Moviebob

/wiki/Moviebobcreator

"Proud to be an American,
Prouder to be an American geek"

—The motto used at the beginning of each segment.

Bob "Moviebob" Chipman, also known as "The Game Overthinker", is a self-proclaimed "Z-list internet celebrity" who maintains a vlog on YouTube and a Blogspot site,and also contributes to both The Escapist and ScrewAttack. He rips apart bad movies, but his particular shtick is giving analyses of gaming culture and the industry, in a style closely reminiscent of college-lit-class style "close reading", overlaid with appropriate (and sometimes humorous) images. Bob's analyses are very much like you would see from a troper. Indeed, he's written an article that refers to "a genuinely wonderful website called TV Tropes". Bob loves what he loves and hates what he hates, and between his (admittedly) abrasive attitude, his unapologetic love of '80s and early '90s gaming, and his tendency to belittle franchises with large fanbases (and those fans), he can be somewhat divisive. However, agree or disagree with him, his videos often provide ample food for thought.

The list of the Films Discussed By Moviebob got so long, it's been moved to a separate page.

Moviebob provides examples of the following tropes:

"You heard me, you half-cocked message board fuckheads, the Wii is part of this console generation ... so can we please stop it with this tired shit about GameCubes and duct tape!"

    • Tyler Perry also counts, as does Sam Raimi's departure from the Spider-Man films and the series' upcoming reboot.
    • He also hates the new Transformers films, as well as the bulk of Michael Bay's output for that matter.
  • Bias Steamroller:
    • He has become notorious for the fact that his intense opposition to politically-incorrect, unfriendly, and "macho" members of the "hardcore" gaming and nerd community, noble in and of itself, bleeds into hating anything he thinks they like, hence the list under Acceptable Targets in the YMMV section.
    • Bob once infamously stated that he preferred Metroid: Other M, one of the most controversial games in the venerable Metroid series and often considered a Franchise Killer, to the beloved and universally-acclaimed Metroid Prime trilogy entirely on the basis that the Prime games were First Person Shooters, and thus automatically, and this is a direct quote, "creatively bankrupt".
    • Furthermore, his intense antipathy towards the "Retake Mass Effect" movement, which went on for more than a month of him being unable to make any videos about anything without spending a bit of time ranting about it, was heavily rooted in his low opinion of the morals and intellectual capacity of the gaming community, and his horror at the idea of what in his mind were a bunch of Acceptable Targets degrading the Auteur theory as applied to video games. Notably, he maintained throughout the controversy that he didn't see why his complete ignorance of the source material should prevent him from having an opinion about it and regularly dismissed the idea that a "player-driven narrative" could have any artistic value. Another direct quote: "No one ever won a Pulitzer for a f@#$ing 'Choose Your Own Adventure' novel!"
    • He's become more and more notable for having a very, very strong leaning towards the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while having an even stronger leaning against any comic book films not made within that franchise post Iron Man.
    • Bob loves the 00s Spider-Man trilogy and slam The Amazing Spider-Man any chance he gets, over emphasising the qualities of the former and dismissing the positives of the latter. For Spider-Man: Homecoming, many were annoyed that he ignored the character story within and just dismissed the whole thing as disposable junk.
  • Breather Episode: If you follow all of his shows, the Game Overthinker episode Bat-Slap comes out with Bob stating he doesn't believe gaming culture as a whole is ready/deserves to be taken as seriously as it so-often claims to want to. Come the following Tuesday, the Big Picture episode Science has Bob making mostly non-serious statements like "Space guys, if you don't want to pretend you've discovered oil on Mars to trick some funding out of the Government, how about telling Glenn Beck there's gold on the moon and not letting him come back?"
  • Brick Joke: His Do The Mario videos on the Escapist, the first one having a stinger showing SMB: Peach-Hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen and saying it's a story for another time (as in, not the week after the first). Two weeks later, Do the Mario PT. 2 was featured (showcasing said aforementioned Mario anime).
  • Catch Phrase: "I'm Bob, and that's The Big Picture."
  • Cerebus Syndrome: Somewhat. Early reviews felt slower, but they developed a more mature, and contemplative pace, dealing with more analytical subject matter.
  • Channel Hop: To ScrewAttack & The Escapist.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu - Discussed in his review of, appropriately enough, Ninja Assassin.
    • Also invoked in Episode 56.
  • Crap Saccharine World: This picture is painted for this video to show the mentality of Nintendo's hugest, almost literally, cult supporters.
  • Crazy Awesome: In-universe, when The Escapist made him start doing The Big Picture, he used a bit of the first video to officially dub his bosses as such.
  • Creator Thumbprint:
  • Curse Cut Short

Ah, finally. Just a good old-fashioned straight-up revenge movie. No post-apocalyptic bible salesman, no angels with guns, no connection to anything remotely spiritual, religious, church-related or anything else that gets people's panties in a twist whenever I mention it. Ah, good. Good. ...Hey, who's in this again? *Shot of Mel Gibson as he appeared in The Passion of the Christ* Aw, Mother F- *Theme Plays*

I'd love to tell you all the thoughts that went through my mind about Scarlett Johansson and her performance in this movie... but this is a family show, so I'll have to summarize. HOLY-- *end credits*

  • Darker and Edgier: "Violence is Golden", "Complex Issues" and "Building a Better Gamer" focus on more complex issues than most of his usual Game Overthinker episodes. His humor is more subtle in those episodes, and he does it a less contemplative tone.
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Did Not Do the Research:
    • His "Combat Evolved" discussion on Halo asserted that the human marines look uniform in comparison to the diverse Covenant; in Halo 3, the humans are teamed up with a species of bipedal 8 foot tall aliens with brightly colored armor. He also mentions that the Covenant want to conquer mankind; their actual goal is genocide.
    • Bob also uses the words "raccoon" and "tanuki" as if they are synonymous (they aren't), among a few other isolated errors.
  • Dirty Old Man: Shows tendencies of this sometimes, and says that's he is a lecherous pig in his review for Love & Other Drugs.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: The production of Salt foundered when it lost its star, but then Angelina Jolie signed up for the action, which is great. Really great. Mmm-hmm. Yeah...weren't we reviewing a movie?
  • Evil Twin: The Antithinker.
  • False Dichotomy: Separating people into the If Jesus, Then Aliens groups in a recent episode, labeling people as either 'thinkers' or 'believers.' There's a bit of Did Not Do the Research with using Lisa Simpson to represent the 'thinkers' group.
  • Fairy Companion: Ivan the fairy intern. Occasionally doubles as Exposition Fairy.
  • Fan Service: The hot model pics.
    • In his Heavy Metal review, he notes that this was the only reason the movie was worth watching at the time, since boobs were hard to find back in the early 80's, let alone cartoon boobs.
  • Fast-Forward Gag: He sometimes speeds up part of his voice-over in order to make the video fit the standard ~10-minute length while still including all the BIG WORDS he wants to use. It is usually accompanied by a graphic of a chipmunk and a cup of coffee.
  • Franchise Original Sin: In-Universe example; in the Intermission editorial "Consequences", he cites four examples of great films that he feels started some of the more annoying and/or problematic trends in various film genres, and in moviemaking as a whole.
  • Freudian Excuse: He admitted once that he was bullied in high school, and his comments seem to give away that his resentment from that era is one, if not the main reason behind his criticism to certain things. Like the "douchebag" video game crowd that came with the Play Station generation (especially Xbox Live FPS users), his hatred towards the 90's (the decade in which he went to high school), and his fondness for Magneto-like villains. He's also specially done a Big Picture episode about nerd reactions to such actions and the mindset that if one was bullied, they can't in turn be a bully themselves. He admits that he's talking to himself as much as he is to the viewer.
  • The Great Comics Crash of 1996: Game Overthinker Episode 11, titled "Can It Happen To Us?", pointed out similarities between the current game industry and the pre-crash comic book industry.
  • Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Yes. Every female character in every movie gets ranked based on how much she appeals to Bob's carefully explained tastes.
  • Heavy Metal: Bob uses the metal fandom's rejection of neo-Nazi skinheads latching onto them as a model for how gamers should react to their medium's association with fringe whackos (like the Oslo killer) and disgruntled youth.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Many of his rants comes very close to what "hardcore frat boys" talk and act like (or at least what he thinks they do). The very first episode is particularly notable in this regard.
    • A more notable example is his frequent Twitter rants, which many people on the internet find unnervingly fascistic in tone due to describing his extreme antipathy towards the Right and his constant talk of "a brighter future".
  • History of Hollywood: He's done a series of episodes on this subject for The Big Picture.
  • Hypocrisy Nod: In the "Building a Better Gamer" video, Bob acknowledges the hypocrisy of a fat man telling people to get in better shape.
  • I Take Offense to That Last One: Inverted. He calls himself out on insulting Michael Bay:

"I said that the movies of Michael Bay were made by a douchebag for douchebags, and that wasn't fair. I don't know Michael Bay, for all I know he's a perfectly nice person. Oh, his movies are still made for and primarily enjoyed by douchebags, but there's no reason to stoop to personal attacks.

  • I Want My Jetpack: Devoted an entire Big Picture episode to this subject.
  • Jittercam: One of his Pet Peeve Tropes, along with the "found footage" genre that makes heavy use of it, though he sees why they're so popular nowadays. He feels that, for the generation that grew up with camera phones and social media as ubiquitous parts of their lives, this style of filmmaking is associated with realism, i.e. something that looks like it was shot on the street by random passerby rather than by a professional film crew.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Most of the time, less pointing out the tropes he uses, and more acknowledging them.
  • Lighter and Softer: Escape to the Movies is done in less serious and less acknowledging tone than The Game Overthinker.
  • My Name Is Not Durwood: Commissioner Bunnyface... sorry, Buonofacio. (He's a rabbit.)
  • No Ending: Moviebob/The Game Overthinker doesn't really find a conclusive point in "Who Will Be Remembered?" other than you will never rid the world of Kirby, and that he wouldn't have it any other way.
  • Nostalgia Filter: Bob is a decidedly old-school-centric gamer.
    • Played straight and averted, respectively, with his treatment of The Eighties and The Nineties. Bob is not a fan of the latter decade, frequently accompanying mentions of it with a stock photo of Randy "The Ram" Robinson with the caption "The '90s sucked", and he has little love for most of the pop culture trends of that era (Nineties anti heroes, post-modern teen horror, et cetera). On the other hand, he loves the '80s, cheesiness and all. He states that this was because the '90s were his awkward, schlubby teen years that came in between his wondrous childhood in the '80s and his present-day success as an internet personality.
    • Averted, and examined, with his treatment of The Simpsons. While going over the older seasons, Bob noticed that most of the episodes he thought were comic gold as a kid didn't age well, while the episodes he thought were boring when they first aired became much better now that he was old enough to appreciate the humor. He concludes that The Simpsons didn't jump the shark like its fans thought it did, but rather, its fans grew up and their tastes in humor changed, and The Simpsons didn't change with them. Plus, there's the fact that the show, a broad satire of the greater pop culture, is a relic of a time stretching from roughly 1950-2000 when pop culture was largely monolithic[1] -- the early '00s, the time most commonly cited as when The Simpsons "stopped being funny", is also the time when the internet and cable television fragmented pop culture into a million little shards and subcultures.
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: For Devil, and emblematic of the whole movie's stupidity:

A character who we're supposed to regard as the grounded rational and moral centre of the entire story proves that they're in the presence of the Devil by throwing a piece of toast in the air and seeing if it lands butter-side-down. [Reverb] I. AM NOT. MAKING. THAT UP.

Shigeru Miyamoto showing up when God is mentioned. Although he also uses Princess Rosalina for this.

And Anthony Hopkins as Odin is...Anthony Hopkins. As Odin.

  • Shout-Out: While revisiting Metroid: Other M, he points out the first rule of internet gaming culture is to never disagree with the mass opinion. The second rule is to never do a Let's Play of Bart's Nightmare. (With a little subtitle saying he thought it was funny.)
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: Falls in the middle. While he'll deal with serious issues, or serious opinions, he'll usually be more serious, with some jokes thrown in. When he deals with something more silly, the jokes are more prevalent. His movie reviews usually fall under silly, with him giving his opinion in a easy-going tone, but can be more serious when going into complexity about the film.
  • Small Name, Big Ego:
    • Admitted in-universe when accused of picking on big names because it makes him feel big.
    • Reading his twitter feed or blogs shows that this applies in real life as well.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Notes that one thing that New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Modern Warfare 2 had in common was a lack of female figures, though the former wins for having two notable female characters (Princess Peach and Wendy O. Koopa)
  • Stealth Pun: In his review of Green Lantern, when Bob says that Warner Brothers "struck out" trying to make a superhero movie that's not Batman, he shows a picture of baseball player Jim Reynolds striking out. [3]
  • The Stinger: In his "Escape to The Movies" series.
  • Stop Being Stereotypical: The entire point of #33, "Building a Better Gamer"
  • Story Arc: Episode 43 had Game Overthinker's Evil Counterpart come in and take over the show, by teleporting Game Overthinker. Many have noticed the Follow the Leader to the plotline based elements in That Guy With The Glasses's shows.
  • Straw Critic: Of a sort. Bob is frequently guilty of making insulting generalizations about the people who disagree with him or criticize his output.
  • Take That: LOADS. The character The Game Antithinker is a parody of how Moviebob perceives hardcore gamers.
  • Take That Me: Bob believes fat people to be amusing...citing himself as an example.
    • "I'm well aware that there's at least already one of you out there itching for this to end so you can run to the forums and get busy firing off some oh so clever missive about how film geeks only like to shit all over marginally talented hot actresses like Fox because we're using them as proxy punching bags for all the women who wouldn't fuck us back in high school. Well, to you sir or madam, I say... So?"
  • Transparent Closet: Invoked for Cammy in ep 14, complete with appropriate graphic.
  • Unconventional Learning Experience: His in-universe general opinion of video games in Ep. 16.
  • Unsettling Gender Reveal: Lampshaded. "Fuckin' Squaresoft!"
  • Unusual Euphemism: "Over the heels"
  • Very Special Episode: "Violence is Golden" & "Building a Better Gamer" respectively deal with the Media Watchdog nature & portrayal of video games and the demonization of them in the media and getting & developing better habits for gamers. They are both some-what well done. "The Revolution" is also this, to a lesser extent, trying to convince people not to shop at GameStop for better retail.
  • Visual Pun:
    • The word "but" will show a picture of Ivy's ass, the word "thing" will be a picture of The Thing, God will show a picture of Shigeru Miyamoto, among others.
    • Sometimes played with. In ep6 he mentions "D-cups" and shows a cup with the letter D on it; the image then quickly changes to a photo of breasts with the caption "Just kidding. Here's boobs."
    • "Polarising": A polar bear. On the polar ice, you see.
    • Often when posing a question, he uses an image of The Question.
  • Wild Mass Guessing: He's responsible for the Super Mario Bros "Rosalina is God" Guess.
  • Working Class People Are Morons: An attitude increasingly accepted by Bob on his Twitter post-election, with many tweets lashing out against them for their support of Donald Trump, and wanting to deny them the right to vote.
  • X Meets Y: Subverted when he describes the gameplay of Shadow Complex as "Metroid crossed with Metroid divided by Metroid with a remainder of Metroid." He also describes Halo as "Starship Troopers crossed with Starship Troopers."

Games discussed:

  • Barnyard Blast: The only actual review.
  • Batman: Arkham City: Loved it. While he disagreed with the idea that it carried sexist undertones, he felt that the gaming community's reaction to this idea was incredibly immature, and used it as a jumping-off point for a discussion about what he felt was a broader lack of maturity in gamer culture.
  • Bayonetta: Restricted himself to a detailed analysis of Bayonetta's character design. He describes her as the first game character specifically designed to be sexually intimidating (and pulling it off successfully) rather than childlike or an Ice Queen.
  • Bionic Commando (the remake): Hated it, and holds it up as an example of bad video game design in this generation.
  • Blackwater: The Game: Absolutely disgusted at the very idea of it, comparing it to Rapelay and Custer's Revenge in terms of vile premises for video games.
  • Call of Duty Black Ops 2: Finds it funny that Activision managed to beat Hollywood to the punch with a technophobic, "our war machines turned against us and we need real men to fight!" action vehicle. On a more critical note, he felt that the advertising department's hiring of Oliver North -- a man who he considers to be a Karma Houdini war criminal and traitor -- as a pitchman may have been the most tasteless thing ever done in the name of video game advertising, and fears that it could needlessly drag gaming and game culture into a broader culture war.
  • Dead Space 2: Felt that its "your mom hates this" ad campaign was distasteful, as it was directly marketing a violent, M-rated game to children and, thus, giving ammunition to Moral Guardians who accuse the games industry of corrupting children's minds.
  • FarmVille and other browser games: Doesn't get why people view it as killing gaming, nor does he get the dichotomy between "casual" and "hardcore" games in general.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Likes the series overall, with Vice City being his favorite. However, he hated San Andreas, viewing that game as having jumped head-first into the sort of Scarface-esque gangster machismo that Vice City had parodied. He also laments the inherent limitations of the genre.
  • Halo: Exhibit A for every problem that Bob has with modern First Person Shooters, particularly the genre's focus on online multiplayer. He also argues that there are Unfortunate Implications in the differences between the Covenant and the UNSC.
    • Halo 4: In the Big Picture episode "One Day in November", he discussed the conspiracy theory that the timing of the game's release on November 6, 2012 -- Election Day in the US -- was an attempt to get Mitt Romney elected President by distracting the youth vote (which pulls strongly for Obama) with a major entertainment release, thus reducing turnout by them. His conclusion: the theory has little to no basis in fact (even if the general idea was theoretically possible), though the mere fact that people even considered it just serves to highlight how gamers should be more involved with the world around them and be active participants in its processes.
  • Madden NFL and other EA Sports titles: Dislikes how EA charges $60 a year for what usually amounts to a roster update and minor gameplay changes, things that, in an age of Downloadable Content, should be done via that route.
  • Kirby 64: Lamented that his homophobic teen years caused him to miss it the first time around, and encourages viewers not to let biases keep them from things they might like.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Apart from believing that Fi will never appear in the franchise ever again, he comments about how the game treats the themes of romance and sexuality through several plot points, "like Nintendo's development teams just now discovered sex and they're really excited to tell everybody".
  • Mario Kart Wii: Not talking about the game itself, but about gaming romantic also-rans, inspired by the statue of Luigi dancing with Daisy on the Daisy Cicuit.
  • Mass Effect 3: Having admittedly never played any of the games[4], he feels that the Internet Backdraft over the ending, specifically the demands that BioWare change it, went way over the line, comparing many of the more vocal fans to Annie Wilkes from Misery in terms of their sense of entitlement. In his opinion, being a fan of a property does not give you the right to claim control over its creative direction, and outbursts like this do nothing to help the image of gamers and geek culture in general. In the process, he makes an argument in favor of the idea that a more linear plotline makes for more compelling storytelling, and that this is the reason why it's so difficult to tell a conventional story through a video game -- the very same elements that traditionally make for a good story in other media also make for boring, unimaginative gameplay.
This one frustrated him so much that he devoted two Game Overthinker episodes and' part of a Big Picture episode to it. During the second Overthinker episode he did on the subject, he felt that Bioware's caving to the demands of the "Retake Mass Effect" movement set a terrible precedent for the relationship between gamers and developers -- a developer may be a lot more reluctant to take narrative risks after seeing what happened to Bioware. He used I Am Legends Focus Group Ending as exhibit A for the chilling effect that this could have on creativity in games.
  • Mega Man: Did an Overthinker episode discussing the various literary, historical and pop culture sources (particularly Astro Boy) that the series drew its influences from.
    • Mega Man 9
  • Metroid: Other M: Controversially defended the game from many of its more common criticisms. He believes that game's portrayal of Samus Aran, while Unfortunate Implications, was due chiefly to a failure to translate old-school narrative mechanics to a modern game, rather than any deliberate malice or misogyny on the part of Team Ninja or Nintendo. He also states that trying to associate the game's perceived misogyny with broader gender issues in Japanese culture carries a ton of unfortunate implications in itself, going as far as to call it flat-out racist.
  • Modern Warfare: Much like Halo, he views it as representative of everything that he dislikes about shooters, often referring to the sequels as "map pack delivery systems". In particular, he is greatly put off by the series' (and other military shooters') gung-ho militarism and weapons fetishism, which he feels attracts whack-jobs like the Oslo killer and fringe militia types to gaming, thus inadvertently giving it its association with real-life violence.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Devoted an Overthinker episode to pointing out the surprising similarities it has with Modern Warfare 2.
  • No More Heroes: Used in his inaugural episode as an example of good, creative character design in modern games.
  • Rainbow Six: Patriots: Upon hearing about it and watching the trailer, he found its attachment of militia overtones to anti-corporate movements (at least in the marketing) to be very off-putting, and emblematic of what he feels to be a disturbing right-wing tendency in the FPS genre.
  • Resident Evil 5: Felt that Capcom went way too far with some of the racially charged imagery, and stated that objections to such content shouldn't be automatically dismissed as Political Correctness Gone Mad.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: Did a two-part Overthinker special on where he felt that the franchise had lost its way, and how it could get out of its Dork Age.
  • Soul Calibur: Bob doesn't find the cheesecake outfits worn by the female characters to be as sexist as other people do, noting that the entire franchise runs on a hyper-stylized, fantastic aesthetic that such fetishized outfits fit right in with. What he did find to be sexist, however, was a Japanese poster for the fifth game that featured literally nothing but Ivy's Absolute Cleavage with the Tagline "Go big or go home."
  • Super Mario Bros 3: The greatest video game ever made.
  • Super Mario 3D Land: Describes it as "happiness on a cartridge", and feels that it made the $250 Nintendo 3DS worth the money. His only regret is that he had to stop playing it in order to review Breaking Dawn - Part 1.
  • Uncharted: Describes the series as, basically, Indiana Jones with Dane Cook playing the protagonist.
  1. ↑ As in, most mainstream Americans, apart from those on the cultural fringes, watched the same three or four TV Networks and the same movies, received the same news, listened to the same music, read the same books, et cetera.
  2. ↑ specifically, assholes using "political incorrectness" as a cover for being assholes
  3. ↑ Hal Jordan is played by Ryan Reynolds.
  4. ↑ He later watched the endings on YouTube, and found them to be "neither awful nor great".
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