books and especially the films had the characters do something that would logically land them in Azkaban. This is taken to its logical conclusion in Part Two of the Half-Blood Prince episode when Terrence realized that the Love Potions are essentially legal magical date rape drugs and proceed to put everyone in Azkaban and wipe his own memory to continue with the review. This is later referenced in Part One of the Deathly Hallows episode when Terrence points out the massive violation of the Statute of Secrecy in the film during the fight with the Death Eaters as Harry leaves the Dursleys.
      Dominic (as a random wizard): As you're probably aware, you've all been sentenced to a few months of mandatory intensive lessons as an alternative punishment because, after half the Wizarding World was sent to Azkaban for sexual misconduct, there is now no more room for any more inmates.
    • During his Ella Enchanted review, every mention of the Prince's Obviously Evil Uncle includes a hilarious nickname pertaining to his Devil in Plain Sight status, like "Uncle McObvious-Nasty," "Malice Incarnate," "Uncle Seriously, All-You-Have-To-Do-Is-Look-At-Him," and others.
    • Similarly, during his Fifty Shades Darker review he never calls Christian's gun-wielding submissive by name, so every time she comes up on-screen he refers to her by a new tongue-in-cheek nickname, like "Subby-McSubsub," "Cuckoo-For-Submissive-Puffs," "Heat-Packing Sub," among others.
    • When advertising for his patreon, for the people who can't/won't pledge, he says "If, however, right now you are thinking: 'My goodness, The Dom, I can't do that, I...'" then goes off on some fantastical scenario. Examples include hiring alien strippers, buying goats to feed dragons, bribing the Ferryman to get the soul of a recently deceased dog, and being a Hylian immigrant who just found out that smashing other people's pottery results in losing money instead of gaining it.
    • For his A Song of Ice and Fire reviews: "MOTHER-FUCKING DRAGONS!!!" (CGI dragon drops in and roars)
    • Throughout his Babe review, " WARNING - TAKING A CHILDREN'S BOOK TOO SERIOUSLY - WARNING - " flashes in bold red block letters on screen every time Dominic starts thinking too deeply about the implications of animals with human intelligence being raised for slaughter on farms.
    • Dominic's inability to pronounce any given author or filmmaker's name has become a Lampshaded Running Gag.
    • When talking about characters from the heavily whitewashed Earthsea TV adaptation, he often prefixes their names with "White": "White Ged", "White Vetch", etcetera.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: All over the place with the Percy Jackson films, much to Dominic's annoyance.
  • SciFi Writers Have No Sense of Distance: One of Dominic's nitpicks regarding Starship Troopers.
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Dominic mentions Hollywood unintentionally doing this in "A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lost in Adaptation":
    Dominic: This is another fine example of Hollywood's tradition of being just sure enough that they won't get a sequel that they do everything in their power to make SURE they don't get a sequel!
  • Sequelitis: invoked Discussed. Doing his retrospective on the The Twilight Saga, Dominic accuses the series of suffering from this, as he found each sequel to be of worse quality than the last. By Breaking Dawn, Dominic admits that he considers the series just as bad as Fifty Shades of Grey.
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: invoked Discussed in the look at Eragon. Dominic finds the book to be a blatant scene-for-scene, character-by-character, backstory-for-backstory rip-off of Star Wars, just in a Standard Fantasy Setting with different names. He compares it to when a student copies an essay online, but then changes a few key words around hoping you won't notice.
  • Shared Universe: Thanks to being included on Channel Awesome and his various cameos and crossovers, he's part of the Reviewaverse.
  • Shipper on Deck: Calluna can't even bring herself to be mad at Terrence for cheating on her with, and dumping her for, Thrandruil from The Hobbit trilogy, because of they make such a good couple.
    Calluna: Yeah, I ship it.
  • Shout-Out: Dominic tries to invoke the "OF COURSE!" meme when suggesting that the hotel from The Shining may have been trying to take over the world. When it doesn't happen, he figures he hasn't earned it yet.
  • Single-Issue Wonk: Dominic can barely contain his frustration at book Mia from The Princess Diaries whining about her height and lack of breasts "the whole way through" the book.
  • Skewed Priorities:
    • Dominic cannot fathom how Book Mia from The Princess Diaries can find out she's a literal princess of an entire country, and never think about it beyond how it might impact her everyday teenage social standing.
    • Dominic is mildly disturbed that the unnamed narrator of Rebecca can find out that her husband murdered his first wife and feel not only completely unbothered by this, but elated that that means he loves her more than his first wife.
  • So Bad, It's Good: invoked Discussed regarding several works.
  • So Okay, It's Average: invoked Again, frequently Discussed.
    • invoked Dominic describes the film Man of Tai Chi as "a big old cup of meh."
    • invoked This is also Dominic's opinion of the film Fifty Shades of Grey, when you take out the abysmal lines and characterization it inherited from the book.
    • invoked While Dominic found the 2002 Disney film adaptation of Tuck Everlasting to be competently shot, he just found the whole thing dull, dull, dull, dull, dull.
    • invokedMinority Report: While Dom enjoyed it when it first came out (he was 14), he admits that most general audience's reaction was, "Well, it was pretty good... You, uh, wanna grab something to eat?"
    • invoked Apart from finding Artemis Fowl to be an insult to the book by making Artemis an Adaptational Nice Guy, Dominic ultimately finds it to be just an okay film overall; competently shot and edited in places, decent CGI, etc. But nothing memorable.
  • Sophisticated as Hell:
    • Dominic imagines what it would be like if the book The NeverEnding Story actually contained events that happened in The NeverEnding Story 3. Sitting in an elegant-looking study with harpsichord music playing in the background, wearing a bow tie and waistcoat, he reads from a leather-bound tome:
      Classy Dom: (in German) Meanwhile, Jack Black was being a massive asshole and tearing up the library and shit...
    • Does this again for Bram Stoker's Dracula, where he tries to imagine how a few added film scenes trying to evoke Girl on Girl Is Hot and Furry Fandom would sound if the writings of classy, dignified Bram Stoker himself had been read out loud before a contemporary Victorian Britain audience.
      Classy Dom: And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a reading from the recently published novel Dracula by esteemed theatre manager, Bram Stoker. *clears throat* "And then Lucy and Mina ran around in the rain giggling while their dresses got all wet and see-through. And then they totally started making out and stuff..."
  • Space Is an Ocean: Dominic is frustrated that the Hiigaran spaceships in Homeworld 2 resemble present-day naval vessels despite that making no sense.
    Dominic: I call it the "Wing Commander Movie Effect". I also call it "disappointingly dull".
  • Spear Counterpart: While Dominic and his friend Feeblemew are discussing the ridiculous Jiggle Physics in Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Feeblemew suggests that there should also be Dead or Alive: Cricket, featuring guys with exaggerated packages.
  • Spell My Name with a "The": Back when Dominic used "The Dom" as his main moniker, he was "The Dom". Even when he was using an honorific. He would also refer to himself as "Captain The Dom" and "Uncle The Dom".
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Dubbed "The Legolas Effect" for the Lost In Adaptation series, where a character in an adapted work (usually a fan favorite) is given more glory and screen time at the expense of other characters (as it is often done by way of lifting moments from other characters in the books, and just having that character do it instead). Legolas himself for the The Hobbit films, and Hermione for the Harry Potter films, are the biggest offenders to date.
  • Stalking is Love: Dominic is not a fan of this trope, and not afraid to blast it every time he sees it.
    • Fifty Shades of Grey: E.L. James glorifying Christian Grey stalking Ana (like Stephenie Meyer did with Edward and Bella before them) drives him to Angrish many times.
    • Blood & Chocolate: Film Adrian relentlessly harassing and stalking Vivian after she makes it clear she doesn't want anything to do with him, following her to her place of work unannounced, and chasing her through an alley to the point that she has to scale a building to get away from him, all being portrayed as romantic, enrages Dominic as much as Christian Grey ever did.
    • Dominic is creeped out by the implication that Film Miles from Tuck Everlasting stalked his wife and children after they left him (and thus how he knew what happened to them), rather than feeling moved by how tragically Miles loved them as the film seems to suggest.
    • invoked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Strangely enough, Dominic isn't that enraged by Scott stalking Ramona at a party, getting her private info from her friends, and later dropping by her place unannounced after she made it clear she wasn't interested. He does discuss the filmmakers having this attitude regarding Knives stalking Scott after he dumped her (since they originally planned to use this to have them get back together at the end), even though the comic made it clear her stalking was a sign of her unhealthy fixation on him that she needed to grow out of.
    • d'Artagnan does this a lot to different women in The Three Musketeers, and Dominic is horrified by it.
    • Is a tad uncomfortable that Raul and the Phantom both do this to Christine in the original The Phantom of the Opera novel, and is relieved that it was at least a little toned down in subsequent adaptations. (Though the The Phantom of the Opera (2004) film added a new layer of creepy by revealing that the Phantom had been doing his "Angel of Music" shtick to Christine since she was eight, meaning he'd been effectively "grooming" her since she was a young child.)
  • Standard Fantasy Setting: Dominic finds the setting of Inheritance Cycle to be this, finding nothing really remarkable about most of the fantasy races and cities apart from the dragons and the dwarves home kingdom.
    • Terrence also doesn't need to spend much time describing the setting of either version of Ella Enchanted, since it's pretty much your standard pseudo-medieval setting with elves, gnomes, ogres, giants, etc. He does note that the book has enough unique features to the fantasy races that it's still a very smart and engaging read.
    • Notes that The Princess and the Goblin was cited as a direct inspiration for a lot of 20th century fantasy authors, including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
  • Stealth Pun: In the video for Mockingjay Part 1, Dominic says that movie scenes that weren't in the book but didn't actually contradict anything in the book were arguably the "best part of the whole damn movie" - he says this while showing District 5's attack on the hydroelectric dam.
  • Stiff Upper Lip: When Number Six's reaction to discovering he's been spectacularly conned by Number Two is simply a stoic "Be seeing you," Dominic allows himself an outbreak of patriotic fervor.
  • Strangely Specific Horoscope: In the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 review, he mentions that his horoscope predicted he'd be killed by a mob of ravenous fangirls when such a group attacks him and Terrence for saying Snape's backstory didn't excuse his horrible behavior or make him any less of an asshole.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial:
    King Aerys: Why don't you [Rickard Stark] come down here, and we'll, we'll discuss it...I definitely won't burn you alive.
  • Tactful Translation: The Calm Intellectual Filter, made so he comes off as not being a ripoff of other Caustic Critics when he's hit a rant-inducing slight...but doesn't censor his body language, which means there's generally a calm, friendly voiceover to him bouncing off the walls in sheer rage and making insulting gestures.
  • Target Audience: Refreshingly for a YouTube media critic, Dominic often takes these into account when reviewing media. If he is the target audience he'll encourage people with similar tastes to give it a chance or not, and if he's clearly not the work's intended audience he'll try to be fair and encourage viewers to take his opinion with a grain of salt.
  • Technology Marches On:
    • invokedHe's a little perturbed to realize that when The War of the Worlds 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.
    • invokedWhile reviewing the 2009's Dorian Gray, an adaptation of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, he notes this movie did something the previous 1945 version didn't. The 2009 version incorporates the jump in technology that occurs during Dorian's 20-year or so span.
  • Tempting Fate: On Dominic's Twitter, he said that he'd review Fifty Shades Darker, in spite of his earlier adamant statement that he wouldn't, if his Fifty Shades of Grey review got a thousand retweets...which it did. When he does the review, one of the first thing he does lamenting this mistake.
  • That Came Out Wrong:
    • Dominic describes how in Ender's Game the Formics came to the conclusion that "every human is a bit of a queen…"
    • In his review of the YouTube Playbook 2020 he asks for people to turn on their notifications by saying "Maybe you guys might wanna... consider ringing Dom's bell". He immediately follows it up by saying "Ow, that came out wrong".
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!invoked:
    • Pretty much the whole point of Lost in Adaptation is to discuss this trope, which results in a mixed bag of subvertions, invertions, avertions, and straight examples. Dominic's stated that he doesn't automatically think the books are better than the movies, or that closeness to the book correlates with quality. Sometimes changes are necessary and forgivable, sometimes they're pointless, sometimes the movies improve on or leave out some of the book's weaker aspects, sometimes they leave out or water down its strengths, sometimes the inherent advantages of an audio visual medium make up for losing the advantages of a text-based one, and sometimes the changes don't matter too much. He'll forgive changes as long as they capture the spirit of the book and what the author was trying to accomplish. As a result, what seems to get his goat more than anything else is when talking about an adaptation is when the film makers just didn't care about the source material.
    • However, to some degree or another, he also judges adaptations on how they work as movies. While he won't completely trash a movie he doesn't like if it's a good adaptation (like Ender's Game) he'll be far kinder to a not-so-faithful adaptation if it works as its own movie. For instance, he recommended putting some distance between the books and movies of Starship Troopers, The NeverEnding Story, and The Wizard of Oz since both were enjoyable (albeit for very different reasons) while trashing movies like I, Robot, Dune (1984), and The Lightning Thief for failing as both adaptations and movies since they disrespected the source material and gave little to nothing in return. When faced with the dilemma at the end of The Shining episode of both liking the movie and sympathizing with Stephen King's resentment of it, the conclusion he came to was "If you're going to make seemingly pointless changes, it better be for a very good movie."
    • Years further down the line, while looking over the film version of The Phantom of the Opera (the musical), he admits that it is a virtually perfect adaptation of the source material... yet, it is deeply flawed in part because it refuses to adapt itself to a new medium. He describes this as the culmination of his "real life character arc" of slowly wrestling and coming to terms with the simple fact that sometimes it sucks because they don't change it.
  • This is Your Premise on Drugsinvoked: Dominic speculates about this while talking about the sequels to The Neverending Story.
    "The third film went so completely off the rails I can only assume the writers were smoking a NeverEnding Doobie while they worked."
  • Throwing Off the Disability: Toward the end of the Harry Potterathon, after The Dom and Terrence have settled their differences, Terrence magically cures Dom's astigmatism, allowing him to discard his glasses. (In real life, Dominic had been treated with laser eye surgery some time before, and had been wearing fake glasses as The Dom to maintain his on-screen persona until he could work in an in-universe transition to a glasses-less look.)
  • Throw the Dog a Bone:
    • While he considers the cinematic version of Queen of the Damned to be a hot mess, Dominic believes that it handles the defeat and death of the villain Akasha in a much more satisfying way than the book's version of the climax. note 
    • Having read The Twilight Saga 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 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."
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: invoked Discussed. Dominic didn't enjoy the A Series of Unfortunate Events books and resents having to review the Netflix series due to finding the series too dark and depressing, since he feels so bad for the orphans and their "Shaggy Dog" Story.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: In a skit parodying Rico's lashing in Starship Troopers, Dom as Rico is shown enjoying it after the third hit and the instructor calling it off when he realizes Rico's enjoying it on the fourth one. Dom!Rico even slips up and calls Zim "Daddy" before correcting himself.
  • A True Story in My Universe: Hogwarts students singing a song with "toil and trouble" mentioned in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban caused Dom to wonder if Shakespeare's Macbeth is a true story in the Harry Potter universe.
  • Understatement: Dominic and Terrence are shocked and disgusted when, during the seventh Harry Potter film, Ron refers to death of an innocent goblin as "unfortunate." Dom notes:
    Dominic: Unfortunate? Unfortunate? Mister Weasley, you and your friends used an unforgivable curse on an innocent bystander, and lead him to a painful death, and all you can say is "That's unfortunate"?
  • Un Equal Pairing: Discussed with Maxim de Winter and his unnamed second bride, considering their difference in age, social standing, and the fact that he's already murdered a previous wife to avoid the scandal of divorce, which doesn't leave her much bargaining power in their marriage.
    Dominic (as Narrator): Maxim, dear? Could you walk Jasper? I've done it every night this week and I could really use a break...
    Dominic (as Maxim): (cocks gun without even looking up from his newspaper)
    Dominic (as Narrator): You know what? I could really use the exercise. Come along, Jasper!
  • Unfortunate Implications: invoked Will occasionally discuss adaptation changes that have serious baggage.
    • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Dominic snarks that the film removed all the things Fleur was good at but kept her failing all the time, and speculates it was meant to humiliate the one female Tri-Wizard Tournament contestant.
    • Also from earlier in the Harry Potter-athon, due to not seeing it as was intended with Harry accidentally killing in self-defense, Dom thinks that he killed Quirrell in cold blood because of how the scene played out in the first movie toward the end.
    • Rebecca: Notes that Book Mrs. Danvers had been the late Rebecca's governess and loved her like a daughter. Alfred Hitchcock removed this so she comes across as a Psycho Lesbian and gave her a horrific on-screen suicide, so Dominic is uncomfortable with how Hitchcock effectively demonized and "punished" the one coded lesbian character.
    • Blood & Chocolate: Dominic finds the book werewolves' racially superior attitude toward humans and Entitled to Have You attitude toward Vivian, combined with the "stick to your own kind" message at the end, to be pro-segregationist white supremacy propaganda. He's also disgusted with the Female Misogynist director making Film Vivian an Adaptational Wimp and Decoy Protagonist while making Film Adrian (her human love interest) an Adaptational Badass and Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
    • In The Andromeda Strain, he points out that one of the scientists has experienced a Gender Flip, and that, while he wouldn't normally mind adding at least one woman to the book's male-dominated cast, they also took away the other characters' heavy flaws and piled them all onto her instead.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: invokedMilady Du Winter might be presented as the Femme Fatale Big Bad of The Three Musketeers, but considering she doesn't do anything worse than the Designated Heroes, yet she's fiendishly intelligent and capable while they're self-absorbed 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 trying to hang her to death after years of marriage just because he learned she was an ex-con, the other using a Bed Trick to engage in rape-by-deception and then bragging to her about it.
    Dominic: Well, I guess if you want to Get Shit Done, you go to Milady Due Winter.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • invoked Everyone in Fifty Shades of Grey, naturally.
      Dominic: (through forced cheerfullness) All of these characters are scum!
    • invoked Dominic finds Maxim de Winter, the Byronic Hero of Rebecca, to be "a total wanker" at best, a cold-blooded murderer at worst. Dominic also finds it jarring how little the second wife is concerned about the murder of his first wife, or de Winter's emotional distance with and frequent inconsideration to her compared to the film or a healthy couple in real life.
    • Dominic finds every character in both versions of Blood & Chocolate to be unlikable. The lead being a vain Female Misogynist, her human love interest eventually committing Van Helsing Hate Crimes, the male werewolves of her pack being Entitled to Have You, and the Does This Remind You of Anything? racial superiority the werewolves all feel toward humans all combined with the "stick to your own kind" message at the end.
    • invoked Dominic acknowledges that the Game of Thrones show creators' decision to have Khal Drogo straight up rape Danaerys on their wedding night, rather than seek consent first like he did in the book (or as much consent as a girl in her situation can give) can put an "irredeemable douchebag" mark on Drogo, and undermine the supposed sweetness of their later evolving romance, to some viewers.
    • The Three Musketeers and d'Artagnan, whom Dominic finds too lazy, cowardly, self-absorbed, Ax-Crazy and hedonistic (in their own ways), not to mention misogynistic pick-up-artists who treat women like garbage (from stalking to rape to murder).
    • Dominic actually found the cruel teachers in Captain Underpants to be more likable than George and Harold, due to how many of George and Harold's pranks wound up making people miserable.
      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!
  • Unreliable Voiceover: In the Lost in Adaptation Episode of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Dominic describes the NSFW pictures of Jessica Rabbit which appear on the internet. As Dominic's voiceover explains that the existence of these images is something he can "neither confirm nor deny" and would be something someone would only find accidentally while looking instead for something completely innocent and above board, we can clearly see Dom at his computer, enthusiastically getting prepared for a wank session.
  • Values Dissonance: invoked Discussed in his review of Rebecca.
    • In-universe, Dominic often wonders if some of the odd things that Daphne du Maurier wrote her characters as doing so matter-of-factly would have made more sense to 1930's contemporary readers; like no one raising an eyebrow at Rebecca having shagged her cousin, Maxim's decision to shoot his wife rather than deal with a messy divorce, and the police allowing a man accused of murder and the lover of the said deceased to take over in the investigation of said murder.
    • In a meta sense, Dominic also discusses how The Hays Code not only impacted Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation choices, but how those changes come across to modern audiences. For instances, he suspects that The Hays Code forced Hitchcock to change how Rebecca died to make Mr De Winter more sympathetic, which worked in the long run since the stigma against divorce has gone away since The '30s. On the other hand, it allowed Hitchcock to effectively demonize and "punish" the one lesbian-coded character in the movie, which flies less with modern audiences today.
    • Discussed in his The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe review, as he points out that C. S. Lewis was a middle-aged man in The '40s and it shows in his writing, since he had the character Father Christmas expressively forbid Susan or Lucy from participating in the upcoming battle because "women are not supposed to fight in wars," even though it ended up being redundant since they ended up missing the battle anyway.
    • invoked Observes how The Princess and the Goblin often goes out of its way to explain how noble-born children like Princess Irene are just naturally, inherently more graceful, polite, well-mannered, and moral than common-born children, which most modern viewers find absurd. (And which Terry Pratchett mocked relentlessly in his Discworld series). Also how the goblins are somewhat designated villains and the narrator thinks nothing of human characters driving them out of their homes deeper underground and effectively committing genocide at the end, when most post-Imperialist Western societies now question the ethics of displacing and wiping out native populations.
    • Defied for The Three Musketeers. 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 contemporary 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.
    • Unsurprisingly, Dominic finds Erik and Raoul to both be creepy, possessive, controlling, jealous stalkers and emotional manipulators (at best) to Christine in the original The Phantom of the Opera novel, even though when it was written it was believed that Stalking is Love.
  • Vampires Are Sex Gods: Doesn't feel the over-use of this trope works for Bram Stoker's Dracula, arguing that while in the hundred years since the novel was written that's what vampires have evolved into that's not how they were seen when the book was written, so trying to shoe-horn it into the story now comes off as awkward and out-of-place.
  • Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: invoked
    • Dominic struggles to figure out the pronunciation for the last name of Michael Ende, the author of The NeverEnding Story, guessing "En-day" and "En-dee" before settling on "End". (Ende's name would actually be pronounced "En-duh".)
    • He has difficulty with the last name of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum, eventually deciding to refer to him as "This Guy" and "The Author".
    • He misnames Michael Crichton as "Michael Christian" in the Jurassic Park reviewn.
    • Although he doesn't seem to have noticed or addressed this, he mispronounced Adrian Veidt's name in the Watchmen review.
    • He fully admits to butchering the name of director Alfonso Cuarón several different ways in his Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban review. He says the same for Guillermo del Toro.
    • In his first 3 Harry Potter reviews, he pronounces the stunning spell "Stupify" as "Stuplify" for whatever reason, even as Terrence. This is corrected by Goblet of Fire's review, but is still weird when you rewatch the videos. Not that it wasn't weird if you're a fan of the franchise coming into the reviews knowing the correct pronunciation beforehand though.
    • He also, for whatever reason, has a slight tendency to pronounce words that don't have either the "sh" spelling, or sound in them as such when they only have "s" in them. For example; he, in some of his 2-part reviews, says "previoushly" instead of "previously" & in the Part 2 of his Goblet of Fire review, he says "obvioushly" instead of "obviously." There are some other examples, so pay attention when he does them when rewatching his videos. Whether this is an accent quirk or not has yet to be explained, though can most likely be chalked up to that.
    • At this point it's become a Lampshaded Running Gag that if the creator's name is even slightly more exotic than John Smith, Dominic will mispronounce it.
    • He manages to nail Eoin Colfer's namenote , who is infamously The Unpronouncable to people unfamiliar with Irish names. The irony is immediately lampshaded.
  • Wanting Is Better Than Having: In his Lost in Adaptation review of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Dominic bemoans the fact that Grandpa Joe's story about Prince Pondicherry and his chocolate palace did not make it into the movie. Since Dominic found it a particularly funny part of the book, he wishes it could've been left in. In an Alternate Universe where Dominic reviews Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory instead, which does include this scene, Dominic finds the whole thing pointless and rather racist, and wishes that it could've been left out.
    • This trope is discussed quite a bit for The Hunger Games books.
      • Dominic learned to regret wanting every film to be a super loyal adaptation of the book once he got to The Hunger Games reviews, as the films follow the books so closely that the "what they didn't change" section of LiA doubles as a plot synopsis that takes up most of the episode, and the "what they didn't change/left out" sections are so threadbare he really has to struggle to find anything to talk about.
      • Similarly, while Dominic hated the Downer Ending of Mockingjay, Jennifer Lawrence's contented smile at the end of the final movie made him feel like the seeming happy ending was now a cop-out.
      • Dominic also discusses how The Hunger Games filmmakers' decision to keep Katniss's introversion and stoicism for a visual medium makes it hard to feel invested in a Dull Surprise lead character, but concedes that in another universe he's probably making this same episode ranting and raving about how the actress they got to visually and verbally express Book Katniss's inner thoughts and feelings comes across as a hysterical, cartoonish, overacting clown.
  • Wasteful Wishing: One of the hypothetical scenarios for why you might not be able to contribute to Dominic's Patreon involves finding a magic lamp that grants three wishes, "and I meant to wish for infinite wealth, but, uh, well, long story short, I have three jetpacks now."
  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties:
    • Occurs during "Beer Talk, Part One" after a catastrophic spillage of beer.
    • invoked Happens during the Dune review. Dominic is absolutely disgusted by all the squicky things that go on in Baron Harkonnen's introductory scene (none of which are in the original book), and begins to go off on director David Lynch.
      Dominic: What the fuck is wrong with you, Lynch? Is this just how you get off, you creepy son of a bi(cuts feed)
    • Happens at the end of his Fifty Shades Darker book review where he descends into such Angrish about Christian's abusive behavior that the video cuts to a fan art of him stabbing the book with a sword and the accompanying message "Whoops! Looks like this reviewer is temporarily out of commission."
  • What, Exactly, Is His Job?: Paul from Dagon. Dom describes him as a "science-computer man doing smart stuff."
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Dominic and Terrence are horrified by the last Harry Potter film depicting a goblin being put under the Imperius Curse by Harry and the gang, being forced to lead them to the Gringotts dragon, and then being directly abandoned to suffer a fiery death by the dragon as "unfortunate," just because he's a goblin. They argue that he was a person they just killed, and they should be sent to Azkaban for murder just as if he had been a human.
    • Dominic is horrified that Dick King-Smith gave farm animals near human intelligence in his book that inspired Babe, but kept the real-world practice of humans raising animals for slaughter.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: This video which essentially collates all the Word of God given about what happened to all the surviving characters in Harry Potter after the Battle of Hogwarts.
  • Wife Husbandry: Dominic is grossed out that the The Phantom of the Opera (2004) Phantom had been doing his "Angel of Music" singing lesson schtick with Christine since she was eight, making his plans for her effectively this.
  • Wild Mass Guessinginvoked: Since the fandom of The Prisoner is full of this, Dominic warns the viewers that their interpretations of the episodes may be completely different from his.
  • Wish-Fulfillment: To give Fifty Shades and Twilight fans a fair shake, Dominic acknowledges in one of his Fifty Shades reviews that he can see the appeal in a story (especially for people with low self-esteem) where an impossibly handsome and rich member of the opposite sex becomes hopelessly infatuated with an ordinary Audience Surrogate and does all the work of bringing them together... The problem is the suitors in these particular stories are controlling, abusive, manipulative, sociopathic stalkers.
    • Likewise describes the Alex Rider book series and subsequent Stormbreaker film as "James Bond meets Harry Potter," and tends to forgive the unrealistic plot of a 14-year-old British Intelligence spy since it's clearly meant to be a self-insert power fantasy for teens, especially teenage boys.
  • World of Weirdness: The Reviewaverse. So weirdness on his show can and has happened.
  • You Keep Using That Word:
  • Your Head Asplode: Dominic claims that if Christian Grey ever met a 'real' feminist, who wouldn't put up with his controlling nature his head would literally explode from not being able to comprehend it.

Alternative Title(s): Lost In Adaptation, Dominic Noble

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Order of the Phoenix

Centaurs from "Harry Potter" in the book compared to the movies.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (6 votes)

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Main / AdaptationalNonsapience

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