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- His "review" of Pixels here
, which turned out to be a nearly ten minute long obliteration of a rant that completely tears apart and addresses every single aspect that made it the worst movie of the year with such anger and spite that even Jim Sterling was taken aback.Jim Sterling: I thought I could be vicious. [Beat] Fucking hell.- It may well be the first of his videos to truly "go viral", as most of his other videos vary from at little as 75000 to 200000 views. Pixels? Two million.
- As a counterpoint of the above, he eventually made a "Really That Good" video on the work of Adam Sandler that used the Pixels video as a preface and then explained that Sandler's work, for all that it is an easy target as "lowest common denominator" cinema, still is done with everybody having fun on the set and bringing work to the town and friends of Sandler, who occasionally are on the down low in the cut-throat market that is Hollywood, and he was not afraid to say that when Sandler can act, he can act.
- His lengthy rant from near the end of his "Not Okay" episode of The Big Picture:How often have we heard that sexism, misogyny or casual racism in this or that community is just part of the way things are there, and how any insinuation that suggests this supposed default status might be a bad thing is violently shrugged off? Particularly my favorite variation on this theme: "Aww, come on, man! This is, like, the last place on Earth where it's okay for guys to talk like this!" As though some kind of sacred tradition is being preserved by not calling bullies out on their bullying.
Hey, uh, genius? Lean your ears up real close: THERE SHOULDN'T BE ANY PLACE WHERE IT'S OKAY, BECAUSE IT'S NOT OKAY!
It's NOT OKAY to harass women! It's NOT OKAY to quote-unquote "slut-shame"! It's NOT OKAY to hurl racist or homophobic slurs as a form of verbal violence! It's NOT OKAY to use "rape" as a casual synonym for defeat! And it's REALLY NOT OKAY that I have to explain that to anybody! I do not accept the premise that sexual harassment, misogyny, bigotry or hatred of any kind is somehow integral to the Fighting Game Community or any other community in video games or anywhere else, but if such a community does exist? Yeah, it's wrong, and should be called out as such, and disinfected via SUNLIGHT!
Of course, this will inevitably draw responses about "Free Speech!" and the First Amendment from people who do not understand either of those things. Free Speech as a legal concept only guarantees you the right to speak. It doesn't guarantee you the right to be heard, it doesn't guarantee you the right to be agreed with, it certainly does not guarantee you the right for your Speech to not be challenged by someone else's Speech, and most importantly of all: it doesn't mean you can't suffer consequences if and when your Free Speech is used to cause harm to someone, which is exactly what sexual harassment, racial slurs and verbal bigotry are! That's not "censorship", that's fairness! - In "Je Suis Charlie", Bob took the extremely difficult task of encapsulating the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hedbo, which had quickly been taken up by the media as a case of studying the rights and limits of free speech. Bob deftly explains that, while he clearly didn't approve of people responding to satire by way of gunning down the cartoonists, he also cautioned how the backlash against the attackers could potentially lead to the equally dangerous proposition of the attacks being used as justification to shut down discussions or criticisms of the content of the satire, similar to how the post 9/11 Patriotic Fervor led to The War on Terror that, to put it lightly, resulted in great losses with relatively little gain, and that it was probably made worse when critics of the war strategies were branded as being "un-patriotic". He ultimately concludes that many of the issues raised by the attacks, from discussions about the differences between free speech and hate speech, satire and mockery, etc., etc., are all very, very complex issues with no easy solutions... before swinging back around to say SOME things are relatively simple, and delivers one final "screw you!" to the terrorist attackers:Bob: Terrorism is wrong, murder is wrong, free speech has to be as absolute as possible for it to mean anything, and while that includes your right to say someone else's speech was offensive or even hateful, my sympathy goes out the window when you make your rebuttal with bullets.
- In his video With Great Power Chipman challenges geek culture to be better than the mainstream culture that came before it - citing With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Like it or not, fantasy, science fiction and lots of aspects of "geek" culture are now part of mainstream culture. But instead of being tolerant, geeks act as prejudiced as those who bullied them in the past. Instead geeks need to be inclusive and accepting.
- In his You Are Wrong About Spider-Man 3 video, he finds an explanation for the Saturday Night Fever scene that is actually smart. Namely that it works on the premise that Spider Man is cool because Peter Parker is comparatively uncool. On that basis, Peter Parker's attempts at being cool via the newfound confidence of the black suit are painful and disheartening... because Peter Parker keeping the black suit on is indeed a bad thing.
- His review of Avatar opens with this rant:Alright, alright, hold on. We'll get to the review, but first...look, I realise we've all got feet of clay on this one, we've all had fun with the little nicknames and jokes. But now that the damn movie is out, there's something that we really need to nip in the bud as far as internet memes go right here, right now. So, hold on. Uh...ok, and...loud voice thingy is...on. Ok. Ah-heh-hem...NOTICING THAT AVATAR HAS THE SAME BASIC STORY AS Dances with Wolves DOES NOT MAKE YOU OBSERVANT! FURTHERMORE, POINTING IT OUT DOES NOT MAKE YOU CLEVER, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE JUST CRIBBING NOTES FROM SOUTH PARK! Clear enough? Alright, then. As of right now, anyone still wanking the "Dances With Smurfs" thing, who isn't themselves called Trey Parker or Matt Stone, is officially a freakin' douchebag. Ok? Guys? Cool? Can we come together on this in the spirit of the season and maybe at least get new material? Alright, then.
- For added build-up by means of Most Wonderful Sound, the aforementioned "loud voice thingy" turns on with the same sound as the proton packs.
- The teaser for his Really That Good episode of Superman: The Movie, expertly weaving the reveal together with the Star Wars review he originally planned until he was so furious at Dawn of Justice that he needed to do this one instead. The use of John Williams' epic score throughout just adds to the awesomeness, including the perfect timing of when it hits the main theme.
- The Big Picture episode "Correctitude" where Bob absolutely tears apart the anti-political correctness crowd by rightfully pointing out that most of what they consider to be "PC" is just being nice, and that there is a huge difference between actually being politically incorrect and just being a bigot hiding behind the anti-PC defense.
- The absolutely brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards M. Night Shyamalan at the end of his review of The Visit where he castigates the director for having such a vicious contempt for his own audience.
- Halfway through the first part, he makes an offhand reference to The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a groundbreaking piece of cinema, and then gives a Preemptive "Shut Up" to his viewers not to bug him to review the saga due to the sheer magnitude of such an undertaking... only to very slowly consider the value of analyzing their influence, and the possibility of doing a video on them in the (not so near) future. Consider his dedication to this video, it's a pretty good indicator that we'll see that video eventually, and it will be amazing.
- These two videos In which Bob pulls apart The Last Jedi to show that the story is ultimately built as a thank you to the fans that let this happen rather than the Take That! many viewers interpreted it as.
- It was a slow burn, but the Really That Good for Spider-Man 1 & 2 has almost 2 million views and is currently the second most-viewed video he has ever made.
- In his three-parter, "How to fix the Fantastic Four In the MCU," Bob creates a fresh, creative and thrilling proposal of how to do the original superhero family of Marvel on film that could really work!
- In his "Big Picture" episode on Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Bob calls out the "YouTube Performative Rage Industrial Complex" for being mad at the show because He-Man and Skeletor were briefly sidelined in the show. Despite the fact that the show is full of fanservice and Call Backs that He-Man fans would like, Bob calls out anyone who was complaining about the show because a female lead briefly was the focus character.Bob: How are you complaining about this? I mean, I know the answer, but it's just so pathetic and sad. Which is why it's so hard to build an episode out of this, if I'm being honest. Nothing was actually going on here! Certain people decided to be mad about this before it came out, they retrofitted what they eventually got into a predetermined sense of what they thought would get them a certain amount of outrage-driven traffic, and people still fell into line behind it. It's the dumbest possible version of the dumbest possible reaction to what should have been — and, as far as I am concerned, still is in terms of execution — one of the easiest lay-up wins in nostalgia repackaging history. And everyone involved in propagating it should be embarrassed. […] Congratulations on having lived down to the stereotype.
- In his Big Picture on Christopher Nolan and his push to have Tenet only available to view in theatres even for critics during the COVID-19 Pandemic, while Bob is sympathetic to theatre owners who were probably desperate for attendance and renewed income, he also exorciates Nolan for his tin-eared, egocentric insistence on getting his way without regard for the consequences to moviegoers and critics who had to choose between risking their health to see his movie or staying home, and deconstructs his fans' insistence on deifying him by saying, in so many words, that he's ultimately Michael Bay but for smart people.
- "NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING" (The Internet Is Stupid: Part 2) sees Bob taking people who make Internet Counterattacks to task once again while discussing the Fan Myopia behind the mindset. Bob calls out such commenters as being a Vocal Minority that the average executive would do well to not listen to, since their opinions rarely pan out with what the Silent Majority of the audience thinks. For instance, Bob cites that everyone thought that Game of Thrones killed any interest in Westeros based on the online reactions to its ending, but House of the Dragon came out to critical and commercial acclaim. Finally, Bob cites how Yellowstone is pulling in gangbuster numbers like Game of Thrones used to have in its middle seasons, the show is getting a prequel series and a ton of good press, and yet most people online have never heard of it because it doesn't appeal to them. In summation, Bob takes rabid internet commenters to task for not only being addicted to their outrage, but for not being nearly as all-encompassing in sharing the majority opinion as they think they are.Bob: Where the disconnect vis-a-vis the internet being stupid comes into this is that because the internet is stupid, and thus a huge amount of the conversation that takes place amid the internal scene fanboys bubble circle jerk spaces is stupid, many of the loudest and dumbest voices either have yet to learn or are being willingly obtuse about just because the whole wide world now knows all about [...] every other no longer niche (because everything can just be looked up and found out) thing you're devoted to doesn't mean that the same whole wide world also knows or cares about whatever very likely petty and tiresome fandom drama hang-up you've attached to it.
- "SO THAT HAPPENED" is a Big Picture episode about the writing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and how the rise of the Deadpan Snarker is treated as some form of criticism whenever any piece of media uses it. Bob tears into this line of thinking, saying that such dialogue has been around for ages — Bob notes that buddy cop movies as early as The '80s used it all the time — and that such "sloppy misapplied critical shorthands" are making everyone dumber by using really bad criticism or bad faith takes. He even points out that the titular phrase "so that happened" is often cited as the catch-all phrase for this kind of writing. Bob argues that this is getting the soruce wrong, since the origin of the line wasn't from the MCU, a Joss Whedon script, or a mainstream pop culture source. It was from State and Main, a David Mamet film that came out in 2000. In the end, Bob argues that bad-mouthing witty or snappy dialogue isn't a real criticism, calling out everyone who uses it as a criticism as a bad faith actor by asking what in the world is supposed to be wrong with witty dialogue.Bob: So I say again: watch more things. Any other things. Gain media literacy. Or at the very least, when you hear smug people dismissing this or that thing with tired, supposedly self-evident, empty cliché analysis like "Oh that's Marvel writing" or "that's Zoomer humor", ask if they can elaborate what they mean by that. Or better yet, what's supposed to be wrong with that in the first place. Because nothing exposes the empty head of a fraud like a follow-up question.
- "The Apu Trilogy" is a three-part video that takes The Simpsons creator Matt Groening along with the show's writers and producers to task for their petty responses to the criticisms raised by the documentary The Problem with Apu during the season 29 episode "No Good Read Goes Unpunished", deconstructing how shallow/poorly thought-out the episode's analogies about the criticisms were as well as proposing different, more thoughtful ways the show could've responded to the criticisms.
