# Forum > Discussion > Media Discussions > TV Willow on Disney+

## Palanan

Made it about thirty minutes into the first episode.  

Not quite sure who this is pitched for.  So far its been a rather bland, frothy, cartoonish teen drama in a highly generic medieval setting.  

*Spoiler*
Show

Spoiled young princess runs away from royal obligation to find adventure and herself.  Not the most compelling concept, and thus far not the most compelling character.

I never realized it was Joanne Whalley in the original Willow, but then I only saw the movie once and wasnt impressed.  Likewise not impressed with this.  The first few minutes were okay-ish, and Joanne Whalley can play a driven royal matriarch in her sleep, but the shallow teen drama quickly becomes a slog.


Coming so soon after the unexpected splendor and power of Andor, I was quietly hoping they might pull off something similar for a fantasy property, especially one thats relatively obscure and unexplored.  Sadly no hint of that here.  At some point I may swing around for another attempt at finishing the first episode, but for the moment Im not really motivated to continue.  Wouldn't mind hearing that it picks up gloriously from someone who made it further.

.

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## animorte

> Not quite sure who this is pitched for.  So far its been a rather bland, frothy, cartoonish teen drama in a highly generic medieval setting.


I doubt that will discourage me so rapidly. Warwick Davis in the trailers was absolutely gorgeous.




> Wouldn't mind hearing that it picks up gloriously from someone who made it further.


Im sure others will get to it before myself, but Im sure Ill contribute when Ive had time to watch it.

I didnt read your spoiler.

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *animorte*
> _Im sure others will get to it before myself, but Im sure Ill contribute when Ive had time to watch it._


Looking forward to hearing what you think.  I have a couple extra comments, but will hold off for now.

And yes, it's Joanne Whalley, rather than the embarrassing typo I made (twice) in the spoilered comments.

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## KorvinStarmast

> And yes, it's Joanne Whalley, rather than the embarrassing typo I made (twice) in the spoilered comments.


  I recall seeing her some years later in _The Man Who Knew Too little_ and it took a moment to realize "hey, that's Sorsha!"   :Small Smile:

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## Kyberwulf

"I was expecting something more grand... something less.....Fuzzy."


I would like to point out, this is what you get when you stop watching something 30 minutes into the episode. Its not a spoiled little princess running away adventure. 

I have watched the first episode and part of the second. So far.. 

This seems to not know who the show is made for. It seems like an episode of a Preteen disney show.. but with fantasy style setting. Its not bad.. its just not.. good either. I want to say its nothing like the original. But then.. It was just one movie, and it didn't really have any lore in it. So it comes off as .. Generic. Like they just took some larp-ers and a renaissance faire location and just shot some scenes. 

One of the things I have noticed is they don't seem to take it serious. Not like. "We are going to win academy awards Serious." Just not as serious as the original cast seemed to take it, Like they did one or two takes of it, called it good. The wardrobe said, hey this looks stylish lets add some dirt, but not to much we don't want to have to make to many clothes. The fx team was like... Hey should we add in some smoke and fog to give it ambiance, and the director was like.. nah lunch is in 20 lets just use the broad daylight. 

I think that's what the show is missing so far. The movie had a darker more atmospheric lived in feel to it. The characters all looked like they lived in their clothes and used their gear to some extent. The actors looked like they spent time.. like real life time living a crappy life to get some of the shots. 

So I guess, thats my take of it. It feels like people came in, said their lines, Pointed their cameras, and said stand here. Did their 8 hours a day, and then went home. Whereas in the Movie, they came together and said, Let's make a movie.

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## Murk

> a Preteen disney show.. but with fantasy style setting.


Honestly, "typical preteen Disney fans with tentative interest in fantasy" sounds like a great target audience. There are a lot of preteen Disney fans and the number of fantasy shows made specifically for them is relatively small. 

I can't judge whether or not they actually succeeded in making a show for that target audience, because I'm not a preteen Disney fan nor have I actually watched this show yet.

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## Talakeal

So far this is... not good.

The costumes and dialogue are far too casual and too modern, and the plot and world building don't quite fit in with the original.

I love Willow, but this is pretty disappointing. Its really sad when a saphic love story involving Erin Kellyman and Ruby Cruz can't hold my interest.

And of course, Madmartigan was the best part of the original, and his absence really hurts, and its hard to watch without being depressed about Val Kilmer's illness.


On a side not, did anyone notice if any of the original actors returned besides Warwick Davis and Joanne Whatley? I was looking, but it was hard to tell. Is the Nelwyn who pretends to be Willow at first someone from the original? He seems familiar, but I didn't ever catch his name.

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Talakeal*
> _So far this is... not good._


That was my strong impression from what I managed to get through.  

Hip modern dialogue in fantasy especially irks me, and there were some glaring examples here.

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## KorvinStarmast

> On a side not, did anyone notice if any of the original actors returned besides Warwick Davis and Joanne Whatley?


 That's _Joanne Whalley_*Spoiler: spoiler*
Show


(Wife and I recently watched a movie about Val Kilmer, his Mark Twain tour, and his career ending medical problems. She and he had married and raised two children with.  We learned that sadly their marriage had broken up a few years back.  :Small Frown: )

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## TheSummoner

> So far this is... not good.


I'll echo this sentiment. I don't expect much from Disney given their track record, but it's still disappointing to see them dig up the corpse of something people once enjoyed to try to milk it for nostalgia. It's not as bad as some other shows that've come out recently, but it's still incredibly middling at best.

It's been a while since I saw the original Willow, but I remember Warwick Davis being better in it than he is here. It really seems like he's phoning it in. I understand that they couldn't feasibly have Val Kilmer reprise his role given his medical issues, but it annoys me that they seem to be going the Han Solo route with him. There seems to be more to it under the surface, but it still rubs me the wrong way. Either recasting him or just saying he died doing something heroic time between the movie and series would've been better. Don't belittle the character by describing him as "an impossibly conceited thief, liar, and rogue." Yes, he started at that way, but he grew and developed over the course of the original adventure.

As far as characterization goes, it's a mixed bag. Elora and Boorman I like, and with Elora and Graydon I see seeds of what could be good character arcs - her learning to use her power and him developing a backbone. Jade is just bland. Kit is insufferable. She's not Galadriel from Rings of Power bad, and the show has the awareness to both occasionally acknowledge how entitled she acts and point out that she's not as good as she thinks she is, but it's not a good way to characterize who seems to be the main character of the ensemble cast. And yes, I realize they're (at least hopefully) setting up an arc for her where she can learn some humility, but I still think it's a poor choice of arc for the main character and it would work much better for a supporting character.

But by far, the biggest issue I have is that the characters don't feel like they belong in this world. The way they speak and act, most of them feel like characters from the modern day dropped into a fantasy setting rather than characters who have lived their entire lives there.

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## Palanan

I tried jumping ahead to the third episode, just to see if the quality dramatically improves.

This time I made it to 35 minutes.  Its really, really bad.  Its like they took all the goofy nonsense of the silliest 80s fantasy, but forgot to include anything resembling fun.



Erin Kellyman is sleepwalking through this.  Shes shown us that shes capable of more, but she just doesnt have much to work with here.  Meanwhile, someone should tell the ex-princess that there are things called acting classes, and she might want to sit in on a few of those.  This should have been done before filming began, because she doesnt seem to have heard of them.  At all.

Much of the dialogue is eye-rollingly bad, both the writing and especially the delivery.  (Princess.)  In some places the dialogue is word-for-word predictable, without even an attempt at improving the clichés.  This is one reason why Warwick Davis is disappointing here, because his lines are garbage.

There are several big swordfight scenes, but the fight choreographyisnt.  The actors (or at least the people in costumes) are just flailing their swords around in great wild sweeps, obviously with zero skilland yet somehow theyre managing to parry the strikes of supernaturally possessed soldiers who are literally splitting trees open.  Its like a bunch of college kids got some costumes, found a misty place in the woods and just swung around for a while. 

The final fight sceneor at least the drawn-out, overly dramatic scene around the 30-35 minute markis both highly contrived and so visually dark that its unpleasant to watch.  Somewhere in there is supposed to be a major struggle for Willow, as well as a bit of silly humor, but the struggle is absurd and contrived, and the humor just falls flat.

Worst of allI simply dont care about any of the characters.  Most of them are barely characters at all, just one-dimensional collections of lines.  As noted above, most of those lines are too modern-day to be convincing, especially when characters are complaining that This sucks!  (Actual line from a supposedly high-fantasy setting.)  This show isnt even a well-intentioned misfire; its just the fantasy equivalent of wet cardboard, and a thoroughly wasted opportunity.

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## t209

So I guess the novel series isn't that bad by comparison then?

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## The Patterner

I have only seen the two first episodes so still a bit early to tell how everything will develop. But overall I like it, it feels like a light hearted fantasy and I think there is a need for that.

Good things:
- Boorman is cool.
- Elora, I like the character and that they did the reveal early on and not just draged it out.
- Graydon, interesting character with room for growth.
- Queen Sorsha, she really feels like a natural eveolution from the movie.

Bad things
- The princess... I hate her. The only good thing I can say is that I like how she is constantly treated as the spoiled brat she is.
- Willow, his acting is not what I'd hoped it would be. Many lines felt very forced and scripted.
- The world, it feels very small and underdeveloped (just two episodes in so a lot can change).
- Fight scenes were kinda meh.

Neutral things
- The bad guys, look kinda cool, but also kinda generic. We will see.
- The lines, some are great and other are horrible. 
- Agree with some of the comments about the lines feeling to modern, but also disagree because none of us speaks Ye olde english. I think this is somewhat due to people being used to english accents rather than just the lines being bad.
- The kidnapped prince, room for nice character development, depends a lot on how he acts once he get back in the show.
- Jade, might become a nice contrast to the spoiled brat of a royalty. But has no real personality yet.

So yeah, overall I like it, but it can really go either way as of right now.

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## Noldo

Two episodes in, I will most likely watch it through but I am not overly amazed by the show.

Thought that the aesthetics had very fairytalish vibe, especially in the sense that everything is very clean (and kinda modernish). No gritty and dirty work that we have gotten used to in GoT. 

I was hoping that the world beyond the barrier would have been a bit more worn out, it would have created a strong contrast between the safe, protected and clean city and emphasized the fairytale feel of the start.

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## The Patterner

> I was hoping that the world beyond the barrier would have been a bit more worn out, it would have created a strong contrast between the safe, protected and clean city and emphasized the fairytale feel of the start.


This is a really good point, it would also have made the world seem more real in a sense.

I'm I the only one who was hoping that Elora wouldn't be able to use magic cause that's not why she is the chosen one?

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## KorvinStarmast

Some years ago, I read three books by Chris Claremont / George Lucas:_ Shadow Moon, Shadow Dawn, Shadow Star._ 
I liked them.  
Is this what the series is based on?

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## Wintermoot

> Some years ago, I read three books by Chris Claremont / George Lucas:_ Shadow Moon, Shadow Dawn, Shadow Star._ 
> I liked them.  
> Is this what the series is based on?


No. This is unrelated to the Claremont series.

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## t209

> No. This is unrelated to the Claremont series.


Now, I think they should adapted it but fix many of its issues.

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## Telonius

I've watched it up to episode 3 so far. I think I see what they're trying to do with Princess Kit; taking the whole "angry at absent father" thing a bit too far, but I'm expecting she'll come around to character growth and "realizes she's really not all that different from him" at the end. (Started out as an insufferable spoiled brat, great swordsman, thing for redheads...). I hate the character, but we'll see if the actor has the skill to sell the change. 

First couple episodes, it did seem a bit wobbly. It almost seems like they had to split time between making enough references to the original and pushing the new plot forward, and they're not sure how serious they're all going to take it. Warwick Davis is erring a bit on the "more serious" side. I get that his character's role is the adult in charge, but it's honestly reminding me a bit of some of those Kevin Costner movies where he's the only one who doesn't seem to know how silly it is. He's loosened up a little bit in episode 3; hoping that it's moving more in that direction. But [redacted event] in the episode might set him back a bit.

Very much interested in how they're going to take Graydon's character. Tied with Jade for "most likeable," but with a lot more room for a growth arc. 

My "(just-barely-teen) Disney fan with tentative interest in fantasy" seems to like it so far. (She loved the original). She's declared that Boorman's name is actually Bruno. For Elora: "Duh, she's already casting magic without knowing it."

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## The Patterner

> I've watched it up to episode 3 so far. I think I see what they're trying to do with Princess Kit; taking the whole "angry at absent father" thing a bit too far, but I'm expecting she'll come around to character growth and "realizes she's really not all that different from him" at the end. (Started out as an insufferable spoiled brat, great swordsman, thing for redheads...). I hate the character, but we'll see if the actor has the skill to sell the change.


I'd honestly love if they went the other direction and set her up to be a new Bavmorda type villain. Have it turn out that the kidnapped prince is a pretty nice guy, while the princess who dreamed of adventure is tempted over to the dark side. The groundwork is there already.

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## Maelstrom

Yeah...I've tried...then tried again, but no.  I'm just going to have to say that I'm obviously not in the demographic that the showrunners were targeting, I guess.  Absolute train wreck on the writing, acting, story, etc.

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## KorvinStarmast

> Yeah...I've tried...then tried again, but no.  I'm just going to have to say that I'm obviously not in the demographic that the showrunners were targeting, I guess.  Absolute train wreck on the writing, acting, story, etc.


 If you have not yet seen Critical Drinker's take on this Disney production, you may be amused by his critique.  As I do not subscribe to Disney+, I may never get to see this one.

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## The Patterner

> If you have not yet seen Critical Drinker's take on this Disney production, you may be amused by his critique.  As I do not subscribe to Disney+, I may never get to see this one.


I'm trying really hard to decide what I think of Critical drinker. 

He is either someone with the occasional deep insight who is really unsure of himself and therefore hides the insightes behind a borish persona. Or he is someone who think that persona is like the coolest most rad thing ever, and his occasional insights are just pure dumb luck.

The fake sounding accent don't do him any favours either  :Small Confused:

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *The Patterner*
> _Or he is someone who think that persona is like the coolest most rad thing ever, and his occasional insights are just pure dumb luck._


Pretty sure its this.  I pay him no mind.

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## TheSummoner

_Ooor_ he's a guy who makes videos on the internet talking about his opinions about movies and shows. Agree with what he says or don't, but it seems like a reach to say he's somehow unsure of himself or putting on a persona and the thing about his accent is particularly baffling given that a glance shows he's been doing his thing pretty regularly for about four and a half years and his voice and style seem fairly consistent.

More on topic
Kit: They wear people's skulls as masks! They're going to kill her!
Also Kit: You (they) can keep Boorman.

I don't get the trend in trying to get the audience to sympathize with utterly awful characters. Kit herself continues to be dreadful, but by the end of the episode it wants us to accept the bonereavers... the people who ambush travelers and wear their skulls... are actually good people who are just misunderstood. I know the characters have forgotten about how these people killed the knight who was close enough to the prince and princess to treat them like his own children, but is the audience also supposed to forget that? Those things we saw with our own eyes was just us being "fed lies about [them]", I guess. "All [they've] ever wanted is [their] freedom" and that is why they have to attack travelers, boil their skulls, and then wear those skulls as masks.

Ok, yeah, that checks out. Makes perfect sense.

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## Razade

> The fake sounding accent don't do him any favours either


I know a lot of people don't think Scotland is real, but that's not a fake accent.

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## Noldo

If I had any doubts, the last two episodes (Bonereavers and trolls) have made it absolutely clear that the series does not take itself seriously. There is no other way to explain the chosen approach.

It is still entertainish. But hard to take anything seriously as the whole world is played for laughs.

Whoever said that a take where Kit would pivot towards darkness would be more interesting was right.

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## KorvinStarmast

> I'm trying really hard to decide what I think of Critical drinker.


Sometimes on point, sometimes too ranty for my taste, and sometimes amusing. 
Mixed bag.  
I think that his  schtick leans into "emperor has no clothes, can't you see? Here, I'll show you!"   
Roger Ebert he ain't.

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## Palanan

> Originally Posted by *Noldo*
> _If I had any doubts, the last two episodes (Bonereavers and trolls) have made it absolutely clear that the series does not take itself seriously. There is no other way to explain the chosen approach._


At this point my main concern is what effect this may have on future fantasy projects, either at Disney+ or elsewhere.  Executives tend to follow trends without always understanding them, and Im concerned this will either spawn even worse imitative trash or drive studios away from fantasy altogether.

And I am really not sure what to make of the critics vs. audience divide in the reviews.  Almost everyone on the audience side seems to acknowledge its corny and ridiculous; some people enjoy this, most of the rest cant stand it.

But some of the reviewers are talking about it like its the greatest thing since great things were invented, and I just cant see where thats coming from.  My worry is that studios will look at this nonsense and somehow imagine there should be more of it.

.

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## HeyHoWhatUpYo

I'll just leave this here.

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## HeyHoWhatUpYo

> I'm trying really hard to decide what I think of Critical drinker. 
> 
> He is either someone with the occasional deep insight who is really unsure of himself and therefore hides the insightes behind a borish persona. Or he is someone who think that persona is like the coolest most rad thing ever, and his occasional insights are just pure dumb luck.
> 
> The fake sounding accent don't do him any favours either


Critical Drinker is someone who has movie insights but feels he needs to do something to make his videos stand out from every other movie review show on YouTube. He really is quite insightful, it's just a shame that he's nearly doing a knock-off impersonation of Red Letter Media's Harry Plinkett reviews. It does work for him though, as he is quite successful on the platform.

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## TheSummoner

> At this point my main concern is what effect this may have on future fantasy projects, either at Disney+ or elsewhere.  Executives tend to follow trends without always understanding them, and Im concerned this will either spawn even worse imitative trash or drive studios away from fantasy altogether.


The latter most likely, and at this point I welcome it. Better to have have a drought of fantasy projects than a sea of garbage ones dragging down the genre.




> And I am really not sure what to make of the critics vs. audience divide in the reviews.  Almost everyone on the audience side seems to acknowledge its corny and ridiculous; some people enjoy this, most of the rest cant stand it.


This is nothing new. Consider:
Rings of Power: 85% Critic, 38% Audience
Halo: 70% Critic, 52% Audience
Wheel of Time: 82% Critic, 59% Audience
She Hulk: Attorney at Law: 92% Critic, 33% Audience(From Rotten Tomatoes at time of posting)

And those are just a few that come to mind from the last year (or barely over it in Wheel of Time's case) alone.  Occasionally you'll get a few where there's general agreement (Andor generally considered pretty good by critics and fans alike. Witcher: Blood Origin is generally considered steaming garbage by both), but in too many cases, the critics and general audience are looking for entirely different things. Fans of established property want a good story that is faithful to the source material. Critics have other priorities, access being a major one. Keep in mind the fact that critics have incentive to get their review out as quickly as possible in order to outdo their competition... The companies who make these shows/movies are also being the ones who control who gets early access to prepare reviews is certainly enough temper any particularly pointed critique and even for critics with integrity, there's still a general trend with shows for the critical reviews to be based on the first episode or two rather than the series as a whole.




> But some of the reviewers are talking about it like its the greatest thing since great things were invented, and I just cant see where thats coming from.  My worry is that studios will look at this nonsense and somehow imagine there should be more of it.


I wouldn't be worried. The critics aren't the ones who pay the bills. They are, at best, advertisement. They can give a show whatever rating they want and sing its praises until it falls out of relevance, but if the show is bad, it's not going to generate much word of mouth (at least not positive word of mouth) and the viewers it does attract aren't going to stay long. How many failures can a company afford? And after they've killed all interest in the "sure thing" properties by spewing out constant garbage, where do they go from there? A lot of people have reached the point of audience apathy. Some have gone farther and gotten jaded to the point of actively wanting adaptations and sequels to fail. For the studios making this stuff, it's not a good place to be. Of course, the trend of hostility towards anyone critical of the show/movie in question hasn't done them any favors either.

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## BloodSquirrel

> Keep in mind the fact that critics have incentive to get their review out as quickly as possible in order to outdo their competition... The companies who make these shows/movies are also being the ones who control who gets early access to prepare reviews is certainly enough temper any particularly pointed critique and even for critics with integrity, there's still a general trend with shows for the critical reviews to be based on the first episode or two rather than the series as a whole.


It's worse than that. 

Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Warner Bros. and NBC Universal. Trace back the ownership of a lot of other media outlets and you'll find a lot of them being ultimately owned by a handful of giant media companies. 

It might not be as direct as the CEO of their umbrella corporation personally emailing critics to give out overly generous reviews, but there's a definite influence trickling down from the top for critics who work for these kind of corporate-owned outlets to act more like part of the marketing machine than hard-hitting advocates for the consumer. The kind of Jay Sherman who thinks that big blockbuster CGI fests all suck is certainly going to have a hard time finding a job at one of those outlets. 

Meanwhile, nobody is going to these media outlets for serious media criticism anymore. That's more or less move onto the internet where independent video producers can put out hour+ long videos about movie/shows/games that they either love or hate. For serious, passionate, opinionated fans who want to make a career out of film criticism, starting a youtube channel is probably a better bet than hoping to get a job at a newspaper at this point. 

Also, the Critical Drinker's accent is real. He sounds the same when doing extended live streams. And, while not exactly on-topic, I was quite amused today to see that he did a review for The Muppet Christmas Carol, a movie that me and my mom watch every Christmas. Apparently he not only shares the tradition, but shares a similar opinion on a few shockingly specific points.

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## Trafalgar

> This is nothing new. Consider:
> Rings of Power: 85% Critic, 38% Audience
> Halo: 70% Critic, 52% Audience
> Wheel of Time: 82% Critic, 59% Audience
> She Hulk: Attorney at Law: 92% Critic, 33% Audience(From Rotten Tomatoes at time of posting)


It also occasionally goes the opposite way on Rotten Tomatoes:

Zach Snyder's Justice League - Critic 71%, Audience 94%
Dave Chappelle: The Closer - Critic 40%, Audience 95%

The real question is why is there is such a big difference between Critic and Audience reviews. I can come up with several.

-Professional reviewers look at movies different than audiences. For example, I don't think an average audience member cares how much dutch angle there is in a movie. A professional reviewer might see the writing as hackneyed while the average audience still enjoys it.
-Influence by corporations and money on professional reviewers.
-Review bombing to change the audience score. Though I think this is overstated.

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## HeyHoWhatUpYo

> It also occasionally goes the opposite way on Rotten Tomatoes:
> 
> Zach Snyder's Justice League - Critic 71%, Audience 94%
> Dave Chappelle: The Closer - Critic 40%, Audience 95%
> 
> The real question is why is there is such a big difference between Critic and Audience reviews. I can come up with several.
> 
> -Professional reviewers look at movies different than audiences. For example, I don't think an average audience member cares how much dutch angle there is in a movie. A professional reviewer might see the writing as hackneyed while the average audience still enjoys it.
> -Influence by corporations and money on professional reviewers.
> -Review bombing to change the audience score. Though I think this is overstated.


A lot of reviewers consider themselves "journos" as well and many of them are out to push an agenda and look good in the eyes of their peers. The Closer is bad because jokes about trans are forbidden by the powers that be... despite whether it's funny or not. This is why you generally see bad critic reviews on "problematic" material despite it being so widely embraced by the audience. The problem is, those dang modern audiences just don't like what we want them to like no matter how many times we tell them they're supposed to like it. Weird.

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## BloodSquirrel

> I
> -Professional reviewers look at movies different than audiences. For example, I don't think an average audience member cares how much dutch angle there is in a movie. A professional reviewer might see the writing as hackneyed while the average audience still enjoys it.


That was something that might have been true 20-30 years ago, but I don't see a whole lot of professional critics who have those kinds of standards nowadays. If anything, they seem to be more forgiving of trashy, hackneyed TV/Movies than general audiences. Youtube critics are much more likely to be the ones taking a movie apart for being full of plot holes, being thematically incoherent, or lacking strong characterization. Meanwhile, I can't really think of any recent examples of this kind of divide where the "average audiences" were complaining that the show/movie was too heady or didn't have enough explosions in it.

Big, dumb, crowd-pleasing movies don't seem to have a problem, in general, with getting good professional reviews.

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## Sapphire Guard

Youtube's ecosystem rewards dramatic takes to stand out from the crowd, so necessarily they skew towards the extremes. Drinker originally gave standard reviews, then he did a review while honestly hung over, it was popular, so he said 'screw it, I'll run with this. The persona is a gimmick, but it works. His takes are hit and miss, nothing special. Better than RLM but that's a very low bar.




> More on topic
> Kit: They wear people's skulls as masks! They're going to kill her!
> Also Kit: You (they) can keep Boorman.
> 
> I don't get the trend in trying to get the audience to sympathize with utterly awful characters.


I think this is a product of the characters metagaming the same way the audience is. The character knows which story threads are dramatic and which are jokes, and responds accordingly. It shouldn't happen, but it does. The writers aren't rooting for evil, they just expect the audience not to care for meta reasons.

See also:

Force Awakens:

Finn: How did you catch these rathtars?
Han: I used to have a bigger crew (implication, they were eaten by rathtars)

Later: 

Han:Hey Rey, want to join my crew?

Rey: Flattered but no. (she refuses because she wants to come home, but it's not relevant to her that the previous crew were eaten by Rathtars and Han doesn't care at all, because she knows that storyline is a throwaway joke, and she's a main character.)

It's not intended that the characters are supposed to be super evil, it's just the meta trend. As the audience is supposed to be doing the same metagaming as the character is, we're not supposed to take it seriously.

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## TheSummoner

> -Review bombing to change the audience score. Though I think this is overstated.


This is a pet peeve of mine. Review bombing _does not exist_. At least not when done by the audience in the way the usual use of the term implies.

The audience leaves a review saying they like it or do not like the movie/show. If a lot of people do not like the movie/show, a lot of people leave reviews saying they do not like the movie/show. A lot of people saying they do not like the movie/show is not _review bombing_, it is reviewing. The reason they do not like the movie/show does not matter and outside of an insignificant minority of actual trolls, it is never for the reasons the defenders claim (which inevitably paint the audience as some variety of "bad person"). The reason could be something as stupid as "I do not like the movie/show because it took place in winter and I hate snow," the audience is paying their hard earned money to see it and is entitled to their opinion.

Further, individual members of the audience simply do not have the reach or resources to significantly sway review scores one way or another. It does not matter how much an individual may hate a movie/show or even if they are among the minority of actual bad actors every bit as evil as the defenders paint them. They just do not have that sort of power and it's laughable for media companies, news outlets, or other defenders of a bad movie/show to claim that they do. There's really only one involved entity who would have that sort of reach, that sort of power, and the sort of resources required to try to sway review scores and that's the one who had the millions of dollars at their disposal to make it in the first place.




> I think this is a product of the characters metagaming the same way the audience is. The character knows which story threads are dramatic and which are jokes, and responds accordingly. It shouldn't happen, but it does. The writers aren't rooting for evil, they just expect the audience not to care for meta reasons.


If the characters don't care and the writers don't even expect the audience to care, the natural end result is that the audience doesn't care. And that's not something that can be switched on and off situationally. Many people are genre savvy enough to assume that as a main character, Boorman is going to come out of the situation just fine, but it's still nice to suspend disbelief and see where the plot goes. A show can't present a situation where the danger he's in is taken completely non-seriously and then expect the audience to take it seriously when a different character is in danger... especially in a case like this where both characters are facing the exact same danger.

The meta explanation also doesn't apply to the bonereavers themselves. These are, at most generous, utterly ruthless barbarians and raiders who attack travelers unprovoked, boil the flesh off their victim's skulls, and wear the skulls as masks. Good people who are merely misunderstood like the show tries to present them at the end, they certainly aren't.

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## BloodSquirrel

> Youtube's ecosystem rewards dramatic takes to stand out from the crowd, so necessarily they skew towards the extremes. Drinker originally gave standard reviews, then he did a review while honestly hung over, it was popular, so he said 'screw it, I'll run with this. The persona is a gimmick, but it works. His takes are hit and miss, nothing special. Better than RLM but that's a very low bar.


That's not true at all. The "Angry Reviewer" thing was much more prevalent 10-15 years ago when The Nostalgia Critic was at the height of his popularity, screaming about bat credit cards. The people making it big nowadays are much more measured, the personas are toned way down, and the videos are much more analytical. Youtube rewards _opinionated_ takes, because there's not much point in watching a video where the person doesn't have much to say, but the dramatics have been streamlined down to the point where they're a much more naturalistic part of the presentation. The "cutaway to the reviewer mugging for the camera and overacting" trope has pretty much entirely gone away, there's more focus on things that reviewers like (_The Drinker Recommends_) instead of just the things that they hate, and clever wordplay in insulting things has replaced blunt vulgarity.

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## Maelstrom

> Critical Drinker is someone who has movie insights but feels he needs to do something to make his videos stand out from every other movie review show on YouTube. He really is quite insightful, it's just a shame that he's nearly doing a knock-off impersonation of Red Letter Media's Harry Plinkett reviews. It does work for him though, as he is quite successful on the platform.


I watched the one on Willow, chuckled a bit, agreed a bit, and then things started to get erm, repetitive.  Watched a couple more just out of S&Gs and came to the conclusion that he's a bit of a borken record and moved on.

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## GloatingSwine

> -Influence by corporations and money on professional reviewers.


Outside of the videogame industry, this isn't really a thing. (The videogame review industry is too captured by specialist advertising and the need for "access".)

Professional reviewers have something to lose by not giving an honest review, their income and livelihood.

Anonymous internet ****heads don't even have a way to demonstrate that they've _seen_ the thing they're reviewing. Anonymous reviews outside of Steam where you can tell that the person reviewing has definitely interacted with the thing they are reviewing and how much are useless.

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## BloodSquirrel

> Professional reviewers have something to lose by not giving an honest review, their income and livelihood.


Can you name a single time that a movie critic was fired for giving a bad movie a good review?

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## GloatingSwine

> Can you name a single time that a movie critic was fired for giving a bad movie a good review?


Can you point to a confirmed instance of a movie critic being shown to be _paid for a specific opinion_ and not losing their credibility?

Movie critics can give bad movies good reviews because they happen to like them (eg. Mark Kermode likes the Minions movies because he thinks they are childish humour done well). More commonly, movie critics give good reviews to good movies that excessively online people are angry about for the usual excessively online reasons.

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## animorte

> Can you point to a confirmed instance of a movie critic being shown to be _paid for a specific opinion_ and not losing their credibility?


Perhaps unpopular opinion as he became extremely renowned From my perspective, Roger Ebert himself got a little carried away in his status and started putting together nonsense with his senility.

This doesnt confirm the specific claim you are requesting, but everything out there is a conspiracy by this point, right?  :Small Confused:

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## GloatingSwine

"I disagreed with Roger Ebert when he was old and cranky" isn't quite the same as "professional reviewers are tainted by undue corporate influence" is it?

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## BloodSquirrel

> Can you point to a confirmed instance of a movie critic being shown to be _paid for a specific opinion_ and not losing their credibility?


You're deflecting.

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## animorte

> "I disagreed with Roger Ebert when he was old and cranky" isn't quite the same as "professional reviewers are tainted by undue corporate influence" is it?


Correct, we dont know if he was or not. Correlation does not imply causality. My only problem with that statement is that it doesnt remove the implications either.

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## GloatingSwine

> You're deflecting.


No, I'm pointing out that "giving a good review to a bad movie" is not actually something that you should expect a critic to get fired for _unless they were paid to do so dishonestly_, because maybe they actually liked it and their review is their opinion and explanation thereof (which is what a review is), which was the implication that started this diversion that "corporate influence and money" was overriding the honest opinions of professional critics.




> My only problem with that statement is that it doesnt remove the implications either.


What "implications"? 

The idea that professional reviewers are all giving bought and paid for reviews (again, outside of videogames which are a special case due to the close correlation between specialist publication and specialist advertising) is spurious nonsense.

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## BloodSquirrel

> Perhaps unpopular opinion as he became extremely renowned From my perspective, Roger Ebert himself got a little carried away in his status and started putting together nonsense with his senility.
> 
> This doesnt confirm the specific claim you are requesting, but everything out there is a conspiracy by this point, right?


Roger Ebert is a bad example regardless. He was the product of a completely different media landscape, one in which there were no alternatives to print movie critics and where he could be enough of a star to get his own television show. He might have actually faced consequences for losing his credibility back in his heyday, but 2022 there isn't a single "professional" movie critic who has become a household name. If you asked a random person to name just a single current-day non-internet movie reviewer I doubt that 1 in 100 of them could do it. 

The closet might be Richard Roeper, but that's only really because he took  Gene Siskel's spot in _Siskel and Ebert_ after Siskel died.

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## BloodSquirrel

> No, I'm pointing out that "giving a good review to a bad movie" is not actually something that you should expect a critic to get fired for _unless they were paid to do so dishonestly_, because maybe they actually liked it and their review is their opinion and explanation thereof (which is what a review is), which was the implication that started this diversion that "corporate influence and money" was overriding the honest opinions of professional critics.


You made a very specific positive claim. I asked you to give me an example of it happening. You deflected onto something else entirely.

So, unless you can give me a compelling reason that, say, CNN would fire a movie critic for being dishonest when their standards for integrity are so low that the person they assigned to provide coverage on the sitting New York governor was _his brother_, then I'm going to go ahead and disregard the notion as highly implausible.

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## animorte

> The idea that professional reviewers are all giving bought and paid for reviews (again, outside of videogames which are a special case due to the close correlation between specialist publication and specialist advertising) is spurious nonsense.





> If you asked a random person to name just a single current-day non-internet movie reviewer I doubt that 1 in 100 of them could do it.


There is a reason consumers dont trust reviews, for the inference that they _might_ be incentivized. Many corporations (making games, movies, series, clothes, drinks, bookshelves, cars, what-have-you) are known to do this.

Influencers, social media presence, are usually more trusted because they developed a fan base more organically. Of course, that doesnt make either of them immune to suspicion.




> which was the implication that started this diversion that "corporate influence and money" was overriding the honest opinions of professional critics.


I think, for the most part, that they do give honest reviews. However, its not unreasonable to think that corporate influence _might_ actually exist.

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## BloodSquirrel

> I think, for the most part, that they do give honest reviews. However, its not unreasonable to think that corporate influence _might_ actually exist.


Might exist?

I was once listening to a podcast, and the host pointed out that they were watching a mainstream media outlet and saw a commercial for (IIRC) Lockheed Martin- a company which sells aircraft to the US military, not the kind of consumer products that an audience member could conceivably buy.

His point was that it was pretty obvious that they weren't paying the network for airtime to advertise to their audience. They were paying them to provide coverage that would influence their audience to support political policies that would ensure that the US Military kept spending a lot of money on their products.

The idea that a corporation has to write a check to an individual journalist in order to buy favorable coverage is laughably naive. So is the idea that a media outlet would hire somebody who would need to be externally influenced in order to promote the opinions that they want. If you want someone to give MCU movies overly positive reviews, then you don't hire a hard-hitting, difficult-to-please critic, you hire a fanboy who is prone to groupthink.

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## animorte

> Might exist?


Yes, youve made my point.

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## GloatingSwine

> You made a very specific positive claim. I asked you to give me an example of it happening. You deflected onto something else entirely.


No, you asked me for an example of _something actually quite different_ happening.

Because as I have repeatedly pointed out, a critic giving a bad movie a good review is _not inherently dishonest_, because they might have honestly enjoyed it and _that is what a review is_. (And I even gave you an example of _that_ happening[/i].)




> Influencers, social media presence, are usually more trusted because they developed a fan base more organically. Of course, that doesnt make either of them immune to suspicion.


I would suggest that they are more trusted because their audience has an unexamined parasocial relationship with them, but they are less trust_worthy_ because buying them is _far_ cheaper. (terrible-yet-ubiquitous **** Raid Shadow Legends only pays $4k for an ad read, that's the price of your favourite youtuber's honesty)

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## TheSummoner

> Anonymous internet ****heads don't even have a way to demonstrate that they've _seen_ the thing they're reviewing. Anonymous reviews outside of Steam where you can tell that the person reviewing has definitely interacted with the thing they are reviewing and how much are useless.


I have no doubt that there are "anonymous internet ****heads" out there doing exactly that. How significant do you think they are in terms of affecting the overall rating? Willow currently has a bit over 2,500 user reviews. It would take 25 of those "anonymous internet ****heads" to sway the overall score even 1%. It is currently sitting at 34%. I don't personally consider the difference between 34% and 35% all that significant and a larger sway would require even more people who didn't watch the thing they're reviewing yet still care enough to leave a review. Now in the case of Willow, we're talking about something that's frankly a bit niche without wider recognition, but the same applies to more well-known properties. To use a more high-profile flop as an example, Rings of Power has nearly 37,500 user reviews. Did 375 "anonymous internet ****heads" not watch the show but care enough to leave a bad review anyways to bring it down from 39% to 38%? Like I said when ranting about review bombing before, the idea is utterly laughable.

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## BloodSquirrel

> No, you asked me for an example of _something actually quite different_ happening.





> Professional reviewers have something to lose by not giving an honest review, their income and livelihood.


This is the claim that you made. I asked you to provide and example of this precise scenario playing out.




> Because as I have repeatedly pointed out, a critic giving a bad movie a good review is _not inherently dishonest_, because they might have honestly enjoyed it and _that is what a review is_. (And I even gave you an example of _that_ happening[/i].)


This is a non-sequitur. I am providing positive evidence for how and why corporate journalism would tend toward corruption. You are proposing an irrelevant hypothetical in response.




> I would suggest that they are more trusted because their audience has an unexamined parasocial relationship with them, but they are less trust_worthy_ because buying them is _far_ cheaper. (terrible-yet-ubiquitous **** Raid Shadow Legends only pays $4k for an ad read, that's the price of your favourite youtuber's honesty)


Again, you're making an unsubstantiated claim. None of my favorite Youtubers are advertising for Raid Shadow Legends, and even if they were, they aren't also reviewing Raid Shadow Legends. And why would Raid's parent company even be interested in paying them to tell me that most of the biggest media releases in 2022 were kind of ass? 

Your position here is horribly untenable. If Youtube critics were regularly dishonest, their fans would find out pretty quickly. The advantage of listening to a handful of high-profile critics instead of relying on aggregate review scores from dozens of low-profile critics is that you can figure out which ones align with your tastes and put your trust in them. But that only works if they remain honest- if a critic fails as a reliable predictor of whether I'll enjoy a product or not, I'm going to stop listening to them. 

A critic with a dedicated audience in accountable in a way that critic 53 of 149 who contributed to a movie's "Fresh" rating on RT just isn't. 

And this isn't even getting into the difference between reviews and criticism. A successful Youtube critic needs to do more than just provide consumer advice; a large part of their audience is there to see them break down media and say interesting things about it, not just to get a 3/5 rating for it. I'm not really worried that Joseph Anderson is being paid to advertise Elden Ring because his video on it goes far above and beyond anything like a paid advertisement. It's a clear passion project, to the point where I'll watch it despite not even liking the Souls genre and having no intent to ever play the game because his analysis is deep enough to qualify as content on its own merits. What corporate interest is being served by a 2+ hour video comparing The Snyder cut of Justice League to the theatrical cut? Or making a review of the 1990 TMNT movie in 2022?

The difference between Youtube critics and corporate media critics isn't just a quantitative difference in trustworthiness. They're providing a qualitatively different product that can't be produced by someone who isn't deeply engaged with the material they're working with.

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## theNater

> Did 375 "anonymous internet ****heads" not watch the show but care enough to leave a bad review anyways to bring it down from 39% to 38%? Like I said when ranting about review bombing before, the idea is utterly laughable.


I'm not sure why you think this is so ridiculous.  Remember, there's the entire internet to draw from.  Over 120,000 people voted to name a boat "Boaty McBoatface".  Getting a few thousand people to do one thing isn't really hard.

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## BloodSquirrel

> I'm not sure why you think this is so ridiculous.  Remember, there's the entire internet to draw from.  Over 120,000 people voted to name a boat "Boaty McBoatface".  Getting a few thousand people to do one thing isn't really hard.


Out of the entire internet, only 37,500 people left reviews in the first place. 

"Boaty McBoatface" got 33% of the vote. On the one hand, the fact that it won the poll reflects the problem with not having any kind of run-off vote. On the other hand, the fact that it got such a sizable minority reflects the fact that a lot of people thought it was funny. If somebody was coming here to claim that the poll wasn't reflective of public opinion, I would challenge that claim.

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## t209

So any comparison with Claremont novels, especially if the new series might cause people to look at them in different perspective like what Sequel Saga did for EU and prequel trilogy?

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## GloatingSwine

> This is the claim that you made. I asked you to provide and example of this precise scenario playing out.


No, you didn't.

This is your post. This is what you asked for:




> Can you name a single time that a movie critic was fired for giving a bad movie a good review?


Trying to pretend that's not what you asked isn't going to fly because I can go back and read it whenever I want.

"giving a bad movie a good review" is not the same as "not giving an honest review", because a critic could honestly enjoy a bad movie and so give it a good review.

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## TheSummoner

> I'm not sure why you think this is so ridiculous.  Remember, there's the entire internet to draw from.  Over 120,000 people voted to name a boat "Boaty McBoatface".  Getting a few thousand people to do one thing isn't really hard.


It's ridiculous because the argument is that they both simultaneously do not care enough to actually watch the show while also caring enough to leave a review and also that those people represent a significant enough portion of the total reviews to sway the overall score in a meaningful way when put up against the people who did watch it and left a review reflecting their honest opinion.

The entire argument is just something that the corporations involved came up with to delegitimize criticism and far too many people buy it.

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## theNater

> It's ridiculous because the argument is that they both simultaneously do not care enough to actually watch the show while also caring enough to leave a review...


Which is very easy, given that it takes minutes to leave a review and hours to watch the show.




> ...and also that those people represent a significant enough portion of the total reviews to sway the overall score in a meaningful way when put up against the people who did watch it and left a review reflecting their honest opinion.


Which is, again, very easy because of how small the number of people who leave reviews is relative to the reach of the internet.

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## BloodSquirrel

> Trying to pretend that's not what you asked isn't going to fly because I can go back and read it whenever I want.


If you want to leave those two quotes next to each other and let them speak for themselves, then by all means let's do so. I'm more than confident enough in what they say to leave it as the final word.




> It's ridiculous because the argument is that they both simultaneously do not care enough to actually watch the show while also caring enough to leave a review and also that those people represent a significant enough portion of the total reviews to sway the overall score in a meaningful way when put up against the people who did watch it and left a review reflecting their honest opinion.


It's not a ridiculous notion in and of itself, but it seems to always come with a giant helping of special pleading where people leaving dishonest reviews only ever flows in one direction and only ever explains the reviews they don't like. Amazon was caught red-handed producing staged "Superfan" reactions in promotional materials, but of course our working assumption should be that there must be tons of people who haven't watched the show giving it negative reviews but that Amazon would never do anything like using sock puppet accounts to add fake positive reviews.

There's just no evidence that "fake reviews" are systematically resulting in lower user review scores. Media that ends up being definitively successful never seems to have much trouble getting good user reviews. The fact that media which isn't even financially successful can often get positive user review scores even demonstrates the opposite- that the inherent bias is toward positive review scores, and that it seems to take pre-existing investment in a franchise in order to get people who don't like something motivated enough to leave negative reviews.

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## The Patterner

> I know a lot of people don't think Scotland is real, but that's not a fake accent.


I know Scotlands real, I've been several times.
Someone wrote that he used to make less angry post until one time when he was hungover and people liked it. So it might be that it's that fake anger/hangover that grinds my gears rather than the accent.

So I'll apologize for that, the accent is most likely real, but inflated/mixed with someting else that I find unpalatable.




> _Ooor_ he's a guy who makes videos on the internet talking about his opinions about movies and shows. Agree with what he says or don't, but it seems like a reach to say he's somehow unsure of himself or putting on a persona and the thing about his accent is particularly baffling given that a glance shows he's been doing his thing pretty regularly for about four and a half years and his voice and style seem fairly consistent.


My critique follows the same vein his does, overly agressive and sweeping judgements, or as you would say:
_Ooor he's a guy who makes videos on the internet talking about his opinions about movies and shows. Agree with what he says or don't..._

_Ooor I'm a guy who makes comments on the internet talking about my opinions about youtube critics. Agree with what I say or don't..._




> Whoever said that a take where Kit would pivot towards darkness would be more interesting was right.


That was me, and yes, that would have worked a lot better than what it seems they are doing now.

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## Telonius

> My "(just-barely-teen) Disney fan with tentative interest in fantasy" seems to like it so far. (She loved the original). She's declared that Boorman's name is actually Bruno. For Elora: "Duh, she's already casting magic without knowing it."


Update from the intended audience: she's been enjoying the whole thing, and thinks the mudmander was adorable. She checked in with me today to see if the last episode was out, and wants to watch it tonight.

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