Cleaning Up Needless References To Reviewers

Trailers Always Spoil is misuse; titles have a separate trope, Spoiler Title. It's also not an example, since the title "The Search for Spock" doesn't imply that the search is successful.

So Okay, It's Average looks to me like an instance where it's okay to keep the review quote, as the entry is fine without it and the quote just adds more colour.

Edited by Vilui on Aug 14th 2021 at 8:32:24 PM

True.

And what about this example that I also included on the previous page:

• Alternative Character Interpretation: In his review of the comic adaptation of the film, Linkara notes that, while some may not find Kruge as memorable a villain as others, he finds a lot more subtlety and depth in his actions than others see, and believes that, after the Klingons had begun to be depicted as a race of bloodthirsty barbarians, Kruge helped move them into the more restrained and intelligent Proud Warrior Race Guy behavior they became in the rest of the franchise. He particularly points out the scene of Kruge holding his head in his hands after the Enterprise self-destructs as a powerful moment: Kruge ordered his men into a trap he did not see coming, and for it he not only got them all killed, but their deaths were meaningless. He not only dishonored them, but himself, and is in pain over his failure. When Kirk radios him and offers the secret of the Genesis Project, Kurge seizes it on the hope he can still redeem himself by completing his mission alone.

I think we agreed that reviewers count as "audience members" for the sake of ACI.

Bringing up these from Cutthroat Island:

• Critical Backlash: Cutthroat Island was one of the biggest box office bombs ever, as well as the film credited with sinking the entire pirate flick genre, so it is just natural that many viewers consider it (at least) not as bad as such a dishonor might suggest. In fact, there are quite a few who have come to believe it is actually a genuinely good movie regardless of all the economic mismanagement and production troubles that led to its failure. Roger Ebert was among those; at the very time of the film's release, while most professional critics were panning it, he gave it three out of four stars, the same number he would give years later to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

• Narm:
  • The overly glorious and over-the-top music, especially those moments featuring Ominous Latin Chanting or some variant thereof, makes the comparatively mundane onscreen events seem almost parodic. Spoony, in particular, argued it.
  • Geena Davis's performance. As Lindsey Ellis puts it, she comes across less as "bloodthirsty pirate queen", more as "Cool Aunt taking some kids to an R-rated movie."
  • During the final battle, one of the pirates is actually providing background music using a violin.
    Captain Long John Thomas: Bloody hell, this movie has become a self-parody at this point!

• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Both the My Year Of Flops review and The Nostalgia Chick review credit Frank Langella for trying his best to save the movie despite a conspicuous lack of effort from everyone else (including the very leads, who reportedly got tired of the film due to its hellish production). Of course, to hear Langella tell it, he wasn't trying to save the movie... he was just having a fantastic time playing pirates.

The first one I don't think is as needless: it explains its point properly, and the reviewer reference is used more as an example than the sole reason behind the bullet point.

I think for an item literally called Critical Backlash, citing professional critics is far from needless. However, it could use a few more details on why Ebert went against the other critics' opinion.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 16th 2021 at 7:33:44 AM

Bringing up the following example from The Lawnmower Man:

• Audience-Alienating Premise: As Film Brain put it, the decision to release a sequel to a film that was both four-years-old and only a modest hit didn't put The Lawnmower Man 2 on a good footing from the start. The decision to then make it PG rated to attract an audience that probably didn't see the original, and have it star a cast of Kid Appeal Characters while only bringing back one minor actor from the first film killed its chances outright.

Moulin Rouge!.

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Doug Walker found Satine's dream of becoming "a real actress" to be blind ambition since she was already an accomplished performer.^note Albeit still a High-Class Call Girl who gets to sing and dance. Not helping is the fact that through most of the movie, she can't even decide whether to persue that ambition with The Duke or to follow Christian's "love conquers all" philosophy. She tries to have the best of both worlds, with disastrous consequences for everyone.
  • From the Nostalgia Critic review, The Nostalgia Chick really hated how bitter Christian was after Satine had invoked Cruel to Be Kind on him, saying that even the Duke's briefly-murderous reaction was better by comparison. While she saw her actions as idiotic, she felt that Christian got off the hook far too easily.^note These were not in fact the true opinions of Lindsay Ellis. Doug Walker wrote the script and had her speak his opinions.
  • As Designated Hero explains in vivid detail, Harold Zidler may be a fun character, but if you don't let his over the top showmanship distract you from what he's actually doing throughout the film, he comes across as truly reprehensible and not much better than the Duke. And unlike the Duke, whose actions, while unjustifiable, can at least be explained by him cracking from his mistreatment, while Zidler has no excuse, with him being fully responsible for any misfortune to befall him and the Moulin Rouge. The fact that he's never even called out for his crimes doesn't help.

Do the first two seem kinda shoehorned. Their just stating what the reviewers stated rather than you know common YMMV interpretations. Plus they seem kinda harsh....

Bringing up this example from Teen Witch:

• No Antagonist
  The Nostalgia Chick : "So, the film is basically, 'Louise Does Stuff for 90 Minutes'."

And this from Footloose:

No Antagonist is a borderline ZCE anyway and I tend to dislike quotes from reviewers as the quote on work pages — it invites snark.

From the top of TearJerker.Western Animation:

How badly do we need the NC line? I'd only keep it if we absolutely must include the viewer's reaction.

It does make the "western animation" part clearer at least, but I could do without it too.

Bringing up this example from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:

• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Helena Bonham Carter is a close second, turning in a very layered performance as Elizabeth. Unshaved Mouse felt she improved the character from the source material.

~Anddrix — The Lawnmower Man: The entire example needs to be rewritten to emphasize the context first ("make it PG rated to attract an audience that probably didn't see the original, and have it star a cast of Kid Appeal Characters while only bringing back one minor actor from the first film"), because the rest of the example isn't about the premise.

Bringing up these examples from Spider-Man 3:

• Tastes Like Diabetes: A lot of people find Sandman's "sympathetic" backstory to be this. Having a daughter who is the world's Littlest Cancer Patient, being divorced by his wife for being a criminal (what else was she supposed to do), makes what should feel like tragic and relatable motivations feel token and forced, and a cheap Freudian Excuse on top of that. The web animation series How It Should Have Ended parodied this with the refrain, "I have a daughter, she's sick! That makes it okay for me to break the law! I'm not a bad person!"
• Vindicated by History: Though still considered the weakest of the original trilogy, the backlash against this movie has noticeably lessened over time (largely after the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which received an even more polarizing reception than this movie, as well as the 2017 release of a special Editor's Cut Blu-ray that many feel is superior to the original cut). Even some of the issues that made people write it off have been reexamined by various critics and perceived in a new light. Longtime Spider-Man fan MadGoblin argued that the "too many villains" was actually necessary to balance out the climax where Harry sides with Peter against Sandman and Venom in a 2v2 battle, that none of the three would have been strong enough to carry the film solo, and that Harry's character arc had to conclude in this film but couldn't afford to just be a rehash of the first one. Bob Chipman has defended "emo Peter" as being the correct portrayal of Peter under the influence of the suit, since Peter, a natural nerd, fails spectacularly at being "cool", and you're not supposed to enjoy him wearing the suit as it corrupts him.
• What An Idiot: Yes, Flint's introductory scene confirms to us the audience that he indeed does have a sick daughter he's committing his crimes for. But Peter doesn't know that nor should he believe it. Nor should he believe that Flint "accidentally" killed Uncle Ben by being startled. For all he knows, Flint might have been lying his ass off in order to gain sympathy and get away scot-free to continue robbing more banks and hurting people with his sand powers.

  James Lileks: Keep it up, Flint, I think he's buying it...

Edited by Anddrix on Sep 2nd 2021 at 4:16:05 PM

I might be wrong (so wait for some more input), but the How It Should Have Ended reference, the MovieBob reference, and the RiffTrax quote can all go.

Agreed with HISHE and Rifftrax, but the Vindicated by History example is actually doing a decent job at using the references properly. I think that it could be better, so would prefer to see it rewritten (also, it has two references; moviebob and madgoblin).

Tastes Like Diabetes doesn't even feel like the right item for that. Sounds closer to Glurge, and Unintentionally Unsympathetic.

Bringing up the following examples from Star Trek: Nemesis and it's YMMV page:

• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Mr Plinkett went into a long rant about the shuttle that brings the Argo buggy down to Kolarus III, complaining that its only function is to house and transport a vehicle that's less useful than itself.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Several (attempted) times in fact. First Data tries to do this when saving Picard, but Picard tells him no. Then Picard attempts to do this when the Enterprise is disabled. Then Data comes to save Picard again, before following through on his initial plan to kill himself in a semi-heroic fashion. The latter two are because no member of the crew seems to realize that the Enterprise has functioning shuttles with functioning transporters, something stardestroyer.net parodied.

• Fight Scene Failure: SF Debris points out that in terms of sheer scale, the fight scenes are a failure; we've already seen epic space battles featuring hundreds of ships - on a TV budget, no less! - on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: As SF Debris' review of the film lampshaded, one can't watch the opening and dramatic sweep over Romulan Senate Complex anymore without hearing the Oblivion theme blaring in the background.

Those can probably go.

Yeah, those examples have little to offer besides "this reviewer thinks this." The Stupid Sacrifice especially doesn't even get to the point of why these sacrifices are stupid until the last line, and the Hilarious in Hindsight examples means nothing if you haven't played Oblivion.

We could move these examples to be In-Universe on the reviewers' page. That probably applies for many examples brought here that are not about fandomwide tendencies.

Bringing up this example from Hillbilly Elegy:

• Narm: As Aja Romano, Emily VanDerWerff and Alissa Wilkinson of Vox (all of whom grew up poor and in rural areas as children) pointed out in their review of the movie, the movie's depiction of poor people's finances is laughably inaccurate.
  Aja Romano: As an aside, you can tell when privileged rich people who've never been poor write screenplays about being poor, because they always include scenes where the poor person's credit card is awkwardly declined, as J.D.'s is when he tries to buy gas during his road trip. In reality, when you're poor, you know every cent you have in the bank, down to the last penny, and you have already calculated exactly how much gas you can put in your car and how far that gas will get you before you run out of money. The only people who think poor people are surprised when they run out of money are people who think poor people are poor because they’re bad with money. But really, a lot of poor people are great with money, and Hillbilly Elegy not knowing that is just one of the zillion ways it sucks.

I think the fact that it cites an actual review is a good thing, since it actually helps back up the example’s argument rather than just being a random reference to a reviewer for the sake of the having a reference.

The problem is, it isn’t an example of Narm. I don’t think it would be Critical Research Failure either, since living conditions among the poor in Appalachia isn’t something that’s very well-known (at least accurately).

Edited by jandn2014 on Sep 10th 2021 at 8:30:20 AM