Cleaning Up Needless References To Reviewers

Bringing up the following from Bride Wars:

• WTH, Casting Agency?: Mark Kermode and Film Brain found Kate Hudson as a high-powered lawyer laughably unconvincing.

Needs some actual context as to why that's a bad choice.

From Star 80, here's a needless reviewer reference in an Award Snub which spends more time talking about the reviewer themselves than the "snubbed" actor the example is supposed to be about:

• Award Snub: Eric Roberts' performance was highly acclaimed and netted a Golden Globe nomination, but he wasn't nominated for the Oscar. Roger Ebert said publicly that he was robbed, asserting that "Hollywood will not nominate an actor for portraying a creep, no matter how good the performance is." Ebert even coined the term "Star 80 Syndrome" to describe this phenomenon. Roberts' later Supporting Actor nomination for Runaway Train may well have been to make up for this snub.

I think the bolded portion can be removed:

• Award Snub: Eric Roberts' performance was highly acclaimed and netted a Golden Globe nomination, but he wasn't nominated for the Oscar. Roger Ebert said publicly that he was robbed, asserting that "Hollywood will not nominate an actor for portraying a creep, no matter how good the performance is." Ebert even coined the term "Star 80 Syndrome" to describe this phenomenon. Roberts' later Supporting Actor nomination for Runaway Train may well have been to make up for this snub.

Which would make the entry look like this:

• Award Snub: Eric Roberts' performance was highly acclaimed and netted a Golden Globe nomination, but he wasn't nominated for the Oscar. Roberts' later Supporting Actor nomination for Runaway Train may well have been to make up for this snub.

If that's enough context, then the example looks much better.

Don't know if it's enough context per se, but I'm not sure what else to add.

It's still better than how it was before.

On the YMMV page for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, there's a quote by Froghand under the Eight Point Eight entry that feels unconnected to what the entry is talking about:

Should this quote be cut?

The Froghand work page itself is believed to have been created by the guy who runs the blog, per this Wiki Talk thread. I think the quote can safely be removed.

I actually think Ebert's comment provides more context for the Star 80 example, explaining why he was likely snubbed despite a powerful performance.

These are all on YMMV.North. a lot of these are laced with complaining too.

• Accidental Innuendo: When North has a panic attack, his dad says, "Quick, loosen his pants!" Unsurprisingly, The Nostalgia Critic went to town with this one in his review of the movie.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • As North's plane lands in Alaska, it slowly drops its speed as it gets closer and closer to the airport building, finally lightly bumping off the window. Cut to the next scene.
    • It's allegedly a Shout-Out/spoof to one iconic gag from the movie Airplane!. While it would be bad enough that it is from a different, much funnier movie, it has the gall to turn it into (and fail at being) an anti-joke by not showing the plane expectantly crashing through, essentially missing the point of the joke in the original while lacking any original context to fall back on. The Nostalgia Critic didn't "get" the reference, either.
• Bile Fascination: As put by Nathan Rabin, "Ebert went into North expecting another winner from a talented filmmaker on a hot streak. I went in expecting one of the worst films ever made." In short, the ruined reputation means new viewers are only in to see if the movie is as bad as they say (particularly regarding the culturally-insensitive jokes).
• Narm:
  • Bruce Willis dressed as a pink Easter bunny. That is all.
  Bruce: Look, kid, just because I'm in a bunny suit doesn't mean I haven't—
  Nostalgia Critic: Yeah, yeah, it does. Whatever you're about to say, being in a bunny suit pretty much destroys all credibility.
• Never Live It Down:
  • It was also the subject of one of the most infamously scathing reviews from critical duo Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who both named it the worst film of 1994 and attacked its "cataclysmically unfunny" premise.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: This was one big reason why Roger Ebert loathed this movie. The stereotype humor and lazy puns are far too juvenile for adults, but the sex jokes and various expletives make it too raunchy for kids, and that's not to mention that one wouldn't want their kids to watch such blatant stereotypes.
• WTH, Casting Agency?: Most of the cast could fit into here.
  • The most unexplainable is probably Kathy Bates and Abe Vigoda with their faces painted brown playing Eskimos, which was criticized as racially insensitive and "an ugly piece of cinematic prostitution" by The Nostalgia Critic and labeled a "new low in bad taste" by Ebert at the end of the year the movie premiered (Bates also got a Razzie nomination for that appearance).
  • Alan Arkin as Judge Buckle may count as another, whose performance Ebert also panned in his review.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 19th 2021 at 12:20:09 PM

Huh. That's a lot of Nostalgia Critic references.

That's a Colbert Bump for ya.

On Shallow Parody:

• Doug Walker felt Enchanted fell into this at a lot of times, especially in its attempt to deconstruct Disney's habit of Love at First Sight - since such a thing only happened in the Disney films of the 30s and 50s, and the Renaissance films featured characters having proper romance arcs where they got to know each other (the closest to Love at First Sight, Ariel and Eric, still had a Time Skip to their wedding). Likewise Queen Nerissa expresses surprise at Giselle being the one to save Robert, when the likes of Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and Pocahontas were active characters who saved their love interests at various points of the movie.

This should be easy to fix, just change the first bit as "Enchanted falls into this a lot of times".

The Robert Ebert references are no slouch either. Should I trim/delete these?

Probably should.

Bringing up the following from Infinite Crisis:

• Nostalgia Filter: This is arguably the issue at the very heart of Infinite Crisis, the running theme that the story is trying to say. The idea that the Gold and Silver age of comics were much better, more optimistic, more light-hearted against the supposed darkness that came in the Bronze and Dark ages of comics. By being blinded by that nostalgia, Alex, Superboy-Prime and Kal-L want to do everything possible to bring back the worlds that they lost, because said worlds were "better". The problem is, by forcing what they see as better on everyone else, it ultimately creates a scenario much worse than what they claim the problem is. They become the brutal and darkness they claim to be fighting against. Internet Reviewer Linkara goes into better detail on this.

Just remove the Linkara note at the end and it should be fine.

Unless anyone else objects. Any disagreement?

Nope; whole thing has to be cut. That's a In-Universe Examples Only trope.

Or move it to Linkara's page since it's in-universe on his show.

Bringing up the following example from Manipulative Editing:

• The ending credits of Jem and the Holograms (2015) featured clips of real fans allegedly talking about what they loved about the movie, but said fans were actually asked what they thought of the original 80's cartoon and the clips were edited and spliced with movie scenes to give the impression they loved the film instead. Naturally fans were not amused by such a shallow trick to give the movie props and The Nostalgia Critic went off on a rant about this in his review, likening it to an outright betrayal of their fanbase.

The NC part can be cut as he wasn't the only one pissed and he's not even a Jem fan.

Also, Manipulative Editing is an objective trope. If a trope objectively happens, you don't need to cite a reviewer.

Bringing up these examples from All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder:

First there's the page caption:

Then the actual work page:

• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • Very often throughout the text. Again and again. There is repetition. Statements are made. Repeated. Hammered. Insistent. Again and again. Relentless. Tireless. Repeatedly. Again and again.^note Linkara compares the dialogue to Torgo's Verbal Tic.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot:
  • As I-Mockery put it, The Goddamn Batmobile is also a Goddamn Delorean.
    Protoclown: "Fifteen hours ago". That means one of two things. Clark Kent either drank this carton of milk fifteen hours before Dick Grayson was kidnapped by Batman, and thus it is a magical prescient carton of milk, OR it's actually been a long enough ride in the Batmobile for Dick to have been reported missing, for his name to get to the missing persons groups, for them to submit his information to the milk company, for the milk company to print the cartons, distribute the cartons, and then for Clark Kent to go to the grocery store and buy the carton of milk. Let's see, by my rough estimate, that means that Batman and Dick have been on the way to the Batcave for, oh, about FIVE WEEKS now.
  • A lot of these issues come up. The series goes over two or three nights, depending on how you look at it, yet Miller seems to forget this since the books took so long to come out. Especially in issue nine. Batman arranges a meeting with Hal Jordan 'in twelve hours' in issue eight; yet in issue nine, Batman is reminiscing about multiple training sessions and Dick Grayson being in the cave with him for weeks. Also, apparently an entire clinic was bribed, Dick made a press conference and then they could paint an entire apartment yellow with "nearly an hour to spare" before Jordan arrived for his meeting twelve hours since issue eight.
  • This is probably because Frank Miller is utilizing non-linear storytelling. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the "11 hours earlier" in the same issue. (Also, it's downright impossible to tell if "11 hours ago" means 11 hours before the previous scene which was "5 hours ago" or 11 hours before now - whenever "now" is. Which makes you wonder the point of all the hopping around in the first place, as it only serves to confuse things.
    Linkara: WHAT TIME IS IT?!

Then the trivia page:

• Fan Nickname:
  • In his text reviews, Linkara ends up calling this version BINO (Batman In Name Only). In the video review, he decides that even that name is too Battish, and dubs the character "Crazy Steve," a random insane hobo who found a Batman costume and a lottery ticket, allowing him to live out his crazy antics.
  • Later, after seeing Wonder Woman also acting way out of character, he dubs her "Bonkers Betty," who's Crazy Steve's Distaff Counterpart.
• Schedule Slip: One reason people went after plot points that are supposedly resolved later — this comic's release schedule was abominable. Jim Lee would later blame this on himself, saying all his other commitments delayed the art.
  Protoclown: This monthly comic publishes about three issues a year. You can't rush this kind of quality, folks.

Then the YMMV page:

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • It's entirely possible that the Batman we're seeing on page is not in fact the real Batman. Some have theorized that he's actually a crazy hobo named Steve who found a Batman costume and won the lottery, becoming inspired to be Batman.
  • Similarly, Wonder Woman's insanely out-of-character behavior has caused some to declare that she's actually a deranged mental patient named Bonkers Betty who's stolen a Wonder Woman costume from a convention and is impersonating her.
  • Interestingly, Black Canary doesn't get a new name from Linkara despite explicitly not being the version we know (her origin clearly isn't that of either mainstream one).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • As Linkara pointed out, Frank Miller once said he considered Batman the most pure and good of all DC superheroes. Fast forward to this comic and suddenly we have the Goddamn Batman smirking gleefully as he slams the Batmobile into cops, abducting Dick Grayson, Age Twelve, and being terrifyingly cruel to him, and generally running around acting so brutally out of character that Linkara dubs him "Crazy Steve" because even "Batman In Name Only" is still too much like Batman. Also, Holy Terror was conceived by Miller as a Batman story before being changed to a new character called The Fixer.^note as detailed on that book's trivia page, Miller claims that he consciously chose to make the hero a new character because he didn't seem like Batman, but a far more popular theory—based on the fact that many elements of the book seem like the Bat-mythos with Serial Numbers Filed Off—is that DC refused to let Batman be used in a story as an Islamophobic sociopath who kills terrorists, and so Miller took the story elsewhere.
  • On the same token above, Batman laughs like a psycho, with Linkara comparing him with The Creeper. Considering how sociopathic this version of Batman is, no doubt someone would compare him with The Batman Who Laughs.

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When 12-year-old Dick Grayson initially creates his costume with a hood, Batman cynically tells him to drop it, since according to him, this would be impractical in a fight. Flash-forward to Grant Morrison's mainstream Batman run, when Damian Wayne becomes the new Robin. His costume includes a hood. (Linkara has theorized Morrison might have done this on purpose as a Take That! to this comic.)
    • This is acknowledged in the comic itself. Dick (who has taken up the Batman mantle) mentions how Batman taught him that a hood would limit his line of sight, but Damian proves that, having been trained from a far younger age than Dick, he can fight perfectly fine with the hood.
    • A later comic by Morrison, though, has the Bruce Wayne Batman scold Damian for having a hood in his outfit.

• Memetic Mutation:
  • Thanks to a certain critic, referring to this series as "ASBAR".

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • One theory provided by Owen Likes Comics posits that the intent was to explore a more up-to-date and deconstructive take on the original formation of the Dynamic Duo, specifically the original Detective Comics #38 that introduced Robin, a comic featuring a similarly uncharacteristically cavalier Batman whose initial treatment of Dick is questionable to the modern eye, but became slowly humanized by his presence. Perhaps the more outlandish characterization choices in All-Star were potentially meant to parallel and decontextualize this arc, but unfortunately, it's completely lost in the other characterization and story decisions that turned it into a mess.

• What An Idiot: If Green Lantern had a brain cell in his head, he'd have dismissed Batman's offer to meet him at a time and place of his specification, and just captured him then and there with the power ring on his own terms. Or, at their actual meeting in the yellow house, used his ring to manipulate normal objects that aren't painted yellow—like, say, controlling a normal pair of handcuffs to arrest them, or throwing heavy objects at them (such as bricks).
  • For that matter, there's Batman's plan to begin with. As Linkara pointed out in his review of ASBAR, Booster Gold encountered Sinestro while Sinestro was a Green Lantern in an issue of BG's series, but despite the fact that BG's outfit naturally featured large amounts of yellow^note technically gold is metallic yellow (which led BG to assume he would be fine against Sinestro), BG lost because Sinestro used methods that didn't involve touching him—meaning that if Hal was at least written semi-competently, all he would have to do was either cover the yellow paint with dirt, or grab something outside the room that Batman didn't paint yellow. (It would be one thing if Batman had sealed all the exits after Hal had entered, but that's not what happened.)

Then the fridge page: Fridge Horror

• As pointed out in Linkara's review, he points out that Batman mentions "having [his] eye on [Dick] for some time" and mentions "other candidates for the job", which would seem to indicate he had been planning to bring Dick in on his crime-fighting well before his parents were murdered. Linkara further interprets Bruce's snarls that "he'd have waited years" to imply he would have abducted Dick and possibly killed his parents himself to get him to join him.
• Linkara also pointed out that we never see Batman giving Hal Jordan his ring back. The Goddamn Batman with a Green Lantern ring...oh dear...
  • If you look at how Bruce reacts to becoming Green Lantern in the Elseworlds In Darkest Knight... It's pretty close.
    • A horrifying thought occurs when combined with the above Fridge Brilliance and the Fridge Horror about the Green Lantern ring. Batman is mentally eight years old, afraid of nothing, fanatically dedicated to his job, unable to work with others, and has no qualms about killing people. Dark Nights: Metal shows exactly what happens when a sociopathic, damaged, murderous Batman acquires any sort of power.

And finally the Heartwarming page:

• A really out there one that counts only if you subscribe to Linkara's humorous Alternative Character Interpretation that the Batman portrayed here is actually a hobo named "Crazy Steve" who found a Batman costume somewhere then won the lottery. If so, it's actually kind of heartwarming that the first thing this obviously very damaged individual would want to do is imitate his favorite superhero and try to protect the city that presumably left him homeless and destitute. He's terrible at it, but still. At least he's trying...

Man, that's a lot of reviewer references for a single work. For a specific example, the Heartwarming Moment doesn't count; it's meta, it only applies through a very specific Alternative Character Interpretation, and it hinges entirely on a review that people may not have even seen.