The Nostalgia Critic |OT| He Remembers It So You Don't Have To

Watching the Princess Diaries reviews, he said that he wants to review the second one as Nostalgia Critic as it was absolutely "so bad it's good". It kept him laughing all the way through in how inept it was.
 
I was wondering why it got a sequel to begin with.

And finally got to watch NC's worst Christmas special. Holy shit my stomach is still hurting from the laughter.

dat dead animation. dat soulless voice acting. wooooow
 
Oh man that review was great. Especially liked the return to form.
I always enjoy when he lets the sketches take a break once in awhile.
Aside from that I need to get a hold of this christmas special, so bad it's good from everything he has shown.
 
Oh man that review was great. Especially liked the return to form.
I always enjoy when he lets the sketches take a break once in awhile.
Aside from that I need to get a hold of this christmas special, so bad it's good from everything he has shown.

I thought stuff like this is uploaded in youtube
 
I gotta admit, his work ethic is great.
Full movie reviews with the videos edited & all.

I remember the behind the scenes videos of the Nintendo Nerd & how hard & long it takes to write, film & edit a video.
 
I gotta admit, his work ethic is great.
Full movie reviews with the videos edited & all.

I remember the behind the scenes videos of the Nintendo Nerd & how hard & long it takes to write, film & edit a video.

Doug's biggest issue is that his production quality has barely improved over five years.

His skits aren't well written and the editing is something most high schoolers could pull off. His sound quality is all over the place and it's evident nobody knows how to white balance a camera yet in his crew.

I guess what I'm saying is, NC videos don't look that hard to crank out.
 
Doug's biggest issue is that his production quality has barely improved over five years.

His skits aren't well written and the editing is something most high schoolers could pull off. His sound quality is all over the place and it's evident nobody knows how to white balance a camera yet in his crew.

I guess what I'm saying is, NC videos don't look that hard to crank out.

this post is awful
 
Doug's biggest issue is that his production quality has barely improved over five years.

His skits aren't well written and the editing is something most high schoolers could pull off. His sound quality is all over the place and it's evident nobody knows how to white balance a camera yet in his crew.

I guess what I'm saying is, NC videos don't look that hard to crank out.

was the last NC review you watched Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat?
 
was the last NC review you watched Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat?

Nope. My friends and I actually watched a few of his newer reviews on a pal's PS3 this past week. Jurassic Park, Turbo, and Sailor Moon. Doug's self-congratulating approach and backpedaling on retiring the critic have made his shtick kind of tiresome. It's a shame Demo Reel was so bad.

I think the most notable "talking internet head" videos in need of a step-up are Brad's, though. He's got a great demeanor and generally funnier quips than Doug's screaming and such, but he's limited to some really rough fidelity.

As for James's Nerd videos, the per capita quality is usually higher than Doug's. He's also simultaneously producing a feature that looks much, much better than any of Doug's longer-formatted movies.
 
But Turbo wasn't an NC review and Sailor Moon is one of his bad ones. I'd argue JP is a good review. The fact that you handpicked certain episodes (which are admittedly bad) is telling.

What is this self-congratulating nonsense you're talking about? The "backpedaling" made sense when they weren't making enough. Hell, at least it's only every other week.

Just because his videos doesn't show any gratuitous effects doesn't mean you can plop something like that with a simple camera. The fact that most of the review is focused on the movie itself shouldn't really imply "a huge backdrop of a set", and it's not a hands-on medium unlike video games.

As for the script - well, at the very least he isn't forcing any poop jokes or swearing every moment (I swear, I never understood how he is "a swearing, toilet joke machine" when Nerd does it more). Hell, I never understood why the two are being compared at all.

And why is per capita suddenly important?
 
What is this self-congratulating nonsense you're talking about?

the importance of the nostalgia critic and the notion that it's a 'character' and not just doug in a simple costume is what was really grating. then doug puts himself in there as a god character to interact with his self-insert mary-sue.

the best part of demo reel, apart from when it starts to fall apart (rob 'as a dinosaur' slowly turning around being the highlight), was the lost in translation episode. it would have been great if the series took a turn where donny was unknowingly living good parodies of movies while making poor ones on his own. the problem, i think is that doug thought the parodies were actually funny skits and they really weren't. the show was apparently redone so many times i think doug should have found time to plot out several episodes over the course of a couple of months and then see if something could grow organically from there. it took a dark turn during the lost in translation episode that seemed to retcon the early episodes. it really felt like the show was flying by the seat of its pants by the time a weird conspiracy is introduced making the doug character the most important one of all.
 
the importance of the nostalgia critic and the notion that it's a 'character' and not just doug in a simple costume is what was really grating. then doug puts himself in there as a god character to interact with his self-insert mary-sue.

And why are people taking that seriously? It's a sketch for crying out loud.
 
wat

where did you get that

the part in 'the review must go on' where the nostalgia critic is talking to doug about how important the nostalgia critic is. and well the whole thing about doug talking to various people about whether or not he should bring the nostalgia critic back.

instead of like, not doing that, just saying hey yeah i fucked up and canceling demo reel and restarting nostalgia critic. i mean come on, in to boldly flee, he literally made nostalgia critic the center of the universe.
 
the part in 'the review must go on' where the nostalgia critic is talking to doug about how important the nostalgia critic is. and well the whole thing about doug talking to various people about whether or not he should bring the nostalgia critic back.

instead of like, not doing that, just saying hey yeah i fucked up and canceling demo reel and restarting nostalgia critic. i mean come on, in to boldly flee, he literally made nostalgia critic the center of the universe.

You're thinking way too much of a joke and a sketch.
 

I do have to disagree with his "Prince Caspian" review. I hated the fact that they made the battle, too much of a copy of other stories/movies. The battle, of course did take place in the books, but seemed much smaller than what I saw in the movie.

Ehh, couldn't have been worse than the silly cloud monster from "Dawn Treader" movie (I HATED that one...) Rather glad they didn't do 'Silver Chair'.. as I much preferred both the book version, and that campy BBC two parter
 
Well the Prince Caspian book wasn't that good, and if they had done a direct adaptation, the movie would have been 45 minutes long.

Dawn Treader was a travesty though. They took an absolutely fantastic high seas adventure book, tacked on a villain that wasn't in the book and the only thing they got right was Eustace as a Dragon.
 
I do have to disagree with his "Prince Caspian" review. I hated the fact that they made the battle, too much of a copy of other stories/movies. The battle, of course did take place in the books, but seemed much smaller than what I saw in the movie.

Ehh, couldn't have been worse than the silly cloud monster from "Dawn Treader" movie (I HATED that one...) Rather glad they didn't do 'Silver Chair'.. as I much preferred both the book version, and that campy BBC two parter

They announced Silver Chair a few months ago and announced the scriptwriter (Life of Pi) just a few weeks back
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=112091

It's not being made by Walden Media though, thank God!
 
I wish they'd skip The Silver Chair and just do The Last Battle and Magicians Nephew. It's probably too late to do LB with the old cast, but they might be able to pull it off. And MN would give us another film with Tilda Swinton doing her thing.

Not to mention the visuals a SFX company would be able to tackle in those films would be amazing to see.
 
the part in 'the review must go on' where the nostalgia critic is talking to doug about how important the nostalgia critic is. and well the whole thing about doug talking to various people about whether or not he should bring the nostalgia critic back.

instead of like, not doing that, just saying hey yeah i fucked up and canceling demo reel and restarting nostalgia critic. i mean come on, in to boldly flee, he literally made nostalgia critic the center of the universe.

Yeah, honestly. After that ending and the self congratulating return... how can you not scoff a bit? He really built his ego up with that multi-hour, half-year production, and that first opening skit on Demo Reel was so painfully poor... it said a great deal about his talents as an editor and creative writer if that's what he tried to hang his hat on, so to speak.

He's not the worst or anything, but some decisions of his warrant criticism. Doug clearly takes his work very seriously and the notion that people who are negative are just "over thinking it" is defensive drivel. If Doug makes these 30-40 minute pieces every other week and puts in aimless skits with weak production, then that's what he's made. You can't argue that they're not important to the review and absolve them from negative subjectivity: that's the material he's making and putting out there as part of his reviews.

He's run out of material and his craft is lacking. If you're happy with watching him review "nostalgic" films like Man of Steel wherein he does that tired Zod impression and screams for 45 minutes, then more power to you.
 
In a nutshell.

In everyone's defense, it was a really bad show. Try and laugh at the first skit here.

I really want to believe he can do better because he seems so dedicated. He just hasn't proven it, yet.

this was later retconned into the creator purposefully making poor versions of hollywood films because something something hollywood made his mom depressed or kill herself or something i can't remember.

the explanation aside (something tragic happened to me so now i'm an asshole for no reason?) i thought the lost in translation episode was a stronger idea with some decent chemistry with him and egoraptor (i think that was the other guy). but then he introduces this weird conspiracy stuff and the show goes from being really silly to somewhat grounded from scene to scene. i think doug clearly wanted to make his own show, but didn't want to lose the people who watched him for lampooning movies (or at least maybe that's how he perceived that audience).

i think the 'reviews' are generally well-done for as consistent as they are. phelan and especially lindsay are better. lindsay can actually review something and offer insight from a background she's studied in. doug is still in the habit of saying 'you feel' every time he tries to be serious (like disneycember). don't tell me what i feel. i'll know what i feel when i feel it.
 
Yeah, honestly. After that ending and the self congratulating return... how can you not scoff a bit? He really built his ego up with that multi-hour, half-year production, and that first opening skit on Demo Reel was so painfully poor... it said a great deal about his talents as an editor and creative writer if that's what he tried to hang his hat on, so to speak.

He's not the worst or anything, but some decisions of his warrant criticism. Doug clearly takes his work very seriously and the notion that people who are negative are just "over thinking it" is defensive drivel. If Doug makes these 30-40 minute pieces every other week and puts in aimless skits with weak production, then that's what he's made. You can't argue that they're not important to the review and absolve them from negative subjectivity: that's the material he's making and putting out there as part of his reviews.

He's run out of material and his craft is lacking. If you're happy with watching him review "nostalgic" films like Man of Steel wherein he does that tired Zod impression and screams for 45 minutes, then more power to you.

As always you seem to focus more on his obviously bad reviews when he has produced better ones since the "return". Stuff like The Last Airbender and The Christmas Tree to name a few. You make it sound like the skits take up too much time or a bulk of review when at most they are a few seconds long.

Yes Demo Reel is bad. Everyone knows that. Why are people pointing it out as though he still does it? It's as bad as people reminding him of his terrible Let's Play. Yes it happened, yes it was bad, yes he admits it. So he moved on.

Why are people making a big deal on the To Boldly Flee ending as though it's a reflection on how a person thinks? It's just a story. Or are you people thinking that Nerd is the "savior of all video games because he stopped a ROB invasion"?

Yes he has bad works. But that's it - he produced bad works that warrant criticism. No, that doesn't mean the person is an egotist because the work has that. Honestly, it's almost as bad as thinking Kamiya has ego issues because of the way he respond to troll posts or how Sakurai is full of himself because he made Smash as is.

How can he run out of material when there's still more to do? You're only relying on "Man of Steel" as your example even though it was an exemption and not the rule. It is not the first time he does that.

And yes, I am going to harp you on "production values" (wouldn't surprise me, your posts on other topics always go for the "this has high production values therefore is superior" like in that PSA thread as well as going all defensive). You mentioned audio and video when in fact his shots have been clear and his audio has been audible. The bulk of the review is still focused on the movie thus the lack of need for extravagant purposes. You only argue towards the technical side when in fact they aren't the focus. Want bad audio from NC? Watch his Warriors of Virtue - now that has bad audio which he admits due to poor equipment.

You always pull that "before these people get defensive" as though you are baiting from your argument and want to sound that you have an upper ground immediately. I keep seeing that from you (especially in PSA).
 
What is this "PSA thread" you keep referring to in your attacks on me? PlayStation All-Stars?

I'm criticising more than production value. I've specifically cited many recent works of Doug's and pointed out vanity issues he seems to carry (other posters on this very page agree with me and have cited other examples). I've also taken issue with his basic abilities as a writer in my posts. I think that he shouldn't bother with skits if he can't pull them off.

He could do better and I'd like to see him achieve that.

If you can't see what NC means to Doug after watching To Boldly Flee and claim "it's just a story," I'd ask you just why filmmakers like him tell stories in the first place. It was clearly a farewell and meant a great deal to him.
 
As always you seem to focus more on his obviously bad reviews when he has produced better ones since the "return". Stuff like The Last Airbender and The Christmas Tree to name a few. You make it sound like the skits take up too much time or a bulk of review when at most they are a few seconds long.

Yes Demo Reel is bad. Everyone knows that. Why are people pointing it out as though he still does it? It's as bad as people reminding him of his terrible Let's Play. Yes it happened, yes it was bad, yes he admits it. So he moved on.

Why are people making a big deal on the To Boldly Flee ending as though it's a reflection on how a person thinks? It's just a story. Or are you people thinking that Nerd is the "savior of all video games because he stopped a ROB invasion"?

i don't know what rolfe did with the rob invasion thing, but more than have the critic 'character' as the center of the universe, there's a prolonged segment in which the critic is interacting with doug walker, making doug some sort of god character. it continues in the review must go on for a total of what, 30-35 minutes on this sort of thing? at that point it's not a sketch. it's longer than a standard episode of television.
 
i don't know what rolfe did with the rob invasion thing, but more than have the critic 'character' as the center of the universe, there's a prolonged segment in which the critic is interacting with doug walker, making doug some sort of god character. it continues in the review must go on for a total of what, 30-35 minutes on this sort of thing? at that point it's not a sketch. it's longer than a standard episode of television.

Precisely. Heck, To Boldly Flee was three hours.

It's an intimate exploration of his material and his relationship with it. I doubt he'd argue against that, as the goal of those scenes was to convey to his audience why he wanted to end (and then resurrect) the Nostalgia Critic.
 
the importance of the nostalgia critic and the notion that it's a 'character' and not just doug in a simple costume is what was really grating. then doug puts himself in there as a god character to interact with his self-insert mary-sue.

I'm kind of new to Nostalgia Critic, but NC is a character. It was originally based on Doug, but the over-the-top rants are fake, and he even mentioned in one episode that his "top ten" lists are total fiction. They're influenced by Doug's personal opinion, but they're more based on his idea of "what would NC do in this situation?" (an idea which has grown in the years he's been doing the character) and some degree of blatant pandering to the audience. I'm sure that's true of some of his complaints and even things he neglects to comment on in his NC reviews. They're not the complaints that Doug himself wants to make, they're the ones that NC would make. Nostalgia Critic clearly reads from a script. That's one of the things that I noticed, that I think I prefer Doug's raw and real opinions.

Even his character of "Doug Walker, the creator of NC", is a character in and of itself by this point ("Doug" became a freaking platypus-bunny in NC's Airbender review), even though "Doug" was based even more heavily on himself. Maybe it's pretentious, but it's true.

Doug seems to have admitted (from what I've seen) that he's a borderline workaholic and that he can be difficult to get along with sometimes, but in some of the stuff I've seen (mostly Nostalgia Chick, I think), he's portrayed as a self-important power-mad dictator, and he himself plays along with that portrayal. It's basically just art imitating life. I think it works. But I think Doug's biggest problem is that his work is too bloated in general. He's got the Peter Jackson disease. It amplifies problems.

Precisely. Heck, To Boldly Flee was three hours.

It's an intimate exploration of his material and his relationship with it. I doubt he'd argue against that, as the goal of those scenes was to convey to his audience why he wanted to end (and then resurrect) the Nostalgia Critic.
Except for the part where it's really not what happened. I think everyone knows that Demo Reel failed and Doug had to eat crow and bring NC back from the dead if he wanted the money to keep on flowing, but Doug wrote some fiction about how Demo Reel was really NC in disguise all along, and how he's just an outlet for Doug's messed-up psyche. As art imitating life, I thought it was neat, but if you can't accept that it's fiction and assume that Doug is trying to rewrite history, then I can get why you'd be annoyed.
 
I'm kind of new to Nostalgia Critic, but NC is a character. It was originally based on Doug, but the over-the-top rants are fake, and he even mentioned in one episode that his "top ten" lists are total fiction. They're influenced by Doug's personal opinion, but they're more based on his idea of "what would NC do in this situation?" (an idea which has grown in the years he's been doing the character) and some degree of blatant pandering to the audience. I'm sure that's true of some of his complaints and even things he neglects to comment on in his NC reviews. They're not the complaints that Doug himself wants to make, they're the ones that NC would make. Nostalgia Critic clearly reads from a script. That's one of the things that I noticed, that I think I prefer Doug's raw and real opinions.

Even his character of "Doug Walker, the creator of NC", is a character in and of itself by this point ("Doug" became a freaking platypus-bunny in NC's Airbender review), even though "Doug" was based even more heavily on himself. Maybe it's pretentious, but it's true.

Doug seems to have admitted (from what I've seen) that he's a borderline workaholic and that he can be difficult to get along with sometimes, but in some of the stuff I've seen (mostly Nostalgia Chick, I think), he's portrayed as a self-important power-mad dictator, and he himself plays along with that portrayal. It's basically just art imitating life. I think it works. But I think Doug's biggest problem is that his work is too bloated in general. He's got the Peter Jackson disease. It amplifies problems.


Except for the part where it's really not what happened. I think everyone knows that Demo Reel failed and Doug had to eat crow and bring NC back from the dead if he wanted the money to keep on flowing, but Doug wrote some fiction about how Demo Reel was really NC in disguise all along, and how he's just an outlet for Doug's messed-up psyche. As art imitating life, I thought it was neat, but if you can't accept that it's fiction and assume that Doug is trying to rewrite history, then I can get why you'd be annoyed.

I can't tell if you're defending all of this or getting sick of it. Surely it can't be both?
 
They announced Silver Chair a few months ago and announced the scriptwriter (Life of Pi) just a few weeks back
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=112091

It's not being made by Walden Media though, thank God!

Interesting. Even though I may have sounded harsh on the BBC version, I still liked that one.. so I look forward to it, but with caution.

Well the Prince Caspian book wasn't that good, and if they had done a direct adaptation, the movie would have been 45 minutes long.

Dawn Treader was a travesty though. They took an absolutely fantastic high seas adventure book, tacked on a villain that wasn't in the book and the only thing they got right was Eustace as a Dragon.

I was hoping, and thinking both would have been combined.. instead we got a longer somewhat good, not too bad Prince Caspian.. and then.. that OTHER movie! ugh, I think I walked out and yelled at a friend outside the theater after the villain reveal.

Also, regarding Last Battle or Magician's Nephew.. I truly wish!
 
I can't tell if you're defending all of this or getting sick of it. Surely it can't be both?

By "all of this" are you referring to Nostalgia Critic, or the current discussion?

Because I initially disliked NC, but I've been giving it some more chances, and I enjoyed Doug's VLogs, and I'm enjoying Disneycember, and even NC seems to be growing on me, although Nostalgia Chick still seems better (which isn't a slight against the Critic).

As for the current discussion, I think that Ani and Kal are on to something, although I don't think I find it as annoying as they do.
 
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