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Kong: Skull Island Director Takes on Cinema Sins

Fersis

It is illegal to Tag Fish in Tag Fishing Sanctuaries by law 38.36 of the GAF Wildlife Act
"Their videos don't count as criticism, a joke nor satire. They play 18 minutes of someone else's movie with their shit commentary track. And they make a fuck ton of money doing it."

My dude is seriously trying to bury these guys.
I've never saw a single episode of Cinema Sins but man, they're getting got right now.

EDIT: Your dude finds value in Red Letter Media's stuff. I like this dude.
 

Trey

Member
It feels like with a lot of their recent videos they're going even more out of their way to be assholes, as if they're responding to the recent criticisms from fans and movie industry types.
 
hey to people here who do enjoy these videos for their comedic content, can you articulate what it is about them you find funny or entertaining or whichever?
like, is it seeing the flaws in a film, something about the dudes commentary?
i cant for the life of me find the entertainment value here, but considering the significant effort put up in its defense there must be something here im completely missing.
 
Rephrase, why aren't robots made to always put children first. The movie's explanation flies in the face of what humanity has decided for a long while now.

Do you understand why it a sin now?
Huh, how is this a "sin". It is an actual part of the plot and story.

That fact that humanity would prioritize a child over an adult in such a situation, and that robots don't, is part of the story and a reason why the main character acts the way he does. That is not a sin or fault in the movie.
 

Dynasty

Member
So CinemaSins very frequently straight up misrepresent films, a prime example of this was posted recent about the I-Robit video, but there are many many more. These misrepresentations are frequently not done for any clear comedic purpose, they are played straight, presented as though they are a legitimate problem with the film. whether is deliberate or an honest (if really irresponsible) mistake, they are misrepresenting a film with the intent to demean that film, to paint it in a negative light to a very large amount of people, many of whole will never have seen that film, and have no reason not to believe it.

And thats just absolute bullshit, even if the intent is comedic, they are actively harming the reputation of a film, and by extension the reputation of the filmmakers, for at most a cheap laugh, and more often nothing more than another freaking DING.

So this is about ethics in movie reviews?
All kidding aside, if CinemaSins was doing any real damage when they are misrepresenting something, wouldnt they get hit with a defamation suit or something?
 
i cant for the life of me find the entertainment value here, but considering the significant effort put up in its defense there must be something here im completely missing.

Based solely off the posts in this thread by people volunteering to take it seriously enough to defend their position, the entertainment value comes solely from

1) nitpicking
2) being stupid
3) not giving a fuck

Those are the three factors.

20 straight minutes of dinging, nitpicking stupidly, and not giving a fuck.

That's the appeal.
 
So this is about ethics in movie reviews?
All kidding aside, if CinemaSins was doing any real damage when they are misrepresenting something, wouldnt they get hit with a defamation suit or something?

Film studios should not be fucking filing lawsuits against critics, even really fucking bad critics like Cinemasins.
 
That's not a "sin" or a plot hole or a flaw or anything. That's a stretch to spin it as a negative.

He Sins for lack of lapdances, for things he actually agrees with and a billion others silly reasons. But even then, they admit they sometimes make mistakes, and have Sinned themselves for it numerous times.

You're taking this too seriously.
 

yuoke

Banned
hey to people here who do enjoy these videos for their comedic content, can you articulate what it is about them you find funny or entertaining or whichever?
like, is it seeing the flaws in a film, something about the dudes commentary?
i cant for the life of me find the entertainment value here, but considering the significant effort put up in its defense there must be something here im completely missing.

They nitpick movies that I have seen and like, and it's funny making fun of random little things in movies. It doesn't all of the sudden make the movie garbage to me.

He did a 20 minute video of Civil War and I thought a lot of it was funny. I still really like the movie.

2) being stupid

Walking a very fine line here now.
 
Huh, how is this a "sin". It is an actual part of the plot and story.

That fact that humanity would prioritize a child over an adult in such a situation, and that robots don't, is part of the story and a reason why the main character acts the way he does. That is not a sin or fault in the movie.

Someone programmed the robots to not save children and instead do some calculations to see who got best chance, that seems pretty stupid.
 

TheMink

Member
^Imagine this, the robot chooses to save the person with less chance and they both die in the process. Does that make it the right decision because saving the child is always better no matter the chance?

What if the chance of survival was an even larger gap and the robot had to choose? The robot would have to save the one with the larger chance of survival right?

The the whole point of the movie is that discussion, so no I don't think it's a sin.

He Sins for lack of lapdances, for things he actually agrees with and a billion others silly reasons. But even then, they admit they sometimes make mistakes, and have Sinned themselves for it numerous times.

You're taking this too seriously.

5 seconds ago you were defending CS's critique, and now you are saying he is taking it too seriously?

If you didn't take it seriously why even bother defending CS.
 
He Sins for lack of lapdances, for things he actually agrees with and a billion others silly reasons. But even then, they admit they sometimes make mistakes, and have Sinned themselves for it numerous times.

You're taking this too seriously.
So you say that he puts stuff out there in his videos that make no sense and are something just straight up errors, and when confronted with that the answer is: don't take it serious.

That makes no sense. It is also the exact things the director has a problem with: that the criticism holds no value at all and is just straight up wrong in a lot of cases.

Someone programmed the robots to not save children and instead do some calculations to see who got best chance, that seems pretty stupid.
No, that is an actual dilemma the programmers of AI face. It is something that will pop up with cars soon. Does the car try to prevent hitting a child, with a large risk that he occupant dies or not for example. So it is not strange that in a movie about robots, such a point will be made.
 
He Sins for lack of lapdances, for things he actually agrees with and a billion others silly reasons. But even then, they admit they sometimes make mistakes, and have Sinned themselves for it numerous times.

You're taking this too seriously.

We're not talking about a sarcastic humorous "sin." We're talking about one that's supposed to be taken seriously.
Someone programmed the robots to not save children and instead do some calculations to see who got best chance, that seems pretty stupid.

See? You're taking that sin seriously by arguing that the foundation premise is stupid because you can't suspend your disbelief that machines would operate based on cold statistics instead of human empathy.
 

kewlmyc

Member
I agree. all these Hones Cinema Trailer Sins Channels are annoying nitpicker.

Wait, people consider Honest Trailers to be the same level of nitpicky as CinemaSins?

Honest Trailers are at least (somewhat) funny and are short and to the point. Also if they like a movie or if the movie is good, they flat out tell you.
 

Dynasty

Member
He Sins for lack of lapdances, for things he actually agrees with and a billion others silly reasons. But even then, they admit they sometimes make mistakes, and have Sinned themselves for it numerous times.

You're taking this too seriously.

People are different, they will take things differently. There is no objective point on the serious scale everyone should be taking when watching CinemaSins, this is coming from someone who enjoys CinemaSins.
 

caliph95

Member
Someone programmed the robots to not save children and instead do some calculations to see who got best chance, that seems pretty stupid.
No it doesn't

How does it, I thought i robots was ok but that made sense, it's no like it was specifically designed to not save children but just be effective and efficient hence saving someone who has the highest chance of survival
 
I enjoyed CinemaSins at first, but their act quickly grew stale for me.


That said, I do enjoy their "Conversations with Myself" videos, because I like the doubling effect(for lack of a better term) that is used in those videos. I want more of those, and less of the "Everything Wrong With" videos.
 
Wait, people consider Honest Trailers to be the same level of nitpicky as CinemaSins?

It's a minority opinion in this thread. Most people are using Honest Trailers as an example of how to do this sort of comedy/criticism in a good way.

Red Letter Media is the only other YouTube channel getting brought up with any regularity and while it isn't as positive a comparison as the Honest Trailers one, it's still a positive comparison in terms of what they're trying to do - although they share in common with Cinema Sins a propensity to reduce criticism to a checklist of nitpicks.

But basically, CinemaSins is considered the lowest of the lowest-common-denominator YouTube channels about film, and the worst in quality. Honest Trailers and to a lesser extent, RLM, are being used as positive examples in contrast to that.
 
So this is about ethics in movie reviews?
All kidding aside, if CinemaSins was doing any real damage when they are misrepresenting something, wouldnt they get hit with a defamation suit or something?

well i sure as hell dont know anything about lawsuits, so your on your own with that kinda thing.
but anyway, i dont think its an effect so bad they desperately need to be nuked for orbit or anything, more that every-time it just comes across as a real dick move, y'know?
its like hearing a co-worker make some real demeaning jokes about someone behind there back just for a laugh, not cool, not cool at all.
 
No it doesn't

How does it, I thought i robots was ok but that made sense, it's no like it was specifically designed to not save children but just be effective and efficient hence saving someone who has the highest chance of survival

The very fact that we're arguing that sin shows that people take it seriously. Not just the people hating it, but people who like cinemasins are taking its seriously by defending a weak ass sin for iRobot.
 

firelogic

Member
If you didnt even watch abit of a movie then your opinion on a movie is invalid, just like gaming, I dont take the criticism of people who haven't played a game seriosuly.
Your post literally screams like CinemaSins hated on something I like so they suck now. What defines a shitty movie? I think Twilight is a shitty movie but my cousin loves it.
Also I aint saying CinemaSins is above any criticism, they get shit wrong, they have admitted that.

You might not take it seriously but there are a lot of people that do. Just look at the comments and see how many people say, "whew, you saved me from watching this garbage," when the movie isn't actually garbage. Yeah you can write it off as "well hey, their loss" but that doesn't mean CS isn't a problem. Of course we're talking about a youtuber and in the grand scheme of things isn't worth much but it's not just a joke channel making joke videos. What they put out has an impact on viewers and their product isn't funny unless you think making things up about a movie that didn't happen and attacking it is funny. Or being completely oblivious and stating something as fact when it clearly isn't if you actually watch the movie. Or nailing something as a sin but then later in the same video question why the thing you said was a sin didn't happen when it did happen as you gave it a sin earlier.

And no, I'm not being critical because they didn't like a movie that I liked because as you said, I'm well equipped enough to know that their opinion on any movie isn't worth much to me so I don't watch their content. That doesn't mean I can't discuss the issue and put forth my take on it.
 

Dynasty

Member
well i sure as hell dont know anything about lawsuits, so your on your own with that kinda thing.
but anyway, i dont think its an effect so bad they desperately need to be nuked for orbit or anything, more that every-time it just comes across as a real dick move, y'know?
its like hearing a co-worker make some real demeaning jokes about someone behind there back just for a laugh, not cool, not cool at all.

I dont know as well, I shouldnt have made that prticular point.
The thing that comes across as weird is what is the guy trying to achieve? All this stuff is just free publicity to CinemaSins.
 
OK so I normally don't sweat these things but that is an absolutely awful take

Immediately right after that is Will's biggest monologue in the film about it, it's his main character motivation

This dude fucking sucks
But it's a fucking joke! Don't take it seriously!

The sad thing is people find it funny when he cuts out context, scenes or dialogue so he can make a shitty jokeyjoke.

That's considered comedy?
 

aliengmr

Member
People are different, they will take things differently. There is no objective point on the serious scale everyone should be taking when watching CinemaSins, this is coming from someone who enjoys CinemaSins.

Evidently there is since we are having this discussion. There is apparently a right and wrong way to do things and it is very SERIOUS business. CS is destroying ALL movies and must be stopped. Think of the directors people!
 

Dynasty

Member
Evidently there is since we are having this discussion. There is apparently a right and wrong way to do things and it is very SERIOUS business. CS is destroying ALL movies and must be stopped. Think of the directors people!

Lol, never saw the sarcasm at first for some reason.
 

yuoke

Banned
It should be noted that some people from the industry like Kevin Smith have praised CS and he even collabed with them on the A new hope video.
 

Trey

Member
hey to people here who do enjoy these videos for their comedic content, can you articulate what it is about them you find funny or entertaining or whichever?
like, is it seeing the flaws in a film, something about the dudes commentary?
i cant for the life of me find the entertainment value here, but considering the significant effort put up in its defense there must be something here im completely missing.

It's like someone quoted above: it's basically a 20 minute summary of a film with a commentary track placed over it. Odds are if I watch a cinemasins video of a movie I haven't seen before, I didn't care enough about it to go see it in theaters, so a quick (if cheap and smarmy) rendition will entertain me for a little bit. Also, sometimes they point out a continuity error or a failure in logic that I didn't notice, but that's not often these days. They say all the time they're assholes just trying to make a cheap laugh, but that doesn't dismiss being an asshole using other's art to make a cheap laugh.

The criticisms levied against the channel are legitimate: they go out of their way to nitpick scenes are actions for no other reason that they can. The only consistent observations they make are their recurring jokes such as nagging about logos, narration, and so on. While I can overlook much of the cheese and sometimes vitriol they levy toward movies to satisfy my expectations of the channel and its content, it doesn't mean these elements aren't valid to be criticized. I haven't really run across a untrue thing said about them in this thread so far.
 
Evidently there is since we are having this discussion. There is apparently a right and wrong way to do things and it is very SERIOUS business. CS is destroying ALL movies and must be stopped. Think of the directors people!

If we can criticize directors with countless movie threads, why can't we criticize critics? If we can get so impassioned about films, why not critics? Even if we operate on the notion that they're comedians instead of critics, even more fitting that they should be submitted to the same amount of scrutiny as any other creative individual.
 
As a hobbyist reviewer, I always try to write my criticisms constructively and with respect to the filmmakers because making a movie is fucking hard. I also watch movies so I can better learn how to create my own projects and when I'm in the middle of a project I'm always reminded "oh right, this is really hard."

People are so eager to call something shit in the most condescending and insulting way because they think they're being funny.

And when something does piss me off to no end (X-Men Apocalypse or Spectre) I'll break it down scene for scene why they didn't work. Won't be done respectfully, but I'll keep it constructive. There's always one every year that breaks me. The problem people have with CS is that they're always on that mode whether they liked the movie or not.
 
I think my biggest problem with the approach that CinemaSins and, to a lesser extent, RLM take can basically be boiled down to the fact that they only know how to view films as a sum of parts. To these guys, if they can spend enough time breaking down small individual components of a movie, it'll be proof enough that the film as a whole doesn't work. But, that's not really how art or film works. You judge the work as a whole. Many films are less than the sum of their parts, and many films are greater than the sum of their parts. It's how everything works together as a holistic piece that really makes a film.
 
I get the Skull Island directors frustration here. On a creative level the man made a pretty decent movie about King Kong. He photographed it with some of the most clever, artistic, and beautiful photography in a modern genre movie. The film itself was instilled with its own level of obvious self awareness that, if you watch the movie purposefully and effectively acts like a parody of itself, such as Sam Raimi would do.

To have someone roll in and recycle the creative intent coat tailing all the creative decisions and incredible labour of himself and his massive team seems gross. Criticism is one thing, utilizing a movie itself to create a new show with made up critical points is pretty ugly. RLM do this as well and I'm not a fan of how they source and frame their material either.
 

yuoke

Banned
I get the Skull Island directors frustration here. On a creative level the man made a pretty decent movie about King Kong. He photographed it with some of the most clever, artistic, and beautiful photography in a modern genre movie. The film itself was instilled with its own level of obvious self awareness that, if you watch the movie purposefully and effectively acts like a parody of itself, such as Sam Raimi would do.

To have someone roll in and recycle the creative intent coat tailing all the creative decisions and incredible labour of himself and his massive team seems gross. Criticism is one thing, utilizing a movie itself to create a new show with made up critical points is pretty ugly. RLM do this as well and I'm not a fan of how they source and frame their material either.

So then would you get on defending George Lucas too? he had a creative vision, and some would argue the prequels were beautiful in their own right. Yet RLM took them down on tons of varied criticisms of the movies.

He also made Yogahosers, so... yeah.

That's fair, but he also made clerks and mallrats.
 
i would have no problem with someone nitpicking movies, but they're often simply wrong, so wrong that i question if they understood of even watched the movie

lqmeemF.png

Yup

another example. He complained about Age of Ultron on the opening scene wondering what mission they were on then said how he doesn't have time to watch Agents of Shield to see why they are on this mission.... When It was explained that they were looking for Loki's staff throughout the entire opening scene.... Cinema Sins isn't just trying to be a satire, he's just flat out wrong and clearly doesn't look for even the simplest detail's in films because he's to busy thinking of jokes for the scene's.
 

Compbros

Member
Someone programmed the robots to not save children and instead do some calculations to see who got best chance, that seems pretty stupid.

They weren't programmed to "not save children", they were programmed to save the people that had the best chance. If a child has both their legs crushed and an adult has their chest down crushed the robot will go for the child as the chance for survival will be much higher. They can go back for the adult but in the drowning scene it was too late to do that.
 
How it must feel as people hating CS and trying to take them down (and RLM).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

You have several well-reasoned takedowns of why CS is bottom of the barrel criticism to read in this thread if you ever feel like doing so. I used to watch CS as well and thought they were funny back when they made their videos under ~10 minutes each. But now I have talked more about movies with more people than I have ever had the opportunity to, and have been connected to superior, better expressed, more informational and very importantly, more genuinely constructed film criticism than anything CS has put out in the last several years. Put shortly, I outgrew CS while it treaded water, creatively. But like whatever you want to like, breh, this really isn't about the popularity of CS as much as it is about how the people who make the videos are charlatans.
 

yuoke

Banned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

You have several well-reasoned takedowns of why CS is bottom of the barrel criticism to read in this thread if you ever feel like doing so. I used to watch CS as well and thought they were funny back when they made their videos under ~10 minutes each. But now I have talked more about movies with more people than I have ever had the opportunity to, and have been connected to superior, better expressed, more informational and very importantly, more genuinely constructed film criticism than anything CS has put out in the last several years. Put shortly, I outgrew CS while it treaded water, creatively. But like whatever you want to like, breh, this really isn't about the popularity of CS as much as it is about how the people who make the videos are charlatans.

I watch serious reviewers for serious reviews.

I watch cinemasins to get some laughs and occasionally a pointed out minor flaw.
 
Here, let me criticize CS as comedians since people can't seem to give up the "they're not critics, quit taking them seriously!" line.

At worst they're shitty critics. At best they're a bad set filled with material that was better left on the cutting room floor. They take a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach and twist the film to fit their jokes instead of going back to the writing room to write better jokes. There's no excuse, when you don't have a time limit to fill, to leave all your bad stuff in and just bombard the viewer with everything just because you couldn't decide what to keep and what to cut, what would hit and what would miss. I can't criticize the business decision that longer videos bring more revenue. But I can criticize the content they create to bring in that revenue. If they want to make longer content to make more money and their content suffers as a result, they invite criticism onto themselves. They deemed that an exchange they're willing to make. Honest Trailers does a better job because they edit down, refine, and are succinct and funny.
 
If I ever program a robot I will put special code in it to make sure that the Chicago Bulls can't make last second shots

I thought the Bronson Way was to change the outcome after the fact, so just make a robot that edits the scores when the game is over so that the undeserving team wins, instead.
 
Yup

another example. He complained about Age of Ultron on the opening scene wondering what mission they were on then said how he doesn't have time to watch Agents of Shield to see why they are on this mission.... When It was explained that they were looking for Loki's staff throughout the entire opening scene.... Cinema Sins isn't just trying to be a satire, he's just flat out wrong and clearly doesn't look for even the simplest detail's in films because he's to busy thinking of jokes for the scene's.

Which, I mean,there could be a funny gimmick in intentionally misunderstanding scenes, but he tries to pair it with extreme detail-oriented nitpicking and it just... doesn't work. And people keep saying "Oh that's the joke, he's bad" but it's like, that isn't reflected in the comments on the videos. The users who are actually interacting with the channel aren't going "Wow haha yeah he sure is a jackass!" they're saying "Wow this movie looks bad glad I didn't see it!"
 
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