On June 2, 2015, Matthew Robert "MatPat" Patrick created the channel "The Film Theorists
", aka "Film Theory". It tackles theories on not only the subject of film, but television shows, web series, and advertisements as well. Other related shows on the channel include Did You Know Movies? (a spin-off of Did You Know Gaming?) and Frame By Frame (which examines film techniques used by famous directors). Did You Know Movies? eventually moved to the Normal Boots channel before being discontinued completely, and Frame By Frame was also cancelled. The show serves as the top right "Red" segment of the circle.
On March 8th 2024, MatPat stepped down as the head of the show and Lee Collins took over on March 17th.
Tropes found in Film Theory:
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- He theorizes that Christian Grey is brainwashing Anastasia into going along with BDSM, pointing out all the times the movie coincided with the steps of Real Life indoctrination process.
- He also speculates that Dory is Obfuscating Stupidity to hunt prey especially since her species does that in nature...only for another, very crucial part of his theory note to be disproven in the first five minutes of Finding Dory.
- He theorizes that Salad Fingers was an abandoned child who went insane after losing everyone in his life and projects himself onto Hubert Cumberdale.
- The United Federation of Planets is a fascist government. MatPat also theorizes that the entire franchise is based upon unreliable narration due to the frequent framing device of the "Captain's log".
- He theorizes that The Intruder is attempting to stop Satan and the Alternates by kidnapping children and giving them an immunity to the M.A.D. which the Alternates carry. Despite this, Mat makes it clear that The Intruder is not the squeaky clean good guy of the story since he still kidnaps children from their parents and drives some of them to suicide, pushing the guy into Unscrupulous Hero or Nominal Hero territory.
- Bait-and-Switch: He begins his video on The Purge by complaining that all we really see is people committing murders despite the wide variety of possibilities for government sanctioned crime, only for him to go down a list and gradually explain why each crime he brings up is either Awesome, but Impractical or guaranteed to blow up in your face. He ends the segment by apologizing to the writers of the movies for not realizing just how narrow the Purge would really be in real life.
- Beat Without a "But": In a Film Theory video on The Lorax (2012), when talking about how Illumination Entertainment handled the movie:MatPat: Now some people might call this an unnecessary cash-grab that totally negates the message of the original story. [Beat] What, were you expecting a "but" at the end of that sentence? It totally negates the original message of the story.
- Berserk Button: In "Hazbin Hotel, There Is NO Redemption!", MatPat gets sidetracked when discussing the rates of infidelities, as he was apparently a victim of getting cheated on, and does not take the topic sitting down. He even states that if you cheat on your partner, he says you deserve to go to Hell, and, "hope the Radio Demon eats your head off."
- Bittersweet Ending:
- His interpretation of the ending of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. Essentially, Roy no longer sponsors Red's show, but Red has finally pulled the plug on Roy's influence on both the show and his son (Yellow Guy) and the characters can finally have the freedom of their show back, even if they're on a smaller budget.
- His interpretation of the ending to Salad Fingers. He will always be the product of his abusive upbringing and he will never fit into normal society. But, he will never repeat their history and will raise his son in a healthier environment.
- Demythification: Does this to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He gives real world answers as to how the poisoned apple worked how Snow White woke up instead of magic and The Power of Love.
- Don't Explain the Joke: The entire point of MatPat's video on the controversy surrounding PewDiePie's supposed anti-semitism.MatPat: Nothing ruins a joke faster than analyzing it. Sooo let's do that!
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Less then two years into the show, the theme song "Phase Shift" was removed, with the Phineas and Ferb being the last to feature it.
- Entertainment Below Their Age: A few lines from MatPat in his first PAW Patrol theory video imply that he may be a fan of the show himself despite it being a Preschool Show and him having a son who was within that demographic when the video was posted, such as showing interest in a toy of the Air Patroller before backpedaling and saying he wants to buy it for his son.
- Failed a Spot Check:
- One episode of the show justifies this in The Walking Dead by showing that spending a large amount of time shooting loud guns in places with echoes (which the characters do constantly) would result in them starting to lose their hearing, allowing Walkers to constantly sneak up on them.
- Lampshaded in the video for Hitman: Agent 47. MatPat discovers and discusses a plausible material for creating bulletproof sub-dermal body armor only to realize by the end that Agent 47 specified that John Smith's bulletproof skin was titanium.
- In "Phoenix Wright Is A Criminal", he claims that Phoenix Wright is guilty of obstruction of justice due to his concealment of the "Maya" note in "Turnabout Sisters", all while his own footage demonstrates that the police clearly have awareness of the note's existence, meaning that Phoenix obviously didn't conceal it from them.
- Faux Symbolism: In-Universe, in his video about Freddy Krueger, he discovers how MAOI drugs are key to stopping Freddy from attacking people in their dreams. Upon discovering this, MatPat starts thinking if Freddy is symbolic of mental illness due to being a silent killer who is unseen by others, operates from the brain, and becomes stronger the more you ignore it. However, MatPat eventually disagrees with this by pointing out how the sequels became less and less subtle in their theme.
- Fridge Brilliance: Matt suffered this when doing research for his Purge episode. While he was originally angry that the movies only showed people committing murder instead of creative crimes like hacking, insider trading, and cheating at gambling, upon further research he realized that most crimes wouldn't work during the Purge for multiple reasons, either because the Purge removes crimes for everyone and thus revenge and betrayals would be common, international laws would still prosecute you for crimes such as counterfeiting and tax evasion, and since it's a yearly event, any crimes with victims are going to still be traced back to the perpetrator (who is now going to be on the receiving end of well-funded vigilante justice the following year). He ended up apologizing to the movie's writer, James DeMonaco, for his original opinion of the series.
- If It's You, It's Okay: Matt himself admits to having a man crush on Chris Pratt. He then later got distracted discussing Jamie Dornan's attractiveness when doing a Fifty Shades of Grey theory.
- Kid-Appeal Character: Discussed in his video on the Minions; Mat and Steph's son, Oliver, knows absolutely nothing about the series or its characters, yet still fell in love with inflatable Minions decorations you see on people's lawns around Christmas time. Mat concludes from this that there's something inherent in the Minions' design to trigger this kind of response.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: Long time host MatPat stepped down as the face of the channel on March 8th 2024. On March 17th Lee Collins took over as the head writer and host.
- The Misophonic: He interprets The Grinch (the first animated one) as this, which would explain his hate for the Whos, for their loud festivities.
- No OSHA Compliance: His analysis of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory states that Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, if inspected, would land him in serious trouble for the myriad of health and safety violations, especially given his blase attitude towards worker and visitor safety. In fact, given the timing of when OSHA was implemented and when the movie was set, MatPat theorizes that Wonka was trying to pawn off his company to an unsuspecting rube that could take the fall for him.
- Self-Deprecation:
- The video "Your Memories Are A LIE!" about the neuralyzer from Men in Black opens with a joke at the expense of some of his most unpopular videos such as "Sans is Ness" and "Overwatch VS TF2", with Mat trying to wipe the viewer's memory of them.
- In the episode on Don't Hug Me I'm Scared he jokingly compares himself to the crazy uncle that thinks everything's a conspiracy.
- She Is the King: In the Aladdin episode, MatPat's goal is to get Aladdin his goal of being allowed to romance Princess Jasmine with just one wish. That wish turns out to be for Jasmine to be the new Sultan so she can decide who she marries. While female rulers would normally have the title of Sultana, there have been some historical woman who went by Sultan.
- Signing Off Catchphrase: "But hey! That's just a theory: A Film Theory! Aaaaaaand, cut!"
- Sins of Our Fathers: According to MatPat, Salad Fingers is a product of an abusive upbringing. His parents hated him for being a child of a biracial couple.
- Spoiler Opening: Subverted with his Film Theory opening in regards to The Hunger Games. The opening shows Katniss next to a chart that shows her chances of winning the hunger games are very low. However, when he actually did the theory on Hunger Games, Katniss was actually slated to win.
- Take That!:
- MatPat's theory on The Martian contains a jab at Adam Sandler by mentioning his movies as a pathogen, complete with a shot of Jack and Jill.
- Likewise, during a Star Trek theory, he briefly mentions the enemy race the Cardassians as the Kardashians, with a texture of Kim Kardashian showing up.
- He uses a poster of Transformers: The Last Knight with the quote "Why Did We Make This Movie Again?" when discussing on Dory.
- In his introduction in Kung Fu Panda, Lee Collins states that he has been in several Game Theory videos but not "Sans is Ness".
- To Serve Man: The theory on WALL•E is that the co-pilot Auto had been given direct commands from the president in 2110 to keep the humans in space as Earth has become uninhabitable. Since there is a large disappearance of corpses and not enough food to last seven hundred years, Auto had resorted to secretly converting the corpses into food in order to have enough for humans to survive for decades.
- Toy Ship: An In-Universe example in "PAW Patrol Is DARKER Than You Think!" where MatPat openly declares his opinion that the preteen characters Ryder and Katie from that show would make a good power couple.
- Who's on First?: MatPat deals with this at the start of his second Doctor Who episode, when someone calls to tell him that there's a TV marathon of famous fictional doctors and says "No" when asked who's on first because Doctor Who is on second (and Dr. No is on first).
