Changing the Dialogue: How Digital Creators Are Reshaping Film Criticism

Hazel Hayes

I think people come to my channel for me, not necessarily the content itself. There’s such a mixed bag of content on my channel. There’s everything from Tipsy Talk, to film essays, to silly games with my friends, to vlogs on very serious topics, to film sketches, and whatnot. They seem to kind of be the same people coming back, time and again, who are just incredibly supportive of me and of my journey. They genuinely want to see me do well, and do things off the platform, as well, which is really nice.

What I wanted to do, from day one, is just make things that I’m interested in, and make things that I think my audience are gonna be interested in, too. For that reason, the audience that I built is quite loyal. They know I’m not trying to bullshit them; they know I’m not trying to make content just for the sake of it.

Chris Stuckmann

I think people can tell that movies are a huge part of my life. They mean something to me, and I think that comes through with the videos.

A great example is my Shawshank Redemption video. Everyone loves the Shawshank Redemption. With a film like that, me just sitting in my office saying “Yeah, I love it too,” seems like such a boring video to me. Then I realized that the set was only an hour or two away from my house. They were — gratefully — very into me filming there. When I have an opportunity to do something like that, that’s important to me. Visiting all those sets meant something to me. I would’ve done that just for myself. So if you really do have a passion for something, people can really tell.

CinemaSins

CHRIS ATKINSON: We certainly have a core of a very large group of dedicated fans. I think that a lot of our fans are people like us, who love movies and love finding little things to nitpick in the movies — even their favorites. For instance, I am a huge fan of Back to the Future, and I have watched that movie literally hundreds of times. But as much as I love Back to the Future, every time I watch it, there are things about it that keep cropping up that make me think, “Oh, wow, that is kind of not so great,” but I just let it go, because the movie itself is so great overall. There is a lot of those types of people out there, who obsess over those kinds of details and they do it in every movie — not just their favorite ones — but in every movie that they have watched.

JEREMY SCOTT: The loudest voices that dislike us seem to come from either the film industry itself, like a director or a longtime professional movie critic, who has either reviewed on television or print. I think that is perfectly natural, because we come along and we are cracking jokes, not taking it as seriously as they have taken their craft for probably decades. And we get millions of subscribers while they still get the same numbers of readers of their review or their newspaper review. They are not really getting the recognition that they probably deserve.

Lindsay Ellis

Humans are naturally curious creatures. They want to think more deeply — well, some of them. Film writing, however, has always been a little inaccessible, especially because academic writing can be really hard to wade through.

For me, there have always been ways to make all or part of my living using online video, mostly to talk about movies. But it is only within the last couple years that I feel like this genre of longform film criticism is gaining popularity. I feel like I am contributing to a new form.

Black Men
Can’t Jump

JONATHAN BRAYLOCK: Our intent with this podcast was to really try to figure out why these trends happen in films starring people of color, note trends that people hadn’t noticed before, and point out things that go over your head that you’re not thinking about when you’re watching the movie.

We know that we are effecting change, but I do think that we’re only gonna effect change with people who are willing to listen to us in the first place, so that’s gonna be somewhat limited. We’re just probably not gonna have people who are ardent Trump supporters, who are mad about a Black Stormtrooper — they’re not gonna listen to our podcast.

History Buffs

I’ve been extremely thrilled with the community I’ve had. They’re unbelievably supportive and understanding, and unlike any YouTube audience that you think you know about. My channel breaks a lot of taboos; one of them is uploading frequently. I upload once a month, or once every six weeks. The usual rule is that if you do that, your channel is dead. But that hasn’t been the case, at all. I go off for like four weeks, to five, to six, and yet they’re always there waiting for me when I come back.

They don’t complain about it, because they know that the longer I spend on the video, the more time I have with it, and hopefully the better piece of content I will take out.

Alachia Queen

My audience knows I’m going to be 100% honest about how I feel about a film, and not going with the tide of what other critics are thinking or what the popular audience thinks. So, if everybody is raving about a film but I didn’t like it, I’m not going to just rave about it because everyone else is. I’m very true to how I feel about a film and I enjoy talking about that.

The Worst Idea
of All Time

GUY MONTGOMERY: There’s a weird appeal. People find it good company if you’re [going] through something challenging. Because the podcast is essentially us locking ourselves in a self-imposed torture chamber, we give permission to the audience to relish in our madness and discomfort. A lot of the messages we get will be, “Well, I was going through something tough, but I listen to the podcast and say to myself — at least it’s not that.”

TIM BATT: Beyond that, people genuinely do gravitate towards the fact that Guy and I are very obviously good mates, and that comes across on the podcast. We’re good mates to the point where we have the ability to really get on each other’s case. If one of us if feeling particularly sensitive one week, the other one will exploit that. And that requires quite a close relationship to be able to get away with that. And people will always enjoy that level of friendship, I think.