Revisiting My First Review After 15 Years...

Hello Everyone and welcome to my editing
bay or as I like to call it my laptop.

Now I've been doing this now for 15 years
which is an absolutely frightening thought

My videos go all the way back to 2009 and
even a couple a little bit beyond that,

but technically that is where the first
bad movie beat down episode originated

Not on YouTube though,
lots of you don't seem to realize that

I've been around longer than
the YouTube Channel

because back in the day, THE OLDEN
DAYS, I didn't post things on You Tube

I posted on blip.tv which got bought out
by Maker and then got bought out by Disney

who then strip mined it for parts,
and then shut it down.

AWWE, the internet....
I don't feel very comfortable celebrating

milestones on this channel, I feel it's a
bit self-congratulatory.

And when the 10th anniversary rolled
around I just left the old website

about a year or so prior and I didn't
feel like I had

especially much to be proud to celebrate
at that point in time, but 15 years is

enough for a celebration, I think,
especially since I didn't acknowledge it

back in 2019. But of course, I don't want
to be too egotistical. So I've decided to

punish myself by watching my first
bad movie beat down video.

This isn't my first video, but it's , you
know, close enough. So we're gonna go

right back to 2009 and watch me
absolutely squirm at my younger self.

Oh God, here we go.

I'm about to press play..... Now.

"Hello and welcome to bad movie Beat Down"

Oh my God, so much hair, so much hair.

unfortunately, mate, you aren't
keeping any of that.

Well, not in the long run anyway.

Appreciate it while it lasts.

You might notice by the way that I have
deliberately decided to wear the exact

same t-shirt that I was wearing back in
2009, arguably it has aged better than I

have. I'm not wearing the same jacket,
however, because I think I threw that out

at some point. So I've deliberately worn

something that is close enough to what
I was wearing back in those days.

"The Bad Movie Beatdown is for everyone
that went to see-"

Oh man, I drew these in MS paint.

MS Paint.

Man, that's fantastic.

Oh, and I've paused on a still frame
of myself.

I need to contextualize this, a little bit
I think.

Somehow when I was doing my early videos,
I actually edited them in Windows Movie

Maker. That's right.

Windows Movie Maker.

Always known for its high-quality
production standards.

This still frame here is literally pulled
from out of the video somewhere. I've

apparently, pulled the most embarrassing
image of myself humanly possible.

So I did all of my editing in Windows
Movie Maker for a long time,

An embarrassing amount of time.

It was kind of split between Windows
Movie Maker and

Vegas, everyone had a crakced version of
Vegas in those days and I still use Vegas

to this day, obviously
a much later version of Vegas.

But what I would do a lot of the time
is that I would edit the videos in Windows

Movie Maker and then finalize them in
Vegas especially if the videos were in

wide screen. Windows Movie Maker was
incapable of putting out a purely wide

screen file, it would always put in an
anamorphic flag, which meant that

anytime you upload it directly like
that it would be squished and stretched.

But it proved to be a good learning ground
and eventually, longer than perhaps it

should've been I did eventually stop using
Windows Movie Maker.

"Here's where I unleash
my good friend PAIN."

The MR. T thing, what on earth.

"Now you must be wondering, isn't this a
bit nostalgic for its like?

Well, right you are. But no one in their
right mind would consider any of these

pieces of celluloid faeces to be
nostalgic?"

I know what you're thinking at that point

Isn't that an iPod touch?
It is an iPod touch!

Ok, being serious now, yes, that is Doug

on there and you know he gave my big break
back in the day by

effectively bringing me onto the website
and I didn't start out making videos

I was actually writing articles, people
were looking at the videos there, they

weren't reading the articles, so I very
quickly pivoted towards that. And I

do have to admit that I am grateful
for the opportunity that was afforded

for me. It opened doors that wouldn't
have happened, otherwise.

And I got to meet some fantastic people
that I still call my friends to this day.

I just wish it wasn't so conflicted in my
mind because of what happened afterwards

and the way things panned out.

It didn't have to be that way. I try not
to be bitter about it.

But it is a shame unfortunately.

Now I was talking there about the fact
that when me and my friends Chris and

Lewis were conceiving of the show, we were
trying to think of ways to separate it

from what Doug was doing as the nostalgia
critic, originally the conception of the

show was that it was actually going to be
a kind of 3-man show, that it was going to

be split duties between us. But Chris and
Lewis weren't really into the idea of kind

of co-hosting and so I ended up becoming
the main host purely because I was the

one that most wanted to do it.
And so the early scripts, and certainly

the early episodes, me and Chris would
kind of split duties on editing them.

So there were some that were edited by me
like this one. There were some that were

edited by Chris, and we'd kind of pitch
in all a little bit when it came to the

writing. But there were other influences
on the show aside from Doug.

Harry Hills TV Burp was a big one
especially the kind of surrealism to

some of the humor but especially
Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe, those

were kind of my influences, I know a
lot of my peers would kind of say things

like angry video game nerd or
mystery science theater, those weren't

really things I was into. Those were very
much American centric ones and as you can

tell, while my influences are very
very British

"...things would be a little bit ran-
different! Great! Now I'm-"

Oh, Seamless edit there!
Absolutely seamless edit there.

You'll notice incidentally throughout
this entire review, the white balance

changes quite considerably, you'll also
notice that the camera moves a little bit

as well. There is a reason for that.

We didn't film this on a tripod.

You see, one of our brilliant ideas
when it came to the show was to film it

shaky cam. A lot of this is actually shot
handheld. And the reason that I came up

with this stupid idea that we abandoned
almost instantly, was again we were trying

to make ourselves look visually distinct
from Doug, how about we do an edgy style?

No, it just looks stupid. Buy a tripod,
Matthew. And you did.

And you still use it to this day.

Because tripods hold value.

"Let's hear it for the first film that
I'm going to be reviewing. Drum Roll

please." drum roll

"Pluuuuto Naaash."

Okay, so the reason I chose Pluto Nash was
actually because I'd found the DVD in the

99P store. And that was literally the
origin store behind it. Although I suppose

there is a little bit more to it. You
remember Quick Time Movie Trailers?

I remember seeing the trailer for Pluto
Nash back in the day and I always wanted

to see it, and so I kind of became
fascinated when I found the DVD in the

99P store and I remember watching it and
thinking 'this is absolutely terrible.'

And that's why I chose it as the first
movie, it's because

I did have that connection to it as
someone that wanted to see it and was kind

of into Eddie Murphy as a kid growing
up with things like Nutty Professor

and Dr. Dolittle and Shrek and then
finally seeing it and going

'Oh this is bad. This is really bad'.

"Since then, Murphy's career has been
like riding a roller coaster."

So Lewis actually did the animation for
this section, this is something we wanted

to do more of, but as anyone who has
tried to do animation would quickly tell

you, it takes a long time. And so this
became something we very quickly dropped.

"They had 20 years to perfect the script
apparently, so it must be good, right?

Wrong!"

You might have noticed that the audio
quality is quite abysmal

I mean, that's just standard for, you know
an online video in 2009

because no one had a clue how to record
audio. And arguably, looking at this video

that might still be the case, even though
I'm using a wireless microphone here.

But I literally have the camera that I
used to record this.

This is a mini DV camera, and what you're
hearing a lot of the time is the tape

noise from the actual mechanism inside
here. The battery in here is dead, so it's

not gonna spring out, unfortunately,
but yeah.

This camera was a cheap JVC model that I
think was bought for me down ASDA as a

Christmas present.

There's one big problem with this camera
that really annoyed the piss out of me for

the first couple of years that I used this
before I traded to an actual, you know,

SD card camera.

You can't actually see yourself filming
with it. Its unique feature is that the

screen slides up and down, which is
functionally useless in most applications

unless you were doing, like, this,
'oh, I'm doing a lot of low-shots.

oh, I'm going up and - look at the top of
the skyscraper.'

Unless you were doing that,
if you were trying to frame yourself

or doing any kind of vloggy stuff, uh,
that ain't happening with this.

That became a bit of a nightmare
to try and frame myself as you can

again tell in several of my episodes,
where there's way too much headroom.

Oh, and while I look at this pause frame,
what's wrong with it?

I'll tell you what's wrong with it,
it's got a dead pixel in the bottom third

of the frame. That little red dot there,
yeah. That is a dead pixel on the camera

sensor that has always been like that.
It literally came out of the box new with

a dead pixel. And so in all my old videos,
have fun spotting the little red dot that

periodically pops up and is especially
identifiable against dark backgrounds

like, say, my black jacket in this review.

"You know what? These effects are pretty
good, but they're not really funny,

are they? Ooh, prepare for lunar gravity.
That's hilarious! laughs

Let's really not..."

And that we call straining for criticism.

The detail there of the world building,
the 'prepare for lunar gravity'

is not meant to be a joke. Some of it is
in Pluto Nash, but it's not actually

a joke. So I'm just reaching.

And I did get better at this as I went
along, as I realised, you know,

you don't have to make everything into a
joke. If you can try and find a legitimate

criticism, and then turn that into the
basis of humour, you know that tends to be

how the joke actually works. Sometimes the
joke lands better if you have a legitimate

observation. I'm just saying.

"There's a complex-"
Can you tell which bits I shot

considerably later with a tripod?
Is it the bits that have the correct

contrast because the camera isn't
panicky because it's being thrown around

like a ragdoll. It's these bits right here
and the reason behind these new insert

shots is that I actually sent it to people
before it was released, to try and get

their opinion on it. And I sent it to
Angry Joe. Yeah, that Angry Joe.

He sent it back and he said,
'Oh, I like the review, but I didn't like

the camera shaking. You need to reshoot
the shots with the worst shakiness.'

And he was absolutely right on that.
So Joe, you saved the video. Partially.

But you gave me some sound advice.
Use a tripod!

So in the intervening time since this
review, many people have covered

Pluto Nash, one of them being my friend
Alison. And I think that her review of

Pluto Nash is much better than mine, for
the obvious reason that it's not her first

video, but also because she had more info
to deal with at that point in time

because people had spoken to some of the
people involved with it.

One of them was the guy that was hired to
rewrite and kind of save the movie

except he didn't, but one of the things
he suggested was writing a new opening.

Knowing what I know now, it's very obvious
to see that this opening portion of the

movie is a total reshoot, it's something
that they came back and did later because

they needed a way of introducing the
characters.

I think that this reshot opening is also
terrible. It's got no energy to it

whatsoever. In fact, it feels really odd,
the kind of Scottish crooning thing, it's

a gag that dies completely on its arse.

And if I was reviewing it now, I would've
said that. But of course, I don't say

that in this video because I didn't know
it at the time.

But, you know, that's the sands of time.

"...Pluto must now turn the bar into a new
nightclub, imaginatively titled

'Club Pluto'."

You might have also noticed there,
those kind of clanking sounds

that's because all the narration is
actually filmed in camera, and this was a

piece of quite bad advice that I took from
Doug back in the day, and perhaps still

does, I don't know. He used to record
all his voiceovers directly to camera

using the camera's microphone, which in
one way, yes, that does make sense

because you've got continuity of audio.
But also, if your camera's got terrible

audio, that means your voiceover's also
got terrible audio at the same time.

And it seems to me from those clacking
sounds that I decided to record my

voiceovers while we were hand-holding the
microphone, so you can hear the lens cap

scraping against the body.
Fantastic!

"She's come to see Pluto because her plot
device, sorry, moon card, has expired."

I've been saying not a lot of very nice
things about my work from 15 years ago

So I'm gonna level that out and say
I'm actually surprised at how fully-formed

in some ways that this video is in terms
of its kind of commentary and

especially the way it's edited,
you can tell that there is a kind of

attempt at pacing and rhythm. And one of
the things I would always do when I was

cutting my videos together is I'd always
pace it to match what I was saying in the

voiceover. There was a comedy promo way
back in the day, that, like precision

engineered comedy, and I believe that when
it comes to editing, because editing is

all about timing and it's all about,
you know, getting all the cuts in the

right places. If you have like a split
second pause between a punchline,

you know when it hangs in the air,
that really can deflate a joke.

The other thing that I'm actually going to
be positive here is that in terms of

recapping, it's not actually going,
'and then this thing happened, and then

this thing happened, and then this thing
happened, which was a really common trend.

I always thought, 'I need to just
make the way that I'm describing things

funny. I can't just be describing exactly
what's happening on screen, otherwise

it's just going to be boring. And it's
really nice to see that I was doing that

even in my very earliest review video.

Oh man. Oh man. Oh god, oh man.
The shot isn't even in focus.

That's how bad the screen was on that
camera. I couldn't even tell that it was

completely out of focus and I had no way
of adjusting it. Oh man...

Okay, so, a lesson that I very quickly
learned, and you'll see this as the videos

progressed over time, there was less and
less skit-based comedy.

And the skits in themselves were an
attempt to differentiate themselves

against what Doug was doing. But I very
quickly realised two things.

One, I was very bad at them, because
sketch comedy is incredibly hard to do.

Let alone when you're working on a not
even shoelace budget, strawberry shoelace

budget, but also two, they really affected
the pacing and rhythm of the videos.

It stops the video dead in my opinion and
it really doesn't work. And so, over time

I moved away from doing the skits and
realised just present it straight.

I probably have had to replace the music
in that last section of the video because

I'm using the Indiana Jones theme.

See, this is the thing with being on
Blip TV back in the day. It was a wild

west. you could use as much footage from
the movie as you wanted to, you could use

copyrighted music, like I used to for my
theme song. Now we're on YouTube, you know

you have content ID to worry about.
You know, I'm very very rigorous about

cutting down movie clips, being very
cautious about the way I use footage

and also not using copyrighted music
because nothing will get your video

demonetised faster than that, and I'm
certain I must've replaced this in the

reupload, I'm actually watching the
original cut of the video.

Contrary to what's stated in a certain
film, it was not my first episode

reviewing Equilibrium. It was Pluto Nash
that was my first episode. Equilibrium

was actually the third one released, but
the second one shot.

And so I did that review, and it went down
like an absolute lead balloon at the time.

I mean, the backlash was really bad.
And I actually remember at the time, I was

genuinely considering just stopping at
that point.

What I took from that video is that I, my
attitude was bad, in that I was making fun

of the movie, but I also made fun of the
fans in that review and I feel like that

was the wrong thing to do. Even if you
don't like a movie, you shouldn't really

be making fun of people because they like
something, so that's what I took away

from it. I think that was a good lesson to
learn. I remember actually being told

years later that when the old site hired
people, they literally put in the manual:

'Don't do anything contentious in
reference to that specific video.'

I was literally in the manual.
Oh man, I am super young in this video.

Super-duper young. I was 18 in this video.
I am 33 now, I look so baby-faced in the

video.
"Pluto rejects their offer, how surprising

so the gangsters decide to blow up his
bar."

"Wait, what?"

I love that plot point, by the way.
It still doesn't make any sense, it still

makes no sense why they would destroy the
property that they were planning to

purchase in the first place.
And it's one of those plot holes that is

so glaring you can tell it's something
that came from the fact the movie was

rewritten over and over and over again, to
the point where plot points don't line up

anymore because they were associated with
different things in earlier drafts and it

just ends up being weird vestiges of
things that don't make any sense.

"After a boring chase, Pluto manages to
follow the hapless goon into an obvious

trap."

Obviously, the way that I approach reviews
on Projector and the way that I cover a

lot of things now is quite different to
how I did in this period, and again that's

because of the content ID, but also
there's two different styles of kind of

doing a review like this and this one is
kind of like doing a blow-by-blow of the

entire movie and kind of talking about the
plot. And there is advantages to that

because if people haven't seen the movie
they can follow along with it, and there's

kind of this nice sense of deconstruction,
but also you're kind of locked into the

movie's own pacing and its story rhythms.
If the movie has a lot of stretches where

not all that much is happening, that makes
it very hard for you to actually glean

material. The way that I approach things
now is I kind of address things more by

theme than by story and plot directly,
especially because on Projector, I'm

aiming it towards people that haven't
necessarily seen the film yet, but don't

want to have all the plot details spoiled
for them. The way that I'm trying to do it

on Projector is make it work so that if
you've seen the movie, you know exactly

what I'm talking about, but if you haven't
seen the movie, you get a gist.

But also, I just think that it's a better
way of analysing something, kind of

tackling, 'no, it's not just what it's
literally about, it's what it's about

about.

"Wait, where the hell did those guys come
from? Were they there a second ago? Then

why did they shoot Pluto in the back while
he had the guy in front of him? This movie

is so stupid! These scenes are so poorly
planned out. Agh!"

You can definitely tell that I'm very
inexperienced in front of the camera.

I don't know how to deliver the lines
properly, and so I'm kind of a bit awkward

I mean, I'm still not great in front of
the camera, as you can already tell.

But I do think I have improved on this,
certainly I made it a point to try and get

stronger with delivering my dialogue.
Again, I don't think it helps the camera

audio is so bad. One of the things that
I'm noticing actually, is the movie clips

just in general are too long.
Again, it's all about pacing and timing

and it's just because of content ID, the
clips are just too long.

It's meant to be a review. It's not meant
to be a replacement for the movie.

It's meant to be focused on my criticism
of it. Putting more emphasis on me as

opposed to showing movie clips is a way of
prioritising that.

"With a briefcase that had the letters WCW
on it."

"I've got a briefcase here."
More sketch comedy stuff that doesn't need

to be there, it just slows down the video
because there is no insight at the end of

the joke, it is just simply a gag for me
to do prop comedy.

And who likes prop comedy?

This is very TV Burp. Very TV Burp.

"Aah! Aah! Aah! Aah!
Yeah, I'd better not open that yet."

I don't even know what that object is I'm
pulling out there. I don't know what I

just pulled out of that briefcase. It's
not visible very well on camera.

I think it's a sock. I think.

"The couple returned to find Pam Grier
inside."

"She's his mother? I'm having a hard time
that Eddie Murphy came out of anywhere as

cool as Pam Grier's womb."

That's a weird thing to say, man. That's a
weird-ass thing to say. Wow.

"Good evening, James here. Aren't you
early sir?"

"Oh come on, John! What are you doing?
What are you doing here?"

Remember when this was considered to be an
embarrassing thing for John Cleese to be

in, remember those days? Those innocent
days?

"Oops!"
"A gag so nice they did it twice. They're

really mining the comedy gold here.
Actually, can I see that again?"

"Oops!"

Oh... with apologies to Dan Olsen, cringe.
There's no other word for it. This makes

me cringe. It's embarrassing. I'm pretty
certain I must've heavily edited that for

the sake of my dignity out of the YouTube
repost. I think that's a Charlie Brooker

gag I'm copying there. It didn't work for
him either. I feel like there was a thing

at this point in time that everyone had to
kind of prove they were, kind of manly

by being like 'oh, I'm really horny and
hypersexualised. Isn't that funny and

hilarious?' No, it just makes you look
like a creepy perv. It's not funny, it's

just gross. Just really gross. And I very
quickly learned to never do that again.

"Registered to Lunar Grand Hotel."

"Isn't it nice of the gangsters to not
only use a car that can be easily

identified, but easily tracked back to
them as well? Isn't that convenient?

Unbelievably stupid!"

Yeah, I feel like yelling in front of the
camera, it's very much of its time.

I feel like as I've progressed, I've kind
of moved away from that format.

You might say that kind of style of
reviewing hit a wall at a certain point.

And I feel like people want, kind of a
more kind of natural style of delivery.

And I can understand why people still hold
you know, some of my old videos against me

I didn't really know what I was doing in
some respects. I do think that I was a bit

overboard in my delivery, and that can be
quite off-putting.

"I like the way the car drifted back to
the surface, as if there's full gravity on

the moon."

Wow, there's some weird editing on that
line. I must've really screwed it up in

the recording and hadn't realised until I
was actually editing the video

and then I just had to chop it up just to
get the line correct.

"There is no sound in space!"

Okay, genuinely a good joke there,
genuinely quite a funny joke.

But it- wow, I really got close to the
camera. I'm very sorry for that.

"Bruno gets arrested because the plot
says so."

Oh I was even doing 'because the plot
says so' at this point. That became one of

my little catchphrases, but didn't really
catch on as much as, say, 'symbolism' did.

Yeah, I would often as a point in my voice
over narration, I would say

'because the plot says so', just to
off-handedly mention something that makes

no sense unless it was purely for a story
reason.

"A pleasure to meet you, Pluto and Dina."

"I met the perfect woman and then I had
her cloned."

"Which one's which?"
"Who cares?"

"Hahaha, oh my god, sexism is hilarious!"

There's a couple of gags in this original
version of the video that really don't

stand up, but hey, at least that one does.

"Rex's goons are waiting for him, which
makes this bit entirely pointless."

Because Windows Movie Maker did not allow
me to add a caption pointing in the air

like that because it only puts text
captions down there, such was the

limitations of that time.
I realised I haven't actually mentioned

that laptop you saw earlier in the video
was my actual laptop that I was editing

things at that point in time, and it had
less than a gigabyte of RAM.

I'm not joking. How much RAM do you think
it has in it? 765 megabytes.

When I was rendering out a video, it
would take six hours for it to render.

I'm amazed I got anything done, let alone
that many videos.

"And are we going to find out who Rex is?"

"No."

"So you got it all figured out, huh?"

This twist, by the way, was the entire
reason why I reviewed the movie

because it's an awful twist. It's a
terrible movie-breaking twist.

Not only does it make no sense, and not
only is it just there for Eddie Murphy to

play multiple characters, but also just
like, what an absurd twist to end the

movie on. It's so bad that they have to
spend ten minutes explaining how the twist

came to be in such laborious and extended
fashion. Even if you were watching the

movie, you wouldn't have been able to
guess that the clone was that of Pluto.

There were no hints beforehand.
When Eddie Murphy swings around in his

chair, you just go, 'oh piss off!'

"The inept goons then bring in Dana and
Bruno and soon gets killed off because the

plot requires them to."

Why does Rex kill those guys? I have no
idea why he does that.

"Never leave home without an undershirt,
right boss?"

"Oh no, not this lazy cliche."

"Isn't that what you always say?"

It's all the bad cliches. It's all the
terrible ones with the bulletproof vests.

"The fight starts up yet again, but
eventually it comes to a very quick end

once Rex gets thrown out of a window."

'Eventually it comes to a very quick end.'
Eventually and quickly probably don't

belong in the same sentence, Matthew.

"I'm Film Brain AKA Movie Buck,
good night."

Alright, I've given myself a lot of shit
over the course of this video, but

actually, what I took rewatching this is
I'm surprised how much of my style was

already there. I clearly learned some good
lessons about timing and the writing in

particular. My delivery definitely wasn't
great and the technical side of it is

absolutely abysmal, but it's nice to see
that I was actually doing a reasonably

good job from the start, once I got rid of
a few things that definitely didn't work

and I feel like I did eventually find my
stride. The earliest episode that I think

is really one that holds up is actually
the On Deadly Ground video which I think

was fourth or fifth, somewhere around
that. This isn't as embarrassing as I

thought it would be. If I did have
something to tell people if they were

getting into videos, not only would I tell
them 'just accept the fact that your early

videos are probably going to suck.'
I would also say that you don't have to

post them if you don't want to. No one's
forcing you to post a video online. Just

sent them to your friends, get the
feedback and then when you feel like

you've gotten to a good enough quality to
actually show the rest of the world,

you'll look like you've come out fully
formed and know exactly what you're doing.

And that's brilliant. It's more than what
I did which was effectively learning on

the job, but, you know, considering that,
I think I did pretty well for myself.

And I just wanna say, a big thank you to
all the people that have followed me

through the years. Whether you were here
right at the very beginning, or you just

followed me fairly recently. It means the
world to me in all honesty.

I mean, I wouldn't be here if I didn't
have an audience and I think I've got a

pretty great one. I've received plenty of
great insights and advice over the years

from them and it really is appreciated.
So thank you so much, I genuinely cannot

express how much you guys mean to me and I
hope that I've repaid your generosity with

plenty of entertainment. No, I'm not as
big as some of my other peers or even

other people on the platform, but honestly
that doesn't really matter to me because

success is how you personally measure it.
The fact that I have an audience to begin

with means that I'm a success. And that's
all that I'm after. I wasn't into this for

fame, I wasn't into this to become an
internet celebrity or whatever.

I just wanted to entertain people and make
people think critically about movies.

And I feel like I've achieved that, I feel
like I've done that.

Thank you again for watching and I hope to
be back creating more great videos in the

future. I don't know how long that will
last, but I'm here for the ride.

I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.