Cleaning Up Needless References To Reviewers

ZCE AND gushing! Just another level of terrible!

Marsupilami has this:

• The Problem with Licensed Games: The 1995 Sega Genesis videogame adaptation is kind of notorious for its clunky controls and bad gameplay despite its amazing graphics. The Angry Video Game Nerd lampshades on this when he says that "The camera jumps with the character, and that's a bunch of shit-sausage salami!"

Half the entry is based on the opinion of a single reviewer, but if you removed it, the rest of the example may not provide enough context.

Bringing up these examples from The Book of Henry:

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Peter's magic act received several:
    • During Midnight Screenings, Brad and Brian suggest that Peter receiving a standing ovation for his magic act boils down to the audience applauding out of pity for him evoking "the dead brother card" rather than anything actually in his act.
    • Likewise, during the Blank Check episode on it, David Sims speculates that, since Peter said at the start of his act that he was "going to bring his brother back to life", the standing ovation is more out of the audience's relief that soap flakes coming from the ceiling and chest are the only things that the trick entailed, rather than something wildly morbid, like Peter bringing out Henry's dead body or actual ashes onstage.
    • Dan Olson of Folding Ideas comes to the conclusion that the snow machine actually had Henry's ashes in it. Or at least that this is the unintended visual metaphor the movie creates by having Peter promise to make his brother appear among the crowd, then spraying them with a white powder.

• Critical Research Failure:
  • Henry has Susan practice using a sniper rifle to murder Glenn with plywood targets, stating "plywood is only slightly thicker than the human skull." This makes no sense, as plywood can be bought in many different thickness types. It also wouldn't matter how thick the target is, Susan is practicing her aim, her level of skill will have no impact on whether the bullet penetrates Glenn's skull or not. Folding Ideas also highlighted the pride that the creators took in this line, as it appears in the opening montage, despite the fact that Susan would be firing 0.30 caliber rifle at relatively close range directly to his head.
  • It's a repeated thing that Henry feels the need to teach Susan about their finance. They are rich. She can just hire an accountant. As Folding Ideas points out, not having to closely manage her finance is one of the privilege of being rich - you can have people do it for you.

• Designated Hero: Arguably Henry. Despite the film’s attempt at framing Henry as a kid who’s mature and wise beyond his years, how he acts paints a different character. From his first scene alone, Henry insults another student in an improvised essay reading and condescendingly tells his teacher that he wants to stay in a class with kids his age for his psycho-social development – even though he is never seen interacting with any other classmate during lunch or recess in the movie.^note He spends all of his time playing checkers with the lunch lady — and he curb-stomps the lunch lady in a single move the very second he needs to leave in a hurry, showing that he only dragged out the game for the sake of... wasting their time, probably? Dan Olson’s video took issue about that because it was such a horrible cliche to begin with and also gives more ammo to the "Henry is an Insufferable Genius" camp. And that’s not getting into how Henry polices his own mother with how she spends her free time, takes care of the family and pretty much how she lives. He gets even worse after he dies. Yes, the abusive stepfather should be stopped; but one should not resort to murder as their first idea, much less coach one's mother to commit the act. As Dan Olson put it, “He’s actually a huge prick”, and it's surprising that he even wants to help Christina at all.

• Fan Myopia: Despite the overwhelmingly negative reception this movie gained, one of the few positive reviews given to this movie was from Chris Stuckmann. While giving reviews contrary to common consensus regarding a movie isn't new for Chris, prior to this movie's release, he got to interview director Colin Trevorrow, where they discussed this film in particular. Whether or not this influenced Chris giving the movie a more positive review compared to other critics caused a bit of debate among the comment sections of Chris' video, Folding Ideas's videos, and Midnight Screenings' video.

• Glurge: As Dan Olson puts it, the first half of the movie is "insufferably twee", which makes the second half's assassination plot highly jarring and unintentionally comic.

• Memetic Mutation:
  • From Dan Olson's review: "HE SCATTERS HENRY'S ASHES OVER THE CROWD."^note It's really fake snow from a snow machine, but the audience knowing it's snow and giving it a standing ovation makes no sense considering they have no idea that there was a snow machine in context to Henry.
  • "GODDAMNIT, JANICE!" ^note From Dan Olson's second video essay on The Book of Henry, and to a lesser extent, Double Toasted and Midnight Screenings' respective video reviews of the film. The line is said by Henry to his principal. Throughout the review, Olson continues to refer to her solely as "Goddammit Janice", which only highlights the absurdity of the line from an eleven year old.

• Narm: As Folding Ideas loves pointing out, since the audience in the final scene has no context for Henry's mountain climbing skit, their being told that Henry is about to appear before them followed by the snow blower likely gives the impression that Henry's ashes have just been blown all over them.

• Spiritual Adaptation: According to director Colin Trevorrow, The Book of Henry is, apparently, also a retelling of Star Wars: A New Hope.
  Trevorrow: Henry was Obi-Wan Kenobi. And he died in the middle. And he left a set of instructions on how to take out the Death Star where Darth Vader was holding a Princess captive. And at the very end, when he had the target in his sights, he had to remember his training. Guided by this ghostly voice. And then Han Solo comes in with the Rube Goldberg machine and gives him the moment. And ultimately the Princess saves herself.
  • And of course, Dan Olson offers his own thoughts on this comparison.

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Brad and Brian suggested that the film might've been more interesting if Glenn was actually innocent and Christina's injuries were caused by her practicing ballet.
  • The Royal Ocean Film Society made a video essay saying that the film could have worked if the tone was different. He even re-edits a fake trailer to make the film look like a Wes Anderson movie. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight as earlier drafts of the film played the story as a Black Comedy, and it was the director's decision to approach the material more dramatically.

• What An Idiot: In general, the plan might have seemed a lot more appealing had the film been made or set during the 90s (although not by much). However, as Cinematic Excrement points out, since it's set in the modern day, it would be incredibly easy to just film the abusive stepfather while he's abusing Christina and post it online so he can't deny it, seeing as how the stepfather strangely always abuses Christina in front of an open window.^note In fact, the plot wouldn't hold up much better if it had been made during the 90s either, since one could just as easily film the abuse and send it to the nearby news station; the only way Henry's suggestion would've been a good idea would be if it had been a Black Comedy as originally planned.

Christ, half the examples are just references to reviewers! It's a lot of stuff though, so I need more input.

Well, from what little I know;

• Alternative Character Interpretation: If all the sub-bullets are interpretations from reviewers, then I doubt it has anything to do with what the movie's actual audience saw.
• Critical Research Failure: Both references to Folding Ideas can be cut and nothing would be lost.
• Designated Hero: Again, the pothole to Folding Ideas can easily be cut; although the whole entry is complainy...
• Fan Myopia: Assuming this is even a real example, it probably should be on the Chris Stuckmann page instead.
• Glurge: Maybe keep this one as it is? It seems a little low on context...
• Memetic Mutation: Either keep them or move them to YMMV.Folding Ideas.
• Narm: Again, I don't think this is a widespread audience opinion if it's only based on what a reviewer had to say about it.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Don't know if the sub-bullet is necessary, but otherwise it's fine as is.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Doesn't say what the actual audience thought.
• What An Idiot: Remove the reference to Cinematic Excrement, the entry's fine without it.

This was on the YMMV page for Endless Love:

• WTH, Casting Agency?: The Cinema Snob wondered why James Spader wasn't cast as David, despite being a way more charismatic actor "who could have romantic chemistry with a ferrett". He even felt that Tom Cruise would have been a better choice.
  Actor Martin Hewitt actually beat out five thousand other people for this part. Wow, who were those 4,999 other people, serial killers?

Bringing up these from The Book of Henry:

• Broken Aesop: Folding Ideas comments that, despite all the implications that Susan is an inadequate parent, we are told that the family has plenty of money (before Henry reveals how much that he's made himself) and her video games/occasional drinking never causes her to make any huge parenting blunders; as a result, the film comes off like it's criticizing her for just having hobbies.

• Flat Character: Christina is this in spades. While her lack of emotion can be excused by her depression brought on by her abuse, she is given no agency or further characterization, and no other characters make an effort to empower her in any way, despite being the primary motivation for Henry, and later Susan, to go through a plot to murder her stepfather Glenn. In his thorough take down of the movie, Dan Olson makes the point that she could have been replaced with a sack of gems and nothing about the plot would've changed.

How did you miss those the first time?

Both references to Folding Ideas can be cut, not much would change.

Bringing these up from YMMV.Spectre:

• They Changed It, So It Sucks: The enmity between Bond and Blofeld is given a Freudian Excuse. As Bob Chipman has opined, that character element is completely unnecessary for these characters as their opposition, until they redo the murder of Tracy Bond, is purely professional. As Chipman puts it, Blofeld is a terrorist and would-be world conqueror because it's his job, and Bond is determined to stop him in part because it's ''his job'.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: A lot of people have accused the plot, from the hero's struggling to find his relevance in the modern era to the bad guy's use of mass surveillance to Take Over the World, of being ripped off from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. As Honest Trailers puts it:
  Narrator: If you only see one movie this year about a hero who belongs in a different era, battling a sleeper cell inside his own organization, with their own tentacle logo, against a former friend that was presumed dead in the snow... you should probably just rewatch The Winter Soldier. It's way better anyway.

And this one from Film.Spectre:

• Whole-Plot Reference: SPECTRE infiltrates an intelligence organization to set up a global surveillance system that they can use to take out anyone they want, just like HYDRA in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. M and C both make much the same arguments for and against this system that were made in that film as well. Funnily enough, HYDRA from Marvel Comics was originally based on SPECTRE, as particularly evidenced by the similar◊ logos. This is pointed out by Honest Trailers in its Honest Trailer of the film.

You can delete the "As Honest Trailers puts it", etc. from the ends of the entries, including the one with the quote. The "as Bob Chipman puts it" stuff can go too, with the rest of the entry remaining intact.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jun 15th 2021 at 7:39:59 AM

Reviewers are part of the audience, so those Alternative Character Interpretation examples are valid.

So, I found this a few weeks ago on the Trivia page for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice:

Now, I wanted to wait until Linkara did his actual review for the movie before I brought this up. First of all, I think this is misuse since this more of a detractor nickname than a fan one. Second, the last part is... unnecessary and also inaccurate. Linkara does refer to movie's subtitle as "Giant Monsters All-Out Attack" whenever he talks about it, but I never recall him calling it "Crazy Steve v Greyman". I don't know if that was in a livestream or a vlog, but that's not how he usually refers to the film.

Regardless, I think this is an easy cut though. Any thoughts?

The whole thing? Yes, snip it to oblivion.

Bringing up the following example from Wild West COW Boys Of Moo Mesa

• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: During his review of the show, The Nostalgia Critic considers having the Big Bads of the show be a Corrupt Cop and a Corrupt Politician to be a case of this; that sometimes, even the people you're supposed to trust to lead you and keep you safe from bad guys can be bad guys themselves.

Delete that example; Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped is being cut and redirected to Anvilicious, and the example doesn't fit there so just slice away.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jun 22nd 2021 at 5:07:23 AM

Aren't those really common villain tropes. I don't think using them is that special.

Last week, this was added to NightmareFuel.Cuphead:

Edited by Shadow8411 on Jun 27th 2021 at 11:10:06 AM

I personally don't think that quote is very illustrative, but you might want to take it to the Quotes thread.

Brining up these examples from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:

• Grey-and-Gray Morality: The RedLetterMedia review pegs this as one of the problems with the film. The other films had Black-and-White Morality, with either Those Wacky Nazis or a Religion of Evil cult as the villains. In this movie, the Americans and Russians are portrayed as Not So Different and yet we're still expected to be rooting against the Russians.

• Improbable Cover: Indy survives a nuke by hiding in a refrigerator.
  • According to a Cracked, interview with a Hiroshima survivor, said interviewee's granpa survived the blast by hiding in a freezer, albeit under slightly different circumstances.
  • Given the fridge is lead, it and the house would have absorbed much of the impact of the blast, so it’s possible Indy could have survived if not for the fridge being flung hundreds of yards in the air.

• The first entry reads like it should be on the YMMV page, but Grey-and-Gray Morality isn't YMMV, so it definitely needs a rewrite.
• As for the second... Cracked isn't a reviewer AFAIK, but nothing would be lost by cutting that bullet point anyway.

As I said here, I don't think The Phantom Menace example on Four Lines, All Waiting should have removed the mention of RedLetterMedia. The example is paraphrasing a point RLM's review made, so keeping it there while removing the part saying it's from RLM seems dangerously close to plagiarism.

Also, how do reviewers not count as part of the audience for Alternative Character Interpretation?

Also also, I removed the JonTron quotes from Takeshi's Challenge, since they didn't add anything important.

Edited by rjd1922 on Jun 28th 2021 at 4:14:45 AM

Uh...how would it be plagiarism? Just because a reviewer says a thing doesn't mean they have some ownership of that criticism. Concepts can't really be plagiarized, especially when the text is paraphrased.

From Critical Research Failure:

• Toy Story: Andy's Mom drives with Molly in the passenger seat. It's illegal to have a baby in a car's front seat. Honest Trailers calls the film out on this.
  Honest Trailers Narrator: Does Andy's Mom realize it's super illegal to have a baby ride in the front seat? Everybody knows that.

I don't think the Honest Trailers mention is necessary.

It isn't. Cut.

This was on the literature subpage for Genre Turning Point:

• Rowling also changed the relationship that content creators had with fanfiction writers, as explained in this video by Sarah Z. Before, fanfic was considered a disreputable hobby that existed in a legal gray area, with many creators regarding it as uncreatively borrowing other people's characters and a violation of copyright on top of it, and as such many fanfic writers had to circulate their work in private networks to avoid getting sued. Rowling, on the other hand, embraced the Harry Potter fanfic community and expressed hope that some of them would go on to become professional authors in their own right (which quite a few did), and even promoted several fanfic websites; her only guidelines were that it remain strictly amateur and not-for-profit (because otherwise it would be copyright infringement), that it didn't venture into explicit sexual territory (because Harry Potter was an all-ages book series), and that they didn't send it to her directly (because then she could risk getting sued for borrowing canon plot elements from fanfic writers). Nowadays, fanfic is an integral part of many fandoms, with major websites like FanFiction.Net and Archive of Our Own catering to it, and content creators who try to sue fanfic authors (as Anne Rice, Archie Comics, and the producers of The X-Files did in the past) would nowadays face scrutiny for it.

Is the video citation necessary?