Screen Junkies is an internet show hosted on YouTube, focusing on, as their name tells you, film media and actors. It began in 2011 with a series of A-List celebrity interviews, then a video edit series called Super Cut debuted where relevant clips of different movies were mashed together to create something awesome such as "The Greatest Sports Pep Talk Ever." In 2012, the Screen Junkies Show proper premiered, hosted by Hal Rudnick. It's on a weekly schedule, with new episode premiering every Wednesday. The format typically involves getting a guest (often multiple ones) related to the movie topic of the week to give their opinions and commentary. They still achieve A-list interviews with people like Christopher Walken and Morgan Freeman. A recurring topic involves having comedian Nick Mundy come on to suggest how to "fix" a movie/franchise (by raging a lot about its current state and how it should stick to its roots) as a parody of fanboyism. Most episodes end with Hal asking fans to suggest something in the comments, the best reply receives a Screen Junkies T-shirt.
They also produced Movie Fights, and the popular web series Honest Trailers to the point of being overshadowed by it. All Movie Fights and Honest Trailers examples go on their own pages.
They're currently owned and operated by Wikia. Their Youtube channel is here
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Screen Junkies contains examples of the following tropes
- Bait-and-Switch: For the
one-year anniversary, a fan requests for Nick to rant about Ben Affleck as Batman. He gets riled up, only to calmly state how the film has a lot going against it, and that Affleck will probably be fine as Batman. - Beach Episode: More like "Park Episode": "The Screen Junkies Geek Games!!!", where recurring contestants from Movie Fights compete against each other as Clockwork Orange
and Deepest Bluest. - Beautiful All Along: This trope is celebrated with the Anna Kendrick award for "the girl you at first don't notice until now and then you really want to bone her". It is named after it's first recipient, Anna Kendrick. The Anna Kendrick Award becomes an example of non-indicative naming when the 2013 award was received by Amy Adams.
- Brown Bag Mask: Screen Junkies found Shia LaBeouf wearing one of these with, "I am not famous anymore" written down the front of it in marker at his #IAMSORRY event. He wouldn't comment on why he wore the mask and had no reaction to Hal Rudnick removing it.
- Butt-Monkey: Hal in general. Best exemplified by his appearances on Movie Fights, where he loses seven times, more than any other contestant, note and the closest he got was a tie. Which makes his victory during his eighth appearance all the more surprising.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Dan has some very strong views on calling The Shape of Water the "Fish banging movie".
- Cringe Comedy: Hal's interviews with celebrities can be very awkward and cringe inducing, Vince Vaughn was especially bad as about half way through it becomes very obvious Vince isn't interested in the interview and is getting annoyed.Hal: (after interview post)...when do you guys think I lost him?"
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The final challenge that the crew played in their first annual Geek Games had all 4 members of the team compete in a tag triathlon. The first three runs ended with near-ties, but the final game had Joe Bareta win against Mark Ellis by a very long margin.Mike Carlson: This isn't even a fight!
- Lovable Coward: All the SJ crew agrees that Dan gets scared the most easily, and in the Halloween episode, everyone thinks that Dan would be the "scardiest scaredy cat" (including Dan himself). Despite that, he's probably the most well-liked SJ member among the fans.
- Multiple Reference Pun: Their yearly assessment of the Oscars ceremony is "The Grouchies". Not only it's done by Accentuate the Negative experts, but references another famous Oscar.
- This Is Reality: The point of the Honest Action videos, which looked at Home Alone and Die Hard, and broke down how much damage would be done to everyone one and/or whether or not it would kill them.
- Right on Queue: Hal and citizens of LA waited for hours in line to see Shia LaBeouf for his #IAMSORRY event.
- The Roast: They did six so far, of Captain America, Rick Grimes, Harry Potter, Darth Vader, Batman, and Beauty and the Beast.
- Self-Deprecation: Hal is fully aware that Honest Trailers are far more popular than his show and that a lot would like to see Screen Junkies disappear if it meant more honest trailers. So of course this is frequently made fun of."Hey guys, want more Screen Junkies? Well too bad..."
- Skewed Priorities: A meta-example comes from the YouTube comments for the "Epic Surprise Wedding with The Rock!" video, which was discussed in the following Movie Fights episode.
- Signing-Off Catchphrase: Hal Rudnick says bye bye and gives a wave.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Any mention of Jayden Smith will drive Hal into a rage.
- Song Parody: Honest Theme Songs; first for The Batman (2022) by turning "Kiss from a Rose", from the other Batman movie with the Riddler, now being sung by Riddler for Batman; and Jurassic World Dominion, featuring the Jurassic Park theme With Lyrics largely critical of the movie itself.
- That Came Out Wrong: When The Rock and the Screen Junkies crew were discussing the surprise wedding they were setting up for Nick Mundy, this gem occurs:Dwayne Johnson: Today, I'm going to marry Nick Mundy! (Beat) Let me clarify... to his fiancée.
- Unperson: Andy has become this after allegations and evidence of sexual harassment and other improper workplace behavior came to light. Not only was he suspended within hours of the testimonies going public and fired almost immediately afterwards, but everyone at SJ who had worked with him in any capacity immediately condemned him, with Spencer, Dan, and many other collaborators publicly stating that they would not come in to work if he was there. Throughout, Andy's once-active social media presence has gone completely silent.
- Waxing Lyrical: Hal makes the revered cast of Last Vegas read pop music. The title of the video even is "Morgan Freeman reads The Fox by Ylvis" (and they mix it to the song just so viewers don't need to...). While Freeman is bewildered by the song, Robert De Niro ("Wrecking Ball"), Michael Douglas ("Chinese Food") and Kevin Kline ("Best Song Ever") give some gravitas the songs never expected.
- ''"Bye bye"
