The Nostalgia Critic

Like a lot of people I became familiar with The Nostalgia Critic and his portrayer/creator Doug Walker in the summer of 2007 on YouTube. At the time, he didn't have anywhere the budget he has today and because of YouTube guidelines his videos had to try to be less than ten minutes. His content then was very to the point, had legitimate and researched criticism, and above all else was actually funny. Not to say he had a perfect thing going on, he did make a few trivial mistakes with his early videos, but for the most part it a harmless string of YouTube videos.

He grew in popularity which led to various others trying to mimic his style of review, getting his own website where he'd not only create content but others as well( many of who became internet stars in their own right) becoming a guest at conventions, and being able to reach out and get people like Mara Wilson("Matilda") and legendary animator Don Bluth("Secret of NIMH") to appear on his content. However, the popularity only went to Walker's head and the content did not get better, it became worse with age.

As time went, the videos became longer than they needed to be, became pretentious( see his woeful editorials, vlogs, and sibling rivalry videos with his brother) more material was not researched better( or at all) and a lot of the humor became mean spirited and condescending to the viewer. The nice and reasonable personality Walker usually portrayed off-screen with fans appeared more and more like a facade than genuine with how eerily similar his views and general attitude of them were to that of his character - Not the night and day difference he used to display when he first started out making videos. Like a lot of the shows and film franchises Walker usually rants on about as "not doing anything new" and "trying too hard to be trendy with today" he too has ironically fallen victim to this and the majority of his newest content is just unwatchable. Furthermore, Walker seems to really think that he is a legitimate film critic and that his character qualifies as such, not quite as the purpose of creating the character was originally just to riff on things for laughs. How fame can really conquer rational thinking...

Walker made a good call ending the character some years ago and decidedly wanting to create newer programs for his social media, but made the mistake of waiting too late in the game to announce it and thus created a backlash from his fan-base so out of worry he brought the character back, but it was never the same - He started making reviews of films that had just came out recently( contradictory to the word "nostalgic"), did more and more crossovers, had skits that ran longer and didn't go anywhere, and the style of humor was unsettling in a similar sense to contemporary Family Guy.

I would only recommend his much earlier content, nothing he's done in recent years. How the mighty have fallen...Ironically, many Nostalgia Critic imitators are proving to do it better than he has in recent years, go figure.

On one hand, the Nostalgia Critic is one of the most important figures to me, at least in internet culture. His content introduced me to the world of critical culture, which is watching analysis on their takes on media. And I'm not going to pretend that N. C.'s old content were always bad. These episodes weren't either clever or deep compared to today's contemporaries. But these episodes, Batman and Robin, The Room, Dungeons and Dragons, the bizarre animated Titanic rip-offs, they had their charm and at least was entertaining. He was alongside AVGN as these forefathers of this emerging genre.

But on the other hand, the N. C. Is also the most outdated and ironic critic in all of YouTube. Since his revival and since his Jurassic world review, the N. C. was going to rely more on using live-action skits to evade copyright issues. In theory, this could possibly work if you have enough creativity, quality production, and, great acting and writing. But in execution, Doug Walker had none of them. The skits are, and continue to be, the worst aspect of his more modern episodes. These episodes are plagued with such puss-poor production that it makes The Incredible Bulk look like a James Cameron film, impressively bad and repetitive comedy that feels ripped off from Seizer and Friedberg, horrible pacing that causes all of the scenes to be unintentionally awkward and unbearably boring, sets that are either a lazy green screen or be set in this unbelievably dull office building, and even the music is this repetitive, stock "epic" tune that feels way too overused. But even then, most of the later episodes aren't consistently bad either, just extreme hit or extreme miss (though it's more the later). And these episodes just get worse and more dumber as the years go by.

But then comes the lingering elephant in the room: "Change the Channel," which, long story short, recontextualized him and his company, Channel Awesome. Gone was the perception of a flawed, yet passionate filmmaker who made a company so that others can accomplish their dreams, instead revealed Doug Walker as an inept, out-of-touch, and egotistical idiot. While there were far more insidious individuals who turned Channel Awesome into a toxic workplace of nepotism, sexual harassment, and gross mistreatment, it was Doug Walker who enabled this to happen. He is still complicit with their actions. And as such justifiably resulted in the largest exodus of creators from a YouTube company which brought the death knell for community-based YouTube Channels.

Watching the Nostalgia Critic turn into a parody of himself is genuinely sad. I truly did grew up in that golden age of YouTubers. He was the reason why I got into cinema and the arts, why I became obsessed with how movies get made and why I follow that weird genre of YouTube Critics like him, but more sophisticated, earnest, and actually funny. He's a trailblazer lost making his own trail in circles. He's the Nostalgia Critic, we remembered him because he doesn't anymore.

The Nostalgia Critic was a very early example of the type of entertaining internet personality who doubled as a media critic. He gave reviews and retrospectives to old works with a flair of sarcasm, injecting some funny jokes and insights. Over time his reviews have become a bit bloated and straying from the point, but I still like them.

To be honest, The Nostalgia Critic as he currently stands deserves one star-- the additional three in my rating are for the entertainment value the series had back in the day, which, unfortunately, the passage of time and the addition of unpleasant hindsight have considerably eroded.

I watched the NC religiously as a teenager in the late 2000s. His reviews were unpretentious and packed with a joke a second. Humiliating as it might be to admit, I still recall his reviews of A TROLL IN CENTRAL PARK and THE TOM AND JERRY MOVIE fondly. These reviews were hardly profound or even that well-made, and many come off as quite dated today, but for the time, the NC was a lot of fun and an internet superstar. His angry critic schtick was copied by just about everybody between 2007 and 2010.

Understandably, Walker wanted to move on to different projects. He was tired of screaming in front of a white wall, even with the addition of skits and special effects to shake things up in later episodes. However, Doug was taken down by his own ego and bad writing. His follow-up series DEMO REEL was a spectacular failure (I saw the pilot the day it was posted and that was enough for me), forcing him back into the NC role. Unfortunately, the new NC was little more than DEMO REEL 2.0-- at that point, the internet review show had outgrown the simpler style that made Walker famous and he himself was only treading water. The horrifying revelations of the Change the Channel documentation only further sealed Walker's fate as a disgraced has-been.

To watch current NC videos is like seeing SUNSET BLVD's Norma Desmond descending the stairs to perform her antiquated Salome before an audience of embarrassed cops and journalists. No one is there because they are entertained: they're watching a train wreck. While reviving the NC might have been a wise move from an economic standpoint, artistically, it's trapped Walker in an eternal adolescence.

As far as I'm concerned there are two "Nostalgia Critics" those that were before "To Boldly Flee" and those that came after. Whereas not all the ones before TBF were gold or necessarily all that good, they were a far sight better than what we got afterwards. Let me take a few steps back.

Doug Walker was a man with a dream. He wanted to be the next Stephen Spielberg. He went to school to study filmmaking and when youtube was still new he came up with the idea of being an internet reviewer. His first reviews were fresh, a little raw around the edges, but they were reviews as done by a screaming, sarcastic, angry guy. But as time went on they became more polished and, dare I say it, enjoyable. I genuinely started to enjoy this and through him I discovered other that I still watch to this day. But time changes things. Whereas before he would have small asides, snide comments and short little skits, as time went on they practically became the driving force. Too much time was devoted to them and less on analysis or just having fun with it. And while reviews like "The Room" are still among one of my favorites they're just not like that anymore.

But Doug got tired of the whole NC shtick and wanted to move onto different things. So he killed the character off, started up "Demo Reel" which was unwatchable, tried his hand at a game show called "Pop Quiz Hotshot" which was equally painful and because the fans wanted it he went back to being the Nostalgia Critic.

It wasn't the same. Now the skits took up a good portion of the review. In some cases they practically were the review. And it became less about the movie and more about Doug and the Chicago Crew, all of whom are community theater actors at best. The show just got to be unwatchable. And then came the whole Change the Channel bit.

if anything this served to sour me on the whole NC show and the cast of characters that seemed to grow with each passing month. Too often there would be recurring characters with no hint of subtlety. It was all in your face obvious and there was literally none of the magic that the show used to have, It was reduced to a paint by numbers set and I finally signed off forever.

I would love it if he went back to his old way of doing things. One camera, short asides, maybe a thirty second sketch and actual care taken to review the movie whether it was good or bad. But sadly he seems stuck on this new way of doing things. Sadly he will never really achieve his dreams but will be playing this character until it stops being profitable and then will fade into obscurity having accomplished very little.