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Web Video / Mr. Plinkett Reviews

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"I've analyzed this film with a team of cheerleaders, and they came up with one unanimous conclusion: that if I let them go, they promise they won't tell nobody."

Mr. Plinkett Reviews is a movie review web series by RedLetterMedia, and the company's Breakout Hit.

Mike Stoklasa performs in voiceover as Harry S. Plinkett, who painstakingly reviews terrible films and sub-par offerings of beloved franchises. The character of Mr. Plinkett is a cantankerous old man prone to mumbling, mispronouncing words, and getting sidetracked on unrelated tangents. His reviews are heavily sprinkled with increasingly overt insinuations that he is a Serial Killer who murdered his wives and regularly kidnaps other women. The reviews were an early trailblazer for long-form video essays, often extending beyond an hour.

RedLetterMedia earned mainstream attention with the Mr. Plinkett review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and it remains their most popular and celebrated offering.

    Works reviewed by Mr. Plinkett 

Mr. Plinkett Reviews uses the following tropes:

    open/close all folders 

    A-D 
  • 10-Minute Retirement: At the end of his Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review, Plinkett sadly rolls away into the sunset in his wheelchair, reciting 'To An Athlete Dying Young', looking very much like it's the last episode... then he suddenly remembers that he needs to review The Matrix movies and the Twilight movies and Terminator Salvation...
  • Abandoned War Child: Plinkett implies he fathered one during the Vietnam War during his review of The Force Awakens.
  • Aborted Arc:
    • Plinkett being apprehended by the police. It happens at the end of his Phantom Menace review, it's mentioned that he's "in the clink" in the Attack of the Clones preview, note  and then it's never mentioned again.
      "Stay back, coppers, I'm packin' heat!"
    • There's also how in earlier reviews Mr. Plinkett clearly and regularly abducted people. It seems weird how Mr. Plinkett in later reviews gets feedback from other people about describing characters from the old and new prequels instead of them fleeing in horror or being kidnapped.
  • Abusive Parents: In the commentary for the History of Plinkett Documentary, Plinkett reveals that his father used to hit him. At least according to Plinkett. Mr. Plinkett is very probably one himself. He considers his son to be a disappointment in the same league as The Phantom Menace, and states that he hanged himself in a gas station bathroom.
  • AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: It's very common for Mr. Plinkett to mispronounce certain words, such as "proa-ta-gone-ist" and "anal-sis."
  • Accidental Misnaming:
    • He jokingly calls Jango Fett "Boba" in the Episode II review. Some viewers took the joke at face value and thought that he seriously couldn't see the difference.
    • Also Ewan McDonald instead of McGregor, and William Shakesman/Shatner/Shakespeare.
    • Senator Paul McCartney's hearings on Soviet spies were a milestone in U.S. history.note 
    • Rose McGowan plays Kate Winslet.
    • "Even Sir Laurence Oliver couldn't read these shitty lines!"
    • He thinks Rose's fiance in Titanic is called Cliff Huxtable.
  • Affably Evil: Plinkett gives off an air of this at first glance, what with his insightful criticisms and snarky quips. He can even come off as an endearing and harmless (if senile) old man with his confusion about everything and enthusiasm for Star Wars and Star Trek... that is until his insanity and horrible actions start to slip through.
  • The Alcoholic: You'd need a drink, too, if you had to review these movies.
    "Maybe It's time for another vodka gimlet... [trips over furniture] GW'OOH FCK!"
  • All Is Well That Ends Well: Following his duel with Nadine, subsequent hospital stay, and near-assassination, Plinkett cheerfully returns home to...microwave his cat.
  • Alternate DVD Commentary: Mr. Plinkett and the Half in the Bag characters had made audio commentaries, which can be seen on the site's Bandcamp..
  • Aluminum Christmas Trees: Invoked in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review where Plinkett states that the scene where Mutt uses a snake as a rope to get Indy out of quicksand couldn't happen since the snake would get ripped in half.
    Mr. Plinkett: I don't know, it just doesn't seem realistic to me. Now go ahead and post comments about how people have used snakes as ropes for years in the Amazon or whatever, you fuckin assho-
  • Ambiguously Gay: Mr. Plinkett himself. Apparently, he made out with George Lucas, and he compliments William Shatner's merkin (a pubic wig) in the Star Trek review.
  • Anything but That!: "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones is the worst thing ever made by a human... except for the bagpipes."
  • Angrish: Several minor occasions scattered throughout the series, usually with The Scary Voice, but the best example would have to be when confronted with the asspull of Yoda telling Obiwan how to talk to Force Specters.
    And then Yoda tells Obiwan that he should talk to Qui-Gon's ghost! (Laugh Track plays) WHAT THE FUCK?! No-one-evermentionedanyoneeverdevertime 'bout talkin' to ghosts!!!!!!"
  • Arc Words:
    • The entire quote by George Lucas, constantly repeated in the reviews of all three prequels: "And again, it's like poetry, it's sort of, they rhyme. Every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one. Hopefully it'll work."
    • Another quote by his Number Two, Rick McCallum, repeated almost as often: "It's so dense, every single image has so many things going on…"
    • "What is wrong with your faaaaaace?"
    • "You might not have noticed... but your brain did."
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
    • Mr. Plinkett says, "I don't think I've ever seen a movie like this, with mind rape, child slave labor, guy getting impaled on a spike and then pulling it through his own guts, horrific scenes of death, close-ups of Marina Sirtis."
    • He even does a positive example of this, listing two really important good things cultures with technology has before listing something far less important.
    Mr. Plinkett: Plus they (savage cultures without technology) don't got things like antibiotics, indoor plumbing, or Taco Bell.
    • Elsa Schneider's List of Transgressions include "Nazi, Whore, Liar, Woman."
    • He complains about the recent trend of Star Trek movies all being revenge films. "I'm filled with so much hate I don't know what to do with it! Usually I turn it into murder. Or complaining at the Post Office about the price of stamps."
  • The Artifact: Plinkett's The Phantom Menace review is divided into a whopping seven parts. This was done to circumvent a limit that YouTube placed on videos that restricted them to being under 10 minutes. This limit is no longer in place, and the more recent Plinkett reviews are all single videos that are well over an hour in length.
  • As Himself: "Man In A Black Cloak"
  • Ascended Meme: Yes, Kathy's review of Cop Dog was indeed real. Well, not the "Motherfucker!" conclusion. One must wonder what Kathy thinks of over 1120 people voting her review as helpful.
  • Author Appeal:
    • Mr. Plinkett isn't the only foul-mouthed sociopathic elderly person Stoklasa's created, ie. Recipe for Disaster.
    • Mike is a fan of the famous jazz artist (and Plinkett's contemporary) Frank Sinatra, to the point that virtually every review has featured Rat Pack-era music. Often, the lyrics double as jabs at George Lucas, as well.
  • Author Usurpation: RedLetterMedia is probably still best known for the Plinkett The Phantom Menace review, to the point that it's still the first thing mentioned on their channel description. However, the Plinkett reviews have gradually lost prominence on the channel as their other series gained traction with viewers.
  • Ax-Crazy: He's killed several of his ex-girlfriends and wives, several Koreans, and now needs to go because his cat isn't going to milk itself.
  • Bait-and-Switch: In the Episode 3 review, he talks about the "funniest scene in movie history". He goes through the part when Vader arises in detail, and shows the moment as... Yoda telling Obi-Wan to talk to Qui-Gon's ghost.
  • Bait-and-Switch Comment:
    • In the Revenge of the Sith review, he jokes that "Sith" has an appropriate anagram: Tshi, which he claims is Chinese for "Disappointed in the cooking of the duck meat" (of course it's a made-up word that doesn't actually mean anything in Chinese).
    • Another good one from the same review, where he rants about how reviews have called the movie better because it's Darker and Edgier: "My stool is dark! And doctor says that's bad! I don't know why he thinks he knows so much about interior decorating, though. [rimshot and a picture of a leather stool]".
    • At the conclusion of the Ghostbusters (2016) review, a stuntwoman is splattered by white slime coming out of a hose. Plinkett says the crew was enjoying it because it looked like... it was going to be a great visual effectnote .
    • "Fuckin' Ray Charles could have seen that coming… and he doesn't even know anything about Star Wars!"
    • "Avatar ushered in a new age of 3-D film-making. And by age I mean six months."
    • Chalks up the misfire of Star Trek V to an issue of ego. "James Doohan's ego was out of contr—!!...wait."
  • Became Their Own Antithesis: "Special effects are just tools. A means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as ends themselves. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." — George Lucas.
    Plinkett: You said it brother... Wait, you said that?!
  • Been There, Shaped History: Plinkett claims he was responsible for the Titanic sinking.
  • Better by a Different Name: In a variation, he says that Star Trek (2009) actually is better if you think of it as a Star Wars movie instead of a Star Trek movie. He also says that it's a better SW film than the prequels.
  • Big Bad: George Lucas fills this role in the Plinkett Reviews continuity if you count Revenge of Nadine as part of it.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: At the end of the Phantom Menace review, he says that the part where a floating pizza roll told him to go murder his wife was really strange. Plinkett himself states he doesn't understand how it fit into The Phantom Menace either. (But he thought it made a good point.) Continued in the conclusion of his Titanic review, Plinkett ends up rambling about how James Cameron was very inaccurate. He goes on to mention how he actually crashed the ship because another talking pizza roll talked him into it, the ship was unmanned as Plinkett's mother was having sex with the captain at the time, aliens caused the ship to snap in two, his father died hiding in a suitcase, and the whole thing was covered up out of embarrassment. invoked
  • Big "SHUT UP!":
    • "Fred Thompson, shut yer trap! SHUT UP! Let her go look for her baby, she'd probably've found it by now. You haven't gotten shit done!"
    • Gives one to Rick McCallum during a later use of the "its so dense" line. "SHUTYOURFUCKINGFACE!"
    • He berates George Lucas' "It's like poetry" line once or twice, but eventually gives up and mutters, "Okay, yeah, we get it. Thank you."
  • Big "WHAT?!":
    • His discovery of the Revenge of the Sith DVD inside his Baby's Day Out case.
    • The results of the Kodak printer challenge™.
    • And again in his review of Star Trek: First Contact:
    Picard: No, there's a chance we could hit the dish, it's charged with antiprotons. We could destroy half the ship!
    (cut to Picard unloading a phaser at the dish)
    Plinkett: WhaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAT?
    • Palpatine, after Plinkett preempts his demands for more reviews by linking him to a gay porn video.
    Palpatine: I was not going to ask for a review of THAT!
    Plinkett: I have foreseen it, though.
    • And Palpatine again after answering his cell phone:
    "Hello? The Phantom Menace in 3-D? WHAAAAAT?"
    • Then when he finds out that The Force Awakens won't be released in December 2014 but December 2015.
      Plinkett: WHAT?! 2015?! I don't even know I'll live that long!
  • Big Word Shout: Picard's magically teleporting photo album. You know what that spells: LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZZYYYYYYYYYYYYY
  • Bizarro Episode: invoked ''Recipe for Disaster!'', the replacement video for Baby's Day Out because FOX wouldn't let him upload the review to YouTube.
  • Black Comedy Rape: Each of the Star Wars reviews have lines about "the Force" being used on women. Another running gag is a reference to the pinball table scene from The Accused.
    "Haha. Rape jokes. I love 'em!"
    (on Picard disobeying orders) "In fact, Picard's orders get violated more often than Councilor Troi."
    "Remember in Nemesis when Riker fought that alien for mind-raping his wife? I don't know why he did that, you'd think he'd want to give the guy a fifty dollar bill!"
  • "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word:
    • He originally tried to extort money from his viewers by claiming it was for his grandkids' ear medicine.
    • While shilling Half in the Bag DVDs, he offhandedly mentions that they have such a big surplus, Plinkett is forced to store them in front of the only fire exit of a children's orphanage. "Order today."
  • Bland-Name Product: Parodied in the Episode III Review Epilogue when Nadine meets Emperor Palpatine.
    Nadine: What do you want, man-in-a-black-cloak-who-is-not-a-trademarked-character-of-Lucas-Limited?
    Palpatine: I see you know my name.
  • Book Dumb:
    • "I ain't never read one a 'dem Star Wars books, or any books in general for that matter!"
    • "The only things I've ever read is the directions to my fleshlight."
    • "I mean, even when Cop and a Half half-assed it, it was still three-quarters cop! ..Wait, gotta check my math on that. [cue montage of charts and calculations] —Yeah I'm right."
  • Brain Bleach: Mr. Plinkett advocates drinking the real deal to make all memories of the prequels go away.
    "Fuck the pain away, fuck the pain away, fuck the pain away..."
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In the The Force Awakens preview, Plinkett says he uses the phone for phone sex, ordering pizza, and pizza phone sex.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
    • "Classic Star Trek images are as identifiable and well-known as, like, the McDonald’s logo, Santa Claus, Superman, and dog crap."
    • The Dog Who Saved Christmas, The Dog Who Ruined Christmas, The Dog Who Got Shot Out Back for Ruining Christmas...
    • "Star Trek V is what they call a 'train wreck': good intentions gone horribly wrong.
      "Trains usually have good intentions: To move people, cargo, hobos, et cetera..."
      • "I'm all for recycling things. Glass, paper, people..."
  • Breathless Non Sequitur: So, so many. Particularly among Plinkett's digressions about his past victims.
  • Breakout Character: The Plinkett The Phantom Menace review going viral essentially put RLM on the map. It took years for the channel to develop a following that wasn’t simply waiting for the next Plinkett video.
  • Broken Bird: Nadine the Hooker seems to have become one, as the trailer for the Episode III review shows her heading to Plinkett's house to kill him and apparently being insane herself.
  • Buffy Speak:
    • "Every character is dumb! But who's the dumbdest? Let's find out..."
    • Mmm, pizza rolls. They're hot, and pizza-y.
    • "Pass the Vicodins. No wait, we need Ambiens. ...well, we sure need somethingens."
  • By "No", I Mean "Yes": As he starts talking about the close similarities between the plot of Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
    "And I'm not mentioning this to say, like, they [the Nemesis writers] ripped off that plot or anything, but what they did do was rip off that plot."
  • Cane Fu: His duel with Nadine.
  • Caption Humor:
  • Cats Are Mean: His theory for why there aren't more direct-to-DVD movies featuring cats instead of dogs.
  • Caustic Critic: Mr. Plinkett criticizes a lot of the movies he reviews. It's deconstructed because he is not a very nice person outside his reviews either.
  • Character Catchphrase:
    • "Oh? ...Oh! ...Ohhhh..."
    • I'll get deeper into that later..."
    • ...So let's dive right in! (*cut to someone drowning/falling to their death*) Huh huh huhhh.
    • WHAMMO! SHABOOMZ! BLAMMO!
    • And then the dumbest thing ever happens...
    • Mad Libs Catchphrase: "[movie title] is the worst thing since [whatever].
    • "Now I've anal-yzed this scene with a team of scientists/engineers/perverts/from the Hair Club for Men/cheerleaders/dead people/two experts on the field of love, porn star Joslyn James and Tiger Woods/etc."
    • "You might not have noticed [some visual element of the movie he's discussing] — but your brain did."
    • (says something shocking) "Anyway..."
    • "Hit it, Johnny!" (used as a transition to another topic or a montage)
  • Child Hater: Zigzagged. While Plinkett claims in the Episode I review that "nobody likes little kids, especially little kids who can't act," the Indiana Jones review repeatedly shows that he has a bit of a soft spot for "sexy Indian children."
  • Clickbait Gag: Red Letter Media has mocked the use of flashy titles and thumbnails to compensate for shallow content in videos about the Star Wars franchise. So far, they've parodied this in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens Clickbait Video!", "The top ten things YOU didn't know about Darth Vader's suit!", and "Star Wars Rogue One Trailer Breakdown No. 6,387."
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Plinkett is fond of these.
  • Comically Missing the Point:
    • After condensing his reviews of dog-themed kid's movies into one unintelligible, mumbling cacophony, Plinkett concludes that it was a horrible idea:
      "I totally forgot to include Karate Dog and Santa Paws!"
    • In an update video, Plinkett awakes to find himself Buried Alive with a lot of DVDs and a player lying around in his coffin.
      Why would they bury me with these movies? They must not want me to review them...
    • From his Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review when dismissing George Lucas' insistence on including aliens in the film:
      "Why is he so important. Since when does being a billionaire that owns the company making the movie mean you have some kind of say in it?"
  • Country Matters:
    • When analyzing the Star Wars Ring Theory, Plinkett asks several times if the structure of the franchise forms a circle, calling it a "big C." Whenever he says "big C," however, the screen shows an infamous clip of Jennifer Lawrence being rude to a reporter at a press conference, implying the other kind of "big C."
    • He more bluntly calls Jar Jar a loathsome cunt in the Episode 3 review, asking if a male dog knows who is a female dog by sniffing its cunt in the Cop Dog review, and referring to one of the female characters in Titanic.
  • Creator's Apathy: invoked Plinkett often seems so genuinely uninterested in actually reviewing his movies, that sometimes he doesn't even care to finish words or to enunciate them whatsoever properly. This works perfectly with Mr. Plinkett's trademark sloppy style, as the sloppy style itself seems coordinated with brilliant craft. Implied in the Star Wars reviews. See, for example, the mention of two Jedi Knights in the Phantom Menace title scroll or the difference between Gungas and Gungans.
  • Credits Gag: (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) had some good moments but overall it was pretty disappointing. That's the end thanks for checking out my review!
  • Creepy Basement:
    • The most memorable and frightening scenes take place in Harry's creepy, dilapidated basement; contents include a plastic bin, several piles of various debris, a refrigerator containing flesh eating cockroaches, more than one human skeleton, one or more living victims to be occasionally tormented by Plinkett, and a Titanic promotional popcorn tub.
    • A popcorn tub filled with bones.
      "GET OUT OF MY POPCORN TUB! JAARG-!"
  • The Cynic: Generally characterizing George Lucas as "a businessman first, and a filmmaker second." Of course Lucas changed the title of "Revenge of the Jedi" to "Return of the Jedi" because revenge is incompatible with the Jedi philosophy, but Plinkett jokes that it was because "he discovered that having a word with one less letter in it would save him $916 annually on the cost of printing the logo on countless T-shirts, action figure boxes and posters".
  • Damned by Faint Praise:
    • Out of universe, Mike Stoklasa (Mr. Plinkett's actor) claims that Jar Jar Binks, who is usually picked on as one of the major flaws in The Phantom Menace and is considered by Plinkett to be annoying, is one of the few things that actually makes sense in the movie due to having a coherent story arc. Plinkett echoes this in his The Phantom Menace commentary track.
    • The things he likes best about Revenge of the Sith are things that aren't in Revenge of the Sith... and Palpatine.
    • Plinkett says that Baby's Day Out is in fact what it says it is, about a baby out loose in the city. The one positive about the movie.
    • Finally, the only kid in this film that talks dies. And all of 'em die. These are positive changes.
    • invokedSo, what else did I like? [Beat] um... I guess I liked it when Anakin got burned. I liked it when it was over!
    • Before complaining some more about Crystal Skull, I thought it'd be fair to point out some of the things I liked about the film. Don't worry, this won't take long.
    • Titanic aimed for the middle. And it hit the target perfectly.
  • Decided by One Vote: Where did the Star Trek franchise go horribly wrong? [Why hello, Generations.] Now, I ain't sayin' no one in particular is to blame... [Unrelated publicity video of Rick Berman]
  • Delicious Distraction: Subverted and combined with Squick of the highest order. Plinkett is at one point comparing the Filler in the Star Wars prequels to the filler in Twinkies, when he suddenly goes "Mmmm...I like to fuck my cat..."
  • Demonic Possession: During his Avatar review he mentioned experiencing one once.
  • Department of Redundancy Department:
    • "Qui-Gon Jin and Obi-Wan Kenobi should have been combined to form a new character, called Obi-Wan Kenobi."
    • Star Trek: The....Star Trek."
    • Cop Dog is the worst cop film since Kid Cop, Cop Out, and Cop Cop.
    • And then Star Trek (2009) becomes Space Adventure Film - Set in the future ... OF SPAAAAAAA--!
    • When weighing the faults of Titanic's leads, Plinkett can't find any aside from a tendency toward suicide and littering. He then lists off the memorable traits of Hockley (Billy Zane): Objectifies women, beats woman, and tries to shoot at women.
      "He also has no faults!"
  • Discriminate and Switch:
    • "Even Ray Charles could have seen that one coming. And he doesn't know anything about Star Wars."
    • "In this new situation, without the Indians, Picard's suddenly willing to defy orders and risk everything to save white peop— I-I MEAN, save people he's grown attached to!"
    • "Anakin's just sitting there like a retard! — Oh, can I still say "retard"? Anakin is just sitting there like an exceptional individual."
    • "Who's this dog's trainer, Michael Vick? (Didja get that joke? It's because Michael Vick would often throw passes that would go well ahead of the intended receiver...)"
    • "Once again, drug 'em out of retirement for one last shot at embarrassment." [cue images of Brett Farve and Michael Jordan] "—hey, how'd these sports images get into my review?
    • The supermassive black hole should not be confused with a supermassive black ho. ...Y'know. (beat) Which is a large tool I use to garden with." (Star Trek V)
  • Don't Explain the Joke:
    • "That must be why they call him Qui-gon Gin. 'cuz he's always drinkin' gin.
    • "So Yoda might be a powerful Jedi, but wise he is not. (Get it? I—I did like a Yoda thing?)
    • "Maybe he should download a program into his brain about child care." (That was a Matrix joke! Didya get it?!)
    • The Cop Dog is suffering from "post-partner depression. Geddit? I SAID GEDDIT?
    • Although Plinkett also subverted this: His attempts to save time by giving the description of four different films at once are acknowledged as a bad idea not because his speech was incomprehensible, but because he forgot two films he wanted to describe. He then discusses six films at once.
  • Double Entendre:
    • "What red-blooded male wouldn't want to dock his canoe in Natalie's port, man? (Rimshot)
    • How about a night in Megan's foxhole?
    • Hey, baby. Looks like you're a Trill. Maybe I can put my worm inside you, huh huh huhh.
    • Maybe Anakin was spending too much time in Obi-Wan's outer rim.
    • "Take 'er to warp speed! (But don't forget to vulcanize your nacelle.)"
    • "Chris' Pine Tree"
    • "Hey, Anna. I wanna spy on your pie. (beat) I mean, I wanna translate into Russian. ..meh I dunno, that's all I got."
    • Kate's heart will go on, but Leo's hard-on will go on.
    • Let us all take a minute of silence for the two "That's what she said" girls.
    • Why does Kirk randomly battle a Cat Girl in Star Trek V? Because Shatner feels Kirk always needs a scene where he gets a pussy wet.
    • "So Picard has spent decades feeling bad about how Data blew himself... wait, sorry, (sounds of papers flipping) it continues onto the next page... blew himself up.''
  • Do Wrong, Right: Not five minutes after being introduced to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, Plinkett is shouting advice at the droids on how to kill them (as Plinkett has experience in that area). Such as poisoning the tea they gave them, letting them get back onto their ship before they blow it up, and using carbon monoxide instead of a highly visible gas due to it being odourless.
  • Driven to Suicide: Plinkett's second wife killed herself in a bathtub out of guilt when he found she had been stealing his money. Yep.
  • Drone of Dread: One can be heard near the end of the Baby's Day Out review, as the sheer number of plot holes and inconsistencies begin to overwhelm Plinkett and drive him over the edge.
  • Drop the Cow: He usually cuts a segment short really abruptly (like in mid-sentence) if his picking on a point is beginning to ramble.

    E-P 
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Back in 2005, Mike Stoklasa did a precursor videos to his Star Wars reviews, called the United States of Noooo!!! which explored what he considered to be the Jumping the Shark Dethroning Moment Of Suck of Star Wars, namely, the scene when Darth Vader utters a Big "NO!" after Palpatine tells him Padmé is dead. While rather funny, the video is also a very ordinary talk-to-the-camera video, without the antics that made Plinkett's reviews famous. Stoklasa's uncannily good imitation of Palpatine's voice can already be heard in this video.
    • The early Pinkett reviews of the Star Trek films are also this. Plinkett's sociopathic tendencies are only hinted at, his victims are never shown, the reviews are shorter, and the reviews aren't as chronologically organized as the later reviews.
  • Easily Forgiven: Nadine waves the white flag in her Revenge video. Unfortunately for Plinkett, it seems he's made an even worse enemy...
  • E = MC Hammer: Plinkett when calculating how much movies suck:
    Plinkett: Ok, I gotta add in the puppy factor, plus two... times square root of pi... 56 point 92 point 986, multiplied by the factor of puppy, added to the compound equation... and then equals—
  • Epic Fail: Once compared ruining the Star Wars saga to ruining mashed potatoes.
  • Escapist Character: Makes a case in his Crystal Skull review that Indiana Jones is designed to be this, so making him older dilutes this element. invoked
  • Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: Believes they are "the worst thing ever made by a human."
  • Evil Cripple: The official Plinkett promo image features him in a powerchair, with one leg chopped off. He alludes to having polio. The end of the 3rd Star Wars review also has his basement prisoner calling him "El diablo en una silla de ruedas" (The devil in a wheelchair). However, his Force Awakens video shows him with two intact feet and sitting in a armchair.
  • Evil Laugh: There's his usual 'huh-huh-huh' when he finds something humorous, but he gives one hell of an unsettling laugh in his most recent Star Trek review.
    "I know a black hoe once tried to scramble my brains (Shows picture of a well followed by a scream) but don't worry...everything turned out well...huh huh huh (Scary Voice) HA HA HA HA HA!!"
  • Evil Sounds Deep:
    • Harry's voice is fairly deep anyway but will drop a few octaves and gain a flavor of reverb when he gets angry.
    "You're going to watch it! You understand?! LOOK AT ME!! YOU'RE GONNA WATCH IIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!"
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: During the review for Attack of the Clones, Harry is discussing how uninterested he feels about a battle between two expendable armies (Clones and Droids) and mentions that at least in the Phantom Menace, the audience might have felt something for the Gungan Army. Before he can complete the sentence, he realises that he is using the Phantom Menace as a positive example.
  • Extreme Omnisexual: Plinkett claims that he has sex with hookers, the Millennium Falcon and his cat, and even claims that he fucks sharks for breakfast.
  • The Faceless: Mr. Plinkett's face actually has been seen in several instances, both in illustrations and in a still photo from one of the Star Trek reviews. Throughout the Star Wars material, however, Mr. Plinkett seems to be abiding by this trope; we see only his first-person perspective while he wanders through his basement and captures women.
  • Fake-Out Opening: During the commentary on the teaser trailer for The Force Awakens, the examination begins with a rough fan film, confusing Plinkett.
    Plinkett: This is the trailer for the new J.J. Abrams Star Wars film? Jesus Christ, it looks amazing!
  • Fanservice/Toplessness from the Back: The inclusion in his Avatar review of the iconic shot of Rose from Titanic dropping her robe to show her butt to the audience. May also apply to his sex puns (with accompanying sexy pictures) for Megan Fox, Natalie Portman and Chris Pine.
  • Flanderization: Applies to Plinkett himself; in the earlier reviews his penchant for murder is just hinted at with a few offhand comments, while in the later reviews we actually see him tormenting his victims and his serial-killer tendencies are mentioned much more often and become much more central to his character.
  • Foreshadowing: "DON'T TRY TO ESCAPE LIKE THE OTHER ONE!" He says near the end of the Episode II review to the two girls making the Puzzles.
  • For Want Of A Nail: Reviewing Star Trek (2009) creates an alternate timeline where Plinkett's cat is still alive. Cue the chaos.
    "Bambi's alive in this timeline! ...Only, now she's my first cat. I'm so confused."
  • Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: Parodied in Plinkett's occasional YouTube updates where Palpatine harasses him into making reviews, although these mostly exist so he can show off his impressive Ian McDiarmid impression.
  • Freudian Excuse:
    • Plinkett's serial killer tendencies make a lot more sense the more we learn about his past. His father died on the Titanic when he was six, and Plinkett has a history of mental illness. Not to mention that he's senile.
    • In the Episode III review, Plinkett mentions that he once threw a psychologist out a window for asking about his "dear mother."
      "Bury them under the floorboards, Harry. No one has to know. It'll be our little secret."
  • Freudian Slip:
    • "I'm sure they cleared it with PETI.'
    • "Now, onto the excrement!'
    • The Importence of Darth Vader.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Home Infant Comedy Injury. (Or "hickey".)
  • Functional Addict: Soon you will learn to appreciate blow.
  • Gag Dub:
    Frozone: English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?!
  • Gilligan Cut: From the Force Awakens review:
    Interviewer: What if someone else, besides you, came to you and said 'I want to make episode seven'. Could you see that happening?
    George Lucas: No.
    Plinkett narration: Star Wars episode VII...
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: In his review of The Phantom Menace when a plot hole so enrages him he begins to wonder if someone was screwing with his meds, leading to an... interesting scene in which he repeats "Who's fucking with my medicine?!" while he scoops several Pizza Rolls into a paper envelope before slurring "What's wrong with me?!" and blacking out.
    • And again in his Attack of the Clones review upon seeing the prop from Star Trek that has red lights moving back and forth in one of the clips from The Last Starfighter and then seeing PKE meters being used in another movie.
    "Do those guys have PKE meters? Am I going insane?! MY BRAIN IS COLLAPSING IN ON ITSELF-okay, back to the review."
    • Finally, in Revenge of the Sith, he has an almost pitiful breakdown as he realises just how much of the film refers back to the original trilogy.
    "Oh god, all I hear is Star Wars inside my brain! Someone help me!"
  • Gushing About Sequels You Like: "I love Empire so much I [bleep] it."
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Stop feeding us this pig slop! I'm only half-pig.
  • Handicapped Badass: An evil version in Mr. Plinkett. Despite having one amputated leg, he is at least able to kidnap several women and fight his way through numerous police officers at the end of his Phantom Menace review (despite being shot at least once).
  • Hero Antagonist: Nadine, the kidnapped prostitute who tries to break out of Plinkett's basement while he's trying to record a review.
  • Homage: Nadine is one to The Bride.
  • Hopeless with Tech: It's a wonder Plinkett can put together a review. He still thinks "digital downloads" involve stuffing money in the disk drive until movies come out..
  • Hurricane of Puns: Via some clever quote mining with Titanic.
  • Hyperaffixation: Stupid grandkids, stop leaving toys in his creepy basement™. And stay out of his creepy house™.
    "I've behn keepin' a record of it here'n mah creepy notebook."
  • Hypocritical Humor: A Running Gag, such as him confusing World War I with the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Nazi invasion of France with the French Revolution.
    "Geez, you stupid people need to learn your history right."
    • "This film is racist against Chinamen!"
    • "Babies are fragile! This kind of disgusting, misleading and irresponsible film should've never been made! Now to talk about my favorite scene: The one where Baby Bink is trapped in a gorilla cage and nearly Eaten Alive..."
    • "Can't they leave this sex stuff out of a kid's movie? I mean, kids have up until they're eight to start havin' sex, leave 'em with those precious few years of innocence, for God's sake!'
    • "What kind of an idiot would take the time to review a children's movie, anyways? You must be a real stupid asshole."
    • Generations and Crystal Skull convinces Plinkett that it's time for retirement, and he Rolls Into the Sunset for good. —Wait, who's gonna review The Matrix, Twilight, and Red Tails? "Shit, I ain't even close to done yet!!"
    • "Hey, anyone see the keys to my red Lamborghini?" (It Makes Sense in Context.)
    • After several shot-by-shot comparisons of Titanic with previous films based around the ship, Plinkett confesses that it's too much to sort out; he's too busy for this. He then continues to play an endless stream of camera shots cribbed by James Cameron and stitched back together, talking over them for a solid five minutes.
    • "George Lucas is kinda mocking the civil rights movement and the memory of Dr. Martin Luther Jones."
    • After slamming Lucas for selling out and using the prequels to sell merchandise, Plinkett takes a time out to promote the "Kodak Printer Challenge".
    • In the Ghostbusters (2016) review, he states that it isn't Toilet Humor per se that is bad, since RedLetterMedia hasn't exactly shied away from it (cue scene of Plinkett's explosive diarrhea splattering J.J. Abrams and George Lucas in the The Force Awakens review.)
  • The Immodest Orgasm: Ends up breaking his TV.
  • Inherently Funny Words: "Pantaloons".
  • Innocent Innuendo: His home recipe book, Eating Pussy. "First you have to take a cat. And it's gotta be alive, 'cause then it's the freshest meat." *turns on rotary saw*
  • Ironic Nursery Tune: ♪ COOOME WITH ME...AN' YOU'LL BE...IN A WOOOOOORLD OF PURE IMAGINAAASHUUN... ♪
  • Is This Thing Still On?:
    • Pausing during the Baby's Day Out review to phone-order sex toys (using Rick Berman's credit card), unaware that he has left the mic on.
    • Accidentally cutting and pasting his AIM chat (in which he's propositioning an offscreen fat woman for sex) into the episode title.
  • Joisey: Plinkett lives in Atlantic City, and pronounces "Joisey" in that way. In his Star Wars: Episode III review, he also refers to the Cedar Lane Theater in Teaneck. This is, in fact, a real theater in Northern New Jersey, that's sadly closed down.
  • Jump Scare: Allusions to the murder of Mrs. Plinkett are often followed by an abrupt scream and split-second cut to a crash site or a blood-covered bathtub.
  • Jump the Shark: Lampshaded and Discussed In-Universe. Palpatine tells Plinkett to stop jumping the shark, and Plinkett responses thus:
    "Look bitch, I don't jump sharks. I fuck 'em for breakfast!"
  • Juxtaposition Gag: One of their more effective ways of showing contradictions or any comparsions.
  • Knight of Cerebus: The entire Nadine arc was essentially this done to the Plinkett Reviews (with judicious use of Snap Back at the end, of course).
  • Laugh Track: Employed sarcastically during the Prequel reviews, such as when Anakin and Padme are in a romantic mood, or when Yoda tells Obi-Wan to talk to Qui-Gon's ghost (preceded by a "WhaaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaat the FUCK?!?!" from Plinkett.)
  • Leitmotif: Many of Pinkett's lists are narrated over the song "Oranges"
  • Letting the Air out of the Band: Mike loves this.
    • The first example was his interviewing of co-workers to get their impressions on the Prequel characters. The bombastic John Williams score screeches to a halt as they search for words to define Qui-gon or Padme.
      "...monotone?"
    • During the Credits Gag in KOTCS, Plinkett plugs a few of his YouTube comments. "I Squeeze Gats" abruptly stops when he reads a (presumably real) comment from one of YouTube's innumerable trolls.
  • Little Stowaway: Little Plinkett stowed away on the Titanic in a suitcase, inadvertently dooming the ship.
  • Long List:
    Female voiceover: "Does he have a good job? Where does he live, and what kind of car does he drive? He needs to be confident without being too arrogant. He needs to be funny, but not like goofy funny. He needs to be tall, but not TOO tall, or like weird tall. He should be spontaneous, but only when I'm expecting it. Handsome is a plus, and handsome with good hair is better. No baldies! LOL! He needs to know the exact time to say ALL the right things. He needs to know the right time not to say anything. He really needs to know how to treat me like the woman I am both in the bedroom, and when we’re out on the town. He needs to be family oriented and good with kids, but not TOO good with kids like in a creepy clown way. He needs to be intelligent, or at the very least money smart so we can know how to invest for retirement, the kid's college fund, and our funeral expenses. He can have his friends and do things with them, but ONLY when it's convenient for me. He needs to care about me, but not be too controlling. Y'know sometimes I just wanna go out and have fun with the girls, and he needs to be ok with that, and not get all like HEY where are you going?"
    Plinkett: OK stop! Thank you.
    • Averted with the list of things a man looks for in a woman:
    "Number 1: Is she hot? Number 2: Seriously bro, how hot is she?"
    • All the creepy things Anakin does and says that ought to put Padme off him.
  • Madness Mantra: Fuck the pain away. Fuck the pain away. FUCK THE PAIN AWAY. FUCK THE PAIN AWAY. FUCK THE PAIN AWAY.
    • Geschlechtsverkehr der Schmerz entfernt.
    • "Oh, no! OH, NO! Somebody please make it stop! I'm gonna fuck my cat, then eat my cat, then kidnap a hooker and fuck the pain away!"
    • During the Ghostbusters (2016) review, he goes into the movie's gratuitous and egregious use of references to other movies played over a scene of the actors in the Ghostbusters remake dancing. He intersperses "Remember [X Movie]?" with an increasingly annoyed, but still polite "Stop dancing!"
  • Malaproper: Related to the trope below, he does this with names. Thus we have Boba Fett instead of Jango Fett, Queen Armadillo, Ewan McDonald, Kate McGowan, Cliff Huxtable, General Grievance, William Shakesman/Shatner, et cetera.
  • Malicious Misnaming: Of disliked (and hated) Star Wars characters are given this treatment; for example, characters like Queen Amidala, Count Dooku, and General Grievous are called "Amig-dahlen", "Doh-koo", and "Grievance" respectively.
    • He finds the new characters from Star Trek: Picard so uninteresting he frequently calls them something other than their real names. Of note is him referring to Admiral Clancy as Admiral Fuckface. He even forgets Seven of Nine's name once because of how different her character is here.
  • Man of a Thousand Voices: Mike can imitate virtually any Lucasfilm character.
  • A Match Made in Stockholm: Over the course of the Attack of the Clones review, Nadine becomes increasingly sympathetic towards Plinkett. Subverted in the end, when it turns out to have been a ruse, which allowed her to escape... but then Double Subverted in Revenge of Nadine, when she discovers that her time with Plinkett has impressed upon her a disdain for bad movies which ultimately leads her to save his life, so that he can make more reviews.
  • Meaningful Echo: His review of the crappy no-budget child movie Cop Dog opened with the deliberately goofy critique "Cop Dog is neither a cop nor a dog" (because Cop Dog isn't a police dog for most of the movie, and is a ghost for about two-thirds of it). When he reviews Star Trek: Picard, he opens with the much more serious critique "Star Trek: Picard is neither Star Trek nor Picard" (because the tone is so wildly off as to border on invokedIn Name Only and Picard is out of character).
  • Metaphorgotten: Lots. "But when it gets going the story starts to suck, like someone pulling a thread out of a sweater until the sweater eventually sucks."
  • Misanthrope Supreme: "Fuck kids! Fuck the elderly! Fuck families! Fuck everyone!" [shows photo of Earth]
  • Moment Killer: Nadine's heartfelt speech at Plinkett's bedside.
    (farts) "My balls itch!"
  • Mood Whiplash: Whenever Plinkett's other hobbies come up out of nowhere in the middle of a detailed analysis.
    • One of Plinkett's complaints about the Trilogy, specifically noted in the Sith review, when he says the opening leaps between comedy, slapstick, dismemberment, and drama indiscriminately. It trails into a discussion about the use of Tone in films, and how comedies like Ghostbusters don't start off with someone getting violently raped on a pinball machine.
    • Plinkett spends the first half of his Titanic review, talking about what makes it good, saying it might be his favorite film. Then near the end of Part 1, he says "So let me, tell you why it SUCKS."
    • The last several minutes of the Star Trek: Picard review includes an uninterrupted montage of moments from all the previous Star Trek series' (excluding Star Trek: Discovery of course) captains leading their crews in an inspiring display of Star Trek's former optimism that's clearly from Mike's heart... which then directly contrasts with a montage of the graphic imagery and cynicism of Picard. He makes his point very clear.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: Plinkett, who always seems to have a different recollection about his youth (which contradicts all of the other recollections).
  • Mysterious Stranger: Plinkett points out that in all three Star Wars prequel movies, the Trade Federation/Confederacy have little reason to trust or follow this mysterious shadowy figure who keeps calling them.
    Grievious: Yes, Lord Sidious. Wait, who are you again, and where are you from?
    Sidious: You don't need to know who I am or where I'm broadcasting this hologram from! Just do what I say!
    ...
    Grievous: ... who are you?!?
    Sidious: STOP ASKING ME WHO I AM
  • Negative Continuity: While the original Star Wars prequel reviews delved increasingly deep into Plinkett's homicidal madness, to the point that there's a subplot of him holding prostitutes hostage and getting into a shootout with police, later videos make no attempt to create a continuing storyline.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: His descriptions of how his wives, girlfriends, prostitutes and Koreans came to their untimely ends is hilarious in its terror.
  • Non Sequitur:
    • In his reviews, Plinkett is prone to going off-topic and start blabbing about pizza rolls or his dead wife. These non-sequiturs begin to increasingly convey that Plinkett is an unhinged madman.
    • In his commentaries, Plinkett is prone to making side observations, comments or jokes that come out of nowhere and have nothing to do with the film, presumably to fill in gaps where he doesn't have anything to say about the movie.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: In his review for Avatar, Plinkett says that, in real life, the tribal cultures that the Na'vi portrayed could be every bit as screwed up as the modern ones.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted. Over a picture of Rick McCallum: "Fuck you, Rick Berman! Ya ruined this, too?! STOP RUINING— wait. That ain't Rick Berman. What is it with Ricks?"
  • The One Thing I Don't Hate About You:
    • According to Plinkett, the only good thing about Revenge of the Sith (that's actually in the movie) is Palpatine, because "he's the only character with any passion" and "pure evil and he loves it".
    • During his review of The Force Awakens, he says that, while the film in question was definitely not without its flaws, just about the only thing he's legitimately willing to give the prequel trilogy over it is the fact that The Force Awakens is a "soft reboot" for A New Hope, whereas each one of the prequel films at the very least tells its own unique story, even if he thinks those stories are awful.
  • Only Sane Man: The First Contact guy, who points out how ridiculous Movie Picard and Padme's plans are.
    "Get back in the Star Trek reviews..."
  • Opinion Myopia: invoked Played for Laughs in Plinkett's Episode III trailer, where Palpatine shows a 108 page rebuttal he wrote to the TPM review. His opening lines explain how Plinkett is a stupidpants because he didn't like the prequels, and how the prequels were extremely complex "like a very deep game of chess where both players don't know how to play chess." This is in direct response to an actual rebuttal that surfaced on the internet that was 108 pages long.
    • "So do the prequels basically expose Lucas as being a shallow, emotionless businessman? I'll let you decide! — but the answer is yes."
    • "So, y'know. You might like the characters, you know... If you're stupid."
    • "Now, whether an idea is good or bad is subjective...Except for here, these are all bad ideas."
    • "Again: A matter of opinion, but mine is right."
    • "I guess everything is a matter of opinion, unless it's my opinion, and then it's right!"
  • Other Me Annoys Me: Mr. Plinkett kills the Rich Evans Mr. Plinkett, who is apparently more famous.
  • Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: From Revenge of Nadine
    Nadine: What do you want Man-in-a-Black-Cloak-who-is-not-a-trademarked-character-owned-by-Lucasfilm-Ltd?
    • In the teaser for his Star Trek rifftrack, Plinkett refers to his guests as "Man" (Palpy), "Creature" (Jar Jar), and "James Doohan" (Boss Nass). He's now living in fear of Disney suing them.
      "Wassa matter, Palpy? Mouse got yer tongue?"
      "FUCK YOU."
  • Out-of-Character Moment: As far as Plinkett himself goes, doesn't anyone else think him saying that he really liked Twilight was weird? Twilight is about a 100-year-old guy who looks young for his age who stalks someone ...Oh, wait.
  • Overly Long Gag: "With these fucking Star Wars prequels, I'm always forced to go back to Screenwriting 101, and a big four-letter word that comes to mind: 'FUCK' (Yoda stares) Naah I'm just kidding the word is 'CRAP'. (Yoda stares) Naah I'm just kidding the word is 'SHIT'. (Yoda stares) Naah I'm just kidding the word is 'PISS'. (Yoda stares) Naah I'm just kidding the word is 'POOP'. (Yoda stares) Naah I'm just kidding the word is 'GARBAGE'. [Beat] (Yoda stares) Naah I'm just kidding the word is 'TONE'."
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: Inverted: "Star Trek: First Contact is the 3967th worst film ever made."
    • Played straight with "What Could Have Been the greatest lesbian sex scene to ever appear in a children's film."
  • Padding: invokedPlinkett points out that The Phantom Menace is this to the prequel trilogy as a whole in the first part of the Attack of the Clones review because the latter film would have been a good starting point. This is because of the deaths of Darth Maul and Qui-Gon, making their introductions pointless, and the fact that Anakin is a completely different character due to the ten-year Time Skip.
  • Parallel Porn Titles: Star Trek: Hiserection
  • Pet the Dog: Plinkett will occasionally temper his criticism to give credit where it's due.
    • Plinkett's review of Revenge of the Sith contains one of these in regards to Hayden Christensen, saying that Hayden himself is not a bad actor, just one handed bad lines.
    • He liked Mutt Williams in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and praised Shia LaBeouf as a good, natural actor.
    • He also notes in his review of the Ghostbusters remake that the leading actresses are talented and funny in other works, even noting that Leslie Jones gives the best performance since she seems to be the one taking the role somewhat seriously. He also plays with it by saying that, despite deserving the lion's share of the blame for how the movie turned out, Paul Feig seems to legitimately be a really nice guy unlike a lot of directors one could complain about, and that if anything his problem is that he's too nice, since he came off like he was just happy to be there, seemed to think everything that was filmed for the movie was hilarious, and ultimately seemed like he was willingly relinquishing authority over how the movie turned out to the cast.
    • In the The Last Jedi review, Plinkett notes that, even though he felt Rian Johnson ultimately screwed up the film on pretty much every level, he was also by all appearances very serious and passionate about making the film, and evidently put a lot of thought and work into attempting to put a new spin on Star Wars, and comments that Johnson deserves at least some respect as an artist for that fact.
  • Place Worse Than Death: Welcome to Coruscant, home of the mid-air collision. And boring scenes.
  • Political Overcorrectness: USA! USA! Oh wait, I mean Captain Adventure Man and Multinational Joe.
  • Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: "I'm like Sinead O'Connor, and you're a picture of the Pope. Prepare to get torn up."
  • Pretender Diss: In The Force Awakens review, he takes a moment to insult all the other online critics who made their own reviews of the Star Wars prequels in imitation of him.
  • Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Inserting Dr. Dre songs into his Star Wars reviews. One YouTube description even reads, "I squeeze gats."
  • Product Placement:
    • By the way, have you guys seen Cop Out? It's amaaaazing. [ahem] I said, it's amazing. Check it out...! [sound of cash register] —oh, there it is.
    • And there's his plug of the Kodak Printer Challenge! It doesn't end well. At all.
    • ("This review sponsored by Applebee's. Proudly serving shitty food and weak alcoholic drinks to fat middle-aged moms everywhere.")
    "MOTHERFUCKER!"
    • And, of course, Totino's Pizza Rolls - which goes meta whenever a Pizza Rolls ad is played before or after a video.
    • CHUNKY'S CHICKEN!!! Yes, they actually went to the trouble of creating a fake website and "promotional video" for the sake of a gag.

    Q-Z 
  • Rage Quit: Plinkett gets fed up with listing how much Into Darkness references previous Trek works, and just summarily ends the review in disgust.
  • Ridiculously High Relationship Standards: In his Attack of the Clones review, he claims that women's list of what they look out from men is a bit longer that a list men look from women. Cue a woman listing all the things she looks from men until Plinkett interrupts her.
  • Rise from Your Grave: It looks like Palpatine buried him alive in between reviews. He escapes by punching his way out as "L'Arena" by Ennio Morricone plays.
    "I saw this once in a movie. It was called Cars 2.'"
  • Rule of Symbolism: The original, shorter Abrams Trek review. A girl gets dragged into an alley by the movie poster, then comes out looking disheveled yet satisfied. The idea was that J. J. Abrams took a bloated franchise and ruthlessly twisted it into something marketable again; Mike thinks this is a good thing in the long run. Of course, he had to address the joke in his extended review, explaining that he doesn't really believe Star Trek was "raped".
  • Running Gag:
    Excuse me, sir? I have a question...
    • Plinkett saying "analsis/anal-ize" (or "analgy") with Spock making an inquisitive face.
    • "Shut up, I'm talking!"
    • "I just said that!"
    • During the Revenge of the Sith review, the squealing pig.
    • UhhurroOOouurraaa.
    • ...and Kevin Bacon.
    • Picard repeatedly asking questions like "Why?", "What?" or "I don't understand" whenever a plot hole or confusing story element comes up.
  • Sampling: "I Squeeze Gats" is the instrumental version of Sam Cooke's "Shake" overlayed by a sample of The Notorious B.I.G.'s "The What".
  • Sanity Slippage:
    • The chapter introductions to The Phantom Menace. They start out with fairly basic titles, but degenerate into "Is It Time For Death Yet?", and, "Oh God Make It Stop Please Make It End"
    • Plinkett's fragile mental health deteriorates even further at the end of the Baby's Day Out review, culminating with him repeating "Fuck the Pain Away".
  • Saying Too Much: Plinkett does this a lot.
    "[Star Trek: Generations is being cheap]. Cheap like my wife. That's why I killed her in that fake car accident- I mean-"
  • Self-Deprecation: The entire character of Plinkett could be considered a lampooning of Stoklasa's own age and crotchety views.
    • "I like to anal-lyze things." Lampshaded in Stoklasa's review of Prometheus.
    • Reckons that Titanic is marketed to retards. Cue shot of proud Wisconsinite Jack Dawson. (Red Letter Media is based in Milwaukee.)
    • He describes Frank Griswald from National Lampoon's Vacation as getting scammed by everyone "because he's dumb and from Chicago." Stoklasa is himself originally from Chicago.
  • Sequel Hook: "Wait. ...There's a PUPPY in this film?"
    • "Y'know, I haven't seen Star Trek V in a looong time. Maybe I'll give it a look..." This served as a preface to his audio commentary.
  • Serious Business:
    • One riled up Star Wars fan threatened to punch Stoklasa in the face if they ever met in real life.
    • Unrelated to RLM, but a direct nod to Plinkett: a forum poster on WingCenter compared that "terrible person called Mike Stoklasa" with another web personality, The Spoony One (for his unflattering views on the Wing Commander film), and said they deserved to die in a car fire. Spoony referenced this in his Highlander II: The Quickening review, but left out the part about Plinkett.
  • Shaped Like Itself: "The fact is that this script feels rushed and not thought out, probably because it was rushed and not thought out."
  • Shared Universe: The RLM Expanded Universe.
  • Shoot the TV: Plinkett's ejaculation is powerful enough to do this, albeit unintentionally.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Shown Their Work: Compared with the earlier TNG reviews, Stoklasa clearly makes an effort to begin the Phantom Menace review by piquing your interest and establishing his credentials as anything but an angry Fanboy. The first ten minutes include an explanation of basic storytelling, familiar examples of other movies which use those techniques successfully, lists of (better) filmmakers who don't use them, and interviews with people which demonstrate the poor characterization in The Phantom Menace.
  • Sick and Wrong: "Darth Vader should never say the word 'Padme'. Or Snuffleupagus."
  • Sickbed Slaying: After Plinkett is hospitalized by Nadine, George Lucas himself arrives to unplug his respirator.
  • Significant Anagram: Mr Plinkett on the title of Episode 3: "[...] if you simply rearrange the letters in the word 'SITH,' you could spell out a different word that just might predict what this movie was gonna be: TSHI' note 
  • Simple Country Lawyer: "Now, I'm not an expert..."
  • Simpleton Voice: Mike originally tried recording a review in his natural voice, but decided it was boring. His "annoying TV personality" voice is closer to the original recordings.
  • Sinister Silhouettes: George Lucas at the end of Revenge of Nadine.
  • Smash Cut: Plinkett has a bad habit of getting cut off before he can finish his senten-
  • Smurfing: The Ba'ku love to ba'ku.
  • So Was X: James Cameron is a man clearly dedicated to his craft. ...But then again so was Jim Jones.
    "But Cameron had much better results. Eleven less people died from cyanide poisoning."
  • Spoof Aesop: Baby's Day Out has a lesson all of us can relate to. "If you live in a giant mansion and want a picture of your baby in the paper, you better care about your baby too, or else he'll get kidnapped, crawl across a busy street, and a truck will drive over him."
  • Stalker with a Crush: Towards the woman held captive in the Attack of the Clones review. He just needs someone to share his pain!
  • Stealth Pun: He refers to the Neimoidians as the "Shatnerians", a double pun on the fact that their actual name sounds like Leonard Nimoy's surname, as well as how they talk much like the typical Shatner parody.
  • Straw Fan:
    • Palpatine is a rather cathartic Take That! toward RLM's overzealous fans, as he constantly makes outlandish requests (such as for a review of to of a Mobile Suit Gundam video game, and compare it to Kido Senshi Z-Gundam: Hot Scramble) and berates Plinkett for not posting updates fast enough, and criticizes them for being stupid once they are released. He also hates Christopher Nolan with a passion and often demands that Plinkett exposes him as the hack Palpatine sees him as.
      "If you didn't like the Star War prequels then you're stupid-pants."
    • The Crystal Skull opens with a YouTube comment calling him a "fat homo" for splitting his time between Half in the Bag. Later on, Plinkett mentions that audiences love "sameness and predictability", then interjects with the tired pizza roll gag.
    • "Enough of this sellout crap! When's the next Plinkett review?! Oh wait, I'm me." invoked
    • A Douchey McNitpick sound-alike from Titanic:
      Tweet: Technically, the Titanic didn't split down the middle. It split between the third and fourth funnels, which is not really in half! CHECK YOUR FACTS!
      Plinkett: ...W-What? What the fuck?
      '''Tweet: UNSUBSCRIBE!
  • Stylistic Suck: Mr. Plinkett apparently does the editing himself, which tends to result in lines getting cut off before the he's finished talki— Anyway, it's something that he does a lot, 'cuz he don't understand all that "ediditing" stuf—
  • Subverted Punchline: The alternate commentary track featuring Mr. Plinkett for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier has a gag where Plinkett explains that the movie's producers were worried about placing the actor DeForest Kelley in the woods... because his last name sorta sounds like "killer".
  • Suddenly Shouting: In the Cop Dog review:
    You never see, like, a "Cat Cop" movie. Why? Why not? I guess it's because CATS ARE FUCKING CREEPY.
  • Surreal Humor: During the Episode II review at one point a levitating probe droid impossibly shows up in Plinkett’s basement.
  • Sword Drag: Nadine in the trailer for the Revenge of the Sith review.
  • Take That!:
    "J. J. Abrams should have directed the prequels, and George Lucas should have directed people to their seats in the theater. Huh huh huh"
    • Plinkett hates Star Trek producer Rick Berman.
    • In the Revenge of the Sith review, when talking about Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon not being in the film as one of the good things about it, he ponders that if the Falcon had appeared, its original owner might have been a terrible, generic looking CGI character. When the Falcon pulls into Cloud City in the video, the character sitting in its cockpit is Shrek.
    • "The euphemism for autograph booths is the "celebrity zoo"; places where endangered B-list actors go after their habitat (Star Wars) has ceased to sustain them."
    • "[T]his is just some random crappy Indiana Jones adventure. Lord knows they're have been plenty of those already." (cue The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles title card)
    • He also lets loose a few against Michael Bay in general and the Transformers movies in particular.
    • "If cancer were pretentious, it would be called Garden State."
    • "The entire senate is filled with stupid idiots. *picture of the US Senate* ...y-yeah, okay, that's true. Yes. But I was talking about this senate. *shot of the Galactic Senate from the Star Wars prequels*."
    • Plinkett takes a lot of digs at online reviewers. He mocks the blunt fan service in Star Wars marketing as well as the easily manipulated fans who lap it up. He also frequently slams the various online review channels that settle for nitpicking plot minutia rather than actually critiquing films.
    • From Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:
    I can't remember the last time a beloved pairing produced such an embarassing turd. Not since Chaz Bono.
  • Take That, Audience!:
    "Hello and welcome. You've made the right decision. You've chosen to listen to my droning, monotone voice for 136 minutes rather than the actual soundtrack to this movie. For that I applaud your common sense and good taste."
    • About 5 minutes into his Star Trek V commentary, Plinkett suddenly says:
    "Why are you watching this movie? In fact, why are you listening to me talk about this movie? Why are listening to this commentary? What the hell is wrong with you!?"
  • Tantrum Throwing: The most brutal murder of a printer since Office Space.
  • That Poor Cat: Plinkett manages to do this inside his coffin.
  • That's What She Said: "Hey! Only guys are allowed to do that!"
  • This Loser Is You:
  • Trademark Favorite Food:
    • A running gag has Plinkett break his train of thought to start rambling about pizza rolls or start making some for himself. He’ll even offer to send pizza rolls to viewers so inclined.
    • Whenever Plinkett mentions a beverage, it’s almost always a vodka gimlet. Given that he’s The Alcoholic, this is fairly often.
  • Trust Me, I'm a Doctor: After Plinkett puts on his rubber gloves before beginning his review of Revenge of the Sith, he says, "Trust me, I'm a doctor... kind of."
  • Unreliable Narrator:
    • With Plinkett's nigh-constant fits of insanity (not to mention the amount of booze and drugs he takes), it's impossible to take practically anything he says for granted. Apart from his opinions on films, which are invariably spot on.
    • Nadine isn't exactly truthful, but then again, she's trying to escape Plinkett, so the entire "baby" might be a ploy.
  • The Unseen: Plinkett. Justified, as he's always behind the camera.
  • Video Review Show: Leans about as far as is possible on the "Show" end of the Sliding Scale of Review vs. Show while still actually managing to conduct a thorough and comprehensive review.
  • Villain Protagonist: Mr. Plinkett is frequently implied to be a serial killer and kidnapper, along with outright stating it occasionally.
  • Viva Las Vegas!!: In half in the bag 139, Mr. Plinkett and Jay run off to Vegas to get married after they learn Mike wants to take all of Mr. Plinkett’s money.
  • Waxing Lyrical: "Paradise City, where the grass is sand and the girls aren't pretty."
  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: BAM BAM! "Plinkett! Open up! We have a warrant for your arrest!"
    "Oh. Hold on, let me get my gat."
  • Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Plinkett has a starring role in RLM's film Feeding Frenzy, in which he's wearing a tacky jacket with an American flag emblazoned over it. The jacket frequently reappears in Half in the Bag.

The following tropes are discussed in Mr. Plinkett Reviews:

    A-D 
  • Accidental Innuendo: Conversed In-Universe. He points out in his Titanic review that a lot of the dialogue sounds sexual out of context.
  • The Alcoholic: Plinkett makes the case that Qui-Gon is one, as an explanation for many of his questionable decisions in The Phantom Menace.
    Plinkett: Does anyone smell gin? Hey! It’s 11:30 in the morning! Who’s been drinking?
  • All There in the Manual: Plinkett abhors this trope, or at least despises the fact that fans so often invoke it to explain away the all but incomprehensible plot and setting of the Star Wars prequels.
    (From The Phantom Menace review) "...Point is, I'm still not sure what the [Trade Federation] ships were there to do. And don't any of you f[beep]gots tell me it was explained more in the novelization or some Star Wars BOOK! What matters is the MOVIES! I ain't never read one them Star Wars books, or any books in general for that matter, and I ain't about to start. Don't talk about them stupid video games, or novels, comic books or any of that fucking crap. I seen enough of that shit."
    (From the Revenge Of The Sith review) "But several questions remain that aren't told to the audience. AND I DON'T CARE IF IT WAS TOLD TO US THROUGH THE FUCKING BOOK OR WHATEVER!"
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • In-Universe: Plinkett claims that Cop Dog was originally meant to be a dark psychological thriller directed by Todd Solondz.
    • He's taken aback when he learns that Captain Janeway hasn't been imprisoned by now.
    • Qui-Gon Jinn is a drunkard, and wanted to sleep with Shmi Skywalker.
    • Anakin's a megalomaniacal psycho from the very start, and getting burned and put in a robot suit is just a formality.
    • Any given part of Palpatine's plan could have been easily foiled if the Jedi weren't a bunch of disorganized hippies.
    • Jar-Jar Binks was inspired by Tara Reid on a bender.
    • Padawans are raised in a creepy, cult-like environment where they lose all their free will.
    • The Old Republic is composed entirely of asexuals. The only person in the universe getting any action is Jimmy Smits! (Not counting Palpatine, who gets aroused by hatred, and Shmi who was making out with the Force)
    • The maid in Baby's Day Out is the baby's real mother, and Mrs. Cotwell is into servant sex.
    • The kid in Cop Dog is a jibbering lunatic.
    • They don't call him "Kid Fisto" 'cause he's into chicks, if you know what I mean.
    • Wesley Crusher is bisexual and in a relationship with The Traveler.
    • Really, he sees a closeted gay subtext in nearly everyone. Anakin and Obi-Wan, Indiana Jones and Mac, Chekhov and Sulu, Scotty and Keesner, himself and George Lucas….
  • Always Chaotic Evil: In the Sith review, Plinkett suggests that the Clones should have been the villains of the Clone Wars from the start, like an army of monsters attacking the Republic from somewhere in space, instead of a conveniently disposable army for the Republic. This was the original backstory for the Clone Wars in Legends material. His argument is that if they were, the Republic would've been forced to draft countless ordinary men into service, dying by the millions to fight the war, which would have added some tension and emotion to the conflict and (along with the other consequences of such a brutal war) made Palpatine's obvious power-grab seem more justified in-universe.
  • Amusing Injuries: One of the reasons he doesn't like Baby's Day Out is that so much of the slapstick in the film seems to be beyond what a human could shrug off. He gives particular attention to a scene where one of the crooks is thrown across a room by a gorilla, hits a metal cage, bends the iron bars upon doing so, and is still only stunned for a moment, pointing out that the guy should have been killed on impact. He believes that "cartoon violence works in cartoons only."
  • The Artifact: Considered Indy himself to be this in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, since an Adventurer Archaeologist doesn't fit in with what's intended as a 50s sci-fi throwback. He credits the indecisiveness involved in retaining Indy as being the main reason the film's sci-fi elements don't work.
  • Audience-Alienating Premise: invoked He argues that a major reason for why Baby's Day Out failed is that it focuses so heavily on cartoonish scenarios and violence, but is filmed in live-action. This causes a lot of scenes to come across as painful and worrisome rather than cute and charming, such as a Straying Baby wandering under a moving truck or the Stupid Crooks being inflicted with incredibly lethal-looking injuries.
  • Boring, but Practical: Plinkett offers several better, more practical plans for the Jedi and Queen Amidala to get to Coruscant from Tatooine in The Phantom Menace, as an alternative to Qui-Gon's convoluted bet with Watto for a replacement hyperdrive:
    • Trade the Queen's broken starship for a less flashy, but fully functional ship that can get them to Coruscant.
    • Hire a transport pilot or smuggler to fly them to Coruscant, offering them whatever Republic credits they have as collateral, then paying them more when they reach their destination (which was the exact plan Obi-Wan used in A New Hope).
    • Instead of taking Watto's claim that he's the only one with a T-14 hyperdrive at face value, try shopping at another junk dealer who will accept Republic credits (or mind trick them like they tried to do to Watto) and get the needed part.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • Just relocate the fuckin' people, ok? It's what we did to the Indians on Earth, and look how that turned out! We have so many wonderful casinos.
    • Plinkett argues at length that the Star Wars prequels retroactively have this effect on much of The Empire Strikes Back. In the latter, The Reveal that the "great warrior" and master of the Force, Yoda, should turn out to be a small, physically unintimidating creature was intended to illustrate that the Force had an ephemeral quality that went beyond the physical. By contrast, in the prequel trilogy, where the same small, unintimidating creature has to engage in physical combat despite severe handicaps, the implied Aesop is much more cynical. That the DVD Special Features have George Lucas on record explaining that he did this based on the oh-so-flimsy logic that, in Lucas' words, "everyone's looking forward" to seeing Yoda fight because "we haven't seen him do that yet" didn't help matters either.
    • Plinkett feels the anti-racism theme of Star Trek: Picard in regards to the Romulans and the androids fall flat because for the Romulans, most of them are portrayed as sinister, violent, or ungrateful to Picard for trying to save as many of them as he could; and for the androids, they're able to be easily swayed by Sutra into agreeing that organic life should be eradicated and Soji comes very close to letting in the robot space octopus.
  • Card-Carrying Villain / Obviously Evil: The reason Plinkett likes Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith.
    "Also on this ship is Commander Nefarious, Captain I'm A Bad Guy, and Admiral Bone To Pick (but they didn't mention them)."
  • Character Shilling: Plinkett argues that one of the biggest issues of the Star Wars prequels is putting way too much focus on the story of Anakin/Darth Vader and making him seem like the center of the universe (which was unquestionably inspired by his real life popularity), arguing that his role should have been a small part of a bigger story instead. He also has difficulty believing that Anakin was really a good friend or a good person as Obi-Wan implied in A New Hope going solely by whats shown on-screen in the prequels (and not taking tie-in materials into account), arguing that all signs pointed to him being a lost cause from the start. He also points out how the opening of Revenge of the Sith does this in a blatant attempt to backtrack and remind us that Anakin is still a good person (by arbitraily wanting to aid some convieniently disposable Clone Pilots under heavy fire) despite Anakin having been shown ruthlessly slaughtering an entire tribe of Tusken Raiders out of revenge in the previous film.
  • Complexity Addiction:
    • Plinkett notes that the whole plot of The Phantom Menace hinges on Palpatine setting into motion his insanely convoluted, 13 year long scheme to get into power by having the Trade Federation stage an invasion on Naboo so he could take advantage of the crisis to advance himself politically. But Plinkett points out that Palpatine's entire plan could have been easily foiled from the beginning if Queen Amidala turned out to be a coward and just signed the treaty.
    • Plinkett breaks down how much the Zhat Vash make their whole goal of trying to find the synth planet way harder than it has to be and ends up making them looking like terrible spies. For instance, Commodore Oh ordered the murder of Sutra's sister when they could have captured her and interrogated her, or were unable to find Bruce Maddox even though he still goes out in public and works at multiple facilities. Not to mention how the Zhat Vash organizing the destruction of Mars leads to the banning of synthetics across the galaxy, which would make finding the synth homeworld even harder since all the androids would either go into hiding or be deactivated.
  • Composite Character: In his Phantom Menace review, Plinkett suggests that Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi should have been combined together to form a character called Obi-Wan Kenobi, since Obi-Wan could have basically served the same role as Qui-Gon, who Plinkett considers to be a pointless addition to the film.
  • Covers Always Lie: He points out in his review of Cop Dog that the covers make it out as if the film is a lighthearted romp focusing on a crime-solving dog, when the actual film is rather dark in its subject matter and doesn't feature the dog doing cop things at all.
  • Cozy Catastrophe: Points out that the reason it's hard to care about the Clone Wars in the prequel trilogy is that it never really seems to affect anything. Aside from the war being mainly between equally disposable robots and clones, Coruscant, where most of the focus is, is still just as lively and active in the third movie (when the war's been going on for quite a while) was it was in the first.
  • Darker and Edgier: Not a fan of this one, as shown in his Star Trek and Star Wars reviews. Ever more so if its simply for the sake of being Dark. Like how it's utterly unnecessarily for there to be rape in Star Trek: Nemesis. He also lambasts Star Trek: Picard for its more nihilistic tone that clashes with the rest of the series, and points to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as an example of Star Trek doing this correctly because it showed a different political side to things and was still able to tell well-written sci-fi stories.
  • Denser and Wackier: This was his main problem with Ghostbusters (2016), The actors just constantly shouting ad-libs over each other and the bright, in-your-face visual style and just about every single character being portrayed as a total idiot completely ruins the tone of the film, which he compares to a toddler in the back seat of a car screaming for the driver's attention. He especially contrasts this with the 1984 original, which used a much more dry, deadpan tone, better comedic timing, and more believable, down-to-earth characters. He eventually sums it up as the original adhering to 'less is more' and the remake opting for 'more is more' where everything needs to be bigger, brighter, and louder.
  • Designated Villain: invoked He has this opinion towards the villains of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, claiming that Spalko doesn't do anything particularly evil besides being a communist and working for her government, and the film also tries to establish that 50s America isn't particularly great either (in comparison to the villains of earlier films, who would usually Kick the Dog enough to establish that they're bad people even by the standards of Nazis and cultists). He's also played it for laughs a few times, such as claiming that Jango Fett was just trying to make his way in the world, and Hockley "has no faults."
  • Devil in Plain Sight: Plinkett points out this trope in the Star Wars prequels, pointing out that despite how shady and conspicuous Palpatine makes himself look with his transparent political orchestrations, talk of Sith Lords and other Jedi matters he should have no knowledge of (including asserting very suspiciously that Sith and Jedi aren't so different), nobody figures out that he's the villain until he all but outright tells Anakin that he's a Sith Lord in Episode III.
  • Dump Months: Coined the phrase "fuck you, it's January!" to mock the low standards for movies released during that month.

    E-P 
  • Ensemble Cast: One of the things he points out about The Phantom Menace is that the film doesn't really have a defined protagonist, with the various candidates for the role (Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme, Jar-Jar) all failing to drive the plot or having swathes of the movie where they're not really doing anything or haven't even been introduced yet—Qui-Gon is the closest, but even then, he gets mortally wounded halfway through the climax and the film basically continues without him. He argues that while this is not a bad thing inherently, in the case of The Phantom Menace, it mostly just contributes to the film feeling unfocused. He notes particularly that the film has a swathe of time where Qui-Gon is running around doing stuff and forming a bond with Anakin, while Obi-Wan is basically just hanging out on the ship—in his view, it should be the other way around, as it would give Obi-Wan a clear character arc and anchor the film.
  • Expanded Universe: Plinkett hates this. He hates when the main story has plot holes explained outside the movie via tie-in materials. He also came down heavily on Rogue One for being a new story in an established universe, which he considers cheating (it's a big cause of the review's broken base).
  • Extreme Doormat: In the Ghostbusters review, Plinkett notes that director Paul Feig's constant fawning over the cast seems to indicate an unwillingness to give them strong direction, thus leading to the constant ad-libs.
  • Filler: Plinkett considers the entire Podracing sequence of The Phantom Menace to be this and that it adds absolutely nothing to the plot, and notes that Qui-Gon could have easily gotten everyone off Tatooine by just selling the Queen's ship to Watto off the bat, and then discreetly getting off the planet to Coruscant on another ship that wouldn't draw attention to themselves.
  • Filling the Silence: A major criticism he has with Ghostbusters is how the constant ad-libbing pads the film with awkward and unfunny dialog while also killing dramatic tension and comedic timing. Plinkett demonstrates this by comparing scenes in the film with ones where he edited the dialog out; the quieted shot actually does convey a appreciable sense of ominousness, and could have nicely set up a well-written quip to break the tension.
  • Flanderization:
    • Plinkett feels the way The Force was presented in the original trilogy had an ethereal quality to it that inspired genuine awe and wonder (using Yoda's mere existence and character to demonstrate this), also due in part to how sparingly and carefully it was used and presented (such as Yoda humbling Luke by successfully lifting the X-Wing out of the swamp), and that the prequels trivialized it by playing up the powers aspect of it way too much, turning it into an excuse to show characters constantly spamming force telekinesis and the super acrobatic abilities it allows, making it come off as a mundane way to show off fancy effects and video game stunts.
    • Plinkett says that Star Trek (2009) took minor character traits from all the original Star Trek crew members and electrified them, to make the characters more interesting.
  • Four Lines, All Waiting: Plinkett tears into Episode I for this happening at the climax. Well, not him so much as selected clips of Lucas and co. looking less than comfortable about having done this and not being able to change it so late in production.
  • Franchise Killer: Plinkett blames the Dominion War for creating a rapid burnout and causing the temporary death of Star Trek.invoked
  • Future Society, Present Values: Plinkett feels this was to the detriment of Star Trek: Picard. The series' not-so-subtle commentary on current political issues didn't make sense in the franchise's universe where humanity has moved on from those things by now, and the show makes it look like people have regressed. Certainly, the franchise tackled various social issues, but they would usually examine it through the lens of interactions with aliens or time travel.
  • Gambit Roulette: One of his biggest issues with the prequels is that Palpatine's plans depend so heavily on a thousand different factors working out in his favor, despite the fact that so many things could go wrong and nobody but him is in on the entire plan. He goes somewhat into detail on this at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, arguing that the entire scheme would have been derailed if, for instance, Grievous decided to kill Palpatine instead of keeping him as a hostage (Grievous doesn't seem to know Palpatine is Sidious), Anakin died in the process of trying to reach Palpatine, Dooku went off-script and spilled the beans after Palpatine told Anakin to kill him, Anakin refused to kill Dooku, or Grievous kept the good guys in their rayshield prison instead of bringing them right to the bridge.
  • Guilty Pleasure: He considers Star Trek (2009) to be this. Also his granddaughter, Crystal.
  • Ham and Cheeseinvoked: The one thing in Revenge of the Sith that Plinkett says he likes is Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine — just because Ian is clearly having the time of his life.
  • Harpo Does Something Funnyinvoked: Discussed. Plinkett cites this as the biggest flaw in Ghostbusters (2016) that isn't directly the doing of Sony Pictures. While giving your actors room to ad-lib can greatly improve a comedy film, it's obvious that Paul Feig's direction in many scenes only went as far as going "Say/do something funny!" This makes the humor come off as too broad, unstructured, and divorced from the action much of the time, in contrast to the original, where the ad-libbing was kept consistent with the action by complementing and building off of jokes that were already in the script.
  • Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Harry explains the somewhat tacked-on nature of the Spock/Uhura romance as a case of the NotGays wherein the director draws undue time away from the plot in order to establish that a character is in fact heterosexual. He then goes on to show how other characters have a case of the NotGays and begins to refer to it as the disease the director seems to think it is. He also points out how it's also done in dog movies.
  • Hollywood Tactics: One of his big complaints about The Last Jedi is how blatant this trope is there. He thinks that instead of being Acceptable Breaks from Reality in the service of story and spectacle like in previous Star Wars movies it just makes every commander on both sides look like complete idiots.
  • Idiot Ball: Another pet peeve of Plinkett, such as Padme being transferred to be "processed," even though the villains not knowing what happened to the Jedis and the fact she's central to their entire plans.
  • Idiot Plot: invoked
    • A major part of why Plinkett becomes angry to the point of murderous rage - and arguably why he has a penchant for butchering hookers - is that not only are the characters in the Star Wars Prequels "flat and uninteresting" but they're also Too Dumb to Live on a galactic scale. A grand hall, full of thousands of delegates listen to a megalomaniacal speech from Palpatine, an obvious despot, yet no-one seems to notice even when he starts ranting about genocide of the Jedis? Not even Anakin (supposedly full of midichlorians which presumably enhance his perception) during a private meeting, where Palpatine mentions that the Sith and the Jedi are quite alike while a klaxon Red Alert blares out in the background. He sums it up that if the characters had displayed the slightest bit of common sense or rationale, Palpatine's plot could have easily been foiled.
    • Discussed in the Star Wars reviews. Plinkett contends that if any of the characters had exercised even the tiniest amount of common sense in the prequels, Palpatine's plans would have been easily thwarted and Anakin wouldn't have become Darth Vader.
    • He also argues this with Star Trek: Picard, claiming that a lot of the plot seems to be fueled by the characters making decisions that make no sense—for example, the attack on Mars, where the Romulans apparently decided that the best choice to pull their False Flag Operation would be staging a strike on a fleet preparing to save the Romulan race from annihilation, or the creator of the androids burying the true goal of the program behind layers of fake memories rather than simply giving them the mission normally. He cites this to be due to the creators prioritizing a sense of mystery and countless twists and turns over creating a plot that actually makes sense.
  • Informed Ability: Plinkett loves pointing these out, such as Anakin's alleged pilot skills.
    • He dedicates a larger part of his Picard review to some of these.
      • He notes that the series treats it as a given that Picard and Data were the closest of friends and Picard, above all others, never questioned Data's humanity... before showing a bunch of clips from Next Generation that suggest Picard was no stranger to questioning Data's nature, making insensitive remarks, or being impatient with his quirks, and Geordi, not Picard, was Data's closest friend.
      • He finds it rather comical that the Romulans are supposed to be expert spymasters when, in an era of teleportation, their idea of a kidnapping is a standard home invasion barely a step above your average street gang, and they try to suffocate an android.
  • In Name Only: Much of his critique of Picard owes to its failure to capture the original tone and morality of Star Trek, such that it feels like it could be any given series.
  • It's Not Supposed to Win Oscarsinvoked: Plinkett argues (pretty convincingly) that Star Trek (2009), despite its somewhat-dodgy plot and its loose adherance to the Star Trek ethos, works brilliantly at exactly what it set out to be: a compelling action-adventure film precisely calculated to make as much money as possible. And saving the franchise. He also averted it by using Citizen Kane as a contrast to Revenge of the Sith when explaining why the latter fails, although he admitted this wasn't entirely fair.
  • Kid-Appeal Character: Ruthlessly deconstructed, especially in the case Phantom Menace-era Anakin.
    "Kids' imaginations don't work that way!"
  • Lighter and Softer: One of Plinkett's complaints about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Indy only murders one enemy, and even Plinkett is confused about how the enemy died (why would the poison dart be poisoned on the wrong side?)
  • Lost Aesop: He notes this of the depictions of McCarthy-era America in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with Indy being wrongfully treated with suspicion by the government, characters lamenting the atmosphere of paranoia, one of his buddies changing sides explicitly because "I'm a capitalist, and they pay", and the protesters being shown sympathetically—all of which seems to be going for a vibe of "the US isn't so great, either." But nothing ever really comes of this, because the Soviets are still treated as self-evident antagonists, the conflict has almost nothing to do with the Cold War in general, and most of the movie doesn't even take place in the US, so really, all it does is undermine the stakes by making it seem like the villains have a point when they're not really supposed to. At one point, he noted that the movie seemed to do a better job of showing the US government as bad than showing the main antagonist as bad.
  • Lost in Medias Res:invoked One of Plinkett's criticisms of The Phantom Menace is that the film rushes through its setup so quickly that it doesn't even take time to properly establish fundamental story points to give an audience a clear understanding of whats at stake, such as why the Trade Federation are invading Naboo and are risking their entire organization by going along with Darth Sidious' oblique plans. He also scoffs at how the film lazily over-relied on tie-in materials to explain these story gaps.
  • Merchandise-Driven: Plinkett felt that Star Wars started heading his direction as early as Return of the Jedi (mainly singling out the presence of the Ewoks) but really got out of hand in the prequels. He also joked that the reason Return of the Jedi had its name changed from Revenge of the Jedi was because having one less letter would've saved hundreds of dollars in George Lucas' ink fund.
  • Mis-blamed: In-Universe. He points out that Lucas gets the majority of the flak for the prequel trilogy, but that things still could've been better if someone, anyone, had the courage to stand up during production and tell him that his ideas were terrible.
    • He also holds this view on Hayden Christensen's portrayal of Anakin Skywalker in the prequel films, saying that he's not a bad actor, it's just that nobody could make some of the scenes and dialogue written for that role look good.
    • He also defends the cast of Ghostbusters (2016) and says they're all funny actors who have been in plenty of good roles, and instead directs the blame to director Paul Feig for giving the cast no real direction, instead just having them ad-lib everything and sit back laughing at all of it.
  • My Way or the Highway: In the review of The Last Jedi, Plinkett unfavorably compares Admiral Holdo's iron fisted leadership style to the leadership style of Captain Jean Luc Picard, who was willing to listen to and consider others opinions, and was willing to give even his worst enemies the benefit of the doubt if it was clear it would make a situation better, to make a point of just how unhelpful and incompetent of a leader she is despite the film presenting her actions as noble and necessary in the big picture. He also points out that it is rather strange that the Resistance, who are supposed to be the good guys and ostensibly more egalitarian that the First Order, operates its chain of command in such a strict and authoritarian way.
  • Never Trust a Title: One of his main complaints about Cop Dog, declaring that "Cop Dog is neither a cop nor a dog"—since not only is Marlowe not a police dog after his first appearance, but Marlowe also dies and becomes a ghost not long into the film.
  • No Hugging, No Kissing: In his review of “The Force Awakens”, Plinkett states that the lack of romance in the film made the cast feel robotic and alien to an extent compared to the original series where romance and sexuality was pervasive. He states that he would have settled for romance of any kind, including either Rey and Finn or even Finn and Poe. Similarly, he notes that a romance subplot in the Ghostbusters remake would have given the characters some personal stakes, even suggesting that Holtzmann should have had a romance with the Mayor's assistant.
  • Origin Story: Plinkett takes the Star Wars prequels to task for being this, arguing that they overall weren't a story that neeeded to be told, and that overfocusing on Anakin and making his story seem like the center of the universe instead of a small part of a bigger story because of his real life popularity actually came to the detriment of the series, and that how Anakin became Darth Vader is nowhere as interesting as what he does when he is Darth Vader.
  • Out-of-Character Moment:
    • A major problem Mr. Plinkett has with the Next Generation movies is that Picard acts like an angry, vengeful, action movie character rather than a diplomatic captain who uses violence as a last resort. Years later it would get even worse in Star Trek: Picard with how Picard will make stupid decisions for no reason other than to move the plot forward.
    • Also, Plinkett points out how the Borg in First Contact randomly act like Frankenstein's monster. Plus Obi-Wan has random moments of being foolhardy and showing off in Episodes II and III.
    • Also considers Palpatine using a lightsaber and everything Yoda does in the prequels to be this.
  • Pinball Protagonist: Plinkett's explanation for why he doesn't consider Anakin the main character in Phantom Menace, due to him having little to no control over the events going on around him, even pointing out that him blowing up the trade federation ship at the end was an accident, and also because Anakin was first introduced a bit into the film's second act.
  • Political Correctness Is Evil:
    • Examined and eventually subverted in his review for The Force Awakens, where he dedicates a small part of the video to Disney going out of their way to give the movie a diverse cast, the way Disney marketed and promoted this diversity, and why Disney would do so. He does conclude that the diversity isn't a bad thing at all, but that it's something most moviegoers, especially children, won't really care about all that much, and that it was most likely only done to make the movie more marketeable to people who would demand such a thing.
    • They also subverted this with discussion about Ghostbusters (2016), especially notable because of this trope being the crux of the controversy surrounding the movie. The channel does discuss the controversy in a couple of videosnote , but overall seem to take the position that it isn't really anything to make a big deal out of either way, and that there are plenty of perfectly valid criticisms and reasons not to like the film that have nothing to do with the cast being women, chiefly the directing and tone. In fact, the Plinkett review itself pretty much ignores the issue entirely.
  • Politically Correct History: Plinkett accuses Indiana Jones of indulging too much in this trope, and haphazardly at that. Because the film is set in the 50s and uses a once-acceptable target (the Russians) as the villains, the filmmakers try to compensate by playing up the flaws of 50s American culture...with an evil Men In Black subplot that goes absolutely nowhere and nonsensical lines like, "Of course I sold you out. I'm a capitalist."
    Plinkett: But people have been greedy since the dawn of time!
  • Popularity Power:
    • Plinkett argues in the ROTS review that this kicks in for Darth Vader. Before the PT, Darth Vader was an iconic character and a symbol of the Empire, formerly a good man gone bad, but only one aspect of a larger story. However, in the prequels he becomes Space Jesus and the most pivotal man in the Galaxy. Plinkett believes this is because Vader is a popular and iconic figure, his life is central to not only the story, but to the in-story universe as well, when it was not suggested in the OT.
    • Plinkett also questions why in the world Padme would bother thanking R2-D2, "a piece of equipment". Why would the queen be ordered to clean a dirty droid? If she's thanking inanimate objects, why not thank the spaceship. This, despite in previous films R2-D2 was treated as just another machine by Luke and others. Once again, R2-D2 is famous to the viewer, not to the characters in the film.

    Q-Z 
  • Questionable Casting:invoked Plinkett delivers one for the casting of Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequels. While Jackson excels at playing bad motherfuckers who yell, curse and beat people, he is utterly ill-suited for the role of a wise and serene Jedi Master. Plinkett suggests that Morgan Freeman, Forest Whitaker and Sidney Poitier would have been better choices if Lucas wanted an African American actor to play a Jedi, but none of them has Jackson's box office appeal.
  • A Real Man Is a Killer: Believes that a good Indiana Jones movie is reflected in how many people Indy brutally murders throughout the film.
  • Red Shirt Army: The biggest problem with the Clone Wars concept, as far as Plinkett is concerned, is that we have two armies of faceless CGI mooks (clones vs droids) who can die by the hundreds onscreen in large battle scenes, with no consequence or emotional impact on the audience.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Invoked. The Attack of the Clones review becomes increasingly sidetracked by the Plinkett/Nadine storyline, as a deliberate contrast to the Anakin/Padme storyline in the movie.
  • Rooting for the Empire:Invoked.
    • Not technically rooting for the Empire, but Plinkett wonders how Obi-Wan automatically knows the Trade Federation attack on Naboo was unprovoked.
    • Less than 5 minutes into his Phantom Menace review, Plinkett is giving the Trade Federation advice on the best ways to murder Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.
    • Mace Windu decapitating a poor working stiff who's just trying to make his way in the universe.(Jango Fett)
    • In Crystal Skull, McCarthyite America terrifies Plinkett way more than Spalko does.
    • Vader throwing poor Palpatine down a mine shaft.
    • Maybe the Zhat Vash were right about the androids, considering they almost let in a robot space octopus hellbent on eradicating organic life. And for a non-villainous but still portrayed as in the wrong example, maybe Admiral Fuckface and the rest of Starfleet were right about the Romulans, considering how most of them are Jerkasses at best. See Broken Aesop.
  • Ruined FOREVER: Discussed In-Universe
    Mike (The United States of Noooo!!!): "[that scene] ruined everything. Not just Star Wars movies, but every other type of movie ever made."
    Plinkett (Star Trek Generations review): "It ruined everything. And not just Star Trek movies, but everything."
  • invokedRunning the Asylum: What he thinks is ultimately one of the biggest problems with Ghostbusters (2016) was director Paul Feig giving a cast full of otherwise competent actors essentially zero direction and instead just letting them ad-lib everything. He even directly compares Feig's directing style on Ghostbusters to a school teacher directing a cast of young children by letting them do whatever they want and just sitting back laughing at how cute it is that the production has gone off the rails. He especially hates this compared to the original film, which mostly used constructed jokes and well-done comedic timing, whereas the 2016 remake is full of the actors all yelling and quipping over each other which just blends together into constant noise.
  • Scary Black Man: Plinkett's primary gripe with Mace Windu is that he didn't adhere to this trope, and that the character was a complete waste of Samuel L Jackson's talent for playing this type of character. Moreover, he argues that Jackson was cast specifically to attract viewers who would expect him to be this trope. He says if they wanted to cast an African American actor then someone like Morgan Freeman or Forest Whitaker would have been more suited to playing a wise Jedi Master.
  • Scenery-Based Societal Barometer: Discussed in the review of Revenge of the Sith. Plinkett points out that the effects of the war could've been shown affecting Coruscant, thus highlighting the issues to the audience. Specifically, he claimed they could've seen the bustling nightlife slow to a stop as the film progressed and explored the idea of a draft being placed on the citizens of the planet.
  • Sell-Out: Plinkett takes more than a few cheap shots at the fact that George Lucas' franchise is a licensing juggernaut.
    "But it (the title of Revenge of the Sith) also harkened back to the original title of “Return of the Jedi” which was supposed to be “Revenge of the Jedi”. Buuut at the last minute Lucas had decided to change the title from “Revenge” to “Return”, because he discovered that having a word with one less letter in it would save him $916 annually on the cost of printing the logo on countless T-shirts, action figure boxes and posters.note  Hey ink’s not cheap kids! The man runs a business. However by 2005 Lucas had saved up well over $1000 in his ink fund, so he could afford that extra letter."
  • Shot/Reverse Shot: An extensive deconstruction of this technique forms a pillar of Plinkett's criticism against the cinematography of Revenge of the Sith, as well as that of the Prequel Trilogy at large. To summarize a ten minute discourse: it's a workmanlike technique whose overuse makes for boring cinema, it doesn't mesh well with the dynamic and free-form camera angles found in entirely computer-generated action scenes, and it takes the viewer out of the film by making it abundantly clear that dialogue is always taking place while characters are sitting or are languidly walking back and forth on a greenscreen runway.
  • Show, Don't Tell: Plinkett's adamantly stresses visual storytelling as a virtue of the original films (particularly highlighting the opening of A New Hope) in contrast to how much blatant exposition though talking is given in the prequel films.
  • Small Reference Pools: He takes issue with Ghostbusters (2016) constantly and gratuitously overusing references to other famous movies. This later culminates in Popcultural Osmosis Failure in the scene from the movie where Holtzmann briefly sings Glinda the Good Witch's "Come out, come out, wherever you are" song from The Wizard of Oz to lure a ghost out of hiding and Paul Feig admits on the commentary track that, despite having paid thousands of dollars just to put that one line in the film, he doesn't actually know what movie the song originally came from and assumes it was from "some Disney movie" (Fellow movie reviewer Bobsheaux even left a comment saying that he never watched a Paul Feig movie before and, after finding that out, he'll make sure he never will).
  • Special Effect Failure: Plinkett considers this a big problem with the prequels due to their over reliance on CGI. He argues that the original Star Wars trilogy benefited from the limitations faced with practical special effects, which includes the problems Lucas faced during production because of using practical effects. He has a particular hatred for the overuse of the lightsaber effects in the prequel movies, seeing as how they were much easier to produce than they were during the production of the original trilogy. invoked
    Plinkett: The human eye can detect fakeness real easy. It's not too hard.
    • Parodied near the end of the Episode III review when he claims that the CGI took a drop in quality for the climatic fight, when he's showing the basic CGI outlines/paths.
  • Strangled by the Red String: invokedA major part of his critique of Attack of the Clones is this, noting that Anakin and Padmé's romantic arc basically amounts to Anakin acting like a dumbass creep at best and a total psychopath at worst, and Padmé inexplicably deciding to marry him despite barely knowing him and having every reason to cut ties with him.
  • Strawman Has a Point: invokedIn his Picard review, he grumpily points out that the General Ripper admiral who claims that Starfleet should just let all the Romulans die is ultimately validated, as nearly every bad thing in the show comes down to the Romulans being a bunch of Ungrateful Bastards with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder to the point that they seem to prioritize screwing over the Federation over the continued survival of their species.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: invoked
    • Plinkett regrets the missed potential lesbian sex scene between the mother and the nanny in "Baby's Day Out" since Lara Flynn Boyle and Cynthia Nixon have "done their fair share of dirty roles, why can't they make room for that here?".
    • He points out that the Clone War from the Prequel Trilogy had its impact greatly lessened by the fact that the heroes are pitting their disposable army of clones against the villains' even more disposable army of robots. After a disclaimer that he doesn't normally want to speculate on how to "fix" the prequels, he goes into detail about how it would've been more interesting if the clones were an invasive force attacking Coruscant from some unknown source in space and inflicting such damage that Coruscant was forced to institute a draft, resulting in millions of deaths, the vibrant, futuristic society shown in Episode I becoming far more run-down and barren by Episode III, and making Palpatine's tricking the people and senate into giving complete power to him so easily more believable, since it would parallel the tactics of many real life dictators.
    • He points out that Anakin's temptation would have been more effective if he were portrayed as a kind family man from the beginning, who only loses his way and falls to the Dark Side at the end of the trilogy, whereas in the actual series, he's portrayed as already being unstable from fairly early on.
    • Plinkett wishes that Star Trek: Picard had limited its scope to focus on more episodic, emotional, character-driven plots that were actually about Picard, like the creators of the show originally promised. Instead, the show includes a plot with a galactic-scale with a bunch of characters that are more important than Picard himself. To illustrate his point, Plinkett throws out a bunch of original plot ideas that they could have done instead.
  • Tropes Are Tools: While acknowledging many good filmmakers stray away from traditional structure, Plinkett argues that Lucas shouldn't have for the Star Wars prequels. Credits classic Star Wars characters for being memorable partly by fullfilling certain archetypes like the Hero's Journey, Fish out of Water, Loveable Rogue, Damsel in Distress, The Mentor, and gay robots.
  • True Art Is Angsty: Invoked in The Nerd Crew about Rogue One, stating that war films aren't supposed to have any Character Development.
    Mike: It's not meant to be "enjoyed" per se as a conventional film.
  • Uncertain Audience: invokedHe believes that one of the reasons Crystal Skull proved so controversial was that the premise was a lot more muddled than the prior Indiana Jones films, which were straightforward Genre Throwback affairs to old adventure serials and films like Gunga Din and Casablanca. Crystal Skull aimed to be an homage to 50s sci-fi films about aliens, but it ran into the issue that actually going all the way and making something in the style of films like The Day The Earth Stood Still or The War of the Worlds (1953) would result in something that no longer felt like an Indiana Jones film. Consequently, they ended up simply grafting aliens and Cold War paranoia into an otherwise-standard Indy plot, which resulted in the film feeling a lot less coherent than its predecessors, since it ended up being too weird for established fans but not divergent enough to draw in new ones.
  • The Unfair Sex: Although focused on more in the Half in the Bag episode for the movie, he takes issue with the portrayal of both sexes in Ghostbusters (2016). Of major note are the fact that while Janine in Ghostbusters (1984) was portrayed as a smart, sarcastic character who was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, her male equivalent Kevin in the remake is for some reason portrayed as being dumber than a brick. On the other hand, he takes issue with the fact that the guys making up the team from the original were mostly (at least most of them) portrayed as pretty professional all around and ranged from Deadpan Snarker to The Comically Serious, even if they tended to bumble their way through things a bit just by nature of being in way over their heads, whereas in the remake, the women making up the team are, mostly because of the Harpo Does Something Funny directing style, all portrayed as childish goofballs that don't seem to be taking anything that happens seriously and seem to have no real motivation for what they're doing.
  • Viewers Are Morons: Lampshaded and discussed in several reviews.
  • Wag the Director: invoked Discussed; Plinkett believes that one of the problems behind Picard was that the actors (Patrick Stewart in particular) were given too much creative control over the series, stating that most actors don't have the creative chops necessary and if given the chance they'll use it to feed their overinflated egos.
  • Walk and Talk: Criticizes what he believes to be a misuse of this technique in the ROTS review. Because most dialogue scenes are shot on a short greenscreen runway, there isn't much room for dynamic or frenetic motion. Having that would mean that Lucas would have had to alter his cameras' positioning, which he was unwilling to do, and results in scene after scene featuring two characters slowly walking down a hallway, talking, until they reach a point where they turn and face each other so that the dialogue can end in a Shot/Reverse Shot exchange. This pattern, far from looking natural, actually accentuates the limits of Lucas's use of CGI.
  • War Is Hell: Plinkett argues that the impact of the Clone War should have been much more visible, with mass conscription and millions dying, which would have added tension and drama and made Palpatine's power grab more justifiable in-universe. Instead, life in Coruscant seems to just carry on as normal and the war is treated like some minor inconvenience out in space.
  • What Could Have Beeninvoked: Mike's promotional popcorn tub for Titanic's initial release date suggests a more action-oriented film, including the tagline, "Collide With Destiny." Compare to the finished tagline, "Nothing On Earth Can Keep Them Apart."
    "But something DID keep them apart. It was an iceberg! Oh wait, it said 'nothing on Earth', an iceberg's in the water. I get it..."
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: invokedHe takes this view of Cop Dog, pointing out that the film is rather melancholy in tone, spends an awful lot of time focusing on the trauma of the kid losing his father, and outright kills the titular dog less than halfway in—all things that make the film too dark for most kids, despite the film being undeniably aimed at a young audience. He contrasts this with other kids movies in the same general field such as Karate Dog or Firehouse Dog, which, though certainly not good, are at least exactly what you'd expect from films with those titles.
    "Soccer Dog is about a dog who plays soccer! There's no weird Exorcist crap in it. And most importantly, Soccer Dog never gets hit by a car and dies. He plays... fucking soccer. And goddamn Firehouse Dog takes place in a firehouse, and the dog becomes a firehouse dog! Get it? Gee, I sure wasn't expecting that from a movie called Firehouse Dog! Fuck."
  • Willing Suspension of Disbelief: According to Plinkett, gets broken when characters act like weird, unrelatable space aliens (which they are) and by seeing live-action actors put into physically impossible and unsurvivable situations, such as in Baby's Day Out and Attack of the Clones, that serve only to draw attention to the artifice.
    • In the Attack of the Clones review, he criticizes the idea of Dooku being able to use Force Lightning. Specifically, he explains how in Return of the Jedi, that Emperor Palpatine being able to use Force Lightning was more of a storytelling tool than a literal ability, meant to demonstrate just how powerful and evil Palpatine was, and imply that he has even more abilities like that up his sleeve. After all, if Palpatine wanted to kill Luke, he could have just strangled him. When Dooku does it, he claims he can't take it seriously because it trivializes the impact of the ability, likening it to a power-up a video game character gets from reaching Level 50 Sith status. He claims he was honestly surprised that Yoda didn't start shooting out green lightning at him too.
    • Speaking of Yoda, he describes the reserved, mentor like Yoda of the original trilogy as a believable character who was there to demonstrate an ethereal quality of the force. For the prequels, he criticizes his over the top, "windmill on a pogo-stick" style of fighting and acrobatics as cartoony and completely unbelievable, seeing them as just a way to show off fancy effects and video game style stunts while flying in the face of the original nature of Yoda's character.
  • Wolverine Publicity: Plinkett mocks Revenge of the Sith for heavily hyping up Darth Vader's appearance (in his iconic armor) in all of the trailers, commercials, merchandise and tie-ins, even though Vader only has 2 minutes of screentime in the entire movie.
  • World of Jerkass: Discussed.
    • Plinkett states that he found it hard to care about the fate of New York in Ghostbusters (2016) as every side character seemed to be either Too Dumb to Live or extremely unpleasant jerks.
    • He also found this to be a major problem with Star Trek: Picard because of how it traded the optimistic future where humanity has genuinely managed to move forward for a future filled with unpleasant and foul-mouthed characters in a much more cynical setting.

  • Yes-Man: Everyone surrounding Lucas during the making of the prequel films, but especially his right-hand man Rick McCallum. This backfires when he finally sees the rough cut of The Phantom Menace:
    Plinkett: Rick McCallum is frozen in utter shock at how horrible the movie was. Internally, he regrets not challenging Lucas on some of the things he was worried about.

"You know what to do..."

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