Poll: Do you enjoy Moviebob's content?

Skatologist

Choke On Your Nazi Cookies
Jan 25, 2014
628
0
21
I do really enjoy his content in regards to the Big Picture, while I see his Escape to the Movies as more mixed, but still generally positive.

His news pieces are a bit too baity for me to like them or even want to check the "discussion" for them, even if he doesn't specifically hold a position in many of them. I'd prefer if he just used social media to spread those kinds of stories and kept them off the site/left someone else write about it.

I respectfully disagree with many of his assessments, as he does many from others from what I can tell from what I've seen from many episodes he has done on his series the GameOverThinker on other bloggers/journalists, but nothing he has ever said had made me think he was anything more than ignorant on some aspects of what he was trying to say.
 

Daniel Taulbee

New member
Jan 24, 2012
1
0
0
He's the main reason I got into this site and still my favorite contributor. I like his style, even if I don't understand every pop culture reference he makes in his videos. More importantly, I find myself agreeing with his take on a particular movie about 9 times out of 10, so I can usually get a good idea of whether or not a movie is worth my time and money by checking out his review, and a few times he's brought to my attention some gems that I hadn't heard of or had wrongly dismissed.

I do get a chuckle, though, when his accent kicks in; it's not an annoying accent IMO, but it's just funny when most of a video is done in his broadcast voice but then a random sentence or two is in his Boston accent. "Let's all congrajalate STAH TREK INTO DAHKNESS on no longeh bein' da dumbest movie o' da summer."
 

JoJo

and the Amazing Technicolour Dream Goat 🐐
Moderator
Legacy
Mar 31, 2010
7,160
125
68
Country
🇬🇧
Gender
♂
I find the content covered in the Big Picture is usually interesting, I don't watch Escape to the Movies regularly however as I'm not interested enough about the average movie to bother and his news articles are eh at best, so it's a mix from me.
 

Fox12

AccursedT- see you space cowboy
Jun 6, 2013
4,828
0
0
I really don't like this guy, which is a fact I've never hidden, but I'll try to list his strong a weak points.

PROS:
He has a really good presentation set up. I like it when he keeps a measured, professional tone, and I like his visual style. It manages to be both entertaining and thoughtful at the same time. He's also capable of putting out a large amount of regular content.

CONS:
Unfortunately, I find that he's heavily biased in several ways, and he allows those biases to color his review in negative ways. I'll get politics out of the way early. He's a heavily liberal figure who lands pretty far to the left. And that's completely fine. Unfortunately, on the scale of what matters, he gives the undue weight. He cares more about the message then he does about the actual quality of the movie being produced. As a result he gives films like Whitehouse Down and Elysium a glowing review, while damning anything that bruises his liberal sensitivities. Never mind that said films were heavy handed metaphors with poor acting and 2-d plots and characters, and that they lacked all subtlety. They supported his beliefs, and that's what matters. And this highlights my whole issue with him. He always seems to have an agenda. It may not always be political, but it's there. As a result, I don't feel like I'm watching a fair review of film making. I feel like I'm watching some form of propaganda. I may as well watch Fox news.

His second type of bias is what I like to call fanboy bias. This tends to color his reviews of Marvel and DC films, as well as popculture films in general. This isn't quite so bad, but it does seem to warp his opinions in sometimes strange ways. A recent example would be the assertion that Christopher Nolan criticized Marvel for having post credit scenes. In fact, he never said anything of the sort, as he was misquoted, and even the misquote never mentions Marvel in name. Unfortunately, many feared that this irrational, perceived slight colored his review of Interstellar, which may or may not be true. The mere fact that this was taken seriously, however, is itself worrying. Which leads to the next point.

The quality I mentioned before is slipping. He pads his videos more and more, and often has less to say. His articles are driven by click-bait more then ever. He also seems more likely to get angry and jump on a soap box. which leads to the final point.

He's becoming increasingly unprofessional. His writing is more toxic then ever, and he seems to really hate his audience. His twitter feed is really nasty, and he fully admits that he can be toxic, biased, and stubborn, so long as he pushes his ideas forward. It just feels like he has a massive chip on his shoulder, and he's always angry. While it's clear he holds his audience in contempt, he shouldn't be allowed to conduct himself in this manner in the public eye. A professional would never behave this way. He should hold himself to higher standards.
 

gigastar

Insert one-liner here.
Sep 13, 2010
4,419
0
0
I keep up with The Big Picture, and i watch Escape to the Movies if im interested in the movie.

And thats about it.
 

Trinket to Ride

New member
Jul 13, 2014
91
0
0
I used to like him a lot, but he's been falling out of favor for me lately. He's getting just a little too political for me.

Don't get me wrong, I consider myself a feminist and I'm all about inclusion and cultural sensitivity. But while those are important things to me, they don't make up 100% of my identity, and I feel that's the direction he's headed towards. It's hard to explain.

I guess the best example was his "Big Hero 6" review. The bulk of the review seemed to be grading the movie almost solely on the representation and portrayal of women and minorities. Like how he mentioned how great of a character Gogo was and her awesome catch phrase "woman up." When I saw the movie, I didn't think she had much of a presence at all, and she only said that like twice in the whole movie. I'd hardly call it a catch phrase. "Bah-la-la-la" is more memorable.

Aside from that, I also dislike how he often seems to have his mind made up about a movie before he even sees it. *cough* Amazing Spiderman *cough*
 

lordmardok

New member
Mar 25, 2010
319
0
0
Generally no, only because I feel like he lets his own personal opinion overwrite his reviews, so we don't /really/ get a review so much as we get MovieBob's subjective opinion. Which is fine and all I guess, but it's no more valid than anyone elses.
 

Zontar

Mad Max 2019
Feb 18, 2013
4,931
0
0
I used to like his content, but over the past two years he's had a very noticeable downturn in quality that almost mirrors the fall of GameOerthinker perfectly. The Big Picture has gone from him talking about things in pop-culture he knows about to him ranting about things he doesn't have the first clue of, and Escape to the Movies is a mostly talking about things which are not in any way relevant to the movie going experience these days. His radical political views that he constantly spews online doesn't help.
 

Random Argument Man

New member
May 21, 2008
6,011
0
0
I sometime enjoy his videos. I don't like them when he's using a dismissive tone about certain subjects or certain movies.

His major contribution is when he gives us Geek knowledge and background to certain aspects of geekdom. When it comes to "how to deal with culture", I preferred Jim?


There was a Jim here..he's gone now.
 

Ishal

New member
Oct 30, 2012
1,177
0
0
DizzyChuggernaut said:
He's a smart guy and I agree with many of his views but whenever it comes to gender and representation... OH DEAR GOD STOP.

He's not an idiot but his interactions on social media are appalling. He lacks the self-awareness of Jim and Yahtzee, my favourite contributors and his ramblings on sexism completely miss the point. (Remember how he thought Link being female would be revolutionary? *shudder*)

I wish he wasn't as facetious when discussing serious issues. I used to respect him but now he's a liberal equivalent of that one lunatic right-winger that has a good grasp on certain issues and an absolutely flimsy grasp on others.
Took the words out of my mouth, though I think people over-estimate his intelligence.

The man has talent in this particular niche area of the internet. That he can pick out a guy at the end of the latest Marvel movie and say "You wanna know who that guy is? Well here's a video explaining who he is, what's he's about, and why you might care in detail. That fits the site, and it's marketable. Good for him. His movie reviews I've never really watched all that much because I don't care about film.

But I don't watch any of his content anymore. So the answer would be no. The way he conducts himself on social media is disgraceful. I'm pretty far to left on quite a few issues, but Bob is off the deep end. He often likes to use nerd lingo to describe things in the political strata and make quips. In regards to GamerGate, or just politics in general. "I've seen this fight before guys, I know the how it ends, the good guys win."

It's telling, phrasing something like that. That there are good guys and bad guys, and it's black and white. Quite telling.
 

jademunky

New member
Mar 6, 2012
973
0
0
Personally, I'd say he is the main reason I visit the escapist. I seldom miss his movie reviews and never miss his Big Picture videos, particularly when he goes into the arcane, uber-convoluted history of superhero comics. ( although his political stuff is great too, I do love that he really seems to piss off certain folks)

The only thing about him that kinda annoys me is that he veers back and forth with that Boston accent. Halfway through a video, it feels like someone else just jumped in and started talking, kinda funny but just a little jarring. I like the accent, just stay with it!
 

ForumSafari

New member
Sep 25, 2012
572
0
0
Dark Knifer said:
Do you enjoy Moviebob's content?
The Escapist had better fucking hope so, now that Jim Fucking Sterling Son has left he's basically their only content producer.

OT: No I don't. I gave up on him years ago when he adopted the disgusting self-righteous pseudo-religious tendency to yell 'HERESY!' at ideas he didn't like that's common to many Internet 'progressives'.
 

Pete Oddly

New member
Nov 19, 2009
224
0
0
Now that Jim is leaving, Bob is certainly my favourite contributor. It helps that I pretty much agree with everything he has to say, save for his stance on certain movies and his unabashed Nintendo love. It's kind of eerie, actually, how much his thoughts mirror my own.
 

Denamic

New member
Aug 19, 2009
3,804
0
0
Not generally, no. His attitude just puts me off. That 'I know better than you' arrogance and the way he aggressively presents his opinions as if they were hard facts just rubs me the wrong way. Even when he says things I agree with, I have a hard time enjoying his content. This was not made better when he sprayed SJW juices all over the place.
 

RedDeadFred

Illusions, Michael!
May 13, 2009
4,896
0
0
I said generally no.

He CAN be quite insightful and offer some truly interesting reviews. However, his blatant fanboyism often gets in the way of his reviews. His political views -many of which I agree with- also tend to get in the way of his reviews. I also find it quite annoying when he slips between his two different accents when he gets excited. Then there's the clickbait articles that he can be extremely guilty of. To top it all off, the way he's conducted himself around this whole GamerGate nonsense has been less than desirable.
 

TheArcaneThinker

New member
Jul 19, 2014
211
0
0
The guy introduced me to the Raid : Redemption and the Raid 2 : Berandal and just for that , he is awesome.

Btw i would see his casual reviews rather than some serious corporate nit picking review.
 

RandV80

New member
Oct 1, 2009
1,507
0
0
I stumbled on his Game Overthinker video's before he came to the escapist, and rather enjoyed them as I found we have a common dissatisfaction with the direction video games have gone. Never liked it when he started inserting himself as a storyline, and always found his 'bro gamer' caricature kind of awkward. Always felt like a lot of contempt leaking out, and that's where we differ. When Bob goes against something he seems to hold a lot of contempt for it, and myself coming from the planet Neutral I'm just not comfortable with it. I mean don't care for Call of Duty either but, while I don't like the direction gaming had gone I don't hate anyone for it but rather have just learned to live with it and stick to my niche. Which is doing quite well right now, thank you very much.

Always liked his shows on the Escapist, the one point of contention with movies is I've always held a lot of nostalgia towards 80's action flicks. Which again, there seems to be a certain level of contempt towards. Which I find especially odd since he holds old grind house films to such high level of artistic integrity.

I've always been a supporter but all this feminism stuff the last few months is starting to push me over the edge. Sorry but I just don't care, and there's been way to many smug snipe shots finding their way into his stuff. It's pretty obvious that he wants to use one of his soap boxes here to lash out at the stupid 'gamergate' thing yet the bosses aren't letting him. Also his apparent blind support of Sarkesian kind of feels like selling out when she's attacking classics like Mario & Zelda by lumping them in alongside the real stalwards like Team Ninja. Feels like the 'game overthinker' fell in with a new crowd and suddenly isn't interested in rescuing the princess anymore.
 

babinro

New member
Sep 24, 2010
2,518
0
0
Voted: I like his work

He's entertaining enough that he's become a regular part of my weekly webshows. I really like his presence in the podcast and I especially like The Big Picture. That said...I disagree with Escape to the Movies a LOT. I dislike how he takes personal issues related to the movie and taints movie reviews with them. Or how he'll talk about another subject during the start of a movie review. That said...I'm still interested to hear his opinion more often then not.

So yeah...I disagree with many of his opinions, I highly disagree with how he uses his one webshow but I ultimately like his work as a whole. Guess that makes me a fan.
 

Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
Legacy
Feb 9, 2012
18,536
3,055
118
No, I don't like him or his work.

I don't like the backhanded insults, I don't like the general bias, I don't like the snotty arrogance, I don't like his fanboy focus on Marvel, I don't like his autopilot disregard for all things not-Marvel, I don't like his rumormongering news pieces or his clickbait articles, I don't like his social media gimmickry, and I don't like the way he's constantly taking up more space at The Escapist.

For this and a lot of other things I don't consider him a good reviewer.