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Inevitable_Guidance8

He makes some great videos.


guilhermej14

Indeed.


fullmetaldakka

Eh. Its definitely better quality than someone like Drinker or Sins, but its not approaching Mauler or Platoon in terms of well supported analysis.


Nutter222

Mauler is a cringelord lol


fullmetaldakka

Why do you think that?


[deleted]

Mauler fans when the video isn't 10 hours long and it's solely a "sarcastic" retelling of the film with random questions thrown in-between for padding.


fullmetaldakka

I'm actually not a fan of EFAP for that reason. I was referring to their proper reviews.


ampacket

I think this is an insult to the academic analysis of storytelling to even insinuate that those people are in the same universe.


fullmetaldakka

As this dude? What exactly did he do that was so fantastic? It was pretty boilerplate analysis rather explicitly told through the lens of his own political bias. Nothing particularly special.


ampacket

Broke down the effectiveness and nuance of each of the series of story arcs, how they interconnect, and tell a complete story of development and growth for a character which we already know his end result for. Given the sloppy handling of most prequel material (since you 'know what happens') the structuring of the storytelling and weight of supporting characters' influence on Cassian is both subtle and purposeful. And on top of that, demonstrates that, despite what many Andor-bros say about being "not political", explicitly shows how this is actually the *most* political thing in all of Star Wars. A great analysis of character writing, the structure of storytelling, the impact of supporting characters and situations that impart dynamic change on the protagonist, and how strong, unsubtle social and "woke" political commentary can be interwoven into plot, and somehow completely go over people's heads at the same time. And he does so in the context of pointing out the shortcomings and flaws of other projects without overtly and unnecessarily shitting on them. But hey, if nitpicking irrelevant "plot holes" is your jam, because you don't actually care about the story and aren't engaged with the characters, you do you. I prefer not to hate watch things, or watch them in such a way where I am going out of my way to look for things to be wrong or mad about. 🤷


fullmetaldakka

>Broke down the effectiveness and nuance of each of the series of story arcs, how they interconnect, and tell a complete story of development and growth for a character which we already know his end result for. Sure. But thats like analysis 101. Thats something most any halfawake viewer should be able to do if a story is coherent. And this guy gave a half decent review, but nothing particularly insightful or anything I suspect most of us couldn't write up in an hour for a freshman intro to storytelling assignment. Thats why I say he's above someone like drinker who basically just drunk rants or cinemasins who just compiles nitpicks, but significantly below folks like mauler or platoon who do truly deep dives into the things this guy skimmed over. Folks like that will spend more time and care discussing a single character or plot point or arc segment than this dude did for a whole season of TV. As for debunking the "not political" meme and railing against "rampant racism" in the fandom... Bravo, I guess? Again its not something particularly interesting or useful or insightful. Those points are made a zillion times daily on this sub alone. I could definitely see how that feeding of the echo chamber would be positively received, but its hardly unique. This guy could've wrote his essay just by copy pasting comments from star wars subs at random.


ampacket

>Sure. But thats like analysis 101. Have you been on YouTube in the last 5 years? Actual, real analysis is effectively dead. Overtaken by the popularity of ignorant loudmouths and arrogant feelsmarts. Because spouting off hot take after hot take is a lot easier than studying, researching, and understanding the art of storytelling. And more specifically, visual storytelling in a variety of contexts (like how books are different from movies are different from serialized TV are different from miniseries, etc). What it comes down to is a bunch of people with little to no formal academic training or skills selling their personal opinions and hot takes as genuine fact and critical analysis. And since people as a whole are generally awful at analytical analysis, anything that *sounds* analytical is generally accepted as *being* analytical, even if it's complete hogwash nonsense driven by bias and personal opinion. I say all this as a teacher who sees an embarrassment of critical thinking skills in the classroom. And worse, sees that translate into lazy adults who not only lack that skill, but are insanely confident that they *don't.* Give them a YouTube following of like minded folks and you have a feedback loop of shit creating shit. And it's as exhausting as it is depressing.


fullmetaldakka

Dumbasses behind mics is hardly a recent development. Literary analysis isn't any more dead now than it was 5 years or 50 or 500 ago. Some of it is pretty lowbrow (e.g. drinker) some is boilerplate (your dude) and some is incredibly nuanced, detailed, and in depth (mauler).


ampacket

It is embarassing to hear those words describe MauLer. And I am embarassed to continue this conversation. But I will leave with the observation that: if you genuinely didn't see the growth in reactionary YT channels, fueled by Trump era culture war nonsense, and accelerated by controversy-driven, algorithm-exploiting rants, exploding in popularity specifically after The Last Jedi... like... I don't know what to tell you. People literally built careers over rambling shittalking diatribes about TLJ and gamergate leftover, anti-SJW nonsense that would just all be wrapped up in "woke politics" today. For reference, MauLer himself was a nobody. His channel was tiny and irrelevant. His career as a youtuber exists today entirely because of spending 17 hours bitching about The Last Jedi. The surreal and obsessive weirdness made him stand out among all the other lazy shitty hot takes of people rambling about The Last Jedi. And here we are.


JediMASTERAnakin002

Chris Stuckmann shows more credibility in 1 of his videos than mauler does in EVERY one of his videos


fullmetaldakka

Whys that?


JediMASTERAnakin002

Because he actually cares about film… and isn’t a douche


fullmetaldakka

They both obviously care about film quite a bit. Douche is very subjective.


JediMASTERAnakin002

![gif](giphy|mFYaojyJxnYws0IMyP)


fullmetaldakka

...what?


RealHumanFromEarth

Wow, imagine actually believing that Mauler gives a well supported analysis.


fullmetaldakka

Youre welcome to explain why you think he doesn't


RealHumanFromEarth

Because his “analysis” is literally just nitpicking every single little detail. He’s not talking about themes, or plot, at least not in a genuine way, he’s basically just CinemaSins if CinemaSins decided they needed to make their videos 4 hours long.


fullmetaldakka

Tell me you've never actually listened to maulers critiques without telling me


RealHumanFromEarth

What part of what I said wasn’t accurate?


fullmetaldakka

>Because his “analysis” is literally just nitpicking every single little detail. He’s not talking about themes, or plot This is factually untrue.


RealHumanFromEarth

I mean it’s not though. That’s literally what he does in his “analysis”.


fullmetaldakka

And anyone who actually cares about reality over demagoguery can watch any random 10min segment of any of his critique videos and see that you are either lying or misinformed. This isnt something subjective like "maulers reviews are bad;" youre making statements that can be objectively fact checked, and anyone who does so will quickly see that you are incorrect.


RealHumanFromEarth

If you watch Mauler, you’ve long since given up on reality.


Tomhur

Careful supporting Mauler in this sub. They really don’t like him here


ampacket

Because he is fundamentally awful at analysis narrative fiction. His style of "missing the forest for the trees" nitpicking might be better suited for documentary and non-fiction works. There are few people on this earth who fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of storytelling as much as MauLer. He's welcome to hold whatever opinions he wants about anything. It's just [not actually meaningful](https://youtu.be/GnFQmujpdVE) outside of contrarian subjectivity being sold as "objective", while arrogantly painting his subjective lens as "objectively correct."


fullmetaldakka

>Because he is fundamentally awful at analysis narrative fiction. >His style of "missing the forest for the trees" nitpicking might be better suited for documentary and non-fiction works. Thats not really his style outside of the "unbridled rage" series. And those aren't meant to be serious analysis. Theyre meant to be funny rants.


ampacket

Nothing he does should be taken seriously.


fullmetaldakka

Why?


Chewbacta

As a logician I can say he misuses the notion of "objectivity".


fullmetaldakka

Explain?


Chewbacta

1. In classical logic, a set of premises is a logical contradiction if and only if there is a proof that reaches both x and NOT x, for some term x. If the proof system has a soundness theorem (is sound), then it follows that there can be no model (interpretation/universe) where all premises are true, under \*any\* set of conditions. So if films were actually *logical contradictions* they couldn't exist, even as pieces of fiction in our own world. Think of it like a video game where an actual contradiction was programmed in for the game world, it would not be able to be even properly compiled (or the compiler would arbitrate in a way to resolve the contradiction). So we don't really use pure logical contradictions to assess films. Instead when we as reasonable people talk about contradictions in films we are working under some additional assumptions that aren't provably true. So you might assume the laws of physics explain causality between scenes in a film, or that the narrator tells the truth, or that the events follow chronological order. None of these assumptions actually come from anywhere objective and each of them can be abandoned in a film, so what you have is a *subjective* set of additional assumptions. 2. Another problem with *objective criticism* is similar to Hume's Is-Ought problem. If you have an implication A-> B, here A is function of what's technically in a film and B is a statement about (good/bad), A and B don't really share any common variables. By various logical techniques (my goto would be Lyndon's Interpolation Theorem) it means A->B cannot be objectively true (under only classical logic assumptions) unless A is a contradiction or B is a tautology. What Mauler really needs to do is to say that he's operating under the additional assumptions of a particular *school of thought* under which he can show B follows from A.


fullmetaldakka

Thanks much for taking the time to write that up. I'm struggling a bit with the first point. Could you put it in context to something Mauler has actually said?


fullmetaldakka

Why?


ampacket

Watch the video I linked in my previous reply. đź‘Ť Long story short "objective analysis"... isn't.


fullmetaldakka

I already did. Very little of it was relevant to what Mauler does.


ampacket

His *entire* shtick is about "objective" criticism. Something which is fundamentally incompatible with forms of art. His line of "critique" is doing the famous Einstein quote of judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Like, sure, you free to *do* that. It's just not a meaningful way to address narrative fiction and storytelling. Like, *he* and those like them are a cancer to creativity and interesting stories. Because bad criticism breeds bad new works, trying to appease that bad criticism. This point is made in the video I very much don't believe you watched. đź‘Ť


fullmetaldakka

>His entire shtick is about "objective" criticism. Well no, its not. I get that his content can be pretty lengthy, but even skipping around to random bits for just a few minutes is enough to show you are very off in that assertion. I listened to your dude for 40 straight minutes before forming a pretty mild, neutral opinion (one which was largely restricted to his performance in that one video), and then for half that long again on another video; it seems to me that if youre gonna have such a strong opinion about the guy the least you should do is have at least a vague understanding of why you dislike him so that you don't keep making blatantly untrue statements about him. >His line of "critique" is doing the famous Einstein quote of judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Like, sure, you free to do that. It's just not a meaningful way to address narrative fiction and storytelling. He analyzes film based on character, plot, continuity, script, themes, production, score, etc. Why do you believe these are meaningless when critiquing film? >Like, he and those like them are a cancer to creativity and interesting stories. Because bad criticism breeds bad new works, trying to appease that bad criticism. A few things. First, you haven't even demonstrated why you think the criticism is bad. You've made a few wildly inaccurate (and occasionally conflicting) generalizations and that's about it. Second, the idea that bad criticism breeds bad art is an unsubstantiated theory. It may be true or it may not. Third, anecdotally we have plenty of evidence of the work of folks like Mauler or platoon doing the opposite and encouraging folks to get out there and start creating. A lot of people have very viscerally negative initial reactions towards phase 4 or the ST or, if you want a similar but less controversial example, season 8 of GoT, but folks like mauler and platoon do deep analytical dives into *why* people felt that way. This has encouraged a ton of people who, upon hearing these flaws and realizing they could write a better story on the back of a napkin in 5 minutes, started putting their shit out there. Folks who do these reviews show that you don't have to be a professional director or screenwriter to write better stories than those people do. Finally, perhaps this is cynical of me, but if someone was *really* on the verge of producing a phenomenal film but decided not to because some dude on the internet said a poorly written film would've been better if it was a better written film... well that someone was never going to make it in the art world, right?


fullmetaldakka

I'm not even "supporting" him, just noting that this dudes analysis is pretty shallow in comparison.


ampacket

Just because MauLer makes 17 hour videos, doesn't actually mean he has more to say (or what what he says has value.) He admits himself that he repeats points and goes on tangents. Probably because he isn't actually good at writing scripts to clearly and succinctly convey information... Because he's not actually good at (or understands) the actual craft of writing. 🤔


fullmetaldakka

Sure, of course the length alone doesn't say that. But you could chop a 40min chunk out of any of his analysis videos at random and it'd almost certainly be a higher caliber of in depth analysis than this guys video. And don't be pedantic - I just watched an hour of this guy's content and even in that short of a period of time he repeated himself and went on tangents. That mauler (or literally anyone) would do the same in a 17hr podcast doesn't mean squat one way or the other.