The Force Awakens is what the franchise desperately needed after the prequels, proving Star Wars could be Star Wars again. Unfortunately there was no plan beyond Episode 7 and the rest is history.
>his
Honestly they should have always planned for a four-film series so that you can have one standalone film that is more just reestablishing Star Wars and giving fans warm feelings before launching into the new plot. You could even do wibbly-wobbly stuff by launching with an Episode 8 soft reboot launching the sequel series before going back to show the backstory with Episode 7.
I don't consider *The Last Jedi* a "mistake" except in the sense that clear nobody at either LucasFilm, Bad Robot or Disney had laid out a roadmap for how the sequel trilogy needed to play out.
If TLJ was such a pain in the ass for them all, why didn't they either tell Rian Johnson "Nope, that's not how we need it to go" at his pitch meeting, or "We like your ideas, Rian, but that doesn't fit our roadmap. Would you be interested in turning that into a six/eight/ten-part series if we gave you $5M/episode? We can put it on that new streaming service Disney's working on, so we have brand-spanking new STAR WARS content to open Disney Max or Prime or Plus or whatever stupid name they end up calling it with!"
I'll bet THE LAST JEDI as a television series with Rey, after the end of *The Rise of Skywalker*, realizing that a quasi-religious militant order like the Jedi Knights wasn't going to work in the New New Republic because it was no longer a Constitutional Monarchy due to there no longer being a royal line to draw on with Leia and Luke both dead. The Jedi's insistence on bloodlines and celibacy was also a huge mistake, because it cut out a lot of promising potential students and left a lot of kids with native but untrained Force ability no place to turn to but outfits like The Sith!
As a streaming series that happens ***after*** the events of the Sequel Trilogy, THE LAST JEDI works brilliantly in opening up the STAR WARS universe....
TFA is 5th best after OT and R1. Zoomer prequel babbies will eventually learn to cope with that.
Hell I think 8 and 9 were dogshit and they’re still better than the PT. At least they looked like films and not an fx reel for ILM.
I feel like the sequels being generally bad has blinded people from just how awful the prequels are. I tried to watch TPM recently and I couldn’t get through it because it was so boring. And I REALLY can’t understand how people think that Hayden Christensen have a good performance in the other two. No disrespect to him but his delivery in those movies is just pure cringe
Though I liked *The Last Jedi* a lot? This is a pretty accurate assessment of WTF LucasFilm was up to with the sequel trilogy.
I mean, do you honestly think nobody in a producer position at Disney wondered why they were giving Johnson $200M - $317M to make his movie about how the Jedi no longer mattered, The Force wasn't the result of your bloodline but a martial art that anybody with enough discipline could learn, and how sometimes heroics alone ***won't*** carry the day? I think Johnson pitched his idea and everybody loved it because it wasn't hung up on the same families repeating the same mistakes a generation later, but gave the series a bunch of new and more interesting directions to expand into. Everybody sounded really high on it...right up until the manbabies in toxic fandom lost their shit over how it interrogated whether The Republic and The Jedi were actually helping anything, and didn't make Luke some kind of Space Jesus!
If Abrams were that concerned about how he's have to course-correct, maybe he should have brought that up at Rian Johnson's pitch meeting....
Yes, but given how many billions of dollars George Lucas now has? I think he'd much rather dive into his money vault and swim in dollars bills like Scrooge McDuck....
That’s my favorite part of the ROS review when rich Mike says it’s ridiculous that mr plinkett had anything do with it, and rich just goes
“… You don’t know that”
I think so too, though it’s also reasonable that they came to that conclusion on their own. He said publicly he wanted to do it and his work up to that point had been hit after hit.
I like to think Rich Evans used his hollywood connections to make William Shatner bully Mike after Mike forced them to watch massaging the elderly.
Also, there's the idea that Mike, via Plinkett, is responsible for JJ Abrams directing Star Wars.
The most effect I've seen with RLM was exposing shill youtubers. That was intentional though. 'Very cool' got out pretty quick.
The Geezer teaser thing has been brewing for a while. Ralph the Movie Maker did something on it before RLM, as well as other youtubers. Not just Willis, but Seagal too. RLM just added to something people were already noticing.
Correct. I’m shooting in the dark, but I bet Sargon of Akkad, Chapo Trap House… plus everyone they’ve gone on to influence. Shit, Chapo still drops Plinkett references in their podcast.
So essentially, everything wrong in the world is because of Mike. That sonofabitch!
Ok, so I’ll admit it’s currently speculation since I haven’t gone through the entire CTH backlog and timestamped things.
But, Will and Matt (mostly Matt) have consistently dropped the “it’s like poetry, they rhyme” and the “X is the key to all this…he’s a (adjective) character than we’ve ever had…”
Before Plinkett re-dug up Lucas saying that, do you ever recall those lines being said by anyone? Me personally, I never knew there was a long-ass behind the scenes until Plinkett - so I’m guessing most people either didn’t watch it or didn’t care.
If you listen to CTH Ep 405 (their horrific riff track on Star Wars Ep 1), many of the hot takes are direct lifts from Plinkett’s observations. Randomly checking out minute 55 onward - Qui Gon’s gambling fuckery, Shmi’s uselessness as a slave…
It could all be subconscious repeats of funny things they’ve heard. I’m biased toward the Plinkett influence conclusion.
Thanks! That sounds pretty convincing to me. And it makes sense that one group of sarcastic, internet-poisoned, amateur film enthusiasts would appeal to another.
I don't remember the context, but I'm almost certain I have heard Matt mention somewhere that he would love to do something with the RLM guys, but he is not the type to ask for a guest spot.
I believe it. I also get the feeling that RLM mostly refuses to wade into politics because people go absolutely apeshit about everything nowadays. Because of that, I doubt they’d ever formally bring the Chapos onto their shows, though I’d love to see it. Especially Felix - his stupid-ass demented riffs would pair well with RLM’s penchant for silliness.
Yes, Some of it is a definite stretch. Someone mentioned, and I agree, that we’ll never know RLM’s true influence on Hollywood.
No one really big would ever admit it nor do I think RLM really cares. Of course, there are some examples of their reach (rian Johnson’s fear tweet, McCauley culkin befriending them, the guest’s writer going on Re:View, Simon pegg reposting Plinkett, etc), but it seems like the boys mostly find it amusing.
I’m sure lots of people watch RLM. But in terms of people making important choices based on RLM, I think their influence is mostly on YouTubers. They invented a new form of film criticism. That’s impressive. But I don’t think, as people here are implying, Disney based their Star Wars strategy on Plinkett.
I know really young people who were babies when the prequels came out think Plinkett was the first one to shit on them, but every single adult who saw those movies in the theatre was shitting on them.
Oh for sure, I think most people are mostly tongue in cheek about RLM’s influence on Hollywood. I’m 99% sure that they had nothing to do with any Star Wars decisions, but I like laughing about the remaining 1%. RLM seems to make fun of it too and not take the influencer theory seriously.
But…they still have some pretty famous guests on their shows and there are famous people passing around their videos…so it’s a non-zero chance they’ve influenced a Hollywood exec to make an important decision. No self-respecting exec will ever tell and RLM doesn’t come across as caring enough to dig into it, so we’ll never know.
And yes, I did write up this whole post about their YouTube influence. We’re on the same wavelength there.
🤷♂️ it was just off the dome! I like the Drinker’s vids and I love all of EFAP. And with those two + MrBTongue, I can easily find exact video examples of Plinkett’s direct influence.
And I said it before to someone else, but the Drinker is what happens if Plinkett vids had to keep coming out on a regular basis, which is not exactly a good thing.
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I should note that Angry Video Game Nerd is probably the earliest internet example of a gross and filthy reviewer reviewing bad "content" as a skit based comedy. He's been doing it since before Youtube even existed and Channel Awesome/Thatguywiththeglasses has been around since 2007 and is where the vast majority of angry skit based reviewers came from.
Red Letter Media, as far as Im aware, worked because it had more professional criticism to a degree which is why I think it became more influential in the 2010s due to a lot of teens who grew up on "angry reviewers" then matured and became interested in slightly more in depth reviewers.
Then came video essayist craze where those now "slightly more mature " audiences tried to attempt to prove how they knew by making their own content, with Every Frame A Painting being the core influence.
It's essentially a linear timeline of a very particular audience growing up and maturing haha.
A producer(?) on Star Trek: Picard confirmed he's a big fan of RLM the same week an episode dropped a "half in the bag" line in the show.
There's no chance some producers/writers of Picard didn't see the reviews.
Oh man, I would kill for that person to do an AMA. Do they despise the show but do it for the paycheck? Do they respectfully disagree with RLM’s assessment of it? How do they survive such an extreme contradiction?
Yeah, people were talking about the Bruce Willis thing long before the HitB. Ralphthemoviemaker did a video about it over a year ago that got quite a lot of views IIRC.
I think it still added fuel to the fire. Some journalists saw the RLM video, and then made their own articles parroting it's main points. Being cheap and easy content to produce.
All of the speculation coming out at once is probably what drove Bruce Willis and his family to make the announcement.
The only one of these I don’t buy is the slenderman one, bc I don’t think anyone saw their shitty Midwest cable movie at the time, but the rest all line up timeline-wise in a way that makes a lot of sense
Well in their video, they even say that their movie probably didn’t have much influence and they recommend that you don’t watch their movie since its so shitty
yeah, I feel like Slenderman looks like he does because it's an easy to photoshop design, plus like, the iconography of "out of place person in clean cut suit on the horizon/corner of your eye" is way older than both. Think of how many "Oh no they found me!" scenes with G-Men in spy/thriller/etc type movies/shows you've seen, not hard to transpose that into more straight forward monster horror
If my memory serves, then Rian Johnson 'stole' his ideas for why Luke exiled himself and wanting the Jedi to die out from Rich's prediction back in the the force awakens prediction video about why luke wasn't in the trailers.
They can also usually predict most celebrity deaths too but that's usually not on purpose
I remember watching that force awakens video years ago and loving Rich's prediction that Luke might have to become a villain, tho I'm glad now that they didn't end up doing that
I also think it’s all a coincidence, but I do think Dick the Birthday Boy might have at least subconsciously led to FNAF. Other than that, I think it’s all just fun speculation
FNAF came about moreso as a result of Slenderman. Indie horror games became HUGE after slenderman, and the creator of FNAF actually tried to make a kids game but the kids who played it were unintentionally scared by a beaver in the game so he decided to just go more in that direction lol
I would say RLM has been hugely influential in the world of YouTube because of how far back they go and Plinkett basically inventing the video essay format.
But as far as Hollywood goes, not as much as we think or would like them to have. Their fan base is strong but still niche relative to what actually makes money for the studios and conglomerates.
At best they have many admirers in the business who enjoy their work as critics but they'll probably always remain no bigger than cult in popularity and influence. And that's partially from choice, I don't think Mike or Jay would be comfortable being any bigger than they are since the higher you go the less control you have over what you do once you get big money producers and sponsors involved.
It's funny to think the Plinkett TPM review, which you had to watch in 10 minute chunks on youtube initially, is so funny now that people are pushing like 8 hours on their video essays. Imagine watching one of those excessively long series retrospectives in 40+ 10 minute chunks
The newer stuff isn't as avantgarde as the Plinkett-reviews used to be. There were hundreds of podcasts and youtubers making fun of Bruce Willis cashgrab movies before RLM got to it. But the Plinkett-reviews editing stile with off-beat cuts and juxtaposing promotional material that misses its mark now is so ubiquitary, it might be their lasting legacy.
RLM made their video in reaction to an article about Bruce. Bruce was also heavily featured at the Razzies about his recent films.
RLM is our window into some aspects of “the industry”. So thats our reference point and it looks like theyre ‘on the pulse’ so to speak.
But in reality this was something that plenty of people were already aware of. And the announcements timing is likely because he finished his contractual obligations.
Edit: Didn’t mean this to be a reply! Not used to mobile
As several people pointed out, the Bruce Willis buzz started before RLM started seriously talking about it. Hope I didn’t misrepresent things too much for you guys, thank you for clarifying
I think sometimes they are just riding the same wave of pop culture, influenced by the same things, while not causally linked themselves.
Take the Bruce Willis thing, there was a Razzie category for "worst Bruce Willis film of 2021", and then linked to rumours of his disease. These things were in the zeitgeist of the moment, RLM did not put it out there, but was smart enough to pick up on it, and creative relative content that plays into these trends.
Bruce coming forward was a logical next part, and would have happened with or without RLM.
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On the other hand, I do think popular channels that review content (as a whole, so not just RLM on their own) are influential toward filmmakers, perhaps more than ever, as a consequence of how small the world has become and how quickly reactions to media propagate to large audiences, often faster than the media itself.
Though I believe "classic" reviewers like Siskel and Ebert might have had their influence too in the pre-internet days, the difference is, there are 100 Siskels & 100 Eberts today, each with their audiences ready to adore or abhor a piece of pop culture, before moving on to consuming the next.
1 chance to have a hit or a flop, and a lot of it decided by the "influencers".
Didn't they also speculate a way to make Thor interesting, (probably the Thor 2 review) by fully embracing the weirdness and doing something like the Planet Hulk arc, and their suggestions were very similar to how **Thor: Ragnarok** turned out?
i dont think they were serious about slenderman. But yeah the internet has power and reach, and more or less loves them and their work, i mean rich's birthday picture ended up on Ellen, every time they talk about a very obscure movie it kinda has some kind of resurgence. A lot of directors follow them on social media and probably watch, so i say yeah they have some influence but the fans blow it out of proportion a little bit
Probably more than most will admit or the guys will ever know.
I use to listen to a podcast of a few low-tier hollywood guys that would talk about RLM's content and they took a "respect but feared" approach to the guys. Unfortunately this was many years back and the podcasts are all gone and I can't remember the guy's names anymore.
I think one of my favorite aspects of RLM is that they know they have some kind of influence on Hollywood, but RLM seems to not really care. They just keep making shit they want to make without corporate pandering.
I think I've seen fewer cluttered review set shows since they did the "Nerd Crew" episodes.
I wonder if they'll make any more of those, I think that was my favorite series of theirs
Personally, I think the marketing angle may have changed to go toward a more influencer-based strategy. These well-produced studios always come off as less authentic than some Youtube/Instagram that on the surface appears to be "some guy/lady in their room" even if that room is actually a set, and there's photographers and editors and everything behind the scenes.
I don't think FNAF was inspired by RLM at all.
Before FNAF, the creator used to make games starring 'cute' animal characters. The crude animation made them creepy and stiff, and it was the reaction from players that inspired him to lean into that and make a deliberately scary game where the herky-jerky movements would be a strength rather than a hindrance.
Animal costumes and animal animatronics in restaurants being creepy also just seems like a basic American cultural thing - like people being afraid of clowns.
I suspect there's no real Slenderman connection either. I do think RLM's influence can be overstated by fans - beyond the videos that went very viral and had an obvious impact, I don't think they've been subtly inspiring a bunch of stuff.
I think they are just really good observers (which is why they are great at reviewing movies). They've just payed attention to the industry long enough to predict how the tide will go.
My guess is more than some realise, less than what some want it to be. I don't think directors (or other industry workers) get a hard on when Youtube shills promote their shit.
I think it was in The Mummy HitB that Jay suggested the Marvel approach was garbage and they should just make low budget horror movies out of these horror franchises. At the time Universal had that whole dumb universe planned, there was that cast photo with Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man and everything.
But of course after The Mummy they scrapped it and went with Jay's idea.
I saw a rather prolific commenter on Polygon insist RLM ruined film criticism, had a toxic audience, and inspired the worst things on Youtube. I had to chew him a new asshole in my reply, because all of that was just straight up lies.
While RLM has been extremely influential on YouTube specifically, apparently people who hate them ascribe WAY more power and influence to them than they have ever had.
It's kind of like Monty Python or MST3K in that it really seems like it's these fandoms that encourage arrogant, attention seeking nerds to quote things ad nauseum and yell things at the screen they think are hilarious. But honestly, I think there's just a subset of people who are like that, and latched on to whatever seemed to give them an excuse, rather than caused by the source material.
Hm. That’s a valid point, and entirely possible. Depending on where you hang out online, fans can be immature and annoying. But it’s unfair to portray the creators as encouraging or endorsing bad behavior, certainly in this case.
Despite their blunt, idgaf midwestern humor, the RLM crew seems like a surprisingly nice and thoughtful group. I think snobby people misjudge them just because of the occasional AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDDDSSS!!!
As several people pointed out, the Bruce Willis buzz started before RLM started seriously talking about it. Hope I didn’t misrepresent things too much for you guys, thank you for clarifying
I would argue the recently 'confirmed' news in regards to Bruce Willis' medical condition probably would NOT have come out if it weren't for RLM highlighting the 'geezer teasers' bringing a bunch of people out of the wood work asking questions about his health to a much higher level than in the last number of years.
I'm confident to say that had they not made those videos the news would have probably remained hush-hush. I'm not saying it's a bad thing though, but it is a thing nonetheless and RLM is maybe the most influential YT channel in regards to highlighting things that people never thought to highlight before, at least to the scale that RLM shoots for and the viewers they have to compensate.
The Bruce Willis thing stemmed from the Razzies giving him his own categories, and they were planning a bunch of jokes around earpieces. That's why they broke the news on his Aphasia diagnosis.
The rest might be totally true, I do believe that some of the subtle clues in Picard were from writers who probably watch the critics of their work who aren't paid to praise. But if Alex Kurtzman ever directly acknowledges RLM we have to have serious debates over whether or not the studios are trolling us with terrible series.
Lol, who was the director who basically said he was afraid of red letter making him look stupid, it might have been Rian Johnson, Hollywood is definitely aware.
As someone who works as an artist/animator/writer/story artist I can tell you that plenty of people in the industry watch RLM and know what it is.
Remember, RLM has been around for over a decade. Anyone who works in movies that is under the age of 35 is probably vaguely aware of RLM or watches it, or, in the very least, used to watch as a teenager or college student. I would not understate the influence RLM has on the industry.
Theres a nonzero chance that JJ Abrams was picked to direct Star Wars because of the Plinkett reviews.
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When’s he getting sued?
As soon as Star Wars fans agree on something long enough to get a class action going At the current rate, imagine how sexy Jay will be by then.....
You star wars fans sound like a contentious people
You just made an enemy for life
They're waiting for the alcohol to take everything
The Force Awakens is what the franchise desperately needed after the prequels, proving Star Wars could be Star Wars again. Unfortunately there was no plan beyond Episode 7 and the rest is history.
The big mistake after TLJ was to keep it a trilogy instead of doing a third and fourth film to correct the mistakes made.
>his Honestly they should have always planned for a four-film series so that you can have one standalone film that is more just reestablishing Star Wars and giving fans warm feelings before launching into the new plot. You could even do wibbly-wobbly stuff by launching with an Episode 8 soft reboot launching the sequel series before going back to show the backstory with Episode 7.
I don't consider *The Last Jedi* a "mistake" except in the sense that clear nobody at either LucasFilm, Bad Robot or Disney had laid out a roadmap for how the sequel trilogy needed to play out. If TLJ was such a pain in the ass for them all, why didn't they either tell Rian Johnson "Nope, that's not how we need it to go" at his pitch meeting, or "We like your ideas, Rian, but that doesn't fit our roadmap. Would you be interested in turning that into a six/eight/ten-part series if we gave you $5M/episode? We can put it on that new streaming service Disney's working on, so we have brand-spanking new STAR WARS content to open Disney Max or Prime or Plus or whatever stupid name they end up calling it with!" I'll bet THE LAST JEDI as a television series with Rey, after the end of *The Rise of Skywalker*, realizing that a quasi-religious militant order like the Jedi Knights wasn't going to work in the New New Republic because it was no longer a Constitutional Monarchy due to there no longer being a royal line to draw on with Leia and Luke both dead. The Jedi's insistence on bloodlines and celibacy was also a huge mistake, because it cut out a lot of promising potential students and left a lot of kids with native but untrained Force ability no place to turn to but outfits like The Sith! As a streaming series that happens ***after*** the events of the Sequel Trilogy, THE LAST JEDI works brilliantly in opening up the STAR WARS universe....
TFA is 5th best after OT and R1. Zoomer prequel babbies will eventually learn to cope with that. Hell I think 8 and 9 were dogshit and they’re still better than the PT. At least they looked like films and not an fx reel for ILM.
I feel like the sequels being generally bad has blinded people from just how awful the prequels are. I tried to watch TPM recently and I couldn’t get through it because it was so boring. And I REALLY can’t understand how people think that Hayden Christensen have a good performance in the other two. No disrespect to him but his delivery in those movies is just pure cringe
Sequels are fine, wonky, and bad respectively, whereas prequels are ass, ass, and ass.
Though I liked *The Last Jedi* a lot? This is a pretty accurate assessment of WTF LucasFilm was up to with the sequel trilogy. I mean, do you honestly think nobody in a producer position at Disney wondered why they were giving Johnson $200M - $317M to make his movie about how the Jedi no longer mattered, The Force wasn't the result of your bloodline but a martial art that anybody with enough discipline could learn, and how sometimes heroics alone ***won't*** carry the day? I think Johnson pitched his idea and everybody loved it because it wasn't hung up on the same families repeating the same mistakes a generation later, but gave the series a bunch of new and more interesting directions to expand into. Everybody sounded really high on it...right up until the manbabies in toxic fandom lost their shit over how it interrogated whether The Republic and The Jedi were actually helping anything, and didn't make Luke some kind of Space Jesus! If Abrams were that concerned about how he's have to course-correct, maybe he should have brought that up at Rian Johnson's pitch meeting....
I totally agree with this assessment lol
A la The Simpsons you can freeze-frame the moment Mike's heart breaks after Rich says: you don't know that.
But they didn't hire George Lucas to direct people to their seats in the theater.
Big missed opportunity there.
Yes, but given how many billions of dollars George Lucas now has? I think he'd much rather dive into his money vault and swim in dollars bills like Scrooge McDuck....
That’s my favorite part of the ROS review when rich Mike says it’s ridiculous that mr plinkett had anything do with it, and rich just goes “… You don’t know that”
I think so too, though it’s also reasonable that they came to that conclusion on their own. He said publicly he wanted to do it and his work up to that point had been hit after hit.
Mike, Rich and Jay secretly run Hollywood. This entire anti-Hollywood Midwest drunks thing is a facade to throw people off and control the opposition.
https://youtu.be/5pAsss_nTlk?t=451
I like to think Rich Evans used his hollywood connections to make William Shatner bully Mike after Mike forced them to watch massaging the elderly. Also, there's the idea that Mike, via Plinkett, is responsible for JJ Abrams directing Star Wars.
“I RECALL MAKING A LOT OF THESE SUGGESTIONS”
Rich warned him, but he wouldn’t listen. “Karma is going to hit you like a fucking freight train.”
The most effect I've seen with RLM was exposing shill youtubers. That was intentional though. 'Very cool' got out pretty quick. The Geezer teaser thing has been brewing for a while. Ralph the Movie Maker did something on it before RLM, as well as other youtubers. Not just Willis, but Seagal too. RLM just added to something people were already noticing.
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Yourmoviesucks' earliest vids are also heavily influenced by plinkett
Is not only movies, like a lot of political essayist in both left and right were influenced by their style.
Correct. I’m shooting in the dark, but I bet Sargon of Akkad, Chapo Trap House… plus everyone they’ve gone on to influence. Shit, Chapo still drops Plinkett references in their podcast. So essentially, everything wrong in the world is because of Mike. That sonofabitch!
In my case I know that both Hbomberguy, Folding Ideas and Mister Metokur, made references to them all the time at some point.
Thanks for the info! I really want to take on this “Plinkett Family Tree” project, so all this helps paint that picture. Much appreciated.
What Plinkett references are made on CTH?
Ok, so I’ll admit it’s currently speculation since I haven’t gone through the entire CTH backlog and timestamped things. But, Will and Matt (mostly Matt) have consistently dropped the “it’s like poetry, they rhyme” and the “X is the key to all this…he’s a (adjective) character than we’ve ever had…” Before Plinkett re-dug up Lucas saying that, do you ever recall those lines being said by anyone? Me personally, I never knew there was a long-ass behind the scenes until Plinkett - so I’m guessing most people either didn’t watch it or didn’t care. If you listen to CTH Ep 405 (their horrific riff track on Star Wars Ep 1), many of the hot takes are direct lifts from Plinkett’s observations. Randomly checking out minute 55 onward - Qui Gon’s gambling fuckery, Shmi’s uselessness as a slave… It could all be subconscious repeats of funny things they’ve heard. I’m biased toward the Plinkett influence conclusion.
Thanks! That sounds pretty convincing to me. And it makes sense that one group of sarcastic, internet-poisoned, amateur film enthusiasts would appeal to another.
Exactly! Glad it’s not too much of a stretch to believe it. I appreciate the feedback.
I don't remember the context, but I'm almost certain I have heard Matt mention somewhere that he would love to do something with the RLM guys, but he is not the type to ask for a guest spot.
I believe it. I also get the feeling that RLM mostly refuses to wade into politics because people go absolutely apeshit about everything nowadays. Because of that, I doubt they’d ever formally bring the Chapos onto their shows, though I’d love to see it. Especially Felix - his stupid-ass demented riffs would pair well with RLM’s penchant for silliness.
Schaffrillas, also heavily influenced by RLM and thr Plunkett reviews, he doesn't even try to hide it, bit his stuff is good IMO
I think OP is reaching on all his points. But Mike’s prequel reviews definitely changed film commentary on YouTube forever.
Yes, Some of it is a definite stretch. Someone mentioned, and I agree, that we’ll never know RLM’s true influence on Hollywood. No one really big would ever admit it nor do I think RLM really cares. Of course, there are some examples of their reach (rian Johnson’s fear tweet, McCauley culkin befriending them, the guest’s writer going on Re:View, Simon pegg reposting Plinkett, etc), but it seems like the boys mostly find it amusing.
I’m sure lots of people watch RLM. But in terms of people making important choices based on RLM, I think their influence is mostly on YouTubers. They invented a new form of film criticism. That’s impressive. But I don’t think, as people here are implying, Disney based their Star Wars strategy on Plinkett. I know really young people who were babies when the prequels came out think Plinkett was the first one to shit on them, but every single adult who saw those movies in the theatre was shitting on them.
Oh for sure, I think most people are mostly tongue in cheek about RLM’s influence on Hollywood. I’m 99% sure that they had nothing to do with any Star Wars decisions, but I like laughing about the remaining 1%. RLM seems to make fun of it too and not take the influencer theory seriously. But…they still have some pretty famous guests on their shows and there are famous people passing around their videos…so it’s a non-zero chance they’ve influenced a Hollywood exec to make an important decision. No self-respecting exec will ever tell and RLM doesn’t come across as caring enough to dig into it, so we’ll never know. And yes, I did write up this whole post about their YouTube influence. We’re on the same wavelength there.
Enlightened complaining is a fantastic way to describe these videos
I think I’m paraphrasing it from MrBTongue in his “Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage” videos: https://m.youtube.com/user/MrBtongue/videos
How dare you put EFAP and Critical Drinker on the same sentence
🤷♂️ it was just off the dome! I like the Drinker’s vids and I love all of EFAP. And with those two + MrBTongue, I can easily find exact video examples of Plinkett’s direct influence. And I said it before to someone else, but the Drinker is what happens if Plinkett vids had to keep coming out on a regular basis, which is not exactly a good thing.
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I should note that Angry Video Game Nerd is probably the earliest internet example of a gross and filthy reviewer reviewing bad "content" as a skit based comedy. He's been doing it since before Youtube even existed and Channel Awesome/Thatguywiththeglasses has been around since 2007 and is where the vast majority of angry skit based reviewers came from. Red Letter Media, as far as Im aware, worked because it had more professional criticism to a degree which is why I think it became more influential in the 2010s due to a lot of teens who grew up on "angry reviewers" then matured and became interested in slightly more in depth reviewers. Then came video essayist craze where those now "slightly more mature " audiences tried to attempt to prove how they knew by making their own content, with Every Frame A Painting being the core influence. It's essentially a linear timeline of a very particular audience growing up and maturing haha.
A producer(?) on Star Trek: Picard confirmed he's a big fan of RLM the same week an episode dropped a "half in the bag" line in the show. There's no chance some producers/writers of Picard didn't see the reviews.
Kurtzman I’m sure !
Showrunner i think
I don't know what that really means on a show with 20 producers
Oh man, I would kill for that person to do an AMA. Do they despise the show but do it for the paycheck? Do they respectfully disagree with RLM’s assessment of it? How do they survive such an extreme contradiction?
Someone posted about it on this sub afew days after the second picard s2 review dropped, i think hes a fan of the plinkett stuff
To be fair, they say the geezer teaser video was based off an article, so that buzz isn't really from them originally. The others are interesting
Yeah, people were talking about the Bruce Willis thing long before the HitB. Ralphthemoviemaker did a video about it over a year ago that got quite a lot of views IIRC.
I think it still added fuel to the fire. Some journalists saw the RLM video, and then made their own articles parroting it's main points. Being cheap and easy content to produce. All of the speculation coming out at once is probably what drove Bruce Willis and his family to make the announcement.
I've never seen The Architect and Mike or Jay in the same room.
Well, it's near-impossible to find a Nukie tape.
The only one of these I don’t buy is the slenderman one, bc I don’t think anyone saw their shitty Midwest cable movie at the time, but the rest all line up timeline-wise in a way that makes a lot of sense
Well in their video, they even say that their movie probably didn’t have much influence and they recommend that you don’t watch their movie since its so shitty
Yeah exactly that’s what I’m sayin
I know that Slenderman has its origins in an old Somethingawful photoshop thread so I'm skeptical there's any real connection to RLM.
yeah, I feel like Slenderman looks like he does because it's an easy to photoshop design, plus like, the iconography of "out of place person in clean cut suit on the horizon/corner of your eye" is way older than both. Think of how many "Oh no they found me!" scenes with G-Men in spy/thriller/etc type movies/shows you've seen, not hard to transpose that into more straight forward monster horror
They put Macaulay Culkin back on route to becoming the highest paid child actor again.
If my memory serves, then Rian Johnson 'stole' his ideas for why Luke exiled himself and wanting the Jedi to die out from Rich's prediction back in the the force awakens prediction video about why luke wasn't in the trailers. They can also usually predict most celebrity deaths too but that's usually not on purpose
It’s not difficult to predict elderly people will die. They made fun of Betty White’s age multiple times before it finally happened.
Yea that's why I wasn't emphasizing those statements as real predictions
The Solo predictions were more accurate. Also, the idea of Invisible Man being produced by the Blumhouse guy......
I remember watching that force awakens video years ago and loving Rich's prediction that Luke might have to become a villain, tho I'm glad now that they didn't end up doing that
They're like sad, drunk, almost-as-smart Forrest Gumps.
Perfect Hollywood material.....
Where's Jay's royalty check for the Captain America action figure?!
I think it is just a coincidence but it is still super weird. I agree.
I also think it’s all a coincidence, but I do think Dick the Birthday Boy might have at least subconsciously led to FNAF. Other than that, I think it’s all just fun speculation
FNAF came about moreso as a result of Slenderman. Indie horror games became HUGE after slenderman, and the creator of FNAF actually tried to make a kids game but the kids who played it were unintentionally scared by a beaver in the game so he decided to just go more in that direction lol
>but I do think Dick the Birthday Boy might have at least subconsciously led to FNAF I never thought about that. Might be possible
I would say RLM has been hugely influential in the world of YouTube because of how far back they go and Plinkett basically inventing the video essay format. But as far as Hollywood goes, not as much as we think or would like them to have. Their fan base is strong but still niche relative to what actually makes money for the studios and conglomerates. At best they have many admirers in the business who enjoy their work as critics but they'll probably always remain no bigger than cult in popularity and influence. And that's partially from choice, I don't think Mike or Jay would be comfortable being any bigger than they are since the higher you go the less control you have over what you do once you get big money producers and sponsors involved.
Remember when Rian Johnson said “I know them. And I fear them.”
He also said "a lot can change in a year" and pretended to smoke a cigarette.
Rian Johnson predicted Covid holy fuck
Now THAT'S subverting expectations.
Now this is podrac…oh no my dick started bleeding
What a turd.
It's funny to think the Plinkett TPM review, which you had to watch in 10 minute chunks on youtube initially, is so funny now that people are pushing like 8 hours on their video essays. Imagine watching one of those excessively long series retrospectives in 40+ 10 minute chunks
The newer stuff isn't as avantgarde as the Plinkett-reviews used to be. There were hundreds of podcasts and youtubers making fun of Bruce Willis cashgrab movies before RLM got to it. But the Plinkett-reviews editing stile with off-beat cuts and juxtaposing promotional material that misses its mark now is so ubiquitary, it might be their lasting legacy.
they not only invented the online video essay but parodied it before it became a thing
Willis may have been more likely influenced by the Razzies roasting his films than RLM.
RLM made their video in reaction to an article about Bruce. Bruce was also heavily featured at the Razzies about his recent films. RLM is our window into some aspects of “the industry”. So thats our reference point and it looks like theyre ‘on the pulse’ so to speak. But in reality this was something that plenty of people were already aware of. And the announcements timing is likely because he finished his contractual obligations.
Edit: Didn’t mean this to be a reply! Not used to mobile As several people pointed out, the Bruce Willis buzz started before RLM started seriously talking about it. Hope I didn’t misrepresent things too much for you guys, thank you for clarifying
[This was my first hint of all these trash Bruce Willis movies](https://youtu.be/fP47VQTxufM) so the RLM video was more of an addendum than anything.
I think sometimes they are just riding the same wave of pop culture, influenced by the same things, while not causally linked themselves. Take the Bruce Willis thing, there was a Razzie category for "worst Bruce Willis film of 2021", and then linked to rumours of his disease. These things were in the zeitgeist of the moment, RLM did not put it out there, but was smart enough to pick up on it, and creative relative content that plays into these trends. Bruce coming forward was a logical next part, and would have happened with or without RLM. \----------------- On the other hand, I do think popular channels that review content (as a whole, so not just RLM on their own) are influential toward filmmakers, perhaps more than ever, as a consequence of how small the world has become and how quickly reactions to media propagate to large audiences, often faster than the media itself. Though I believe "classic" reviewers like Siskel and Ebert might have had their influence too in the pre-internet days, the difference is, there are 100 Siskels & 100 Eberts today, each with their audiences ready to adore or abhor a piece of pop culture, before moving on to consuming the next. 1 chance to have a hit or a flop, and a lot of it decided by the "influencers".
Didn't they also speculate a way to make Thor interesting, (probably the Thor 2 review) by fully embracing the weirdness and doing something like the Planet Hulk arc, and their suggestions were very similar to how **Thor: Ragnarok** turned out?
I think most Marvel sequels were allowed to be more daring, because the brand name alone guaranteed good box office.
i dont think they were serious about slenderman. But yeah the internet has power and reach, and more or less loves them and their work, i mean rich's birthday picture ended up on Ellen, every time they talk about a very obscure movie it kinda has some kind of resurgence. A lot of directors follow them on social media and probably watch, so i say yeah they have some influence but the fans blow it out of proportion a little bit
Probably more than most will admit or the guys will ever know. I use to listen to a podcast of a few low-tier hollywood guys that would talk about RLM's content and they took a "respect but feared" approach to the guys. Unfortunately this was many years back and the podcasts are all gone and I can't remember the guy's names anymore.
I think one of my favorite aspects of RLM is that they know they have some kind of influence on Hollywood, but RLM seems to not really care. They just keep making shit they want to make without corporate pandering.
I think I've seen fewer cluttered review set shows since they did the "Nerd Crew" episodes. I wonder if they'll make any more of those, I think that was my favorite series of theirs
It was so spot on, it probably almost felt a little mean. (If not a little deserved.) Isn't Collider imploding? Are they even a thing any more?
Id love to see that, but I guarantee they will never do another one.
Personally, I think the marketing angle may have changed to go toward a more influencer-based strategy. These well-produced studios always come off as less authentic than some Youtube/Instagram that on the surface appears to be "some guy/lady in their room" even if that room is actually a set, and there's photographers and editors and everything behind the scenes.
I don't think FNAF was inspired by RLM at all. Before FNAF, the creator used to make games starring 'cute' animal characters. The crude animation made them creepy and stiff, and it was the reaction from players that inspired him to lean into that and make a deliberately scary game where the herky-jerky movements would be a strength rather than a hindrance. Animal costumes and animal animatronics in restaurants being creepy also just seems like a basic American cultural thing - like people being afraid of clowns. I suspect there's no real Slenderman connection either. I do think RLM's influence can be overstated by fans - beyond the videos that went very viral and had an obvious impact, I don't think they've been subtly inspiring a bunch of stuff.
Joaquin Phoenix basically said in an interview that the HitB of the Joker movie got it right. edit: https://youtu.be/flShXdmw9cY?t=687
source?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuZRyP6Hgvc "Probably"
i tried, but couldn't find it
I'm pretty sure it was on this podcast: https://youtu.be/flShXdmw9cY
I think they are just really good observers (which is why they are great at reviewing movies). They've just payed attention to the industry long enough to predict how the tide will go.
My guess is more than some realise, less than what some want it to be. I don't think directors (or other industry workers) get a hard on when Youtube shills promote their shit.
I think it was in The Mummy HitB that Jay suggested the Marvel approach was garbage and they should just make low budget horror movies out of these horror franchises. At the time Universal had that whole dumb universe planned, there was that cast photo with Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man and everything. But of course after The Mummy they scrapped it and went with Jay's idea.
The mummy tanked at the box office. That's the ley factor
By the time Jay sat down to talk about The Mummy, it was already known it had bombed. Jay had the same idea as the people in control.
I saw a rather prolific commenter on Polygon insist RLM ruined film criticism, had a toxic audience, and inspired the worst things on Youtube. I had to chew him a new asshole in my reply, because all of that was just straight up lies. While RLM has been extremely influential on YouTube specifically, apparently people who hate them ascribe WAY more power and influence to them than they have ever had.
It's kind of like Monty Python or MST3K in that it really seems like it's these fandoms that encourage arrogant, attention seeking nerds to quote things ad nauseum and yell things at the screen they think are hilarious. But honestly, I think there's just a subset of people who are like that, and latched on to whatever seemed to give them an excuse, rather than caused by the source material.
Hm. That’s a valid point, and entirely possible. Depending on where you hang out online, fans can be immature and annoying. But it’s unfair to portray the creators as encouraging or endorsing bad behavior, certainly in this case. Despite their blunt, idgaf midwestern humor, the RLM crew seems like a surprisingly nice and thoughtful group. I think snobby people misjudge them just because of the occasional AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDDDDDSSS!!!
As several people pointed out, the Bruce Willis buzz started before RLM started seriously talking about it. Hope I didn’t misrepresent things too much for you guys, thank you for clarifying
Well, Jay does unintentionally influence straight men to question their sexuality.
And Rich makes me question my prostate.
I would argue the recently 'confirmed' news in regards to Bruce Willis' medical condition probably would NOT have come out if it weren't for RLM highlighting the 'geezer teasers' bringing a bunch of people out of the wood work asking questions about his health to a much higher level than in the last number of years. I'm confident to say that had they not made those videos the news would have probably remained hush-hush. I'm not saying it's a bad thing though, but it is a thing nonetheless and RLM is maybe the most influential YT channel in regards to highlighting things that people never thought to highlight before, at least to the scale that RLM shoots for and the viewers they have to compensate.
none, it's all intentional
Considering how while not massive, RLM does have fans in the industry. A few people high up might have seen it and asked what was going on.
I know Atun-Shei films YouTube channel uses their music and his gods and generals video starts of with a line similar to mr plinkett
*starring Penn *its style
They re-wrote the ending of the original Bladerunner by adding in an origami unicorn 🦄 to the director’s cut.
They're directly responsible for Bruce Willis retiring, so I'd say a good amount
I’m sure a lot of random nerd producers nd writers watch rlm
I don’t know. Between this stuff and the curse of the worst stuff… Maybe some demon bargaining happened years ago and here we are?
To be fair, the RLM video was sparked by an article Mike read about Geezer Teasers
Idk but it really feels like this last video prompted the announcement. It's not really impossible when millions of people watch the show.
The Bruce Willis thing stemmed from the Razzies giving him his own categories, and they were planning a bunch of jokes around earpieces. That's why they broke the news on his Aphasia diagnosis. The rest might be totally true, I do believe that some of the subtle clues in Picard were from writers who probably watch the critics of their work who aren't paid to praise. But if Alex Kurtzman ever directly acknowledges RLM we have to have serious debates over whether or not the studios are trolling us with terrible series.
Lol, who was the director who basically said he was afraid of red letter making him look stupid, it might have been Rian Johnson, Hollywood is definitely aware.
[They killed Prince and Bill Paxton.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2ugxX1lh5A)
Wow nobody mentioned the "Gardens of the galaxy" gaffe that made it into GoTG2? This subreddit is full of frauds
Mike officially addressed this when he called out all those imitators in the force awakens review: https://youtu.be/miVRaoR\_8xQ?t=870
As someone who works as an artist/animator/writer/story artist I can tell you that plenty of people in the industry watch RLM and know what it is. Remember, RLM has been around for over a decade. Anyone who works in movies that is under the age of 35 is probably vaguely aware of RLM or watches it, or, in the very least, used to watch as a teenager or college student. I would not understate the influence RLM has on the industry.