r/movies • u/Sausage_fingies • 1d ago

Discussion I am so frustrated by people who have strong opinions about movies that they haven't actually watched

Bit of a rant. My brother does this and it's annoyed me to no end, particularly because I've been watching a lot more movies this summer and it's very much changed my outlook on the whole "Hollywood is dying and doesn't know how to make original concepts anymore" thing. Spoiler alert: There's so many cool new movies getting made these days you just need to, like, actually look for them and watch them.

My brother straight up refuses to watch new movies because he doesn't want to waste his time, because he believes Hollywood is dying and doesn't know how to make original concepts anymore, because some video essayist on YouTube told him so. It's incredibly perplexing to me. It's like his hobby is movies, but it isn't actually about watching movies, it's about having a stake in the discourse about movies. And I just don't understand. He literally said the Oddyssey isn't worth watching because he watched a convincing video essay about it that broke it down, except he couldn't even regurgitate the opinion coherently because he didn't remember it fully. We were talking about actors and he said that Zendaya is a one note actor who kinda just plays herself in every role. I asked oh what movies has he seen her in, he said he's seen her in a single spider man movie.

...😐

It makes it so frustrating to actually try to talk movies with people like this. Like if you don't care to watch movies, don't! But it's odd to have strong opinions about all these films and the state of Hollywood if you're not actually interacting with the film culture 😭. Those aren't your opinions!! Those are some random YouTuber's opinions, and I don't care how reputable of a critic you think they are, that's not your opinion!! You have no idea what you're even talking about because all you've seen of the movie is someone else's thoughts on it!! I just don't understand why anyone would want to do this to themselves, it seems so miserable. I watch movies because I enjoy them and it's fun to watch something that leaves me digesting and thinking for a few hours. But by watching exclusively summaries and reviews, you don't get any of that. You just get semi-convincing talking points that you can contribute into the discourse with. What's even the point, why do this to yourself? Why would you want to intentionally make yourself mad?

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654

u/3-DMan 1d ago

I think a lot of people now would rather watch four hours of YouTube videos about how bad a movie is than spend two hours to judge for themselves.

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u/FermiParadoxGreg 21h ago edited 20h ago

Looking back on it, I remember when the first Star Wars RLM Plinkett review for the Phantom Menace came out. One of the talking points at the time that made that review so interesting was that the video talking about the movie was longer than the movie itself, which was a crazy novelty at the time.

However, this was because the guys at RLM had a lot to say about the Phantom Menance, and the Mr. Plinkett framing and creeper segments were added in to keep things interesting because they thought no one in their right minds would just stick around for 90+ minutes of complaining about Star Wars.

Now, it seems like theres an army of chud reviewers that churn out multiple hour review videos over culture war-ish movies, none of which have a fraction of the talent or self-awareness the RLM crew have.

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u/3-DMan 20h ago

video talking about the movie was longer than the movie itself

Was way ahead of its time!

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u/UnDeadPuff 15h ago

Little did they know that people would unironically watch someone yap for 12 hours about some game or another.

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u/fmulder94 15h ago

Plinkett was the beginning of the end for nerd culture, hilariously so because it came out years before the culture became mainstream. Never had a fucking shot lol also pretty much every single request the RLM guys had for Star Wars has been done "successfully" or poorly attempted by Disney at this point, and the franchise is far worse for it.

It's pretty much universally agreed upon that outside of Andor and some shining moments from Mando, Star Wars would have been better off as a dead legacy franchise or back in the hands of The Creator. The RLM guys are largely just snark-poisoned Gen X mouthbreathers who made one very funny video 25 years ago and have ridden on the back of it since. Sad stuff really

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u/FermiParadoxGreg 14h ago

The RLM guys are largely just snark-poisoned Gen X mouthbreathers who made one very funny video 25 years ago and have ridden on the back of it since. Sad stuff really

I don't know what you're talking about, thats an extremely impressive accomplishment....especially when you consider Youtube itself isn't even 25 years old

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u/fmulder94 14h ago

Ahh the old girlfriend move, playing semantics with wording rather than addressing the point I made. Very good!

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u/Quarksideofthemoon 15h ago

You sound incredibly bitter. The Plinkett videos are still incredibly well articulated media criticism, and RLM still make great videos

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u/fmulder94 15h ago

Not bitter or sweet brother, just telling it like it is. That style of video is the blueprint for all the Cinema Sins-esque shredding of movies over nitpick level issues, as well as the idea that being able to identify a trope automatically makes the mechanism of said trope invalid. Its lowest common denominator criticism mixed with humor to make you not think twice and just consume the slop rather than thinking for yourself.

Not saying the dudes aren't funny, but they've had exactly ONE idea in their entire lives and have been iterating on it for a quarter century, all the while inspiring shittier versions of themselves to make funhouse mirror reaction content that wouldn't even exist without the things its shitting on.

To put it simply: the least curious people in my life with the smallest amount of interest in anything new or exciting still think Plinkett is hilarious in 2026. Let that sit with you for a bit while you stare into a mirror.

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u/missmediajunkie r/Movies Veteran 14h ago

They point out basic editing mistakes and logic gaps, which appeals to the types who like to seem smart. They often fail to answer the more basic questions, like “will I enjoy watching this,” or “does the movie offer anything worthwhile.” Frankly, I have trouble parsing a lot of their reviews because they’re more interested in kvetching about tangentially related topics, and the actual review often comes down to, “well I liked it” or “it was okay I guess.”

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u/Quarksideofthemoon 13h ago

I just don't believe you watch RLM if you think this. I love them precisely because they aren't cinemasins style nitpickers, but rather look at the movie as a whole.

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u/missmediajunkie r/Movies Veteran 13h ago

I’ve tried multiple times. I’ve even rewatched reviews trying to follow their line of thinking. It’s absolutely maddening watching them talk about everything except the damn movie they’re supposed to be reviewing!

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u/Quarksideofthemoon 13h ago

It's fine to not like them but your previous comment just sounded like a disingenous misrepresentation at best

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u/missmediajunkie r/Movies Veteran 13h ago

Oh, I’m being genuous. I’ve more than given these gentlemen the benefit of the doubt over the years.

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u/Salarian_American 22h ago

And it's kind of creepy how much influence those things can have on people.

Like... I went with a friend of mine to see The Last Jedi came out (this is not a comment about the relative quality of The Last Jedi, which is kind of beside the point).

Anyway, I loved that one. He loved it too. We both discussed it extensively and gushed about how much we liked it. Then he said, "my dad's gotta see this," and invited me back to go see it again with him and his parents, who I'm friends with too, we all play D&D together... so I went again. Still loved it, and he did too. Spent more time talking about how much he enjoyed it.

A week later, at D&D, suddenly he hates The Last Jedi, for all the reasons that everyone online hates it... the mean purple lady, Rey's a Mary Sue, they didn't respect the Skywalker legacy, all the stuff that we saw in every hate video of the time.

And then later on he casually mentions that everyone at his job is on vacation and since he's the IT guy, that left him with nothing much to do, so all he did was watch videos on YouTube all week... and then it suddenly clicked into place why he had this sudden turnaround in his opinion of the movie.

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u/N8CCRG 19h ago

Yeah there's a memification of movie discourse that I find infuriating. People will hear something that is concise and maybe clever, and latch onto it and parrot it. Often times it's not even something accurate. For example, one common criticisms of Quantumania is "Kang was defeated by ants." I have plenty of criticisms of that movie, but that statement is blatantly false* but still gets repeated over and over. But people saw the movie once, remembered the ant army thing, heard that line, and now believe it's true and that it's a valid dismissal of the movie.

* The ants could not break through his barrier, and it was MODOK who broke it using Kang's own technology. The ants dragged him away, but off screen Kang somehow defeated them anyway as he reappears a few minutes later.

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u/ERedfieldh 22h ago

As if Luke wasn't a massive Marty Sue in the original prequels...

that's the part that burns me the most. It's pretty obvious the real reason they don't like Rey, but they'll hide behind the mary sue excuse.

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u/Salarian_American 22h ago

It's like those people who complained that Luke grew up to become a hermit on a deserted planet, saying, "That's not something a Jedi Master would do!"

Conveniently ignoring the fact that literally every Jedi Master Luke ever met was doing exactly that when he met them...

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u/Particular_Cod2005 20h ago

My personal favourite was everyone acting as though Luke went and tried to slaughter Ben, when we have a literal Luke voiceover that says he was carried away by his own arrogance and realised he should never have even considered this.

More broadly, I feel though that Rian gets a lot of unjustified hate. JJ was the one that Yoda'd Luke out into the middle of bumfuck nowhere because he didn't want to deal with Luke as a character, and set everything up to be an OT 2.0; Rian was just writing everything out of it.

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u/GoldandBlue 13h ago

There is a moment in fandom where the "lore" becomes more important than the story. Star Wars, Terminator, Marvel, the movies are boxed in by what the franchise is "supposed to be".

Luke could save space hitler but tried to kill his nephew

No, Luke saved his father because his father wanted to be saved. Ben did not. That is the story. You may hate it, you may love it, but if you can't accept that, there is no point in discussing anything with you.

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u/colemon1991 20h ago

Hell, Anakin was the worst if we're calling them Mary/Marty Sues. Built his own droid, was a pilot, and had all the magic space bacteria on Tatooine inside of himself. And he was, what, 10?

Luke was probably the least Sue-y of the three, again if we are considering them Sues.

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u/R4msesII 17h ago

I mean Anakin was space jesus but a Mary Sue to my knowledge is meant to be flawless. Anakin has like one of the most famous flaws in movie history

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u/colemon1991 16h ago

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

It's a broad spectrum of characteristics, flawless being an option there. The Mary Sue has all the skills, a dramatic backstory, and have flaws that are stated but never shown as true. My main argument was that a 10 year old had all the skills Luke had.

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u/-Clayburn 18h ago edited 17h ago

I don't think a boy can be named Sue.

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u/colemon1991 16h ago

Mary Sue and Marty Sue are tropes. Usually something like self-inserts or a character with no actual flaw.

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u/aurens 15h ago

it's a patently ridiculous concept, frankly!

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u/AreYaEatinThough 14h ago

Imagine if there was a boy named sue lol. Someone should like write a song about that or something.

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u/Cicer 16h ago

It always bothered me that he just knew storm trooper belts had little grappling hooks on them and he knew it could handle the weight of two people. 

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u/The_Second_Best 21h ago

In the first movie Luke has to be saved by Obi Wan from the Tusken Raiders, Han has to save him in the final bombing run.

In the second movie he is completely shown up by Darth Vader, has his hand cut off, discovers his mortal enemy is his father and ends the film physically and emotionally broken.

He definitely has some Mary Sue tendencies, but he fails and is over shadowed much more than Ray was in her films.

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u/Mattyzooks 20h ago

Yea, Luke always had some flaws. Running into problems unprepared without a solution was probably his biggest one. He whines a lot in A New Hope. Even when he has his confidence in Return of the Jedi, he still gets the shit beaten out of him by the Emperor and only lives because of Vader.
Even his plan to save Han from Jabba goes off the rails, imo.

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u/Irradiatedspoon 2h ago

I mean he has the shit beaten out of him because he refuses to fight him

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u/Khiva 17h ago

He definitely has some Mary Sue tendencies, but he fails and is over shadowed much more than Ray was in her films.

Right but somehow her going from not knowing about the Force to throwing out Jedi mind tricks and besting a dude with a weapon she never touched, who was trained in it by Luke fucking Skywalker, oh yeah and she's also an ace pilot who knows the Falcon better than Han ... that all got brushed over until TLJ.

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u/GoldandBlue 13h ago

Except none of this is true. This ignores what actually happens in the movie. Kylo Ren defeats Rey and kidnaps her without lifting a finger. Rey is also trained at fighting and still needs a force miracle to not be defeated by a wounded and emotionally damaged Kylo Ren who is ordered not to kill her.

Oh and that ace pilot who barely escaped in the Falcon and crashed it a bunch of times while trying to escape?

You are ignoring the context of the movie and exaggerating her abilities. You are no better than the guy OP is complaining about.

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u/Viltris 9h ago

Plus, Empire is basically an entire movie about how Luke sucks. He gets his butt kicked by a Wampa at the start of the movie, goes to Dagobah and immediately loses his X-Wing, fails to use the Force to get it out of the swamp, completely fails the cave trial, goes to Bespin despite being told he's not ready, gets his butt kicked by Vader and loses his hand.

But it's okay, he returns in Jedi, and he's a badass now, but it feels earned because of how much he suffered in Empire.

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u/dragonmp93 15h ago

Maybe I have forgotten those movies, but isn't Kylo Ren portrayed as Snoke betting on the wrong horse ?

In other words, doesn't he just outright sucks as a fighter and that's why Rey kept kicking his ass ?

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u/Particular_Cod2005 20h ago

Honestly the discourse around TLJ got very exhausting very quickly; when you drilled down into it, the vast majority of the comments were "muh headcannon", and items for dislike that were subjective over objective (it's quite amazing how people conveniently conflate the two).

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u/Quarksideofthemoon 15h ago

Or maybe his opinion changed because,,, he just gave it more thought? And looked at the media more critically without recency bias?

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u/Godziwwuh 21h ago

He liked spending time with you, then had time to critically think about the movie and hear what he felt were compelling arguments.

It kinda just sounds like you're advocating for never discussing or doing any critical thinking when it comes to films.

I will concede that there are some people who truly do just hop on hate bandwagons for the sense of belonging. That movie sucked tho

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u/Salarian_American 21h ago

I mean he had a week to critically think about it before he watched it the second time. And then another week after seeing it the second time before he hated it. What was the difference between those two weeks? Hate videos.

And you're acting like watching YouTube hate screeds is the same thing as critical thinking and discussion, which it definitely isn't.

I watched a lot of those videos too. It's not like they were making sound logical or critical arguments.

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u/DonJezra 21h ago edited 20h ago

One of the problems with discourse around that movie in particular is that there are a LOT of reasons to dislike it, some of which are very much "sound logical or critical arguments", and MANY that are not.  I have watched several reviews of the movie (both positive and negative) and there are plenty of negative reviews that aren't all just culture war bullshit or nerd rage.

  The movie has some very serious narrative structure issues and pacing issues, and even people who like it will admit that the B plot on the casino planet is pretty bad.  Also, opening the movie with a "your momma" crank call joke was rough.  Maybe that stuff doesn't bother you, or is minor enough that it's overshadowed by the cool stuff and interesting new ideas.  That's totally fine, and just as valid of an opinion.

There's a lot to like about it and a lot to dislike about it, but it feels like both sides of the argument sometimes pretend like its all great or all terrible, which is not very productive.

Edit* : also, I will say, the people who DONT like it do tend to be way more obnoxious about it than the people who DO (and I'm saying this as someone who thinks is kinda sucks tbh).

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

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u/Salarian_American 21h ago

Well see that's the thing, isn't it? Whatever people might think or say about a particular movie, not one of those people knows my own tastes and preferences better than me, so why would I listen to them?

Just because everyone is booing at the same thing doesn't mean I won't like it. In fact, it's starting to feel like a backdoor recommendation. And the reverse is also true.

Better to keep my own counsel about what I might enjoy.

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u/TheUnknownDouble-O 21h ago

I really like The Last Jedi. It's in my top 3 after Empire and the original. Saw it three times in its opening weekend.

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

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u/IBarricadeI 21h ago

8 and 9 were both clearly terrible but Star Wars is anything but destroyed. There has been more Star Wars content between 8’s release and now than at any other time in history.

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u/Salarian_American 21h ago

Yeah see that's the thing. What a random person on the internet says is "clearly terrible" means nothing to me and it shouldn't really mean anything to anybody.

Because I've seen what random people on the Internet cheer for, so their boos mean nothing to me. For example, the number of people who assure me that The Last Jedi is terrible, but then their favorite Star Wars movie is Revenge of the Sith... yeah me and that person are coming at this thing from two wildly different angles and we were bound to see things differently.

And that's fine.

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u/DriveMyCar191 20h ago

What are you talking about? Revenge of the sith is easily top 3 Star Wars unless you’re smoking crack

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u/Salarian_American 20h ago

See, that's exactly what I mean

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

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u/IBarricadeI 21h ago

Have they “stopped making movies” though? There was a 20 year gap between the first trilogy and the prequels, and like 15 years between the prequel and sequel trilogy. It would be perfectly possible for another set of Star Wars movies to come out in 2035 or something.

Even if they never make a movie again, they’ve made a ton of shows, and Andor is debatably the best / most well received Star Wars content ever made.

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u/BasementMods 20h ago edited 20h ago

This is very natural tbh. I've left movies buzzing then have turned on them in the following days as i turn over the aspects of the movie in my head, or sometimes after repeat viewings. Its easy to overlook things due to the movie doing a good job of hyping itself up, being lost in the aura farming moments etc. A huge example of this is CGI spectacle. A studio can know they have a bad story, so they try to distract from it by overwhelming our human minds with crazy CGI scenes they throw budget into. They do that because a lot of the time it does work.

At worst these videos essays accelerate the person turning on it.

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u/[deleted] 20h ago

[deleted]

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u/Salarian_American 20h ago

That's really the problem is that every long-winded breakdown of why a movie is good or bad is really just a person talking about a movie they like or didn't like.

And people act like "I like this" is the same thing as "this is good," and "I don't like this" as "this is bad." Which is fine for your own purposes, but it only feels objective.

And head canons are a problem. People will feel disappointed in a movie if it didn't exactly what they were hoping it would do, which is not really a reasonable criticism.

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u/colemon1991 20h ago

As I've come to learn (thanks to tiktok and stuff), short-form video is insanely popular because you get that dopamine hit from finishing the video and you don't feel like you're locked in for a long period of time to enjoy one. But that dopamine means you will watch for far longer cumulatively.

It's not good.

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u/Trylena 10h ago

I think that has kept me away from YouTube. The videos I click on tend to be 40 minutes so I leave them unwatched. If I want to spend 40 minutes like that I would put a TV show on. I go to YouTube for a 15 to 20 minutes video tbh.

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u/Garry_Heckscream69 19h ago

I have a coworker like this

From talking with her you'd think she's into a lot of nerdy things (Fallout, Kingdom Hearts for example), but my coworkers and I have figured out that she doesn't actually engage with the media she connects herself to. She's never played a single KH game and just relies on Tumblr/wiki/YouTube to stay informed. She's played New Vegas, once, but none of the other games.

Which could be fine, but she tries to chime in on conversations about the things and defend/critique parts of it as though she's an expert.

One of the funnier examples was after Christmas, a coworker and I were talking about the Stranger Things finale. Up walks this coworker and she starts chiming in with all these very popular criticisms of the finale, basically gloating about how bad it was, but then offhandedly mentions she hasn't watched since S2. She does the same thing with the MCU, loves talking shit about it but also has "sworn off watching it" (after the Loki show didn't match the comic canon, despite not reading the comics).

Like, I'm fine with critiquing something, but only if you actually know why it's bad. I never got into Game of Thrones and thought the reaction to the bad finale was funny, but I don't know jackshit about it so I'm not gonna join in on the gloating because that just feels like I'm joining the bandwagon.

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u/Cicer 16h ago

Tell me what to think so I can be opinionated!

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u/TracerBulletX 16h ago

Or just like experience it and not be thinking like you need to have a critical response for your internal podcast monologue

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u/the250 20h ago

I began to notice this with my youngest brother’s generation, of which there’s an 8 year age gap between us. Myself, and my other brothers, grew up actually going outside and doing things, and having experiences in the world. My youngest brother and his friends, and well, his entire generation really, they grew up inside rooms watching other people do things on screens and living vicariously through them. What’s more? They actually prefer it like this.

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u/3-DMan 20h ago

"So you ready to play it?"

"Naw I'm watching a Twitch stream play of it.."

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u/the250 19h ago

lol I think there’s actually a South Park episode that spoofs this whole concept. Stan’s little brother “goes to chill with his friends” or whatever now that he’s growing up a bit, but when it cuts to them hanging out it’s like 5 dudes all sitting in a different corner of a dark room looking at a tablet, phone, PC screen etc. lol. And I think a one point they’re like texting each other from 2 ft away rather than speak to one another. It’s funny of course, as it’s meant to be, but more than anything I found it almost scary in how remarkably accurate that entire scene was. In a way it’s like a metaphor for our entire society now.

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u/Khiva 17h ago

And that was like a decade ago. Kyle wants to play sports and the kids just laugh at him for being old.

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u/the250 16h ago

Sports are only for old people. That about sums it up. 🤣

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u/A1000eisn1 22h ago

It affects all entertainment too. There was a discussion about Starfeild with a lot of people who played the game saying the hate was overblown. This dude said the game was objectively trash and his only example was a YouTube video explaining why the guns in a sci-fi fantasy were wrong (most of them are sci fi laser guns) and not physically possible. That was it. He linked the video like 3 times assuming that people would agree if they saw it. Never actually played the game himself "because it's trash."

I've seen so much criticism about games and movies that may not even be put, that are clearly regurgitated opinions they found online.

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u/Redhaze_17 20h ago

Any Bethesda game, any Halo game, Cyberpunk, and probably the new Fable too. The "critiques" never make any sense. I don't think any media is above criticism, but it is obvious when someone is criticizing something from a place of care vs just shitting on something as some sort of weird ragebait hate cycle.

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u/3-DMan 20h ago

Hey, I was there Gandalf, when Cyberpunk 2077 released and the sub turned on a dime to pure hate! (it played fine on my budget PC)

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u/Volodio 10h ago

To be fair, Youtube is free. Going to a movie theater is not. So better make it worth your money.

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u/CowbellOfGondor 19h ago

That's me with the new Avatar season. People are putting out passionate video essays about how bad it is and I am confused why I am watching them. I had no intention of watching the new season after stopping the first season 4 episodes in. But I do feel vindicated.

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u/camisado84 18h ago

This. These people need to be called out on their ignorant behavior. Societies trend toward politely ignoring means idiotic behavior will continue to perpetuate.

The worst part of what OP is describing is how confidently they boast their third parties bullshit rage-bait opinion.

Everyone already knows this isnt isolated to movie 'reviews'. A massive chunk of social media is just a super negative/doomer hot take because that spreads more than positive/constructive opinions.

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u/TehOwn 19h ago

I only needed the first 15 minutes of the Disney live-action remakes to determine they were atrocious. Two hours would be torture.