I'm thinking of making a series dedicated to talking about youtuber made shows & movies! Let me know in the comments if you got any good name suggestions for the series, make sure you like the good ones so I see em!
The worst thing about Doug’s version of The Wall is that he used “Bring the Boys back home”; a song about Roger Waters losing his father in WW2 when he was a child, to complain about the movie runtime.
@dezessete tragically, there are people who support him unironically. I say "tragically" because many of them got doxxed and without going into detail, they seem like they're the kind of people who would be easily manipulated.
Fun fact about To Boldly Flee - they told Phelous to make the special effects intentionally bad, and then when people were like "the special effects in this are so bad??" then they were like "Yeah the person we hired to do the special effects didn't do a good job lol" instead of just saying the effects were intended to be bad as a throwback to old sci-fi effects.
I feel it should be noted that all the CGI in these "films" were done by amateurs FOR FREE, so the fact that they don't look like pure trash is a testament to the dedication of the CG artists. Turns out they weren't appreciated and were pushed to make it all look better than it turned out while being (wrongly) assured they'd be financially compensated. The artists were badmouthed, bullied, and never paid. Bold-face lied to. I feel bad for them.
I like the irony of Boldy Flee's ending. Doug sacrifices himself to save everyone, then in real life he threw everyone under the bus to save his own sorry ass.
@@felathar1985 to be honest, criticising well is hard, and it is something that the nostalgia critic never did. People only watched it for the jokes, not for legitimate critique.
The reason why most of the other characters in these anniversary movies all act the same is because Doug deliberately wrote them to be that way. Most of the other critics came to him with ideas for how their characters are supposed to act, but doug would reject them in favor of his own style of comedy, basically turning them all into other versions of The Critic character.
Linkara had to write an entire CHARACTER ARC into his own show to rerail character!Linkara from his Jerkass behavior. It ended up as one of the better arcs of the show, but still.
"The Channel Awesome trilogy and the Nostalgia Critic in general wasn’t that great as we remembered" is my favorite subgenre of TH-cam videos for the past three years.
@Tucker Johnson It`s so interesting how some things age so bad and others kind of stay as good as they used to be. Early TH-cam Content aged absolutely terribily and I can`t understand how I ever found it as enjoyable as I did. And not only because of the awful Quality (altough it doesn`t help to have the worst light and sound imaginable) but because it really didn`t work as a concept. I tried to watch the Nostalgia Critic again lately after the whole Crisis with the Whistleblowers but I really can`t get back into it again. They are somehow stuck in the worst time for this kind of content and just cant develop into something worthwile. They sure should`ve ended Channel Awesome in like 2015 so we`d at least have nostalgic Memories.
@@frybodelgado1482 AVGN aged beautifully, (for the most part) Its less that early youtube content aged bad and more like alot of early youtube stuff was a product of its time. People just knew less about what they were doing back then.
@@ijones36 Hmmm... I guess it is a matter of taste how you look about the persistent Quality of Art. Yes, the Nerd aged WAY better but he`s more the exeption then the rule I think. Why this is I donr know. Maybe because he seems to have always put effort in his content? Or that he seems genuinly goodhearted? I personally dont like how most content aged and ESPECIALLY the Nostalgia critic makes me feel strange to re-watch! Not only does it seem immature but it also wasn`t nearly as clever as i remembered it to be. And this whole thing with "change the channel"? It makes me feel a bit sick to see all these Cameos and the "Group" Agenda they pushed knowing what we know now. It`s like listening to Michael Jacksons Music or trying to laugh at the Cosby show... one CAN try and forget the context of something but killing the author isn`t always easy I find. Nothing like that with the Nerd tough. He survived everything and came out on top. Funny enough the overall production quality isn`t at all what bothers me about early TH-cam Content. Its more the messages and the effort they put in it.
@@frybodelgado1482 The general consensus with James from what I've seen online is that unlike Doug, James's content actually evolved. He developed his film-making skills to something competent while Doug's content seems to be stuck in stasis. So IMO James's older stuff can probably be seen as decent even back then in part because one can see it as the start of his development of his work over time. Doug's content meanwhile hasn't really evolved and his work now is just a mirror to his work back then.
@@stevenguitink5947 I remember watching a Video about this called "why People hate the NG and love AVGN" or so. And yeah, there`s no doubt who of the two is the superiour Filmmaker when it comes to almost every aspect of producing a movie worthwile (exept maybe acting but even that is debatable). Doug peaked around 2012 and since then his stuff never really got better which is really sad. But I dont think thats the only reason the Nerd is preferred by almost everyone. I believe the behind-the-scene stuff is almost as important as the actual comtent. And it`s the simple truth that Channel Awesome was and remains an awful company treating its producers horrible. While I never heard anything bad about Rolfe. This sure plays a huge part in how they are perceived.
Actually he write himself as someone like jesus but without the miracles that Jesus made. He literally made an universe of his own creation with lots of youtubers involved in this.
"They all act like the same guy" That's . . . not wrong. Apparently Doug wanted people who were very much like his character, and when filming he specifically wanted them to be like said character too in terms of delivery and behavior.
Lol yeah I heard that too. I think maybe in the "Change the Channel" document they say that if they wanted to do it their own way, he'd get them to do 2 takes, one where they did it their way and one where they acted like Doug and he'd just use the second take every time.
It really sucks, because I loved everyone for being like... individuals. Linkara, Todd in Shadows, Lindsay Ellis, Paw, Pushing up Roses, Nash... fortunately you can watch most of these people online still.
Kickassia was alright from the fan service perspective. It was pretty cool seeing all these creators together and there was a really unique and great sense of community on the old TGWTG website. I think that was pretty much the whole point of that movie. But yeah, as a film it doesn't hold up, I don't think it was even intended to. The thing is the other movies came out when the site was slowly deteriorating and the community was a bit fractured so the novelty factor was gone and they're just kinda sad.
Yeah the idea of kickassia is actually pretty funny, A bunch of online creators taking over a micro nation is a cool idea for a film. But the final product is terrible, You'd think someone who's whole career is centred around talking about movies, would actually have some knowledge on how to make a movie.
For the uninitiated, Ma-Ti is a character from the cartoon series Captain Planet, and the joke is that everyone else got cool elemental powers and he got "heart" and Internet nerds traded the "heart is useless" joke back and forth from 2001 to 2010.
@@gracekim25 for some reason doug thinks having heart or love is a bad character trait (he literally trashes any tv show or movie that its plot is centered around heart and love) because being an edgelord is good cinema dude actually thinks comedy is only tragic or from pain...then praises kids films with non tragic humor in it... as mentioned by the narrator, doug thinks being a dick, crude, and belittling people is funny just on its own without understanding context the joke should be that the dick and belittling boss gets their karma in a comedic sense either in the second act or third act....he just says "oh its funny cause im a edgelord..so therefore in your face haters" did no one he worked with not warm him or advised him on how comedy works?
Well, heart is useless because you can't control your... ermm... I forgot there's a villains and heroes that control Bloods and count 'em as elemental thing. I think Ma-Tie could be a bloodbender like Scarlet from Mortal Kombat...
@FALL-LAFF-7477 Not that kinda heart. It's more like "spirit" type of heart. He has empathic powers, telepathy, can communicate & control animals, etc. He's basically a psychic crossed with a beast master.
Kickassia strikes me as a product of its time, because watching it, you can tell there's something genuine about it; it's just a bunch of content creators coming together to make a film, not take it too seriously, and just have a fun time. And then they made two more which makes you go "Oh....oh I thought that was just, y'know, a one time thing for fun...or something.....ok."
@@stingerjohnny9951 I will say there are a few times Doug has made me really laugh and even had some profound insights, but I try to watch him now and its just cringe.
@@craigusselman546 I’ll give him a tiny bit of credit, some of his editorials, while often pretentious, did sometimes make very interesting points, like his video on comparing modern cartoons to those of his youth and admitting the modern ones in his opinion were better. I really enjoyed that video and remembered wondering why he didn’t make more videos like that.
a critic doesn't need to know how to do something in order to critique it (but humility is not often their strong suit either >_> ). There are only a few critics that do their corresponding art and it shows. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation has been around as much if not more than Doug doing reviews and games (reviews > games) [But Yahtzee does have some level of charisma and humility (and maturity) that Doug doesn't have].
The reason the creators all feel the same in these "specials" is that Doug writes and directs them all the same. They all just become different flavors of the NC.
It’s not even that it’s that he writes the others like he has no idea what their gimmick is, why people watch the various reviewers. “Oh he’s ‘angry joe’ so his scene will be him screaming.” That kind of thing.
@@braedenmclean5304 I'll never understand why Film Brain was written as an annoying sycophantic puppy in the specials. While I found his rhythm of speech annoying in his own videos, the tone of the content itself contained straightforward opinions and felt like he wasn't playing a character at all. His reactions were often exaggerated, but that was more to emphasise how he felt about what he was reviewing as opposed to creating a character. It was the total opposite of how Doug portrayed him, as though he'd never watched a film brain review before. And I think it was similar for most of the other producers. Linkara and Phelous were the ones he got closest and I suspect that Phelous was going to deliver his lines the way he wanted regardless of how Doug directed him.
Yeah I still laugh at the absurdity of: 'he looks pretty tiny' 'that's because he's far away stupid' 'well he's about to get a lot closer!' Kickassia is the only one I can still get a tiny bit nostalgic about.
I still think the first two movies are pretty funny but I can see how someone who hasn't watched all the previous episodes of Nostalgia Critic wouldn't get many of the jokes.
I still kinda like the joke where they march towards the house with the intent on invasion, the ruler guy steps out to greet them, and as they get closer he just pulls out a pistol and they all panic and run away at this sudden escalation they weren't prepared for. It's a good bit because unlike most of Dougs jokes, it just lands and he doesn't over explain it or congratulate himself.
I watched all of To Boldly Flee with some friends and we were just absolutely flabbergasted at the display of ego under a veneer of parody. It deserves a psychological study.
We need some in-depth video essays on Doug Walker's egomania and how it led to his downfall. It's got the making of a Greek tragedy. Except this is Doug we're talking about, so it's more of a comedy for us lmao
That study would need a lot of funding, since watching that abomination would require paying people hundreds of dollars just to endure the cringe injuries
I tried to watch it and I’m not a movie writer but I could immediately tell the team up teleport scene felt like a finale moment😅 and like it really should have been super long. I couldn’t continue watching it or it would kill me …like watching it was sapping my energy 😬
I like nostalgia critic reviews, but when they dress up and start doing some kind of act, it's best kept in small doses. I can't imagine watching a feature length film's worth of it.
As a former channel awesome fan, videos dunking on Doug Walker are so cathartic to watch. Rewatching the channel awesome trilogy when keeping the "change the channel" allegations in the back of your mind somehow makes these movies more cringy and uncomfortable. I don't know how you survived over 7 hours of Doug Walker.
People involved with these tend to pronounce “To Boldly Flee” as if it were “Tiboutli Flea,” a parasitic insect from some fictitious place with a stupid-sounding name. Which seems appropriate.
There comes a time in the youth of every consumer of internet culture when they realise two things. 1. The Walkers are not nearly as funny as they think they are. 2. The Walkers are not nearly as funny as you thought they were when you were 17. I used to watch The Nostalgia Critic back in the day, and I now feel like I’ve left a cult. I’m glad I got out when I did.
I was 15 when Kickassia came out and started to get really bored of him by that time. His reviews were just getting longer with more filler and sketches. I actually thought the first two episodes of Kickassia were alright, but the remaining three were really boring.
The best way to understand Doug Walker is that when he quit his job to do the Nostalgia Critic full time, he filmed himself going to work, while playing the 2001 music, and then pulled open his shirt in the lunch room revealing a shirt that said 'I quit' before running off with his brother because of what he was doing.
@@lamlelamatsiliza8550 Nope. It's not a joke. It used to be up on the TGWTG site. It might still be. But it was on the original site for all to see, because everything is a stunt to him.
@@shawnconway6009 ok thanks I actually found that was true by some else making a video about him and when I watched it a though how I feel sorry for the employees for looking at "that" also why couldn't he just going to the office and just resign from his work instead doing that shit that would hurt a normal persons self respect
doug LOVES singing in these videos for some reason. his review of Les Miserables is...so much. pretty bold of him to assume people want to buy his poorly made and performed parody songs.
Which is kinda funny because Doug had a guy in his troupe, Kyle Kallgren, who legit had the chops and could sing really well. But then again, someone being better than him would hurt Doug's ego.
A 7 months later comment. He said once in one of his real opinion videos, that the singing is because of his mother. She was a music teacher or something like that.
These "movies" feel like the movies we made in Film Camp when I was in grade school.... They're hilarious to the people in them/ part of the production team, but really cringey to everyone else.
@@icecreamhero2375 Especially when it's more than one movie of completely cringey crap, or when it's the premise of an entire bad, messy schlocky "comedy" movie. Cough "Suburban Knights" Cough. Sorry, slight cough there.
@@icecreamhero2375 I agree. Same here. I watched ALL of Dog Walker's Dogshit movies, and I thought they were good. Including The Wall. I don't know what was wrong with me. I used to think Doog was fun and funny to watch, back in 2008. When I saw his review for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a movie I sort of liked as a kid, even though I wasn't born when the movie came out, but seeing it on tv as a kid, is what made me kind of like it, even if it had almost nothing to do with Mario at all, it's at least something, and a little interesting. So one day, I searched for reviews of the Super Mario Bros movie, and saw Doug's review. I saw it, and I wanted to see more reviews of his stuff. This was 2008, when I was 15. This was, at the time, me thinking I'd discovered a new and hilarious youtuber. But, as recently I realized, it was just a very long phase. An 11 year phase for me. And I realized the people I subscribed to, that worked with doug in his videos, are still ok, and the best content creators who used to be involved with CA, left the site a long time ago, and I started to become more distant and disinterested with doug and his work as the years went on. The best creators have left the site already, people like Todd In The Shadows, the Rap Critic, Angry Joe, Film Brain, Phelous, Linkara, Lindsay(I guess? I was never really a fan of hers, but it's whatever), Bennet The Sage(for the most part, if you liked seeing an alright anime reviewer), and I'm sure there's many others, but those are some of the ones I'm a fan of, that had left CA.But the people who'd done crossovers with Goud Walker, are still some of the best youtubers out there, like TeamFourStar, Little Kuriboh, Chris Stuckmann, even Jontron, and of course, the AVGN. Sorry, for the long ranting. Got carried away there. I do agree that the crappy costumes make more sense for a web series. Which is why AngryJoe makes it work as well as he does, with his friends, Other Joe, and Alex. Because it just seems like they're dressing up for fun, even when they're doing reviews. They don't always get the point, but when they do, I agree with them, and plus, Joe and his friends can act pretty well, for the most part, like Alex, and Other Joe. AJ himself, doesn't always stand out, acting-wise, I mean, but I honestly believe he's a good guy. Doesn't always make a good point, but that's not to say he never makes good points. But the crappy costumes do have a charm to them, and do make sense in context of the video, and Joe does seem to know what he's doing. Don't always agree, but he's still one of my favorites, and I think it's because I discovered his videos during his time with CA, and Blistered Thumbs, that I started to get into Doug Walker's videos at first. Along with other creators, like Spoony, Todd, the Rap Critic, Film Brain, etc., but as they slowly started to leave, over time, I just found myself just losing interest in doug and his character of the NC. I found myself just sticking to the individual videos people that Joe, Spoony, Todd, RC, Film Brain, made, and just stopped caring about the Nostalgia Critic. But now, I don't even watch Film Brain or Spoony(because I don't even know if Film Brain still makes videos), and what happened to Noah, is just tragic, the dude needs help, but he ain't getting it, and I feel like it's too late. Noah ain't coming back, which is all the more sad, because he had potential, but he's so far gone at this point. His wife left him, whenever he streams(which is sadly all he does now),he just bans people left and right. And those are all things I've heard about him. Never saw any streams from him. His videos were some of the best when CA was in it's prime. Like the Phantasmagoria 2 playthrough, his retrospective on FF8(even though I didn't agree with everything he said about it, the videos themselves were funny enough on their own, except for the whole, "gay, gay, sissy gay" joke about the theme song), it wasn't funny back then, still not funny now. But it sucks to see what happened to him. Being bipolar, being unable to let things go, holding grudges, it's a sad story of a sad man's life. His tweets are also implying he may be depressed too. I don't have Twitter myself. Wouldn't blame him if he was depressed though. Still feel bad for what happened to him though. But unfortunately, Noah, needed help, but refused to get it... sorry to go off topic again, and sorry for the super long rants. Meant to keep them short, got carried away.
Fun fact: The part of the The Wall review with all the CG creatures wasn’t made by Doug’s crew. It was a collaboration with a TH-camr named Fennah that has a made up universe for all of these characters on his own channel.
He also gets upset at the slightest, most minuscule amount of constructive criticism he receives on Twitter and will proceed to bash the person who gave it into agreeing with him. And he has a severe hate fetish for a small fish who is _definitely_ an allegory for abuse and drugs and not an abuse victim in it of itself- it likes to draw with crayons and literally displays no abusive behavior towards its ‘victims,’ of coooouuurse it’s not victim blaming. And if you disagree with him, you’ll get the most toxic online harassment of his as retaliation.
The thing is, I and everyone I've met that watched nostalgia critic, only did it when they were preteens. Did he ever actually have an adult viewership?
Usually, I'd feel bad about picking on what seemed like a fun small youtube friend passion project... But turned out Doug's kind of a shitty guy so it's all fair game.
to be fair he knows he fucked up but said what can he do best thing hes going to do is move on now and learn one of his twitter posts made back then 5-6 months back i belive
You know what was really BOLD? Killing off your flagship series, the main thing that bring in traffic to your website (they weren't on TH-cam at the time they were hosted on a different site) and not telling any of the other contributors that so they can prepare for the massive drop in views their videos were going get.
Yeah recently watched the Down the Rabbit Hole on the Change the Channel thing. I was barely a fan of his show and I much prefer the stuff the old creatirs are doing now.
From what I remember Doug got tired of doing the Nostalgia Critic and around that time started his own production company and studio. The idea was to kill off the character and then focus on his "comedy show" he created to replace the Nostalgia Critic. There was just one big problem: Nobody fucking watched that show. It's so forgettable and bland that I have a hard time remembering what it was called and I don't care enough to google it. Having "no choice" Doug then brought the character back because at the end of the day Nostalgia Critic was his main source of income. In short: He undid the ending of To Boldly Flee because money. I'm not bashing him for it, if I was in his shoes I would've done the same.
The thing that kills me is that the Nostalgia Critic wasn't a series that needed a big, grandiose goodbye. He was making fun of movies in front of a white wall. He could've just said; "Hey, we're trying this new project, so NC is gonna take a short break while we get our new studio set up."
@@seamusburke639 The problem is back in 2007-2012 TH-cam, it kinda was a big thing. People forget but during that time AVGN and NC ruled the internet and every content creator was trying to be them. Problem is Doug actively got tired of being the NC. So he tried Demo Reel. A horrible show yes, but one with some actual ideas not to mention personal vulnerabilities on display towards the end. It was finally something where Doug was acknowledging his horrible content was his way of coping with his midlife crisis. Had Doug continued with that kind of material, getting better over time, he could've become a decent artist eventually. But he didn't. His own self-doubt in combination with the rabid fanbase trying to pressure him into being NC again in combination with Maud essentially forcing him to or he would bankrupt Doug entirely (Doug doesn't own the NC, Maud does) led to Doug returning to NC, but bitter and angry towards himself and everyone. It's why he only gets pettier and pettier over the years. His insecurities and anger consumed him. And while AVGN actively evolved with the internet and constantly made an effort to be on par with the new generation of creators, NC is stuck in 2007-2012, as if the only way he can be happy is if he convinces himself that he's still beloved and everyone who disagrees with him is wrong. It's why he has such a hate boner for film directors that don't make what he specifically doesn't like, he's angry that they get second chances for stuff he doesn't like when he never got a second chance for stuff his fanbase hated (Demo Reel). At this point he's just a pathetic shell of a man clinging to his former fame.
Here are the many problems with that: - The studio he bought was useless, he didn't bother to check if it was soundproofed and was just an ordinary warehouse, thus was unsuitable for filming. So, he just used it as a makeshift office, and to store old costumes. A complete waste of money. - He sprung both the end of NC and the shift to Demo Reel on his audience with no warning whatsoever. Even if DR had been good (which it wasn't), it STILL would have failed, because the fans were still reeling from the end of NC and would react badly to anything designed to replace him, regardless of what it was. - What was stopping him from doing both? Seriously? There's no reason whatsoever why he couldn't have done both. He could have split his time between projects, only upload NC once or twice a month and then work on other ideas on the side, like many media personalities, musicians, and artists do. He just doesn't make good decisions or think things through at all. - Even during the first two episodes of DR, he lost his resolve and frantically began reshooting and rewriting the series. Not exactly the actions of someone who's finally doing what HE wants to do artistically, is it? Bottom line, Doug is incompetent in pretty much every sense of the word.
The fact that Doug states Daffy Duck is one of the "main inspirations" for his "comedy style" should tell you all you need to know about him and his sense of humor
@@davidlloyd2952 Daffy works in a very well animated setting and makes use of exaggerations that only look good in cartoony animation. It REALLY doesn't work in a live action setting as seen when Doug just looks like an overacting idiot instead of being funny.
@@takashinakamura2624 That's a perfect description of the guy. Took the words right out of my head. I always cringe thinking the same exact thought that you just mentioned! 'I always just assumed it's a personality trait of his that goes unchecked, like many others that "over-act" in real life. That being said, I think he might be on the spectrum.; don't quote me tho.
I thought Doug's """"review"""" of Hocus Pocus was one of the worst reviews he ever made in his series, it being a lazy parody of a movie I have never heard of, instead of the reviews we're used to from him. So it's pretty bold of him to do it AGAIN, but with Pink Floyd's The Wall instead.
Kickassia is the okayest film. It's a fair length, gets to the point, legitimately gets everyone in Arizona, illuminates the strange Molassia thing, and has some fun moments. Suburban Knights is empty and pointless. Nothing happens, it is pure boredom, no funny lines, no fun, terrible experience. To Boldly Flee is so bad it's interesting. A friend of mine once said it killed the angry reviewer, and I think he's right. At 3.5 hours, it's comically long yet has nothing of interest. It does have a few funny lines, but only like 1 or 2, rendering the whole film a total miserable slog. Over the last few years we've all come to learn how much Doug sucks. He was never really that funny, his content has aged like milk except for a few reviews, and no one respects him or associates with him. He's very sad.
Also, it's REALLY important to remember: These movies were NOT released as movies. They were released as episodic series cut up into like twenty-minute videos that would only get released I think one day at a time. So it's not like you had viewers actually sitting through a 3.5-hour long movie.
I remember watching them as they were released weekly on the site. They were roughly 20 - 30 minutes each. In that format it was really fun to watch as a fan, except for To Boldly Flee. Even in weekly chunks it dragged on for way too long.
There are a few minor defenses for these trainwrecks... one of them is the fact that they were originally released as episodes. Also, all the in universe references / movie references were what the fans wanted... for whatever reason there were a LOT of nerds back in circa 2010 that thought goofing on a famous scene from a good movie while wearing cheap Halloween costumes was the height of comedy. The fans ate this shit up at the time. I floated in some online "nerdy" circles back then, like Star Trek / Wars, MST3K, etc... and there was a decent amount of fan crossover. I never found him funny... just a lot of screeching and mugging for the camera... but he did have a pretty ridiculously large online following by the standards of 15 years ago.
Its good to have people, who do stuff like in the old days. Some people like 2008 TH-cam more, some doesn’t. Everyone has their own taste of humor, and if you dont like it, it doesn’t mean its bad. Doug is overall a nice dude and his videos appeal to a certain amount of people.
AND I feel that he greatly improved since circa 2018. Hes gone more away from that “dude shitting on movies” vibe and also talk about some good movies too. But I admit that different people have different tastes of humor.
This inspired me to go back to a Todd in the shadows video he did with Lindsay years ago just because I wanted to hear this exchange verbatim again “I got nothing against silly productions starring a bunch of non actors. I was in a couple of those. But we weren’t forced to be in those out of contractual obligation.” “Maybe you weren’t”
@@nunpho Todd goes "really?" and then they move on but yeah it's pretty yikes. It's from a 2015 video on Todd's channel, the From Justin To Kelly video they did together and she's still the Nostalgia Chick
wasn't there a scene from one of these "films" with lindsay ellis and someone else where walker brothers made them do an uncomfortable scene involving rape and both actors didn't want to do it but the Walkers made them do it anyway? also heard that they had no food or water on set during the film. *bold* move lol
Lindsay Ellis, same woman who hung out with Quinton Reviews and Chris-Chan pre-Christina. She's got a history along anyone involved with ThatGuyWithTheGlasses website... except for GuruLarry, dude's chill.
@@garyhall7867 I did until I got bored watching it. I still watch Phelios (however you're supposed to spell him) every now and then, granted he is of a lower energy and often unfunny.
Kind of bold of Doug to make fun of the room. As bad as the room is, its strangly lovable and entertaining. (especially after "Disaster Artist") but to boldly Flee... I couldn't even stomach to finish that one.
As far as I can tell, there have been two phases to Doug's Nostalgia Critic character. For the first several years, it was all about fun and comedy. He didn't have all these pretentions about being a high-minded film critic with artsy ideas. Back then, he was just a guy who enjoyed screaming into a camera about shitty old movies, and (at least from my recollection) he was actually funny then. At least for an audience of early tweens and kids. But more than being funny, it was just a lot more pure. His old videos, and also these movies and his clashes with the Angry Video Game Nerd, felt like they came from a person who just enjoyed goofing around and making silly videos with his buddies/coworkers. Of course they don't hold up as actual films, because they were never supposed to. They were only ever meant to be celebrations of a shared community of goofy people who like bashing crappy media and making people laugh. But around the point To Boldly Flee came around, and ever since then, Doug's grown a lot more pretentious about his craft. The earlier films he and the TGWTG crew had made together probably had gone to his head by that point. Over time, he started thinking he could make the jump to being an actual serious filmmaker with big ideas (*cough*Demo Reel*cough*). This is where all the self-indulgent pontification and the atrociously unfunny skits started coming from. It wasn't enough anymore for Doug to simply make his audience laugh, now he also had to make them "think", and "feel". The problem is, Doug himself, while he does have some insightful commentary from time to time, is no Roger Ebert as much as he would like to be. He's not a professional critic, he's not a storyteller, and he's CERTAINLY not a filmmaker. And even worse, BECAUSE he yearns to be taken more seriously, his comedy has also suffered tremendously as a result. Even if his older videos look sophomoric and cringe-edgy now, at least they were funny TO a sophomoric and cringe-edgy audience. Now, his jokes are all painfully bland and predictable. At least his earlier material was more bombastic and more energetic. Now it just feels like a uniquely terrible parody of SNL scripts. To be fair, it's not easy to make quality content when your boss (Mike Michaud) is an abusive prick who shackles you to a rigorous schedule where you have to churn out a video every single week for a whole year with a shoestring budget and very few crew members. Not even the most talented director could make anything good under those conditions. But then, that gets back to the central problem. Doug tried to go too big, and is still trying to go bigger. He got burned flying too close to the sun, and he's still burning as he tries to fly even closer. He forgot his roots, and he forgot what made him popular. If he had just stuck to being a wacky, goofy character who was content to make us laugh with him at easy-to-make-fun-of movies, then maybe he'd be doing better than he is (although, let's not kid ourselves, he's not exactly on the brink of collapse right now). Instead, he decided he was made for better things, but he's too much of a coward to actually ditch the small TH-cam platform where he found his fame in order to make the perilous leap to the actual film industry. And honestly, if he knows what's good for him, he'll stay right where he is. Because my guess is the moment that Doug decides he wants to fly, he'll jump off the cliff and realize his wings are made of cardboard.
@@sightlessninja2456 There are so many "that's not a joke , that's what happened." type jokes in all of those old reviews all across the board, it's painful.
@@thegeneralpopulace8513 you really are right, all the jokes about Doug and his brother being shitty bosses and all the reviewers hating them weren't even jokes
I love how in his eyes these movies are like the Harry Potter saga where he’s the cool main character, but all we see is P*rn hub acting/quality and a superiority complex. These movies are genuinely embarrassing
The Critic's early videos were and still are pretty entertaining for me. His little cut-away gags didn't outstay their welcome and I enjoyed a lot of the running jokes. Even when I thought his reviews were off-mark it was decent enough entertainment for a guy, a blank wall and a camera. But eventually it became clear that his ego was growing far too large to fit in that room, and the movies were just not interesting. When I heard he was reviewing The Wall, my immediate reaction was "Oh, god no...". He had made it completely obvious by then that he had nowhere near the intelligence or capacity to delve into anything as nuanced as Pink Floyd. I didn't even watch his review. I watched other people watching his review, just so that I didn't give him the traffic. My fears were justified. Calling something pretentious while standing in front of posters of himself and his awful movies honestly made me want to think it was intentional irony. But that'd be giving him way too much credit. Love letter my ass. I still enjoy a lot of the creators from the TGWTG days, and I'd encourage people to look into some of them, but Doug Walker is just insufferable.
Yeah even when I didn’t agree with his takes in his early videos, I at least got a few laughs out of it. Then he began to take himself too seriously and became less and less about actually reviewing and more about him showing off his skits and attempting to pass that off as a review. He still had his bad takes thrown in here and there and it made me realize he wasn’t a good critic to begin with. I can’t even get into the old stuff anymore.
I actually thought the back and forth "Who's on first" style structure of the bit with the female doctors was kind of funny, but the sexual nature of the bit when considered with all of the accusations of misogyny behind the scenes at Channel Awesome makes it really not sit well....
Imagine bringing your kids to the Playground, seeing its occupied by 38 year old Doug Walker in a green Link costume from the Zelda franchise and 25 other freaks.
One account from that filming stated that when some people came walking by he actually started yelling directions towards them I will be generous and believe he did that as a joke but it's still a really cringy thing to do.
The Internet seemed a lot smaller when we were younger. It almost felt like Doug was doing stuff no one else has ever done, but because he was a regular guy instead of a celebrity, it made you believe that you could do things that were just as good if not better. The Internet was a Wild West and it was all about who got there first.
As someone who got into him at like 11 when he had one page of videos on his website until close to To Boldly Flee, I completely agree with you. Besides being an asshole and yelling a lot, there's really nothing to him. Took me waaaaay too long to realize it.
He was doing what avgn was doing, but for movies, another very popular thing, he was one of the first to do it, it didn't matter if it was good, what mattered was that he became the biggest because of a lack of competition, also the lack of something else to compare it to, plus the fame, made it easier for his content to look good or funny, also a really young demographic doesn't have the highest of bars
Because back in the early days of TH-cam, the whole angry guy yelling at bad stuff was popular. However, many of those has either evolve their style to be more informative while still being entertaining (Lindsay Ellis went from a distaff version of the Nostalgia Critic to someone who made a documentary about the Hobbit movies) or has faded into obscurity (Like Spoony). Doug didn't evolve his style (or he evoled in ways nobody wanted IE: Clipless reviews) and, as a result, what what seen as endearing back there is now annoying.
@@TheArkman360 If I remember correctly, almost all of the former contributors very vocally hate these films. ToddInTheShadows has made jokes about them,too.
@@TheArkman360 Phelous was actually the Special Effects artist in Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee, so the most decent aspects of those quote on quote "movies" were his contributions to the effects, he also designed the Channel Awesome logo Doug keeps using. Despite that, I like his early stuff but I don't dig his recent content at all.
Doug's films perfectly reflect the atmosphere of the platform at the time. There was no self awareness; content creators believed they were doing something genuinely incredible and poured their hearts into everything they made for better or for worse. On the upside of this we had stuff like Red Vs Blue where the creators grew as artists and still make new series people like to this day. On the other hand you have cases like Doug, where as kids a lot of us liked his content and what he was trying to accomplish, but after getting older and developing more taste it became apparent that a lot of it was just self-indulgent and didn't really succeed at being anything but a big circle jerk.
@@HBarnill this is literally even more hillarious than the comment I'm replying to. I literally just said the most juvenile shit and you're acting like I told him I had his credit card info and was going to burn his house down
@@flusendieb6833 I had no idea that Colin Mochrie's daughter was part of Channel Awesome. That's so weird and yeah, that joke is even worse in hindsight
idk man. In the time it takes to finish To Boldly Flee you'd already have finished like 3 SD movies. Sometimes it's better to just rip off the bandaid. Also Shane didn't actually horribly mistreat and traumatize his costars. They might've been a bit uncomfy but he's got nothing on Doug.
@@ognjensijak989 He may have been mean to them. Verbally. Which is reprehensive and he still hasn't really addressed it. Some people say that the bts was a mockumentary but idk. Either way it still has nothing on Doug and his producer (I think). Two people made the movie mainly so it was them. Shane didn't actually assault costars. Shane didn't actually withhold his costars paychecks. Shane didn't send his fans to harass costars. Shane didn't have pressure two actors into doing a r*pe scene though they both said they didn't want to. There aren't any actual real life r*pe allegations against Shane. Shane isn't known to have sexually harassed how costars. Despite looking dismissive towards women in the behind the scenes Shane wasn't being deliberately sexist. There wasn't blatant mysogyny allowed just out in the open. Shane doesn't have a long document written about just how toxic the work environment was. It's called Not So Awesome if you wanna read it or something since I doubt you know the situation. It's a public Google doc. Probably easy to find.
Oh no, I just realized that when CinemaSnob makes that "remind me to ask if he's a transvestite" joke, he's talking to Kinley Mochrie. Oh boy, that makes it a whole lot worse doesn't it....
'Spoony completely looses it at some point.' Welp... life imitates art, I guess, which is something that can be said for quite a few plotpoints in these movies.
Back then video quality wasn't really a concern. It was the age of "anyone can pick up a camera of any kind and just film something with friends," so that was how I perceived their first movie at the time. I was also a teenager, so I can't say my sense of humor was super mature at the time. The NC era is such a weird thing for me to think about because I was such an avid watcher of those creators, and still follow some who came from it like Dominick Noble. But as soon as the allegations of grooming and SA dropped, as well as other creators coming forward to speak on their bad experiences working with the Walker brothers and others in his company, I dropped NC entirely. It's not only a sense of humor I grew out of, but knowing the conditions these videos were made under makes it hard to watch. It really is a shame, and I get a weird feeling of melancholy because it was a big part of my early internet days that I can't just go back to and be...nostalgic over.
Somehow this is the fifth result for “nostalgia critic” when logged out. I checked on incognito and after the three “latest from Channel Awesome” videos a well as the channel itself is one Nostalgia Critic and then this. Nice job.
"Spoony ... completely loses it at some point. He goes absolutely crazy. It's like he's possessed, or something" describes the (so-called) movie _and_ reality.
As a side note, I just wanna say, Molossia sells Wild Mustang lip balm and it's literally the best lip balm I've ever used. Seriously. They're also just... the coolest? They're ridiculous in the best ways, like most micronations. Reading their newsletters and website is a trip. It absolutely sucks that they're most well known for Doug Walker. Support micronations!
Fun fact about the wall review, the gci animal abominations in them were made by some dude who made them as a fetish and Doug didn’t realise that he just made them for people who had the same fetish
Oh, Satellite City was a kink show? I never new that. I lost interest in it after a while, but I did like the design of Fontaine and the idea of all the casinos in Las Vegas being run by a literal monster.
To be fair, To Boldly Flee was originally released in separate parts, so it probably wasn’t meant to be watched all in one sitting. Doesn’t really make it better though
Well now you have to do the Atop the 4th Wall movie, because Linkara keeps these films as part of his canon. Yes, Linkara has a canon...a very long, very weird, ongoing storyline in his videos that has continued for what I’d guess is over ten years now.
@@mnemot we already have a Dream SMP one and that only recently started compared to linkara. Maybe you should do it! I’m sure a lot of old fans would love it.
I Think what really sucks is just how shitty the reviews where treated on these sets, a craft service table was laughed at during multiple times and as i recall the, " coffee runs" where a goddamn nightmare
@@stolyartoad8640 they are hating on him because of his idiotic way he ran his business and shitty treatment of his other reviewers leading to a mass exodus from his sight until him and Guru Larry were all that was left (who stayed there as a joke and treated it as a Hunger Games “Last one Standing sorta deal)
I thought Kickassia was pretty funny, and overall harmless fan service. It was pretty cool to see all those youtubers together, and some jokes really took me off guard. The rest were shit, though. No question about it. Bold
I was a fan of the Nostalgia Critic basically from the beginning all the way back in like 2008 and watched at least until To boldly Flee (if not later, it's hard to say). It's fun to see people rag on how bad the content was. I worshipped everything Doug Walker did for way too long considering how bad he was at being a critic. Pretty bold of me to automatically accept any opinion he had while shitting on channels like CinemaSins for being way too nitpicky and egotistical.
I feel that, at least with his earlier videos, they weren't meant to be anything serious, just a bunch of jokes at a movie's expense (your taste in "humor" may very I suppose). But With Demo Reel and thee later Nostalgia Critic stuff he's actually trying to make serious, analytic film criticism and it's painfully obvious he just not good at it. And that wouldn't necessarily be that bad, everyone has to start somewhere and you could look at a lot of different creator's earlier works and say some of the same things. But the fact is Doug Walker just can't seem to improve in either his film making or his critical skills and when you read the behind the scenes stuff that seems to come from him arrogantly believing he's already great and doesn't need to improve.
In the words of Spazkid/Cory, "You can sit through Kickassia and have a grand old time... but I can not fucking get through To Boldly Flee, it's so boring, it's Star Wars, Star Trek, and Cowboy Bebop all in one, and it's as cringy as it sounds."
@17:45 this one is ESPECIALLY awkward because the person he’s making the joke to is Kinley Mochrie... whom later came out as trans... and she looks so uncomfortable there when he says that 😬
The reason they were all so samey in the _Kickassia_ is because of Doug's (non-existent) talent as a filmmaker. Rather than letting them play themselves, he kept directing them all to act like him, over the top, shouty and so on. When they were insistent, he told them to record it two ways so he could pick and choose later on. But of course, he always chose the take using his style.
As a lonely 12-year-old, the ramshackle and awkward feel of Kickassia and Suburban Knights made me feel like part of a real community who saw media and the world around them in sort of the same way I did. It's a real shame Walker and co turned out to be so IRL shady. I still get that nostalgic feeling from the memory of the movies - I remember wishing I had the self-belief and committed group of friends to make a movie too, even if it was super amateur like theirs. It feels like a betrayal that it wasn't really just a bunch of misfits making something they thought was cool but bosses horribly mistreating their employees.
I used to like the NC and his movies from a teenagers perspective is that they're good but looking back with how bad the actors were treated makes it hard to enjoy them
I'd recommend checking out Linkara's Storyline Videos mostly so you can watch his 10th anniversary movie. It had a better production and was done under better conditions then what Doug and his brother put the reviewers through it also incorporates plot elements from Doug's anniversary videos into its storyline. It rarely does as much direct quoting from other media like Dougs films and whenever Linkara does quote something it serves the scene its in and isn't thrown in at random or haphazardly. He's actually the Reviewer (one of the many reviewers) that inspired me to give youtubing a shot
I remember a line from Nostalgia Critic's review of the AVGN Movie (which is like Nostalgia Critic's movies, but a whole lot better). It went some thing like "AVGN the movie is a movie made by that kid who would incessantly said he wanted to make a movie in high school, without thinking much about how to make movies, but in the end, he made the movie." James Rolfe is hardened film buff who studied film and knows what he's doing. Doug Walker is that kid in high school who wanted to make a movie without putting the effort in learning how to make movies.
Honestly, I used to watch her when she was on the site and I _still_ tend to forget she was ever the NChick. I think it’s the fact that her current stuff is so much further removed from Doug’s formula than anyone else’s is.
@@Rex13013 She calls herself an anti-capitalist (don't even having the ovaries to flag proper socialism or communism) yet leaves a perfectly comfortable and privilege life as a capitalist, with her thousand of Patreon dollars and her shitty books.
The first year anniversary special they did, the one before Kickassia, was the best one because it was just all filmed in a hotel with a bunch of the critics from the site (and James Rolfe) just engaging in a gigantic, pointless brawl and you could tell everybody had a lot of fun with it. Also pretty BOLD of the critic to include that one dude's weird sexy fetish CGI furries in his Pink Floyd critique.
Wait the anthem of the Nazi party is in kickassia when the example of him doing the dictator voice was on, I thought I was literally just hearing things
I'm thinking of making a series dedicated to talking about youtuber made shows & movies! Let me know in the comments if you got any good name suggestions for the series, make sure you like the good ones so I see em!
Hi
Hi
Yes
That’d be an epic gaming moment
AWESOMEST TV MOVIES
“Doug is a horrible ruler who doesn’t even pay his employees”
I thought you were watching a film not a documentary
It’s this
I came to basically post exactly this. Go ahead, have my upvote. You've, you've earned it.
Did anyone notice this was the 69th video
Boooooooo
@@NorthshireGaming Redditor Detected, engaging shitty meta reply.
At first I misread the title as "I watched all of Nostalgia Critic's adult films".
Now that would have been truly terrifying.
But not surprising
"you don't have a bat credit card?! Well, let's arrange a different form of payment" nostalgia critic looks at the camera seductively
But you still clicked it...
@@GhostW1thTheMost You don't have to select the video to read the title.
@@Mels0103 thats not what im saying.
The worst thing about Doug’s version of The Wall is that he used “Bring the Boys back home”; a song about Roger Waters losing his father in WW2 when he was a child, to complain about the movie runtime.
Truly the ultimate love letter.
@@willmistretta if that’s a love letter, then Mark David Chapman’s .38 revolver is a wedding present to The Beatles.
He even used "Goodbye Blue Sky", a song about the affects of war on both civilians and soldiers, to call the same song "Oscar bait"
@@hyperion3145 and Goodbye Blue Sky actually written before Roger‘s idea of the goddamn film even exist.
@@hyperion3145 Oscar bait wasn't even a thing when the song was written so it's extra frustrating
I love that “dunking on Doug Walker” has become almost a rite of passage among TH-camrs.
I don't know how I came across it but the only thing I know him from is these videos dunking on him.
@dezessete tragically, there are people who support him unironically. I say "tragically" because many of them got doxxed and without going into detail, they seem like they're the kind of people who would be easily manipulated.
@@KetsubanSolo or maybe the people who were conditioned to hate him just for doing what he loves are the ones who are easily manipulated
@Mr. Yuck if “unironically sarcastic” means not sarcastic at all, then yes
@James Greenwood also, people who hate someone more than the person who was actually wronged make me physically ill, especially these days
Fun fact about To Boldly Flee - they told Phelous to make the special effects intentionally bad, and then when people were like "the special effects in this are so bad??" then they were like "Yeah the person we hired to do the special effects didn't do a good job lol" instead of just saying the effects were intended to be bad as a throwback to old sci-fi effects.
Phelous is pretty cool.
@@brunobucciaratiswife yeah
@@brunobucciaratiswife I really like his content and recommend it to anyone. 😊
Didn't he also do a bunch of that SFX work completely for free, too? If you're getting free stuff from me, it's not gonna be super high effort!
I feel it should be noted that all the CGI in these "films" were done by amateurs FOR FREE, so the fact that they don't look like pure trash is a testament to the dedication of the CG artists. Turns out they weren't appreciated and were pushed to make it all look better than it turned out while being (wrongly) assured they'd be financially compensated. The artists were badmouthed, bullied, and never paid. Bold-face lied to. I feel bad for them.
ah the life of an animation artist truly the worst career available despite how absolutely fucking pivitol they are to our entertainment today
I like the irony of Boldy Flee's ending. Doug sacrifices himself to save everyone, then in real life he threw everyone under the bus to save his own sorry ass.
Not really. There is proof that recently came out which proved both sides did horrible stuff and NC is not to be blamed completely
They lied
@@Ranuyasha so what is this proof?
@@Ranuyasha walker apologists are so weird
@@Ranuyasha oh dude send the source i wanna see
Nostalgia Critic: *criticizes films for being bad*
Also Nostalgia Critic: *creates godawful films*
Goes to show that critizing is super easy but doing something good is not.
It takes one to know one.
@@felathar1985 to be honest, criticising well is hard, and it is something that the nostalgia critic never did. People only watched it for the jokes, not for legitimate critique.
It's an infinite money glitch.
If he keeps making bad movies, he will never run out of content.
@@notapplicable6985 his normal videos are already awful, he could probably just bite the Baudrillardian Bullet and review his own reviews
The reason why most of the other characters in these anniversary movies all act the same is because Doug deliberately wrote them to be that way. Most of the other critics came to him with ideas for how their characters are supposed to act, but doug would reject them in favor of his own style of comedy, basically turning them all into other versions of The Critic character.
Linkara had to write an entire CHARACTER ARC into his own show to rerail character!Linkara from his Jerkass behavior. It ended up as one of the better arcs of the show, but still.
"The Channel Awesome trilogy and the Nostalgia Critic in general wasn’t that great as we remembered" is my favorite subgenre of TH-cam videos for the past three years.
@Tucker Johnson It`s so interesting how some things age so bad and others kind of stay as good as they used to be. Early TH-cam Content aged absolutely terribily and I can`t understand how I ever found it as enjoyable as I did. And not only because of the awful Quality (altough it doesn`t help to have the worst light and sound imaginable) but because it really didn`t work as a concept.
I tried to watch the Nostalgia Critic again lately after the whole Crisis with the Whistleblowers but I really can`t get back into it again. They are somehow stuck in the worst time for this kind of content and just cant develop into something worthwile.
They sure should`ve ended Channel Awesome in like 2015 so we`d at least have nostalgic Memories.
@@frybodelgado1482 AVGN aged beautifully, (for the most part)
Its less that early youtube content aged bad and more like alot of early youtube stuff was a product of its time. People just knew less about what they were doing back then.
@@ijones36 Hmmm... I guess it is a matter of taste how you look about the persistent Quality of Art.
Yes, the Nerd aged WAY better but he`s more the exeption then the rule I think. Why this is I donr know. Maybe because he seems to have always put effort in his content? Or that he seems genuinly goodhearted?
I personally dont like how most content aged and ESPECIALLY the Nostalgia critic makes me feel strange to re-watch!
Not only does it seem immature but it also wasn`t nearly as clever as i remembered it to be. And this whole thing with "change the channel"? It makes me feel a bit sick to see all these Cameos and the "Group" Agenda they pushed knowing what we know now. It`s like listening to Michael Jacksons Music or trying to laugh at the Cosby show... one CAN try and forget the context of something but killing the author isn`t always easy I find.
Nothing like that with the Nerd tough. He survived everything and came out on top.
Funny enough the overall production quality isn`t at all what bothers me about early TH-cam Content. Its more the messages and the effort they put in it.
@@frybodelgado1482 The general consensus with James from what I've seen online is that unlike Doug, James's content actually evolved. He developed his film-making skills to something competent while Doug's content seems to be stuck in stasis. So IMO James's older stuff can probably be seen as decent even back then in part because one can see it as the start of his development of his work over time. Doug's content meanwhile hasn't really evolved and his work now is just a mirror to his work back then.
@@stevenguitink5947 I remember watching a Video about this called "why People hate the NG and love AVGN" or so.
And yeah, there`s no doubt who of the two is the superiour Filmmaker when it comes to almost every aspect of producing a movie worthwile (exept maybe acting but even that is debatable).
Doug peaked around 2012 and since then his stuff never really got better which is really sad.
But I dont think thats the only reason the Nerd is preferred by almost everyone. I believe the behind-the-scene stuff is almost as important as the actual comtent. And it`s the simple truth that Channel Awesome was and remains an awful company treating its producers horrible. While I never heard anything bad about Rolfe. This sure plays a huge part in how they are perceived.
Bold of Doug to literally try and make himself internet Jesus at the end of the boldly flee.
Actually he write himself as someone like jesus but without the miracles that Jesus made. He literally made an universe of his own creation with lots of youtubers involved in this.
@@karakun1 No, his website merely slapped its name on creators unfortunate enough to sign contracts with them.
Well, write what ya know, I guess.
@@fadillangston9797 Yeah, like there were contracts involved
@@victorwagner2423 Next they'll be saying they actually got PAYED!
"They all act like the same guy"
That's . . . not wrong.
Apparently Doug wanted people who were very much like his character, and when filming he specifically wanted them to be like said character too in terms of delivery and behavior.
Lol yeah I heard that too. I think maybe in the "Change the Channel" document they say that if they wanted to do it their own way, he'd get them to do 2 takes, one where they did it their way and one where they acted like Doug and he'd just use the second take every time.
Good lord. Doug's narcissism is almost unmatched. Is it wrong to say that given all we know now that I literally hate him?
@@michaelgraham9774
Ego got wayyy over his head
It really sucks, because I loved everyone for being like... individuals. Linkara, Todd in Shadows, Lindsay Ellis, Paw, Pushing up Roses, Nash... fortunately you can watch most of these people online still.
Was that because of narcissism, lack of creativity, or both?
Kickassia was alright from the fan service perspective. It was pretty cool seeing all these creators together and there was a really unique and great sense of community on the old TGWTG website. I think that was pretty much the whole point of that movie.
But yeah, as a film it doesn't hold up, I don't think it was even intended to. The thing is the other movies came out when the site was slowly deteriorating and the community was a bit fractured so the novelty factor was gone and they're just kinda sad.
True. That first one was neat.
Kickassia wasn't the first aniversary special.
@@bronze-hawk6914 Was the first movie I thought
@@TheLonelyGoomba the first anniversary brawl with the AVGN is way shorter than I remember, so yeah I guess Kickassia is their first "movie".
Yeah the idea of kickassia is actually pretty funny, A bunch of online creators taking over a micro nation is a cool idea for a film. But the final product is terrible, You'd think someone who's whole career is centred around talking about movies, would actually have some knowledge on how to make a movie.
For the uninitiated, Ma-Ti is a character from the cartoon series Captain Planet, and the joke is that everyone else got cool elemental powers and he got "heart" and Internet nerds traded the "heart is useless" joke back and forth from 2001 to 2010.
That was the only person other than a few others I recognised
@@gracekim25 for some reason doug thinks having heart or love is a bad character trait (he literally trashes any tv show or movie that its plot is centered around heart and love) because being an edgelord is good cinema dude actually thinks comedy is only tragic or from pain...then praises kids films with non tragic humor in it...
as mentioned by the narrator, doug thinks being a dick, crude, and belittling people is funny just on its own without understanding context
the joke should be that the dick and belittling boss gets their karma in a comedic sense either in the second act or third act....he just says "oh its funny cause im a edgelord..so therefore in your face haters"
did no one he worked with not warm him or advised him on how comedy works?
Well, heart is useless because you can't control your... ermm...
I forgot there's a villains and heroes that control Bloods and count 'em as elemental thing. I think Ma-Tie could be a bloodbender like Scarlet from Mortal Kombat...
@FALL-LAFF-7477 Not that kinda heart. It's more like "spirit" type of heart. He has empathic powers, telepathy, can communicate & control animals, etc. He's basically a psychic crossed with a beast master.
This, right here. Said it perfectly.
Kickassia strikes me as a product of its time, because watching it, you can tell there's something genuine about it; it's just a bunch of content creators coming together to make a film, not take it too seriously, and just have a fun time.
And then they made two more which makes you go "Oh....oh I thought that was just, y'know, a one time thing for fun...or something.....ok."
For someone who loved to yell at actually good directors he sure sucks at this
His talent does not equal his disgusting ego.
@@craigusselman546 you described both his character of the Critic, AND Donny from demo reel as well, funny how art imitates life eh?
@@stingerjohnny9951 I will say there are a few times Doug has made me really laugh and even had some profound insights, but I try to watch him now and its just cringe.
@@craigusselman546 I’ll give him a tiny bit of credit, some of his editorials, while often pretentious, did sometimes make very interesting points, like his video on comparing modern cartoons to those of his youth and admitting the modern ones in his opinion were better. I really enjoyed that video and remembered wondering why he didn’t make more videos like that.
a critic doesn't need to know how to do something in order to critique it (but humility is not often their strong suit either >_> ). There are only a few critics that do their corresponding art and it shows. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation has been around as much if not more than Doug doing reviews and games (reviews > games) [But Yahtzee does have some level of charisma and humility (and maturity) that Doug doesn't have].
Doug Walker has always had far more ambition than he does talent, budget, expertise, likability, charisma, or creativity.
His ambition has gotten him far though to be fair
@@RIPAlienhas it really though? I mean it’s kinda sad to picture him in his 60s doing this bit.
The reason the creators all feel the same in these "specials" is that Doug writes and directs them all the same. They all just become different flavors of the NC.
Ironic he bashed Teen Titans Go for making all the characters the same. This is not true they have made several character-driven episodes.
It’s not even that it’s that he writes the others like he has no idea what their gimmick is, why people watch the various reviewers. “Oh he’s ‘angry joe’ so his scene will be him screaming.” That kind of thing.
@@braedenmclean5304 I'll never understand why Film Brain was written as an annoying sycophantic puppy in the specials. While I found his rhythm of speech annoying in his own videos, the tone of the content itself contained straightforward opinions and felt like he wasn't playing a character at all. His reactions were often exaggerated, but that was more to emphasise how he felt about what he was reviewing as opposed to creating a character.
It was the total opposite of how Doug portrayed him, as though he'd never watched a film brain review before. And I think it was similar for most of the other producers. Linkara and Phelous were the ones he got closest and I suspect that Phelous was going to deliver his lines the way he wanted regardless of how Doug directed him.
Wow😅
@@icecreamhero2375 They are largely just satires on the original characters instead of being original, though.
I'm gonna be honest the line in Kickassia where someone says "We heard gunshots" "Did it come from a gun?" made me laugh more than I should have.
Yeah I still laugh at the absurdity of: 'he looks pretty tiny' 'that's because he's far away stupid' 'well he's about to get a lot closer!' Kickassia is the only one I can still get a tiny bit nostalgic about.
I still think the first two movies are pretty funny but I can see how someone who hasn't watched all the previous episodes of Nostalgia Critic wouldn't get many of the jokes.
I still kinda like the joke where they march towards the house with the intent on invasion, the ruler guy steps out to greet them, and as they get closer he just pulls out a pistol and they all panic and run away at this sudden escalation they weren't prepared for.
It's a good bit because unlike most of Dougs jokes, it just lands and he doesn't over explain it or congratulate himself.
I watched all of To Boldly Flee with some friends and we were just absolutely flabbergasted at the display of ego under a veneer of parody. It deserves a psychological study.
If you ever consider making such a study, something like "The Echo Chamber Effect, Study 1: Doug Walker, To Boldly Flee", ping it here
We need some in-depth video essays on Doug Walker's egomania and how it led to his downfall. It's got the making of a Greek tragedy. Except this is Doug we're talking about, so it's more of a comedy for us lmao
That study would need a lot of funding, since watching that abomination would require paying people hundreds of dollars just to endure the cringe injuries
@@tylere.8436 Or “cringuries”.
I tried to watch it and I’m not a movie writer but I could immediately tell the team up teleport scene felt like a finale moment😅 and like it really should have been super long. I couldn’t continue watching it or it would kill me …like watching it was sapping my energy 😬
I got to nostalgia critic late, after the movies were made, but it sucks knowing just how bad things where behind the scenes of these movies.
lol imagine genuinely liking the nostalgia critic
@@nickstromberg3864 lol imagine posting obvious bait
@@nickstromberg3864 lol imagine posting obvious bait
@@Thejghostodst
Ok, this joke has officially ran it's course.
I like nostalgia critic reviews, but when they dress up and start doing some kind of act, it's best kept in small doses. I can't imagine watching a feature length film's worth of it.
As a former channel awesome fan, videos dunking on Doug Walker are so cathartic to watch. Rewatching the channel awesome trilogy when keeping the "change the channel" allegations in the back of your mind somehow makes these movies more cringy and uncomfortable. I don't know how you survived over 7 hours of Doug Walker.
People involved with these tend to pronounce “To Boldly Flee” as if it were “Tiboutli Flea,” a parasitic insect from some fictitious place with a stupid-sounding name. Which seems appropriate.
Honestly a cooler name
There comes a time in the youth of every consumer of internet culture when they realise two things.
1. The Walkers are not nearly as funny as they think they are.
2. The Walkers are not nearly as funny as you thought they were when you were 17.
I used to watch The Nostalgia Critic back in the day, and I now feel like I’ve left a cult. I’m glad I got out when I did.
Same. I really used to think BC was funny. Turns out all it was that I was an immature kid. Thing is, I grew up. He didn't.
I realised that after watching Kickassia, doubled on when Doug vs The Room happened
I don’t have a clue why I ever found NC funny😅
There was a time i genuinely had fun watching the Nostalgia Critic, and i admit nowadays i hold the Walker Brothers with nothing but contempt
I was 15 when Kickassia came out and started to get really bored of him by that time. His reviews were just getting longer with more filler and sketches. I actually thought the first two episodes of Kickassia were alright, but the remaining three were really boring.
The best way to understand Doug Walker is that when he quit his job to do the Nostalgia Critic full time, he filmed himself going to work, while playing the 2001 music, and then pulled open his shirt in the lunch room revealing a shirt that said 'I quit' before running off with his brother because of what he was doing.
I hope you are joking about that?
@@lamlelamatsiliza8550 Nope. It's not a joke. It used to be up on the TGWTG site. It might still be. But it was on the original site for all to see, because everything is a stunt to him.
@@shawnconway6009 ok thanks I actually found that was true by some else making a video about him and when I watched it a though how I feel sorry for the employees for looking at "that" also why couldn't he just going to the office and just resign from his work instead doing that shit that would hurt a normal persons self respect
doug LOVES singing in these videos for some reason. his review of Les Miserables is...so much. pretty bold of him to assume people want to buy his poorly made and performed parody songs.
Which is kinda funny because Doug had a guy in his troupe, Kyle Kallgren, who legit had the chops and could sing really well.
But then again, someone being better than him would hurt Doug's ego.
@@JeanMarceaux Wasn’t the whole running joke that Kyle really wanted to sing but outside circumstances kept preventing him from it?
@@DuelaDent52 maybe, my memory is fuzzy. Regardless, it was script contrivances written by Doug that prevented him from singing.
Its so much...what?
A 7 months later comment. He said once in one of his real opinion videos, that the singing is because of his mother. She was a music teacher or something like that.
These "movies" feel like the movies we made in Film Camp when I was in grade school.... They're hilarious to the people in them/ part of the production team, but really cringey to everyone else.
Too bad that they weren't even fun to the crew to film due to incompetence and bad direction.
Yep. 3 dollar costumes is one thing for a 20 minute review but an hour of that is pretty bad.
@@icecreamhero2375 Especially when it's more than one movie of completely cringey crap, or when it's the premise of an entire bad, messy schlocky "comedy" movie. Cough "Suburban Knights" Cough. Sorry, slight cough there.
@@shawnfields2369 I would be embarrassed to watch one of the Nostalgia critic movies in public. Crappy costumes for a web show makes more sense.
@@icecreamhero2375 I agree. Same here. I watched ALL of Dog Walker's Dogshit movies, and I thought they were good. Including The Wall. I don't know what was wrong with me. I used to think Doog was fun and funny to watch, back in 2008. When I saw his review for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a movie I sort of liked as a kid, even though I wasn't born when the movie came out, but seeing it on tv as a kid, is what made me kind of like it, even if it had almost nothing to do with Mario at all, it's at least something, and a little interesting. So one day, I searched for reviews of the Super Mario Bros movie, and saw Doug's review. I saw it, and I wanted to see more reviews of his stuff. This was 2008, when I was 15. This was, at the time, me thinking I'd discovered a new and hilarious youtuber. But, as recently I realized, it was just a very long phase. An 11 year phase for me. And I realized the people I subscribed to, that worked with doug in his videos, are still ok, and the best content creators who used to be involved with CA, left the site a long time ago, and I started to become more distant and disinterested with doug and his work as the years went on. The best creators have left the site already, people like Todd In The Shadows, the Rap Critic, Angry Joe, Film Brain, Phelous, Linkara, Lindsay(I guess? I was never really a fan of hers, but it's whatever), Bennet The Sage(for the most part, if you liked seeing an alright anime reviewer), and I'm sure there's many others, but those are some of the ones I'm a fan of, that had left CA.But the people who'd done crossovers with Goud Walker, are still some of the best youtubers out there, like TeamFourStar, Little Kuriboh, Chris Stuckmann, even Jontron, and of course, the AVGN. Sorry, for the long ranting. Got carried away there. I do agree that the crappy costumes make more sense for a web series. Which is why AngryJoe makes it work as well as he does, with his friends, Other Joe, and Alex. Because it just seems like they're dressing up for fun, even when they're doing reviews. They don't always get the point, but when they do, I agree with them, and plus, Joe and his friends can act pretty well, for the most part, like Alex, and Other Joe. AJ himself, doesn't always stand out, acting-wise, I mean, but I honestly believe he's a good guy. Doesn't always make a good point, but that's not to say he never makes good points. But the crappy costumes do have a charm to them, and do make sense in context of the video, and Joe does seem to know what he's doing. Don't always agree, but he's still one of my favorites, and I think it's because I discovered his videos during his time with CA, and Blistered Thumbs, that I started to get into Doug Walker's videos at first. Along with other creators, like Spoony, Todd, the Rap Critic, Film Brain, etc., but as they slowly started to leave, over time, I just found myself just losing interest in doug and his character of the NC. I found myself just sticking to the individual videos people that Joe, Spoony, Todd, RC, Film Brain, made, and just stopped caring about the Nostalgia Critic. But now, I don't even watch Film Brain or Spoony(because I don't even know if Film Brain still makes videos), and what happened to Noah, is just tragic, the dude needs help, but he ain't getting it, and I feel like it's too late. Noah ain't coming back, which is all the more sad, because he had potential, but he's so far gone at this point. His wife left him, whenever he streams(which is sadly all he does now),he just bans people left and right. And those are all things I've heard about him. Never saw any streams from him. His videos were some of the best when CA was in it's prime. Like the Phantasmagoria 2 playthrough, his retrospective on FF8(even though I didn't agree with everything he said about it, the videos themselves were funny enough on their own, except for the whole, "gay, gay, sissy gay" joke about the theme song), it wasn't funny back then, still not funny now. But it sucks to see what happened to him. Being bipolar, being unable to let things go, holding grudges, it's a sad story of a sad man's life. His tweets are also implying he may be depressed too. I don't have Twitter myself. Wouldn't blame him if he was depressed though. Still feel bad for what happened to him though. But unfortunately, Noah, needed help, but refused to get it... sorry to go off topic again, and sorry for the super long rants. Meant to keep them short, got carried away.
I took psychic damage from just reading the title
I think we all did.
@big chungus ?
Is that... an AlternateHistoryHub reference?
HBow about the marathon commercials videos or Disneycembers, Pinely? :)
“And he doesn’t even pay them their wages.” Oof! That plot point didn’t age well.
I downloaded Kickassia onto my old iPod when I was in high school. Boy was I surprised to see that again after finding that same iPod a decade later.
It’s like the Necronomicon. It’s ancient, it’s evil, and you shouldn’t open it.
Fun fact: The part of the The Wall review with all the CG creatures wasn’t made by Doug’s crew. It was a collaboration with a TH-camr named Fennah that has a made up universe for all of these characters on his own channel.
Hell yeah! Satellite City!!!
He also gets upset at the slightest, most minuscule amount of constructive criticism he receives on Twitter and will proceed to bash the person who gave it into agreeing with him. And he has a severe hate fetish for a small fish who is _definitely_ an allegory for abuse and drugs and not an abuse victim in it of itself- it likes to draw with crayons and literally displays no abusive behavior towards its ‘victims,’ of coooouuurse it’s not victim blaming. And if you disagree with him, you’ll get the most toxic online harassment of his as retaliation.
@@FujiAppul Wait, Fennah or Doug?
@@koichidignitythief7429 The former; you were correct the first time.
@@FujiAppul I didn’t know that. I not an avid follower but I thought Fennah was an alright guy who got lumped in with Doug’s shitty review.
I watched all of Nostalgia Critic's films back when I was 10 and thought they were great. I willingly sat through all those films yes.
Dude trust me you are not alone
Same... Oh same. I could've done so much more... But we all make mistakes.
I sat through all of his reviews thinking he was a comedic genius trust me I feel your pain
I’m not alone. I used to pretend to be a lil critic ....god I’m glad I got out of that phase before I made anything of it. Eugh
The thing is, I and everyone I've met that watched nostalgia critic, only did it when they were preteens. Did he ever actually have an adult viewership?
Usually, I'd feel bad about picking on what seemed like a fun small youtube friend passion project... But turned out Doug's kind of a shitty guy so it's all fair game.
how?
Absolutely. This isn't punching down at ALL
@@michaelhegwood9977 that was some rabbit hole. im not an initiated person
He seems more chill now, everyone makes mistakes, but at least he realized them, unlike some other people.
to be fair he knows he fucked up but said what can he do best thing hes going to do is move on now and learn one of his twitter posts made back then 5-6 months back i belive
You know what was really BOLD? Killing off your flagship series, the main thing that bring in traffic to your website (they weren't on TH-cam at the time they were hosted on a different site) and not telling any of the other contributors that so they can prepare for the massive drop in views their videos were going get.
Yeah recently watched the Down the Rabbit Hole on the Change the Channel thing. I was barely a fan of his show and I much prefer the stuff the old creatirs are doing now.
@@melkhiordarkfell4354 The Change the Channel stuff is filled with lies if you are keeping track
@@Ranuyasha Simping for Doug?
The summary "Angry Joe gets pretty angry" made me laugh more than the actual movies.
From what I remember Doug got tired of doing the Nostalgia Critic and around that time started his own production company and studio. The idea was to kill off the character and then focus on his "comedy show" he created to replace the Nostalgia Critic. There was just one big problem: Nobody fucking watched that show. It's so forgettable and bland that I have a hard time remembering what it was called and I don't care enough to google it. Having "no choice" Doug then brought the character back because at the end of the day Nostalgia Critic was his main source of income.
In short: He undid the ending of To Boldly Flee because money. I'm not bashing him for it, if I was in his shoes I would've done the same.
It was called Demo Reel. But yeah, nobody watched it.
Deadwing Dork did a stream of it, it's garbage and looks like Doug swinging his fame like a hammer on his guests
The thing that kills me is that the Nostalgia Critic wasn't a series that needed a big, grandiose goodbye. He was making fun of movies in front of a white wall. He could've just said; "Hey, we're trying this new project, so NC is gonna take a short break while we get our new studio set up."
@@seamusburke639 The problem is back in 2007-2012 TH-cam, it kinda was a big thing. People forget but during that time AVGN and NC ruled the internet and every content creator was trying to be them.
Problem is Doug actively got tired of being the NC. So he tried Demo Reel. A horrible show yes, but one with some actual ideas not to mention personal vulnerabilities on display towards the end. It was finally something where Doug was acknowledging his horrible content was his way of coping with his midlife crisis. Had Doug continued with that kind of material, getting better over time, he could've become a decent artist eventually. But he didn't. His own self-doubt in combination with the rabid fanbase trying to pressure him into being NC again in combination with Maud essentially forcing him to or he would bankrupt Doug entirely (Doug doesn't own the NC, Maud does) led to Doug returning to NC, but bitter and angry towards himself and everyone. It's why he only gets pettier and pettier over the years. His insecurities and anger consumed him.
And while AVGN actively evolved with the internet and constantly made an effort to be on par with the new generation of creators, NC is stuck in 2007-2012, as if the only way he can be happy is if he convinces himself that he's still beloved and everyone who disagrees with him is wrong. It's why he has such a hate boner for film directors that don't make what he specifically doesn't like, he's angry that they get second chances for stuff he doesn't like when he never got a second chance for stuff his fanbase hated (Demo Reel). At this point he's just a pathetic shell of a man clinging to his former fame.
Here are the many problems with that:
- The studio he bought was useless, he didn't bother to check if it was soundproofed and was just an ordinary warehouse, thus was unsuitable for filming. So, he just used it as a makeshift office, and to store old costumes. A complete waste of money.
- He sprung both the end of NC and the shift to Demo Reel on his audience with no warning whatsoever. Even if DR had been good (which it wasn't), it STILL would have failed, because the fans were still reeling from the end of NC and would react badly to anything designed to replace him, regardless of what it was.
- What was stopping him from doing both? Seriously? There's no reason whatsoever why he couldn't have done both. He could have split his time between projects, only upload NC once or twice a month and then work on other ideas on the side, like many media personalities, musicians, and artists do. He just doesn't make good decisions or think things through at all.
- Even during the first two episodes of DR, he lost his resolve and frantically began reshooting and rewriting the series. Not exactly the actions of someone who's finally doing what HE wants to do artistically, is it?
Bottom line, Doug is incompetent in pretty much every sense of the word.
The fact that Doug states Daffy Duck is one of the "main inspirations" for his "comedy style" should tell you all you need to know about him and his sense of humor
What wrong with Daffy Duck
@@davidlloyd2952 Daffy works in a very well animated setting and makes use of exaggerations that only look good in cartoony animation. It REALLY doesn't work in a live action setting as seen when Doug just looks like an overacting idiot instead of being funny.
He also believes that all comedy is about inflicting harm or misery on others, and to me that says a LOT more about how he thinks.
@@takashinakamura2624 That's a perfect description of the guy. Took the words right out of my head. I always cringe thinking the same exact thought that you just mentioned! 'I always just assumed it's a personality trait of his that goes unchecked, like many others that "over-act" in real life. That being said, I think he might be on the spectrum.; don't quote me tho.
I know Daffy Duck and you Doug are no Daffy Duck.
I thought Doug's """"review"""" of Hocus Pocus was one of the worst reviews he ever made in his series, it being a lazy parody of a movie I have never heard of, instead of the reviews we're used to from him. So it's pretty bold of him to do it AGAIN, but with Pink Floyd's The Wall instead.
Movie reviews? I thought these were remakes of films but if he made them good!
@@exquisitelemonade3039 he just couldn’t let go of demo reel could he?
For me the Mad Max ""review"" was the worst
His review of Prince of Egypt is getting recommended to me and the idea of that scares me
@@noraarcadia635 Mmmmm Yeaaaaaaah noooooo.
Kickassia is the okayest film. It's a fair length, gets to the point, legitimately gets everyone in Arizona, illuminates the strange Molassia thing, and has some fun moments.
Suburban Knights is empty and pointless. Nothing happens, it is pure boredom, no funny lines, no fun, terrible experience.
To Boldly Flee is so bad it's interesting. A friend of mine once said it killed the angry reviewer, and I think he's right. At 3.5 hours, it's comically long yet has nothing of interest. It does have a few funny lines, but only like 1 or 2, rendering the whole film a total miserable slog.
Over the last few years we've all come to learn how much Doug sucks. He was never really that funny, his content has aged like milk except for a few reviews, and no one respects him or associates with him. He's very sad.
Also, it's REALLY important to remember: These movies were NOT released as movies. They were released as episodic series cut up into like twenty-minute videos that would only get released I think one day at a time. So it's not like you had viewers actually sitting through a 3.5-hour long movie.
I bought the first two on dvd.
@@SALshaNoma I meant they weren't originally released as movies.
I remember watching them as they were released weekly on the site. They were roughly 20 - 30 minutes each. In that format it was really fun to watch as a fan, except for To Boldly Flee. Even in weekly chunks it dragged on for way too long.
There are a few minor defenses for these trainwrecks... one of them is the fact that they were originally released as episodes. Also, all the in universe references / movie references were what the fans wanted... for whatever reason there were a LOT of nerds back in circa 2010 that thought goofing on a famous scene from a good movie while wearing cheap Halloween costumes was the height of comedy. The fans ate this shit up at the time. I floated in some online "nerdy" circles back then, like Star Trek / Wars, MST3K, etc... and there was a decent amount of fan crossover. I never found him funny... just a lot of screeching and mugging for the camera... but he did have a pretty ridiculously large online following by the standards of 15 years ago.
@@SALshaNoma Why do you hate yourself?
He is stuck in 2008 youtube while everyone else improved.
Its good to have people, who do stuff like in the old days. Some people like 2008 TH-cam more, some doesn’t. Everyone has their own taste of humor, and if you dont like it, it doesn’t mean its bad. Doug is overall a nice dude and his videos appeal to a certain amount of people.
@@stolyartoad8640 Doug is overall a
nice dude? Are you sure about that?
@@SootsAndSmoke yeah, he does charities and is overall nice to fans. I think you’re mistaking him with his nostalgia critic character
AND I feel that he greatly improved since circa 2018. Hes gone more away from that “dude shitting on movies” vibe and also talk about some good movies too. But I admit that different people have different tastes of humor.
You should see Devasia Mentality, dude is stuck in the stone age last time I watched him
This inspired me to go back to a Todd in the shadows video he did with Lindsay years ago just because I wanted to hear this exchange verbatim again
“I got nothing against silly productions starring a bunch of non actors. I was in a couple of those. But we weren’t forced to be in those out of contractual obligation.”
“Maybe you weren’t”
Who said what?
@@nunpho Todd said the first part and "maybe you weren't" was Lindsay
@@Jenninka yikes 😬
@@nunpho Todd goes "really?" and then they move on but yeah it's pretty yikes. It's from a 2015 video on Todd's channel, the From Justin To Kelly video they did together and she's still the Nostalgia Chick
@@Jenninka Also worth remembering that she left CA in around 2014 IIRC in response to CA firing a different producer - Lupa, I think?
Subbed to this guy yesterday and now I immediately get a new video! Thanks lol
Woah that was An instant heart 🤯Thanks again!
🦆
Wow cool comment very insightful and you’re checkmarked! WOW GREAT COMMENT BTW A COOL ONE
Yeah he's very good for uploading videos
@@JediPlays0309 why r u everywhere
wasn't there a scene from one of these "films" with lindsay ellis and someone else where walker brothers made them do an uncomfortable scene involving rape and both actors didn't want to do it but the Walkers made them do it anyway? also heard that they had no food or water on set during the film. *bold* move lol
And the scene as originally scripted was actually worse.
Link?
@@CTOACN th-cam.com/video/dhWh_FRxJOc/w-d-xo.html
At this point making a Doug Walker video is a rite of passage for video essayists on here. Love it.
Todd in the Shadows deserves so much better than to be associated with the Nostalgia Critic. So does Lindsay Ellis, for that matter.
lindsay's tried to remove them from her imdb page but it won't let her lol
I feel like, at this point, more than a few of their fans never even heard of their Channel Awesome days.
Lindsay Ellis, same woman who hung out with Quinton Reviews and Chris-Chan pre-Christina. She's got a history along anyone involved with ThatGuyWithTheGlasses website... except for GuruLarry, dude's chill.
@@ScottE-2 still watch Cinema Snob, except anything that involves any CA creators. They annoy the piss out of me. And yeah, Larry is awesome
@@garyhall7867 I did until I got bored watching it. I still watch Phelios (however you're supposed to spell him) every now and then, granted he is of a lower energy and often unfunny.
Kind of bold of Doug to make fun of the room. As bad as the room is, its strangly lovable and entertaining. (especially after "Disaster Artist") but to boldly Flee... I couldn't even stomach to finish that one.
I always forget the last movie is 3 hours plus like its a LOTR movie
Or like Blood In Blood Out. A Chicano classic despite its many flaws, but even its worst moments are better than any of these Channel Awesome movies
I haven’t seen the Nostalgia Critic in many years. He hasn’t changed much, he’s just gotten more bold.
Edit: Bald*
As far as I can tell, there have been two phases to Doug's Nostalgia Critic character.
For the first several years, it was all about fun and comedy. He didn't have all these pretentions about being a high-minded film critic with artsy ideas. Back then, he was just a guy who enjoyed screaming into a camera about shitty old movies, and (at least from my recollection) he was actually funny then. At least for an audience of early tweens and kids. But more than being funny, it was just a lot more pure. His old videos, and also these movies and his clashes with the Angry Video Game Nerd, felt like they came from a person who just enjoyed goofing around and making silly videos with his buddies/coworkers. Of course they don't hold up as actual films, because they were never supposed to. They were only ever meant to be celebrations of a shared community of goofy people who like bashing crappy media and making people laugh.
But around the point To Boldly Flee came around, and ever since then, Doug's grown a lot more pretentious about his craft. The earlier films he and the TGWTG crew had made together probably had gone to his head by that point. Over time, he started thinking he could make the jump to being an actual serious filmmaker with big ideas (*cough*Demo Reel*cough*). This is where all the self-indulgent pontification and the atrociously unfunny skits started coming from. It wasn't enough anymore for Doug to simply make his audience laugh, now he also had to make them "think", and "feel". The problem is, Doug himself, while he does have some insightful commentary from time to time, is no Roger Ebert as much as he would like to be. He's not a professional critic, he's not a storyteller, and he's CERTAINLY not a filmmaker. And even worse, BECAUSE he yearns to be taken more seriously, his comedy has also suffered tremendously as a result. Even if his older videos look sophomoric and cringe-edgy now, at least they were funny TO a sophomoric and cringe-edgy audience. Now, his jokes are all painfully bland and predictable. At least his earlier material was more bombastic and more energetic. Now it just feels like a uniquely terrible parody of SNL scripts.
To be fair, it's not easy to make quality content when your boss (Mike Michaud) is an abusive prick who shackles you to a rigorous schedule where you have to churn out a video every single week for a whole year with a shoestring budget and very few crew members. Not even the most talented director could make anything good under those conditions. But then, that gets back to the central problem. Doug tried to go too big, and is still trying to go bigger. He got burned flying too close to the sun, and he's still burning as he tries to fly even closer. He forgot his roots, and he forgot what made him popular. If he had just stuck to being a wacky, goofy character who was content to make us laugh with him at easy-to-make-fun-of movies, then maybe he'd be doing better than he is (although, let's not kid ourselves, he's not exactly on the brink of collapse right now). Instead, he decided he was made for better things, but he's too much of a coward to actually ditch the small TH-cam platform where he found his fame in order to make the perilous leap to the actual film industry. And honestly, if he knows what's good for him, he'll stay right where he is. Because my guess is the moment that Doug decides he wants to fly, he'll jump off the cliff and realize his wings are made of cardboard.
Well said.
God,seeing JewWario in these is....an interesting experience with hindsight.
Oh no. I know exactly who you're talking about. 😔💔
They gave him a line about thinking about the children.......I HATE IT
@@sightlessninja2456 There are so many "that's not a joke , that's what happened." type jokes in all of those old reviews all across the board, it's painful.
@@thegeneralpopulace8513 you really are right, all the jokes about Doug and his brother being shitty bosses and all the reviewers hating them weren't even jokes
my heart still stings about it
I love how in his eyes these movies are like the Harry Potter saga where he’s the cool main character, but all we see is P*rn hub acting/quality and a superiority complex. These movies are genuinely embarrassing
Please don't insult the hub like that
what are you doing stepcritic?
ironically, i've seen Pornhub videos better then this.
@@ZackExplorer28 Send link. For critical analysis
@@hyperion3145 can't because it won't be released in a few months.
The Critic's early videos were and still are pretty entertaining for me. His little cut-away gags didn't outstay their welcome and I enjoyed a lot of the running jokes. Even when I thought his reviews were off-mark it was decent enough entertainment for a guy, a blank wall and a camera. But eventually it became clear that his ego was growing far too large to fit in that room, and the movies were just not interesting.
When I heard he was reviewing The Wall, my immediate reaction was "Oh, god no...". He had made it completely obvious by then that he had nowhere near the intelligence or capacity to delve into anything as nuanced as Pink Floyd. I didn't even watch his review. I watched other people watching his review, just so that I didn't give him the traffic. My fears were justified. Calling something pretentious while standing in front of posters of himself and his awful movies honestly made me want to think it was intentional irony. But that'd be giving him way too much credit. Love letter my ass.
I still enjoy a lot of the creators from the TGWTG days, and I'd encourage people to look into some of them, but Doug Walker is just insufferable.
Yeah even when I didn’t agree with his takes in his early videos, I at least got a few laughs out of it. Then he began to take himself too seriously and became less and less about actually reviewing and more about him showing off his skits and attempting to pass that off as a review. He still had his bad takes thrown in here and there and it made me realize he wasn’t a good critic to begin with. I can’t even get into the old stuff anymore.
I love Phelous still as well as Lindsay. And NC inspired my early days of wanting to be a critic too.
But yeah he definitely went down hill
@@angelsartandgaming Those aren't great examples of people to look up to. 🤣
@@pferreira1983 what's wrong with Lindsay and Phelous? /gen
@@angelsartandgaming What's right with them? 😁
I actually thought the back and forth "Who's on first" style structure of the bit with the female doctors was kind of funny, but the sexual nature of the bit when considered with all of the accusations of misogyny behind the scenes at Channel Awesome makes it really not sit well....
Imagine bringing your kids to the Playground, seeing its occupied by 38 year old Doug Walker in a green Link costume from the Zelda franchise and 25 other freaks.
One account from that filming stated that when some people came walking by he actually started yelling directions towards them I will be generous and believe he did that as a joke but it's still a really cringy thing to do.
This makes me wonder how Nostalgia Critic got so popular. He's not even a good critic.
The Internet seemed a lot smaller when we were younger. It almost felt like Doug was doing stuff no one else has ever done, but because he was a regular guy instead of a celebrity, it made you believe that you could do things that were just as good if not better. The Internet was a Wild West and it was all about who got there first.
As someone who got into him at like 11 when he had one page of videos on his website until close to To Boldly Flee, I completely agree with you. Besides being an asshole and yelling a lot, there's really nothing to him. Took me waaaaay too long to realize it.
He was doing what avgn was doing, but for movies, another very popular thing, he was one of the first to do it, it didn't matter if it was good, what mattered was that he became the biggest because of a lack of competition, also the lack of something else to compare it to, plus the fame, made it easier for his content to look good or funny, also a really young demographic doesn't have the highest of bars
Internet standards were pretty low back in 2008.
Because back in the early days of TH-cam, the whole angry guy yelling at bad stuff was popular.
However, many of those has either evolve their style to be more informative while still being entertaining (Lindsay Ellis went from a distaff version of the Nostalgia Critic to someone who made a documentary about the Hobbit movies) or has faded into obscurity (Like Spoony). Doug didn't evolve his style (or he evoled in ways nobody wanted IE: Clipless reviews) and, as a result, what what seen as endearing back there is now annoying.
4:26 Fun Fact: that guy is a TH-camr named Phelous and he himself hates these movies makes fun of them sometimes
By make fun, I don't mean he's reviewed them but he jokes about how they suck sometimes in his vids
@@TheArkman360 If I remember correctly, almost all of the former contributors very vocally hate these films. ToddInTheShadows has made jokes about them,too.
@@thegeneralpopulace8513 Nice!
@@TheArkman360 Phelous was actually the Special Effects artist in Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee, so the most decent aspects of those quote on quote "movies" were his contributions to the effects, he also designed the Channel Awesome logo Doug keeps using.
Despite that, I like his early stuff but I don't dig his recent content at all.
@@luismarioguerrerosanchez4747 Really!, also why don't like his recent content cause I find it good
Lindsey looks directly into the camera at 9:32 and I s2g I can see her soul dying.
Soul?
I love how the irl Doug Walker turned out to be basically his character from Kickassia to his real employees
Doug's films perfectly reflect the atmosphere of the platform at the time. There was no self awareness; content creators believed they were doing something genuinely incredible and poured their hearts into everything they made for better or for worse. On the upside of this we had stuff like Red Vs Blue where the creators grew as artists and still make new series people like to this day. On the other hand you have cases like Doug, where as kids a lot of us liked his content and what he was trying to accomplish, but after getting older and developing more taste it became apparent that a lot of it was just self-indulgent and didn't really succeed at being anything but a big circle jerk.
the 'remind me to ask him if he's a transvestite' "joke" is even worse in hindsight, considering he says it directly to a transwoman
@Shaun Jay wow sick burn bro did your mom choose it out for you?
@Jo Jo no, Kinley Mochrie is
@@arowace498 Leave him alone.
@@HBarnill this is literally even more hillarious than the comment I'm replying to. I literally just said the most juvenile shit and you're acting like I told him I had his credit card info and was going to burn his house down
@@flusendieb6833 I had no idea that Colin Mochrie's daughter was part of Channel Awesome. That's so weird and yeah, that joke is even worse in hindsight
I'd honestly still watch these over any of the films Shane Dawson was in .
Ya lol
idk man. In the time it takes to finish To Boldly Flee you'd already have finished like 3 SD movies. Sometimes it's better to just rip off the bandaid. Also Shane didn't actually horribly mistreat and traumatize his costars. They might've been a bit uncomfy but he's got nothing on Doug.
@@yukikanegawa7470 Honestly from what I've seen of Shane he seems way more disturbing.
@@yukikanegawa7470 he was horrible to his costars maybe even worse
@@ognjensijak989 He may have been mean to them. Verbally. Which is reprehensive and he still hasn't really addressed it. Some people say that the bts was a mockumentary but idk. Either way it still has nothing on Doug and his producer (I think). Two people made the movie mainly so it was them. Shane didn't actually assault costars. Shane didn't actually withhold his costars paychecks. Shane didn't send his fans to harass costars. Shane didn't have pressure two actors into doing a r*pe scene though they both said they didn't want to. There aren't any actual real life r*pe allegations against Shane. Shane isn't known to have sexually harassed how costars. Despite looking dismissive towards women in the behind the scenes Shane wasn't being deliberately sexist. There wasn't blatant mysogyny allowed just out in the open. Shane doesn't have a long document written about just how toxic the work environment was.
It's called Not So Awesome if you wanna read it or something since I doubt you know the situation. It's a public Google doc. Probably easy to find.
Brandon Rogers did "charcter meets creator" better with same and stuff lol
When did he do that? I remember liking that person's content
@@alx0tl watch his series "sam and stuff", near the end he dose that
There’s also the year recap video where he meets his own characters. Its called “Interviewing my characters”
Brandon rogers works because all his characters are very distinguished from himself and each other. Doug and the nostalgia critic are exactly the same
@@DeathnoteBB It includes a surprisingly catchy song.
Oh no, I just realized that when CinemaSnob makes that "remind me to ask if he's a transvestite" joke, he's talking to Kinley Mochrie. Oh boy, that makes it a whole lot worse doesn't it....
*Does a quick google search* ... Yikes. That does compound the shittyness in retrospect.
I was just going to make this comment
Why what happened?
Kinley Mocherie is a Transwoman
'Spoony completely looses it at some point.' Welp... life imitates art, I guess, which is something that can be said for quite a few plotpoints in these movies.
Nostalgic critic is the cringiest coffee shop drama school dork ever.
And a true bugman consoomer of product
And he's never grown out of it.
You should check out his *very* bad “game show.”
I want to say it was called “Pop Quiz, Genius”
I thought it was "Pop Quiz Hotshot"? Either way ,hard agree.
@@thegeneralpopulace8513 Oop, you’re right.
Pop shot quiz smart
Hot shart pop tart
Yes please!
The Channel Awesome films never felt like it was about the creators. To me, it always felt like “The Nostalgia Critic appreciation movie”.
Back then video quality wasn't really a concern. It was the age of "anyone can pick up a camera of any kind and just film something with friends," so that was how I perceived their first movie at the time. I was also a teenager, so I can't say my sense of humor was super mature at the time.
The NC era is such a weird thing for me to think about because I was such an avid watcher of those creators, and still follow some who came from it like Dominick Noble. But as soon as the allegations of grooming and SA dropped, as well as other creators coming forward to speak on their bad experiences working with the Walker brothers and others in his company, I dropped NC entirely. It's not only a sense of humor I grew out of, but knowing the conditions these videos were made under makes it hard to watch.
It really is a shame, and I get a weird feeling of melancholy because it was a big part of my early internet days that I can't just go back to and be...nostalgic over.
It was really bold of Doug to try and make a documentary on the torture the Nazis used for their opponents.
Somehow this is the fifth result for “nostalgia critic” when logged out. I checked on incognito and after the three “latest from Channel Awesome” videos a well as the channel itself is one Nostalgia Critic and then this. Nice job.
Our boy is moving up
It's actually frightening how accurate Kickassia is to the real events behind the scenes at Channel Awesome.
"Spoony ... completely loses it at some point. He goes absolutely crazy. It's like he's possessed, or something" describes the (so-called) movie _and_ reality.
As a side note, I just wanna say, Molossia sells Wild Mustang lip balm and it's literally the best lip balm I've ever used. Seriously. They're also just... the coolest? They're ridiculous in the best ways, like most micronations. Reading their newsletters and website is a trip. It absolutely sucks that they're most well known for Doug Walker.
Support micronations!
Fun fact about the wall review, the gci animal abominations in them were made by some dude who made them as a fetish and Doug didn’t realise that he just made them for people who had the same fetish
Oh, Satellite City was a kink show? I never new that. I lost interest in it after a while, but I did like the design of Fontaine and the idea of all the casinos in Las Vegas being run by a literal monster.
@@stingerjohnny9951 yeah, I read about it hearing the guy makes them as a fetish but Doug just thought he liked making cool monster designs
@@stingerjohnny9951 Now I’m scared to look it up...
To be fair, To Boldly Flee was originally released in separate parts, so it probably wasn’t meant to be watched all in one sitting. Doesn’t really make it better though
Well now you have to do the Atop the 4th Wall movie, because Linkara keeps these films as part of his canon. Yes, Linkara has a canon...a very long, very weird, ongoing storyline in his videos that has continued for what I’d guess is over ten years now.
just a glance at his AT4W wiki makes me wonder how noone has come with a linkara lore iceberg
@@mnemot we already have a Dream SMP one and that only recently started compared to linkara.
Maybe you should do it! I’m sure a lot of old fans would love it.
I think the AT4W movie was pretty good. And a far superior production than TBF.
Sounds fun
I Think what really sucks is just how shitty the reviews where treated on these sets, a craft service table was laughed at during multiple times and as i recall the, " coffee runs" where a goddamn nightmare
I just imangine neighbors walking by seeing grown men in cosplay fighting on a playground like "Wtf?"
"He is nothing short of insufferable"
That's just how Doug is
Why everyone is hating Doug? I feel like people forgot, that Nostalgia Critic is just a character, and not how he actually acts
@@stolyartoad8640 doug sucks get over it
@@stolyartoad8640 they are hating on him because of his idiotic way he ran his business and shitty treatment of his other reviewers leading to a mass exodus from his sight until him and Guru Larry were all that was left (who stayed there as a joke and treated it as a Hunger Games “Last one Standing sorta deal)
@@stolyartoad8640 The thing is, his character is basically him masquerading as a critic.
I thought Kickassia was pretty funny, and overall harmless fan service. It was pretty cool to see all those youtubers together, and some jokes really took me off guard. The rest were shit, though. No question about it. Bold
I was a fan of the Nostalgia Critic basically from the beginning all the way back in like 2008 and watched at least until To boldly Flee (if not later, it's hard to say). It's fun to see people rag on how bad the content was. I worshipped everything Doug Walker did for way too long considering how bad he was at being a critic. Pretty bold of me to automatically accept any opinion he had while shitting on channels like CinemaSins for being way too nitpicky and egotistical.
I feel that, at least with his earlier videos, they weren't meant to be anything serious, just a bunch of jokes at a movie's expense (your taste in "humor" may very I suppose). But With Demo Reel and thee later Nostalgia Critic stuff he's actually trying to make serious, analytic film criticism and it's painfully obvious he just not good at it. And that wouldn't necessarily be that bad, everyone has to start somewhere and you could look at a lot of different creator's earlier works and say some of the same things. But the fact is Doug Walker just can't seem to improve in either his film making or his critical skills and when you read the behind the scenes stuff that seems to come from him arrogantly believing he's already great and doesn't need to improve.
In the words of Spazkid/Cory, "You can sit through Kickassia and have a grand old time... but I can not fucking get through To Boldly Flee, it's so boring, it's Star Wars, Star Trek, and Cowboy Bebop all in one, and it's as cringy as it sounds."
man i always forget "cory from oneyplays" is a Chris Chan main character
I like how you put more time into this 28 minute long video than Doug put into 8 hours of film
Spicy, dare I say BOLD take on Doug Walker's mind.
That scene with Angry Joe ranting in the beginning of Suburban Knights is real.
@17:45 this one is ESPECIALLY awkward because the person he’s making the joke to is Kinley Mochrie... whom later came out as trans... and she looks so uncomfortable there when he says that 😬
i just rewatched that scene and man... ive never cringed so hard. sexism, transphobia... these films are absolutely insufferable
also fun fact: her dad is colin mochrie of who’s line is it anyway fame!
Yeah, she turned out to be trans and so did the guy who played "Radical Edward", JesuOtaku.
@@Davethe3rd yeah is he still on TH-cam? I remember liking some of his anime stuff
The reason they were all so samey in the _Kickassia_ is because of Doug's (non-existent) talent as a filmmaker. Rather than letting them play themselves, he kept directing them all to act like him, over the top, shouty and so on. When they were insistent, he told them to record it two ways so he could pick and choose later on. But of course, he always chose the take using his style.
As a lonely 12-year-old, the ramshackle and awkward feel of Kickassia and Suburban Knights made me feel like part of a real community who saw media and the world around them in sort of the same way I did. It's a real shame Walker and co turned out to be so IRL shady. I still get that nostalgic feeling from the memory of the movies - I remember wishing I had the self-belief and committed group of friends to make a movie too, even if it was super amateur like theirs. It feels like a betrayal that it wasn't really just a bunch of misfits making something they thought was cool but bosses horribly mistreating their employees.
I used to like the NC and his movies from a teenagers perspective is that they're good but looking back with how bad the actors were treated makes it hard to enjoy them
Why the hell was I obsessed with him as a kid???
Sometimes you make mistakes
*pats shoulder* it’s ok, we were all there. This entire comment section is like a massive AA meeting....CAA
Because you were a literal child that didn't know any better.
The weirdest part of this video for me is you calling them youtubers when I associate 90% with the channel awesome website only lol
That's why I call them internet celebrates.
Since it covers all platforms.
I'd recommend checking out Linkara's Storyline Videos mostly so you can watch his 10th anniversary movie.
It had a better production and was done under better conditions then what Doug and his brother put the reviewers through it also incorporates plot elements from Doug's anniversary videos into its storyline.
It rarely does as much direct quoting from other media like Dougs films and whenever Linkara does quote something it serves the scene its in and isn't thrown in at random or haphazardly.
He's actually the Reviewer (one of the many reviewers) that inspired me to give youtubing a shot
I remember a line from Nostalgia Critic's review of the AVGN Movie (which is like Nostalgia Critic's movies, but a whole lot better). It went some thing like "AVGN the movie is a movie made by that kid who would incessantly said he wanted to make a movie in high school, without thinking much about how to make movies, but in the end, he made the movie." James Rolfe is hardened film buff who studied film and knows what he's doing. Doug Walker is that kid in high school who wanted to make a movie without putting the effort in learning how to make movies.
Shit, i forgot that Lindsay Ellis was the Nostalgia Chick
Honestly, I used to watch her when she was on the site and I _still_ tend to forget she was ever the NChick. I think it’s the fact that her current stuff is so much further removed from Doug’s formula than anyone else’s is.
I liked the the transitory stuff she made between leaving CA and starting her own channel. But I can't stand her current content at all.
She is trying to forget that too.
@@luismarioguerrerosanchez4747 Same. Mostly because her political bs tbh.
@@Rex13013 She calls herself an anti-capitalist (don't even having the ovaries to flag proper socialism or communism) yet leaves a perfectly comfortable and privilege life as a capitalist, with her thousand of Patreon dollars and her shitty books.
When Google changes the format of this site for the millionth time, that finger will feel weird pointing at where the title used to be.
I had it full screened in mobile and I thought the finger was pointing at the scheduled add segment.
The first year anniversary special they did, the one before Kickassia, was the best one because it was just all filmed in a hotel with a bunch of the critics from the site (and James Rolfe) just engaging in a gigantic, pointless brawl and you could tell everybody had a lot of fun with it.
Also pretty BOLD of the critic to include that one dude's weird sexy fetish CGI furries in his Pink Floyd critique.
13:05 That's not acting. That's literally how Doug acted as a director, too.
Wait the anthem of the Nazi party is in kickassia when the example of him doing the dictator voice was on, I thought I was literally just hearing things