The Big Picture: Plothole Surfers

Dak_N_Jaxter

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1. While you've made your feelings on the 90s quite clear, were you at all into the 90s animated Marvel shows on FOX? If so, how do you feel they hold up against / compare to newer iterations?
 

Gizen

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Gennadios said:
Gizen said:
Gennadios said:
Nu Star Wars isn't viewed positively.
This is something the internet has to get over itself about. TLJ is viewed extremely positively by the movie going public at large. Just because an extremely vocal minority doesn't like something, doesn't mean the silent majority who can't be bothered to argue over internet forums agrees.
I realize that I'm probably in the minority on here, but I see aggregate user reviews as a better indicator than critic reviews, and the user scores on Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic paint a different story.
Review aggregate sites, by their very nature of letting anybody leave their opinion, are highly vulnerable to things like review bombing. A small group of persistent and pissed off people can wage a campaign to tank any movie or game's score (or vice versa).

Wanna know what's even better than user reviews for judging how much people like something? Sales numbers. Despite the supposedly bad word of mouth, The Last Jedi did absurd box office numbers. Even if you want to make the argument that negative word of mouth spread too slowly to prevent box office success, if TLJ was truly as unpopular as you want to believe, then surely nobody would be buying home video copies of the film. Afterall, why would people buy a movie that they supposedly think is trash? And yet it's the best selling blu-ray of the year. The majority of the movie going public either does not have a problem with the film, or does not view its problems as a big deal, otherwise they wouldn't still be buying it long after all those 'problems' have been made apparent and bitched about on the internet since the movie came out.
 

CrazyGirl17

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Kolby Jack said:
CrazyGirl17 said:
I admit to liking Cinema Sins but I don't take it seriously. I do kinda prefer its counterpart Cinema Wins, which is more positive and also goes into detail of why the movie is so good.

Also as a wannabe writer, the fear of plotholes in said writing makes it tricky to even do it since people nowadays are critical about that sort of thing.

(Also I can't be the only one who got the reference in the title, right?)
I also like Cinema Wins (fell out of love hard with cinema sins though), but disagree with your wording a bit. I like it not because it shows how a movie is good, but instead how someone could end up liking the movie. Cinema wins covers a lot of poorly received films. There are several movies I like that I wouldn't call good, but them being bad is also not why I like them. I just like them, unironically. Justice League would be one example; I saw it in theaters and honestly loved just about everything in it, yet also I fully understood why so many others would hate it.
That's probably a better way to look at it, I never though of it like that... so thanks.

(Also for the Q and A)
So Bob,
*What made you want to get into the reviewing business to begin with?
*What have you been doing in your time away from the Escapist?
*What do you think of the current state of comic books? (Maybe keep it short please?)
*Are there any modern cartoons you like? (ie the Ducktales reboot)

Feel free to answer any one of these, you don't have to answer them all.
 

Exley97_v1legacy

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I'll just throw some fuel on the fire here and say I *LOVE* The Last Jedi and after repeated viewings I think it my be my favorite, surpassing Empire.

And yes, I understand all of the structural issues and questions people have pointed out here, and I really don't care. Just as I don't care about the issues with Empire (Wait, there's an Emperor? Who is this guy? He was never mentioned in a New Hope! Hold on, when did Vader realize Luke was his long lost son? Why didn't he just use the force to prevent Luke from jumping? How does Luke just....escape from Hoth casually while the whole Empire is surrounding the planet/looking for him? Why the hell did the Empire just disable the Falcon's hyperdrive? Why not just DESTROY it if you're worried about Luke and company trying to escape? And don't even get me started on the Battle of Hoth...)
 

PsychedelicDiamond

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Exley97 said:
(Wait, there's an Emperor? Who is this guy? He was never mentioned in a New Hope!
He was, actually. There was a throwaway line by... either Tarkin or some other imperial officer about the Emperor having dissolved the senate.
 

webkilla

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leet_x1337 said:
Question:
If you had a choice between a game that's fun to play but has a story that you actively dislike and can't skip, or a game that's boring or not fun to play but has a story you enjoy, which one would you play?
Both

Fallout 4 has a really bad story - and its built into the gameplay in a painfully unskipable fashion - but the rest of the gameplay is really fun

Games like Spec Ops: The Line has intentionally meh gameplay, but a riveting story, to the point that the shitty cookie-cutter gameplay is actually an intentional part of the experience


My point is: you can get away flaws like that - if the other qualities of your product is good enough, and you're lucky enough that the bad qualities don't overshadow it
 

Frankfurter4444

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Good stuff, now on to the questions!

What video game system/video games do you currently have/are currently playing?
 

Bedinsis

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Through your videos Bob I've learned of the history of Hollywood, and in particular how the 70's was the era were movie studios tried risky ventures on movies deemed higher risks due to there not being any safe bets left in the movie business. This lead to one of the most creatively vibrant eras were auteur driven projects were the rule of the land, and films that would never have seen the light of day earlier were given the go-ahead. This due to Hollywood at large being slow at adapting to changing tastes.

I'm bringing this up because when I look over the Zero Punctuation reviews of this year I see an awful lot of indie games, i.e. games made by teams small enough that they can afford to take more risks and tackle less conventional material. Meanwhile as far as AAA-games go I am more reminded of loot box controversies and Ubisoft's "standard yearly releases" of good, but safe games. My question is thus:

Do you think we're we're about to see a major shift in what games get major push-back in awareness and marketing, similar to the movie business in the 70's?

Alternatively, if you think that question is to difficult to fit into your show format/too specific to be meaningfully answered:

How do you think indie games will affect/is affecting the video game business?

Edit: Thinking about it, feel free to reformulate the question whichever way you choose. The key component is that I'm curious if the 70's film scene can be reasonably compared to the present day indie game scene.
 

Something Amyss

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While I mostly agree, it does nag me when I can't disceren any level of sense. Indiana Jones didn't know he needed to sit out Raisers, but it seems like Poe Dameron doesn't just do some stupid things, but undergoes a radical personality change because someone needed to be the idiot who started a mutiny. And it also seems like the reason this was done was to largely bring him back to who he was before. It'd be like Indiana Jones starring in a movie where he had to re-learn Nazis were bad or something.

Samtemdo8 said:
You prefer Kirk over Picard?

To me that's like choosing between my children.

And I have yet to see Deep Space 9 to see if Sisko can even compete.
If my children were Kirk and Picard, it'd be an easy one. Kirk is objectively better, based on the only logical criteria: I prefer him.
 

Scott-Spain

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Question
What IP/media is surprisingly under-represented in Movies?

Sidenote: It is so weird to have logged in after not even visiting this site in such a long time. Welcome back, guys!
 

pineappledan

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I know this is just personal opinion, and I fully agree that most nitpicking film criticism is pointless, pedantic over-intellectualizing, but I cannot get behind this being used as a defense of Star Wars VIII. I only watched the movie once, and I was just so constantly distracted by the bizarre physics, logic, plot progression, design choices, characterization and dialogue in the film.

- Why did the director decide that the opening dialogue of the movie should be a "Yo' mama" joke?
- Why did the director decide that the first action scene of the film should be a tech demo of a character's impregnable plot armor? He single-handedly destroys every point-defense turret on a massive capital ship using a single fighter? Why does the director spend the first 5 minutes driving home the fact that this character is invulnerable?
- Why did the director have the droid smash its face into a circuit board to keep the ship flying? Was that supposed to be funny? What did that slapstick routine add to the film?
- Why do bombs drop in space? Why do bombers in space send a payload DOWN?
- Why do 2 capital ships that are of completely different make and model have cruising speeds that are exactly the same? The entire 2nd and 3rd acts of the film takes place over 18 hours of in-universe time, where neither ship has eith erpulled away or gained on the other. Do they put governors on spaceships?
- How did the director decide that having characters zip in and out on 3 separate occasions would keep tension on this whole chase thing? How can I believe there is any risk to any character when they can all come and go freely?
- Why didn't they just park the space ship legally on the casino planet? Their entire breakout/chase scene was to get out of the galactic equivalent of jaywalking.
- why do the laser blasts arc in space like cannon balls? Why does the director seem utterly convinced that gravity works like that in space?
- Why does everyone seem so damn pleased with themselves at the end, when >300 of their friends are dead, and there are ~15 people left on a rinky-dink, 50+ year old shuttle? That was the story equivalent of watching a car crash kill 5 people, but then telling the audience to be happy because the paramedic gave the lone survivor a lollipop.
- Why is there still only a single recurring alien with a speaking role in 2 films? Why do these star wars movies not have any alien characters in them?
- Why is Holdo's main motive "follow orders unquestionably", when the bad guys are space-nazis? Wasn't that, like, the one lesson real-life nazis taught us, to question authority and not just blindly follow orders? Her entire character undermines any possible attempt at an anti-fascist message.
- Why did the director tease a better movie inside his movie? "The Sith, The Jedi, let it all die." Yes. You teased an actual narrative, thematic, and philosophical progression in Star Wars, and then threw it away to reenact the Battle of Hoth instead.
- "...........salt." -wut? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGILNrrruPk)

That's just the stuff I could think of off the top of my head. It was really a death by a thousand cuts for RotJ; I could hardly watch the movie because I just kept getting taken out by these bizarre decisions.
 

Kenji_03

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Q&A - What does Bob think the odds of "Mexican Superman" becoming a thing in the DC-CU?

It worked really well in "Justice League: Gods and Monsters", and Mexican-immigrant Superman speaks to the "American way" in 2018 about as much as being "just a poor corn farmer" in the 1930s. But I don't know how Hollywood's "old guard" execs would feel about that vs the potential profits and new blood it could bring in.

I would love to hear your take on that (largely in response to your recent big picture discussion of Black superman instead of Mexican superman).
 

RealRT

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If constant search for plotholes results in less movies as abhorrent as The Last Jedi (and make no mistake, the movie is a complete and utter pile of garbage), what are the drawbacks, again?
 

HazardousCube

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Q&A
You might be asked this A lot but I'm genuinely curious. Why did you come back to The Escapist? I assumed your YouTube career would've allowed what you do here and on your own terms.

Also what is your favorite videogame movie if you have one?
 

HazardousCube

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Samtemdo8 said:
Patrick's video became viral because of Mauler's 5 hour long stream criticising it:


Honestly to me this is gonna soon create precendent where everyone are gonna now criticize youtube critic's videos when it comes to movies and tv. Making video responses to other videos.
Not gonna lie. I hate those people. Mauler's 5 hour critique of The Last Jedi was the point of the video taken to its logical conclusion. Dishonored Wolf decided to not give his channel anything that makes him stand out other than making gay jokes about himself and Rags is just awful. I'm okay with people being unwavering in their views, but Rags is just condescending about it.
 

Gordon_4_v1legacy

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Windknight said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Patrick's video became viral because of Mauler's 5 hour long stream criticising it:


Honestly to me this is gonna soon create precendent where everyone are gonna now criticize youtube critic's videos when it comes to movies and tv. Making video responses to other videos.
on the one hand I've never heard of this takedown till now, but I absolutely saw the 'shut up about plot holes' video. On the other hand

... 5 HOURS criticising a 13 minute video?

Five. Full. Hours. That's over TWENTY times as long as the thing their critiquing.

(disclaimer - not actually watched the video (again FIVE HOURS) so if they don't actually spend all that FIVE HOURS on on 13 minute video, feel free to mock me for jumping to conclusions)
Yeah I?m curious about that too; how do you need 300 minutes to break down 13 minutes? That?s fucking insane.
 

HazardousCube

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Gordon_4 said:
Windknight said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Patrick's video became viral because of Mauler's 5 hour long stream criticising it:


Honestly to me this is gonna soon create precendent where everyone are gonna now criticize youtube critic's videos when it comes to movies and tv. Making video responses to other videos.
on the one hand I've never heard of this takedown till now, but I absolutely saw the 'shut up about plot holes' video. On the other hand

... 5 HOURS criticising a 13 minute video?

Five. Full. Hours. That's over TWENTY times as long as the thing their critiquing.

(disclaimer - not actually watched the video (again FIVE HOURS) so if they don't actually spend all that FIVE HOURS on on 13 minute video, feel free to mock me for jumping to conclusions)
Yeah I?m curious about that too; how do you need 300 minutes to break down 13 minutes? That?s fucking insane.
This is their usual MO. I have not seen the video, but one thing these channels are infamous for is talking non-stop. Mauler is extremely nitpicky, Dishonored Wolf has a lot to say (to put it nicely). and Rags cuts people off halfway through each sentence. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case
 

Tsun Tzu

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Gordon_4 said:
Windknight said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Patrick's video became viral because of Mauler's 5 hour long stream criticising it:


Honestly to me this is gonna soon create precendent where everyone are gonna now criticize youtube critic's videos when it comes to movies and tv. Making video responses to other videos.
on the one hand I've never heard of this takedown till now, but I absolutely saw the 'shut up about plot holes' video. On the other hand

... 5 HOURS criticising a 13 minute video?

Five. Full. Hours. That's over TWENTY times as long as the thing their critiquing.

(disclaimer - not actually watched the video (again FIVE HOURS) so if they don't actually spend all that FIVE HOURS on on 13 minute video, feel free to mock me for jumping to conclusions)
Yeah I?m curious about that too; how do you need 300 minutes to break down 13 minutes? That?s fucking insane.
Well, it was two videos. One about 13:30 and another about 11:30. So, 25 minutes. Along with going over and breaking down a couple long comments from YourMovieSucks that were refuting the original video.

And, yes, 300 minutes. It was that shit of a pair of videos.

When you have to pause after almost every sentence because they're that ridiculous, it can prolong the process quite a bit.

But...yeah, long as all fuck. Had folks in the chat pointing that out constantly and they did too.
HazardousCube said:
This is their usual MO. I have not seen the video, but one thing these channels are infamous for is talking non-stop. Mauler is extremely nitpicky, Dishonored Wolf has a lot to say (to put it nicely). and Rags cuts people off halfway through each sentence. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case
Mauler actually did most of the interrupting, though I'm sure not intentionally. They all like to talk, so it just happens. Rags was pretty quiet/polite. Wolf sperged out a bit at the end when YMS was in the chat.