- Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Nerd bringing and using a record player in his car makes for a hilariously exaggerated Disco Dan gag, but some very vintage cars (i.e. A 1960 Dodge Polara) actually did come with (optional) record player attachments.
- Angst? What Angst?: You'd think Dark Onward would be at least a little bit angry over the loss of BOTH of his arms, which is in addition to him already being in a wheelchair by the start of this movie.
- Awesome Music: By Bear McCreary, with the request of making the soundtrack sound big and bombastic like you would expect from The Movie (the behind-the-scenes Vlog
even has Rolfe and McCreary referencing The Transformers: The Movie and the Lion version of its theme
as inspiration). For your perusal, his remix of the Angry Video Game Nerd main theme
. Even critics who were less enthusiastic about the film itself conceded that its score was fantastic. - Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Death Mwauthzyx putting on Groucho Marx glasses and laughing.
- Broken Aesop: The point of the Nerd's character arc is to learn that his over protection was making him sound like Dark Onward and he doesn't need to protect his fans from bad games like Eee-Tee. While the Nerd does do the Eee-Tee review at the end, it's only after every copy of Eee-Tee is assured to be leaving earth forever, meaning that he's only accepted that he doesn't need to protect his fans after the thing he was protecting them from was already gone forever.
- Broken Base: Not to carry over from the main page, the following concern the movie only:
- The production to this movie divided the fans somewhat, with a good chunk of them disapproving of James Rolfe relying on IndieGoGo to get it funded, while so many others happily contributed to the project, even to the point where he had more than what he needed to make the film happen, and more.
- The film's release on Vimeo on Demand. $5 to rent, and $10 to purchase. A good chunk of people argued that he ought to make the film free to watch mainly because it was crowd-funded, while many others are ok with paying to watch it and even argued that this took the most amount of effort yet (especially if you've been following his updates) and is worthy of those prices.
- The quality of the movie itself. Some thought it was an amazing film with nonstop funny moments, great acting and characters, and were happy James achieved his dream of being a filmmaker. Others thought it was a trainwreck that didn’t live up to the initial hype with a convoluted plot, bad special effects, and found it to be a pathetic excuse to finally review the infamous E.T. video game. There’s also a third, smaller group who thought it was competently made, but otherwise a generic road trip movie.
- Ending Fatigue: A complaint that has cropped up from some is that the film runs too long (about 2 hours) and could've been cut in some places. The film especially drags once Death Mwauthzyx begins destroying Las Vegas.
- Inferred Holocaust: Las Vegas gets trashed in the middle of a busy workweek. You'll probably be too busy watching James Rolfe live out his dream of making a kaiju scene to care.
- Memetic Mutation: The brief moment of Cooper humping the bar table has been gif'd tons of times. Often accompanied by sarcastic remarks on how high art the movie is, or that the actor gave an Academy Award-worthy performance.
- Speaking of Cooper, the joke that Cooper's been with the series from the beginning.Note
- Mis-blamed: Many people got angry at James for excluding Mike Matei from appearing on the movie despite him supporting AVGN from the start. However, James didn't decide that Mike couldn't appear in the movie, Mike himself decided not to participate in the movie because he doesn't consider himself to be a good actor and he also needed to stay in Philadelphia to look after the Cinemassacre website and make content for the Youtube channel to keep Youtube's algorithm happy so that the channel could still make some money since James couldn't make any AVGN episodes while the movie was in production.
- Moral Event Horizon: General Dark Onward. Among many of his deeds include being willing to kill all the AVGN's fans just for being at the landfill where the Atari 2600's ET game cartridges are.
- Nightmare Fuel: The Nerd's nightmare about the carnival actually looks like a realistic Zombie Flick. Even though no blood was shown, the sound effects and terrified expression on the Nerd's face can actually make you think he's being eaten alive.
- One-Scene Wonder: Mr. Swann, the Nerd's boss in the beginning of the film. Doesn't hurt that he's played by Eddie Pepitone.
- Pandering to the Base: The whole point of the film is The Nerd finally doing a review of the infamous "E.T." Atari game, which he finally does at the end of the film. Surprisingly, he doesn't actually consider it the worst game ever made, and even points out that Atari's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was more cryptic than their "E.T." game!
- So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the film: It's got fun setpieces and charmingly campy moments, and is ultimately the best you could possibly expect from a Big Damn Movie of The Angry Video Game Nerd, made as a labor of love by its creator, with criticisms stemming from its uneven pacing and periodically weak humor.
- Special Effects Failure:
- One pretty bad special effect occurs when The Nerd, Cooper, and Mandi try to cross a stream of lava, that is obviously CGI, and the actress playing Mandi actually steps in the lava a few steps before jumping on the platform! Other examples are deliberate to invoke laughs, such as the toy models for the van, and tank. The van doubles as Narm Charm as somber music is played as it burns up.
- Most of the green screen scenes are extremely blatant, especially with the Las Vegas scene where Cooper and Mandi have both been captured by Death Mwauthzyx.
- Really, some of the special effects are easily to call out, which is part of the fun of watching this movie as a good chunk of it was intentional.
"Even my dreams are low-budget!"- A few shots involving miniatures look very "off" because they feature a shallow Depth of Field, which is only possible when the subject is very close to the camera. Miniature effects are generally shot with a deep depth of field because it creates the illusion of greater size and distance.
- Strangled by the Red String: The Cooper/Mandi at the end came from where?! She only used him to get close to the Nerd and he accused her of being a Double Agent and left her to possibly die, and romance was not in the movie.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/AngryVideoGameNerdTheMovie
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