Mike says Tolkien is a shitty writer who had no idea what he was doing because he made a random archer kill Smaug when it should've been Bilbo killing the dragon because he's the hero.
This is the best film critic of all time?
Mike says Tolkien is a shitty writer who had no idea what he was doing because he made a random archer kill Smaug...
she Lord on my Of till i The Rings
He's right though. Tolkien has good world building but he's a terrible writer.
I'm here to speak to the lard of the land!
Create the fantasy genre single handedly
Neckbeards nearly 100 years later call you a hack because your primary work doesn't adhere to marvel slop tropes
Fantastic stuff
Bilbo told the bird, who told Bard where Smaug's weak point was.
Create the fantasy genre single handedly
thinking Bilbo is the hero in The Hobbit
Jfc
He borrowed heavily from various mythologies, but yes, he built the fantasy genre. Choose a fantasy IP and you'll find a mountain of Tolkien antecedents
mike doesn't know what he's tolkien about
"The random archer" part in the books is awesome.
Red letter media has always been terrible at actual reviews. Yeah the star was prequel videos from 15 years ago were unique and fun for the time but they can't review for shit. At this point if anyone tells me they watch RLM I can automatically discard their opinion. As much shit as siskel and ebert get they did great jobs reviewing movies. I have a few issues with them but at least you know you're listening to a well thought out opinion even if you disagree. But watching some unintelligent dipshits review a Steven Soderberg movie for an hour is embarrassing. Siskel and Ebert reviews were like 3 minutes each and had insight
a lot of the times their review is just an excuse to talk about larger problems in the industry, which is why they end up talking for half an hour
Literally this. Every fucking half in the bag now is them talking shit about movie theaters.
It's like the grandpa your family keeps the kids away from who just drinks on Thanksgiving Day and rants about how horrible the world is because the one thing they liked was ruined.
Every single time Mike Stoklasa tries to “improve” a film he ends up making it worse and more cliche.
He is legit the biggest hack of all time.
hates youtuber
is intimately aware of every opinion he has and always will
You're the problem
The point of rlm is not to be right
The point of rlm is to present a consistent opinion from an honest critic so you can compare what stock you put in their views with what result you should expect for yourself.
he is not saying he is bad, he saying he doesn't conform to hollywood mass produced dogshit 3 acts structure, which is absolutely true
Mike says Tolkien is a shitty writer
Never happened. You do this several times a day, get help.
the archer was some important legacy character he never got to describe well in the book cause he didn't knew what he was doing
He is right about the hobbit is a sloppy job with big ideas
honest critic
Red Letter Media aren’t honest critics though.
Especially not Mike Stoklasa who sucks off Nepo Babies and modern Hollywood now.
Hell, Mike literally went back on his opinion on American Ultra solely because Max Landis appeared on the channel. And then tried to hide the videos when Max Landis was cancelled.
This fat reddit schlub somehow already destroyed all film
What more do you want?
is Marvel in the room with us right now?
seethe more Shatner
Mike literally can not follow a story that isn't the most generic basic bitch story.
I have to skip the parts where he pitches movies because every time its just terrible
Not that this is in any way an accurate quote but if it was it would be a rare time I agree with Mike. Tolkien's strength was consistency and volume, not wit or amazing prose. His works emulate sagas and myths of old, wherein the ideas present are stronger than the writing within. His ability to copy their tone and adapt them to modern English speaks volumes of his linguistical and historical knowledge but he very rarely could construct a novel well. It wasn't until people constructed the myth of Tolkien's mythical prose long after they were published that it was seen as a literary peak. Go reread them. They are probably my favorite piece of literature for the core ideas within, but not because he can write like no one else can.
They are written so basically as to be able to be translated into almost any language without any real loss - that is a certain purity. Also, there is no effortplotting, only natural unfoldings and interesting tidbits, which is the most wholesome form of teleological storytelling.
Before Tolkien, elves were short little mythological creatures (looked like Santa's helpers). Hobbits, Orcs, didn't exist. Dragons weren't gold hoarders. Dwarves were closer to Snow White shit. Trolls lived under bridges and charged a toll or some dumb shit like that.
Only Goblins were pretty much the same.
So yeah Tolkien created Fantasy and every other fantasy IP out there is literally built on the back of his work.
This is the best film critic of all time?
nobody ever said that and believed it
it's exactly the opposite
Don't care, not watching
implying based shat would even know their names
he built the fantasy genre.
lmao
Before Tolkien, elves were short little mythological creatures (looked like Santa's helpers). Hobbits, Orcs, didn't exist. Dragons weren't gold hoarders. Dwarves were closer to Snow White shit. Trolls lived under bridges and charged a toll or some dumb shit like that.
Only Goblins were pretty much the same.
ladies and gentlemen this is average american education
Tolkien isn't a shitty writer.
He's a fucking atrocious writer.
good world building
This compliment is laughable.
It means he spends 25 pages describing the wood that the chairs the hobbits are sitting on is made out of.
Then another 10 pages of song lyrics that they all sing around the fire.
implying you or Stoklasa ever read the Hobbit
lol nope
kill Smaug when it should've been Bilbo killing the dragon because he's the hero
RLM is fucking obsessed with film tropes for some reason
RLM is garbage and that point specifically is dumb but LOTR is dull as all hell. The films are fun but the books are glorified travelogues with a truck full of exposition to pad things out.
ACK why isn't this movie like ghostbusters or gremlins
The Colchian dragon guarded the Golden Fleece in the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts
The Nemean dragon from Greek mythology, which guarded the sacred grove of Zeus
Cuélebres from Asturian and Leonese mythology, which were giant winged serpents that guarded treasure
Everything he "created" was stolen from mythology.
This is the best film critic of all time?
Has Mike ever even been regarded as an okay critic? He knows nothing, has barely seen anything, constantly gets filtered, his "fixes" for movies are always laughably bad.
What I always thought he had going for him is editing, production value, good chemistry with Jay. Things that are good for what is a broad comedy show where people talk about movies.
You look at Half in the Bag in 2011 and it looks like it could be released today. You look at his contemporaries videos from 2011 and they look like they're from the 1990s. Mikes always been more of a technically proficient guy than any sort of critic.
You've never actually tried reading his work
The people that praise Tolkien as a writer are the kind that read fantasy exclusively (a genre that is 90% garbage) and/or have little to zero experience of actual good writing.
Like weebs or videogame autists whose only frame of reference is the limited puerile shit that they have been exposed to in their lives so when they come across something with a fraction of artistic merit they hold it as the apex of civilization.
he spends 25 pages describing the wood
Then another 10 pages of song lyrics
Reddit take. If anything, LOTR is surprisingly compact when you compare it to other fantasy series that span 10+ books of 500+ pages each. Tolkien does it all in what, 1000 pages for 3 books?
t. read 30 pages of some retarded book like Gravity's Rainbow so he thinks he knows his shit
that's not the fucking point. bilbo isn't some great hero. bilbo is a hobbit. bilbo is just some dude.
I mean he's not exactly wrong. The stories are very interesting, but my god the prose is beyond awful. It's so dry and lifeless almost, even if I can understand his linguistic greatness.
They are written so basically as to be able to be translated into almost any language without any real loss
Yet Tolstoy did it better. His writing is far superior and yet rather simplistic, and can be translated far easier yet retain all the power his ideas have.
Hollywood brain rot. Meanwhile in historic narratives shit is constantly anticlimactic.
My friends!!!!
Unironically very true. I would say this applies to any exclusively genre-fiction reader though.
This is such a Reddit take. Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald and even CS Lewis were doing what JRR Tolkien was doing, reinventing fairytales for modern audiences. Why do you have to overemphasize someone's already substantial contribution to make it le more le heckin epic?