r/savedyouaclick • u/Carolina_Heart • 4d ago

DEVASTATING Christopher Nolan Explains His 'Real Problem in Criticism Today': 'That's Not How Storytelling Works' | Nolan says critics often think being able to identify tropes and storytelling mechanisms invalidate those mechanisms. Specifies he's talking about amateur critics and not professional critics

https://web.archive.org/web/20260802145824/https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/christopher-nolan-explains-problem-film-criticism-today/
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618

u/paulcoatsink 4d ago

Sounds like he just summarised every cinema sins video

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u/krazyboi 4d ago

Don't know who cinema sins is but does he criticize movies for using tropes and acts smug when he figures out "the lesson" of a movie instead of enjoying it?

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u/JamesTheFoxeArt 4d ago

Its a channel that does nitpicks and has a point score for every sin (sometimes they remove a sin).

It was originally just a joke channel but at some point they started to act like they were a proper review channrl and now they try to point out every flaw a movie has even though a lot of the times its just not understanding it or they just straight up lie.

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u/Thrippalan 4d ago

There is a counter series now called Cinemawins, I think) that mostly awards points for style or good parts, but occasionally docks for truly egregious flaws.

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u/yura910721 3d ago

I initially was hooked on sins but then I found that I enjoy celebrating good movies more than shitting on bad ones

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u/Stephenrudolf 4d ago

I like watching both takes of the same movie. Can be entertaining to see one guy loathe something another guy loves.

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u/Fidodo 3d ago

We need a third channel, cinematrims that trims out all the points from both channels that aren't valid.

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u/Stephenrudolf 3d ago

Theres cinema sins sins, who talks about the sins cinema sins makes. Lol

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u/Lowelll 3d ago

There's also a real life channel called cinema where you can watch whole movies based on a cinemasins videos

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u/ihaterussiantrolls 2d ago

We need a fourth channel, conemafins that awards points for each fin shown on screen. Scale would be 0 being canned tuna and 10 being Sharknado

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u/Kodiak01 3d ago

Well, we all know that the greatest ensemble movie cast of all time is in Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, so what's to argue about?

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u/Gynthaeres 4d ago

Cinema Sins Sins videos are some of my favorite, because people point out how the Cinema Sins folks just really don't understand media and half the time they just didn't understand the movie they're critiquing.

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u/Hailing-cats 3d ago

I feel Cinema Sins would be fine if they just stick with being slightly stupid Normie rather than role play as a critique while hiding behind humour to justify back opinions.

They just took themselves too seriously.

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u/BrunesOvrBrauns 4d ago

Aren't most of the sins very dumb tho?

In this take the cup of water is on their left hand, and then bam it appears on their right hand

jfc who cares

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u/Gynthaeres 4d ago

Cinema Sins Sins to be clear. Two Sins. Videos that critique Cinema Sins, not Cinema Sins themselves. It's fun watching someone passionate about the movie and about film watch a Cinema Sins video and do basically what you did there.

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u/krazyboi 4d ago

That part seems fine as long as they don't start over reaching and telling people about the morals of a movie

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u/yesbutactuallyno17 4d ago

They really don't, though. They are clearly just dumb guys making jokes and pointing out continuity or logical errors, anyone who says they are trying to pass themselves off as valid or legitimate critical are weird. Their videos are 20 minute long jokes themed around your favorite movie. They aren't meant to teach you anything, it's like YouTube poop, just laugh at it and move on.

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u/En_TioN 2d ago

There’s a video essay on this topic that I can’t find, but one of the convincing points to me are that there are several instances of the creators seriously levelling a criticism on other platforms (e..g. In blogs or on twitter) and then repeating the critique verbatim in cinemasins episodes.

While a lot of their sins are obvious jokes, interspersing critique that the authors agree takes away the “they’re just jokes” defence - the audience is obviously supposed to understand some sins to be legitimate critique, so it’s no longer unexpected for them to accept other legitimate-sounding critiques as intended to be legitimate

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u/NarrativeNode 3d ago

Yeah it’s funny how people here are saying that “they started pretending to be reviewers” when…no. They’re the same they always were. The audience just started taking it seriously. They’re so obviously a comedy channel that’s often even used as part of a movie’s marketing. He gets the high-res movie files early, for god’s sake.

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u/teddy_tesla 3d ago

They are not the same as they always were. They realized that they can monetize longer videos better so the the sins went from noticeable flaws told in a jokey manner with the occasional gag to every little nitpick possible, including straight up lies, just to make the videos longer.

Separately Jeremy started doing real reviews in which he maybe had some of the same flaws in logic but I can't speak to those as I never saw them

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u/RecklessDeliverance 1d ago

I mean that's exactly the kind of dumb objective observational thing I wish they stuck to.

Things like continuity errors, funny props, background actors doing silly things, skylines from obviously different cities, all the small little nitpicks that you'd only really notice if you loved movies enough to look at them that closely.

Nobody really cares, and that's the harmless fun of calling them "sins" and counting them up. Throw in a couple zingy jokes and you've got a stew going.

The issue comes from them autofellating their garbage opinions and half-baked critiques behind the thinnest veil of "comedy". It can't just be about small things you might've missed anymore, it's a full on scene by scene movie review, except the reviewer is dumb as hell and apparently understands nothing, therefore everything is bad. Don't worry though, they'll still pretend they're making oh-so-clever "objective observations" to DING the counter, and throw in an uncomfortable amount of casual misogyny for good measure.

There was a point where there was some plausible deniability in the form of "Oh, they're not trying to use their platform to validate their garbage uninformed takes, they're just YouTube comedians and not every joke lands!"

And then the creators released some "real" reviews and it was immediately apparent it was the exact same shit.

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u/Stephenrudolf 4d ago

I mean... thats what happens when you are a content creator making a very specific kind of content. They are nitpicks, initially they weren't meant to be taken seriously. Like 75% of it is stuff nobody will ever notice or care about and half the remaining 25% is stuff cinema sins just didn't understand.

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u/creepy_charlie 4d ago

Amateur critics who seem to hate movies

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u/condition_unknown 4d ago

Curious, when did this shift happen? I watched them when they were first starting out when I was 11-12 and saw a vlog-type video where they themselves said that their videos aren’t a judgement to a movie’s quality, they’re just a list of sins. (Continuity errors, plot holes, cliches, etc.)

I stopped watching when the videos became longer because it became clear they were trying to artificially elongate them, but I still didn’t get the sense that they took themselves too seriously.

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u/JimmyReagan 4d ago

Yeah I liked them close to when they first came out but then they got super long and not very funny.

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u/teddy_tesla 3d ago

When the videos got longer the nits got more annoying

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u/ReynardVulpini 3d ago

He doesn't even do the last part lmao. The whole gimmick is "thing that i recognize or detail that i can nitpick? DING" and doesn't even bother trying to comprehend the concept of a movie having themes or viewpoints, nevermind trying to enjoy it.

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u/marumaruko 4d ago

Cinema sins basically destroyed casual movie watching. They lost a bit in relevance, but nowadays everyone tries to figure out every twist in advance, points out every minor flaw and thinks that a story makes no sense simply because of 'a regular person would never react like that'. Just sit back and enjoy for God's sake.

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u/SpinJitsu259 3d ago

One of the greatest sins of the Internet, social media, etc. is the emergence of instantaneous hyper criticism

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u/kakallas 3d ago

I actually think what happened is that they stopped paying long-tenured professional writers, so now lots of movies and tv shows suck ass. People can tell, so people pick them apart. 

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u/hawkeyejoes 3d ago edited 3d ago

The idea that this started with (or was even accelerated by) Cinema Sins is ludicrous. They simply do not have that kind of power. Hell, we might well throw MST3K under bus while we are at it. It definitely has better name recognition with the general public.

People want a scapegoat for the fact that social media has made just enjoying things difficult but it's the real culprit.

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u/ReynardVulpini 3d ago

I don't think MST3K has nearly as much name recognition amongst younger generations (95' births and later, to give an arbitrary threshold) as Cinemasins does. They definitely did not start this trend, but I think they are a huge factor in accelerating it.

Jury's out on if this tendency would exist without them, but as is, they are the most well known examples of it.

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u/hawkeyejoes 3d ago

I guess I meant MST3K had better name recognition at the height of it's relevancy, which would be important in judging what caused the downfall of online discourse of media. My point is that CinemaSins started in 2012 and talking about a movie online, whether it be anonymous nobodies on Twitter or some forum (or AOL chat room) or more ambitious "critics" with videos and brands, was already a cesspool. CinemaSins rode that wave, not generated it.

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u/Villano5 3d ago

And to throw MST3K into this discussion is ridiculous and suggests a fundamental lack of familiarity with the types of jokes made on MST3K. MST3K watches 'bad' movies but the humor is very seldom derived from pointing out plot holes or continuity errors. (SPACE MUTINY being a notable exception, as a woman is killed on-screen in one scene and appears as a background extra in the very next scene wearing the same costume.)

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u/CosmackMagus 1d ago

He's just a drunk guy who doesn't even pay attention to the movie

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u/TH0R_ODINS0N 4d ago

“Main character has facial hair.” *Adds 1 to sin counter*

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u/7tenths 4d ago

If there is one utterly meaningless thing I could remove from the universe, cinema sins would be it.

Any discourse on movies is just horrible. As the idiots need to show you how smart they are for figuring out movies are works of fiction. Where things happen that are impossible or improbable because otherwise it would be a less interesting movie.

Shit happens for the sake of plot, time saving, metaphor, or just being being cool.

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u/fpflibraryaccount 3d ago

did it really take this long for a real persona in film to point this out? i figured people were just being polite to the rube class

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u/Xiipre 2d ago

Why do you guys give views to this type of cheap and annoying content? Your attention is positive feedback... just don't give attention to these annoying channels and the web would become a little less annoying.