When Chipman was talking about some long-ago kaiju movie, or minutiae of comic book backstory lore, or the development of major video game icons, he could be fascinating.
At the time he left the Escapist, he was also well on his way to becoming a genuine hate-monger. And I do not use that term lightly.
It wasn't even just about politics, per se, though there were certainly some uncomfortable examples there. He was increasingly incapable of reviewing a movie without expressing narrow and venomous contempt for a large group of people- the teenagers who might dare to enjoy a YA franchise, the testosterone junkies who line up for the latest offering in an action franchise. Sometimes even the audience for a movie that he was allegedly giving a positive review- his X-Men: Days of Future Past review was in spectacularly poor form. Individual actors, writers, or directors weren't enough; anyone tangentially involved in something that rubbed him the wrong way became sub-human.
I essentially called him out on his interpreting Gone Girl as a scathing denunciation of modern marriage as a sham, pointing out that the author of the book it was based on was an apparently happily married mother of two (one who had shared the drafts of her book with her husband as she wrote, no less). Next thing I knew, he was referring to the novel (along with Fight Club and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) as "questionable source material".
...Yeah. Books that the plebs have enjoyed that got turned into successful movies. Shameful.
In some ways, the worst thing was the kerfuffle about Kevin Smith. After months of hurling vitriol at the guy, Bob finally did an episode examining his career, admitted *why* he was so frustrated with its recent turns, and conceded that when all was said and done he probably wasn't quite as awful as he had been making him out to be.
Bob was (and presumably is) not a stupid guy; he was capable of examining why and when certain things brought out such extreme reactions in him, and recognizing in the process when it wasn't necessarily appropriate, or even accurate.
He just couldn't be troubled to do that, nine times out of ten.
I haven't really followed his career much since the departure. He seems to be doing okay, if not on anything like the plane of someone like Jim Sterling. I don't wish him ill.
I just continue to think that, one day, he's going to be like the forty year old with chemically damaged hair, half his hearing, and piercings in unfortunate places who suddenly realizes that he doesn't even like punk rock and has divested himself of everyone and everything that wasn't part of the scene.
