Red Letter Media

[Idiotron]

Could you explain what you mean by this? I'm curious about what you're trying to say here.

They're rich dudes who are constantly acting like everything in their lives sucks.
That doesn't work in a time where most people's lives actually suck.
It was cute pre-COVID but now, it's just annoying.

 

[Mussolini’s Merkin]

They've fallen off since COVID.

As someone that still enjoys their new stuff, even I have to admit the quality just isn't the same any more. Their older episodes are still great though.

 

[INDEED]

This new meta that started with the Minecraft movie where they "review" films without actually seeing them is just cancer.

I haven't watched RLM in a while - are they seriously not bothering to go see the movie?

The Critical Drinker started doing this as well, but walked it back after pushback. I think after so many years the temptation is strong to just look up Rotten Tomatoes and just guess what the movie is like.

The should just make Half In The Bag an irregular thing like re:View and only drop it when they have something worth saying.

 

[Dollar Store Sentai]

Some (all?) of them even claim to have not seen it, which I don't believe for a second. Everyone born in that generation watched MST3K.

I'm pushing 50 and can count the times I've watched a full episode of MST3k on one hand. It just wasn't my thing when I was channel surfing as a teen/early 20's

 

[The Blue Morpho]

Could you explain what you mean by this? I'm curious about what you're trying to say here.

I guess it's hard to put into words, but in the early BOTW episodes the cast always comes across as self-aware enough to make what is ultimately a bunch of normie middle aged nerds sperging about nerd shit seem subversive and cool instead of cringe. They would even clown on that type of stuff done without the self-awareness, like Collider, with things like the Nerd Crew. This is, imo, very characteristic of the Gen X mindset. A generation of Daria's, who hide their own stances and preferences behind a veneer of above-it-all irreverence and indifference.

Personally, this posture of not caring about things (while still very clearly caring about things) doesn't play well anymore. Its gay and cringe. Maybe I've just outgrown it. Also there have been a few times in the last few years of RLM where Jay and Rich have suggested really gay opinions/takes on current events. You just never got that kind of stuff from the main three, just Josh and sometimes Jack.

Edit: I forgot about the reviewing movies they didn't watch thing lol, I guess its just been that long since I've watched Half in the Bag with any regularity because its always about whatever gay shit Mike just found on Tubi

 

[Null]

They're from Milwaukee and watch film for a living. They're one bad cucking from being Patrick Tomlinson.

 

[The Blue Morpho]

They're from Milwaukee and watch film for a living. They're one bad cucking from being Patrick Tomlinson.

Thats why I love Tim Higgins. He's more salt of the earth and clearly is immune to such city slickery.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

It's not that deep, their content has just gotten a bit boring and stale, likely due to them churning out the the same sort of content for nearly 20 years now. I've personally barely watched them this past year.

 

[mlanguishi]

They've always been hit or miss IMO, over fairly long periods too. I tried to watch their Picard reviews again, and man they are too long and not good. But their top 10 TNG and 2 Re:Reviews are great. I wish they'd bring back the gimmick BOTW ones. Plinko, wheel, junka. A lot of the last few years of BOTW have usually had one solid funny entry and 2 other slogs.

 

[Kether]

We really should love On Cinema At the Cinema more, they were literally mocking Red Letter Media and lazy faggots like them way back in 2011. They had Mike and Jay's number completely. They somehow were parodying Mike and Jay's Minecraft review all the way back then.

. You'd think with her fame her movies would do better than they are.

its not the 2000s buddy. fame doesn't put people's asses in seats anymore. even Marty Supreme which has the biggest male star on the planet and is a star vehicle and has timmy dancing and jumping on couches and shit like that has made fuck all money.

social media has made the allure of being an actor or actress collapse. it used to be that a decade ago you'd only see a celebrity if they had some movie they were in and they'd have some 5 minute interview they'd do for every morning show or radio show but they only put on their a-game for the late night show interviews.

Think about Jennifer Lawrence, she was oozing with charisma and she wasn't doing every podcast and her star vehicles did mostly well but she really was one of the last that could star in a movie and near guarantee it hitting $100 million or more. . Just her in a movie meant it was greenlit no matter how weird or out there it was, because people knew it would make money. Her and Chris Pratt in passengers, a film everyone admits was "ok" at best cleared $300 million entirely because it starred those two.

the modern equivalent, Anyone but you, from Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell made only $220 million, which is pretty awful considering how even a cheap film costs $20 million now and spending $100 million on a film doesn't get you much and is almost a norm, the alternative being if you paid everyone scale and only hire b or c level actors. Everyone praying for backend money to come through. there was some jordan peele movie a few years back that was shot in the outskirts of LA right across from the Wipeout set and starred random c-list actors and it still cost $60 million. the numbers don't make sense for movies anymore. the only ones making money are kids films like pixar and AI has shown they can very easily crank those out for literally fucking free.

honestly if a Jennifer Lawrence type was born a decade later, she'd be better off using that charisma to become an e-celeb and acting in their local community theater, or doing what RLM does and have some skits in their shitty videos. She'll have so many hours of her showing off her charisma on hours of podcasts that no one will bother paying money to see her in her movie.

plenty of people just do acting as a hobby from their main job, every town has some group doing a production of a christmas carol. Thats where acting is going back to, its like how in the vaudville days you could be a professional juggler or magician but barely anyone can do that nowadays. the allure of the film business isn't there anymore. If you wanted to see a hot chick's tits 20 years ago you'd have to watch her films in theaters. now you can look up the scene anywhere and save money. If you wanted to see a cool dude being all charsimatic and fun, you have the dozens of hours of podcasts and don't have to pay money to the theaters. the Marty Supreme press tour was better than the movie, according to even fans of the movie.

We're sort of like in that era where radio stars vanished and tv stars happened, or how silent film stars were replaced by actual actors. the "tv and film" era of entertainment is dying out completely. If you're going to be a star, its because of your innate likeability and not because people like your acting skills. Sydney is no different from any of the fat tiddy chicks on twitch or instagram and her career in a few years will reflect that. If people are going to see an IP its because of the behind the camera people vs the ones in front of it now.

 

[mlanguishi]

Acting and Hollywood has always been a few big stars on top and many many that have to wait tables or something else to get by. Streaming odds seem even worse, only the top 5% make much, if that. Rest $100 a month or less. But indeed, the 'movie star' thing has been gone awhile. And the big 'movie director' mostly too. Tom Cruise is pretty much the last big star that can bring them, and even that's faltering. Nolan.. If Odyssey doesn't perform might end the director as thing too. Avatar 3 is down somewhat so even Cameron's not such a draw.

I said it before, but I think the long form movie format is going the way of how Operas and Symphonies went as big entertainment. More and more niche. I think theaters will mostly go away and there will be 'event' areas for 'event movies' that charge $100 per seat like the Sphere Wizard of Oz deal. A lot of the gimmicks in theaters fail pretty quick too. 3d comes and goes. Dbox is still around, but certainly never took off. VR stations in theaters were tried, but died.

I made the Disclosure Day thread, and if that fails and even Spielberg on a big Sci-fi can bring it on a tent pole, it's really bleak. Odyssey and that and Doomsday for 2026 are going to be big indicators going forward. Even the more recent cheaper horror movies like Blumhouse haven't done that well, and without physical backend deals, I'm not sure how they can keep going much longer. It's like a few big expected hits, and a few surprises, and that's it.

A bit unknown is how much cheap as hell AI can be popular. The last dozen years of movies, only a few have been better quality than cats yelling at customer 30 second videos. That will eventually totally kill off the back end of Hollywood, and I don't think people are going to theaters to watch AI much. But I do think AI can and will do much better writing than Hollywood 'writers' can, if not most acting too soon.

 

[Well Intentioned]

I guess it's hard to put into words, but in the early BOTW episodes the cast always comes across as self-aware enough to make what is ultimately a bunch of normie middle aged nerds sperging about nerd shit seem subversive and cool instead of cringe. They would even clown on that type of stuff done without the self-awareness, like Collider, with things like the Nerd Crew. This is, imo, very characteristic of the Gen X mindset. A generation of Daria's, who hide their own stances and preferences behind a veneer of above-it-all irreverence and indifference.

Personally, this posture of not caring about things (while still very clearly caring about things) doesn't play well anymore. Its gay and cringe. Maybe I've just outgrown it. Also there have been a few times in the last few years of RLM where Jay and Rich have suggested really gay opinions/takes on current events. You just never got that kind of stuff from the main three, just Josh and sometimes Jack.

Edit: I forgot about the reviewing movies they didn't watch thing lol, I guess its just been that long since I've watched Half in the Bag with any regularity because its always about whatever gay shit Mike just found on Tubi

Gotcha. I was more curious as to why you were thinking it doesn't work in a contemporary context -- detached analytical humor/snarking will always have a place, IMO, but was just curious what you thought had made it not work.

But I do agree that it is something you largely grow out of. If that's your main attitude/ethos or how you default to things, yeah.

I've always viewed them as guys who liked/loved bad cinema (as well as good cinema) and snarked on it because it was so bad it is good to them. But yeah, they have gotten a lot more sour over shit over the years, which I think is where a lot of it is coming from.

Shit like Don Beveridge or Rich just going unhinged with that one movie with the baboon in a tuxedo (I think?) is what I'm talking about. Them just shitting on something isn't really enjoyable and even the stuff where they do dump on something comes from having liked it in the first place.

 

[Kether]

Acting and Hollywood has always been a few big stars on top

but the problem is the few big stars now are having the same effect on movies as a c-list star a decade ago. its like how being the best Starcraft player a decade ago meant a lot more in terms of money and prestige vs now when no one really follows that esport anymore. Timmy in Marty Supreme is having the same box office effect as Shia Labeof in Eagle Eye back in 2010. like the current day top A-list star is barely where former child stars where 15 years ago. thats how much star power has been nerfed.

I made the Disclosure Day thread, and if that fails and even Spielberg on a big Sci-fi can bring it on a tent pole, it's really bleak.

not really Spielberg has actually had a pretty shitty filmography for awhile now. Ready Player one made more money in china than the US, he spent most of the last 20 years doing smaller dramas. his big blockbusters have flopped or did barely well. the BFG famously flopped a decade ago. tintin and warhorse barely made the money expected. the fablemans flopped but people don't mind, same thing with west side story.

if you just take the last 20 years Spielberg is actually a pretty shitty director. i'm just a retard but i am at least 90% sure discloure day will be considered outdated and have some weird message that turns off the general audience who he clearly hasn't been able to connect with since the early 2000s. the post and bridge of spies were great boomer porn, but relying on the medicare aged to turn your blockbuster into a hit is a retarded idea

A bit unknown is how much cheap as hell AI can be popular. The last dozen years of movies, only a few have been better quality than cats yelling at customer 30 second videos. That will eventually totally kill off the back end of Hollywood, and I don't think people are going to theaters to watch AI much. But I do think AI can and will do much better writing than Hollywood 'writers' can, if not most acting too soon.

look at the stuff emily youcis is able to do with AI, and thats with her using it to help get a message across, but if you just want AI to write you a simpsons episode its going to be a lot easier and cheaper than paying some indian who'll give you a terrible script.

Neural Viz released a parody of the mandolorean that was done entirely in AI and he did it on his own, Disney's flagship summer blockbuster of next year can now be reproduced by one autistic dude thanks to AI. movie making will go the way of music, instead of hiring an entire band like in the days of Herb Albert, one autistic dude can make the same shit and usually better shit because its all from one person's mind instead of having to drag a bunch of annoying degenerates into following your ideas. the concept of a wedding or night club band was replaced by the DJ and we're going to see a similar thing in entertainment. and if we're being honest its practically guaranteed to be better because of how badly hollywood has treated people and how much better an output can be when its all done solo.

another music example is how the destruction of heavy metal coincided with the solo project like Nine Inch Nails or Smashing Pumpkins or other "one man band" stuff taking off. When you take away all the bullshit and leave in the art the medium thrives. rock died and rock bands were replaced by djs and rappers and other small groups. One guy with a touring band or just a computer. EDM dominates now and even if you tried to replicate the biggest edm song from the last year using real instruments it would be insanely expensive and not fucking worth it.

Even anti-AI people have noted how dogshit films are, Netflix has forced movies to all look the same, with the same lighting and the same heavy focus and close ups and scripts that can't be too difficult for someone not paying attention to notice every detail.

When you look at how cheap and cost cutting movies are made, its no wonder AI can replicate it. a high movement intricate scene with plenty of extras like you had in not only shitty films starring adam sandler's friends but even porn a decade ago can't be replicated. but a scene of two people in an elevator with 0 movement and them reciting the lines without emotion is super easy to nail on AI.

it reminds me of how plenty of people were fine with american factories closing down because of how low quality the products had gotten by the 90s. as much as the auto factory workers whined about jap cars, they were better quality and price. AI has dominated commercials now, it used to be you had bad commercials or creative commercials or shit local commercials, but now its all bland cheap commercials that are at least better than the DEI commercials we had 3 years ago.

 

[mlanguishi]

Rap is dying, finally. And mando and grogu might also help kill off the movies. That one is going to BOMMBBB. If they thought ROS was bad money, this one's fucked. No interest, dead series. I think a Rey movie would've done better. It's going to do worse than Solo I'm sure.

Car thing is similar, but US ones could and did match it. Hollywood won't be able to overcome AI movies after a few more years. Lucasfilm hired a youtuber AI guy that was beating their asses off in FX, forget who but 3-4 years ago he was doing better than ILM for actor replacements. I don't really care anymore if AI ruins em all, fuck these idiots.

 

[Well Intentioned]

another music example is how the destruction of heavy metal coincided with the solo project like Nine Inch Nails or Smashing Pumpkins or other "one man band" stuff taking off. When you take away all the bullshit and leave in the art the medium thrives. rock died and rock bands were replaced by djs and rappers and other small groups. One guy with a touring band or just a computer. EDM dominates now and even if you tried to replicate the biggest edm song from the last year using real instruments it would be insanely expensive and not fucking worth it.

The music industry in general was destroyed due to the advent of the digital age. Napster, file sharing, mp3s, and then later streaming all led to the death of the music industry, which relied primarily on albums and tour revenue.

When albums started to flop as a format due to physical media becoming outmoded, it shifted towards tour revenue and 360 deals, which is where we saw this glut of celebrity endorsements from musicians/artists and you saw a lot of folks trying to work around that and make money (Trent Reznor/NIN was pretty notable for this with giving away music or the 'pay what you feel'/tiered payments for some of his stuff, going all in with ARG marketing, taking stabs at Chris Cornell, reworking his touring contracts and then eventually getting into scoring music, but there were others, like Radiohead, for example.)

Part of the issue is that rock music died because it wasn't a sustainable model and because rock was clinging to the album format. Top 40/Rap/EDM are all singles driven and you don't really need/care for whole albums. Plus tastes were just generally changing to coincide with what folks were doing/caring about now. You ignored how country became a huge fucking deal for a bit, too, and that was because it basically superseded rock -- you had songs about girls, beer and partying, which is what rock music used to be about. Now that glitz and glamour is with influencers and retards like Hassan.

And yeah, part of it, too, is cost efficiencies, like you mentioned. It is far cheaper for some dipshit with a laptop and Serato to go on tour.

But the biggest change and the shit that's driving all of this is the death of monomedia. We don't have MTV marketing what is 'cool' to folks, working with record label marketing teams to push this artist or that band. I don't know how old a lot of the people are on here, but living in certain parts of the States or Canada back in the 90s was like being 8-9 months behind things, or sometimes not even getting things, even with shit like MTV or Rolling Stone telling people what is cool. For stuff that was more niche, (eg, computer games, Warhammer, anime, certain genres of music, whatever) you were sometimes well and truly fucked for options.

You have shit like YouTube, SoundCloud, BandCamp and even Spotify where artists can release music. And if you're a guy who only listens to Norwegian death metal? You can burrow in like a tick with that kind of music and never listen to anything else because you aren't starved for choice anymore.

Same shit with movies, books, whatever. There's indie guys doing shit in the vein you'll probably like. There are authors going the self publishing route. Bands that are hustling doing their thing. There's no Michael Jackson/Beatles/Elvis Presley/whatever-tier types anymore, but is that really so terrible?

Unfortunately with that comes a lot of shit. And you have big companies/studios/etc being even more risk averse (a trend you could see with how and what record labels were doing in the early 2000s), not wanting to take risks and just retreading the old faithfuls. The Spielbergs. The Pacinos. The Scorceses. The MCUs. The reboots. Etc.

 

[Kether]

You ignored how country became a huge fucking deal for a bit

i feel that was part of the "one man band" thing i mentioned. i was also talking about from a creative output and not financial or industry as a whole. It seemed like plenty of people were sick of heavy metal and its image problem the same way people are sick of hollywood today. its also why i was trying to focus exclusively on the 90s with that comment. the Death of Western civilization, etc.

you're right if we're talking about music overall. Pretty hate machine coming out in 1989 is insane. comparing that to Guns n roses in the same era is insane. it reminds me of how Nick Fuentes going off on jews and boomers was happening back in 2017 when most political people even on the right were talking about how cool it was to have tranny trump supporters and drag queen trump people and even someone with the same politics as Vivek was considered an extremist. Like its so ahead of its time and i doubt if he had to deal with actual band members and the usual production headaches like you'd hear about heavy metal albums from the same era it would be remotely as good or well made.

You're right about books and music and monoculture being shit, in general capitalism seems to corrupt everything. There's no way in hell the bands doing stadiums are doing better shows than they did when they were younger and performing in basements or in malls or parking lots. At least with all music being more level you'll never have to worry about paying through the nose to hear your favorite bands. the bullshit Taylor Swift fans deal with is insane. An indie performer cherishes their fans more than any major act and seems to put in more work as well.

 

[Eadred]

This thread should be renamed to "RLM sucks", time to unwatch it.
While I agree that they aren't as consistently entertaining as they were a couple of years ago, you guys make it sound like they did a complete 180 and trooned out or something. It's just a miserable read now

 

[ddlloo]

This thread should be renamed to "RLM sucks", time to unwatch it.
While I agree that they aren't as consistently entertaining as they were a couple of years ago, you guys make it sound like they did a complete 180 and trooned out something. It's just a miserable read now

Just like the RLM crew have gotten older, lazier, and more bitter, so too have we.

 

[mlanguishi]

This thread should be renamed to "RLM sucks", time to unwatch it.
While I agree that they aren't as consistently entertaining as they were a couple of years ago, you guys make it sound like they did a complete 180 and trooned out something. It's just a miserable read now

I've often complimented them and been watching from the start. They do have good and dry spells though for sure. It's always been hit and miss. Lately I think they've been pretty on par average, which is still pretty good compared to most slop. I do like the conversations about media in general being all messed up, cause they've been saying that for kind of the whole time and in between eps it's a good discussion.

I don't think 'rock music' died cause of online piracy though, fads come and go. Movie and all genres come and go, and come back. I'm glad zombie content is 'dead' for awhile now, it was overdone for so long. I hope superhero shit goes away for awhile too. Star Wars needs a long break. With Star Trek you can make a case that it was always serialized TV, but I'd say give that a rest too. However, without legacy IPs propping up major studios there's not much left anymore. Nothing new since maybe Harry Potter has really been original. I've complained about it forever, most IP's are from the 40s-90s, then Potter, and not much else since.

 

[Well Intentioned]

It seemed like plenty of people were sick of heavy metal and its image problem the same way people are sick of hollywood today.

I don't agree with that at all. Heavy metal was always a niche thing and the whole Satanic Panic thing was moralist bullshit.

Hollywood and modern media is just seen as boring and unimportant.