Web Video / The Cosmonaut Variety Hour

"So you clicked on our channel. We are so sorry."

The Channel Trailer

The Cosmonaut Variety Hour is a video review series created in 2013 and hosted by Marcus, Dan, and Meghan. Together they cover a variety of video games, TV series, and films. The trio have produced dozens of lets plays, retrospectives, reviews, riffs, and "other dumb shit."

The channel originally gained notoriety for a video declaring Junkrat to be an unfathomably powerful monster of a character. The popularity continued with many of the channel's other more serious analyses, such as those on the Star Wars franchise and the MCU.

The group has a few recurring shows:

• Cosmonaut Quickies: Marcus gives his quick thoughts on movies currently in theaters.
• Dungeon and Cosmonauts: The trio play and film a DnD campaign with their friends. Currently discontinued.
• Why it sucks: Longer form videos wherein Marcus breaks down the problems and failings with certain movies and tv series.
• You Guys Are Just Mean: Smaller videos done by Marcus where he goes over films that have large hatedoms that he feels are unwarranted.
• Buddy Cop Hour: Marcus and Dan mess about in various video games, akin to a Let's Play series.
• Designated Driving: Marcus and Meghan do the same as above, but with the addition of alcohol. Drunk hilarity usually ensues.
• Cosmonaut Picture Show: Marcus and friends riff on hilarious/bad/campy movies.
• Sleepy Time with Meghan: In a send-up of ASMR videos, Meghan plays video games (usually horror games) while talking in a low whisper.

---

Tropes:

• Adaptational Wimp: Discussed. Something that really frustrates Marcus is how weak Daredevil comes across as in the 2003 movie when compared to the comics and 2015 Netflix series. He points out that the character relies on more than just sound to see where everything is, yet the film seems to make it out like that's his only method of sight.
• Animation Age Ghetto: Discussed and called out In-Universe during his Cowboy Bebop (2021) rant. Marcus blames this mentality to be the reason why there has been a recent trend in Hollywood to make live-action adaptations of animated works (whether it be anime or the Disney Animated Canon) in an attempt to cater to people who would otherwise not watch said works out of an inherent prejudice towards animation.
• April Fools' Day: On this day in 2019, he does a video that seems like he's about to review Aquaman (2018). He spends the entire video reviewing a Batman coffee mug.
• Ass Pull: In-Universe.
  • Peter having no knowledge of OsCorp in the first TASM film, yet knowing and being best friends with Harry Osborn, the heir of the company, is a massive one for Marcus. So much so that it got a Big "WHAT?!" from him.
  • Discussed in regards to Rey just being the daughter of a couple of nobodies after the buildup of her having some major legacy to explain why she's so powerful in the Force. He denounces this notion, as her being a nobody brings mystery to the Force again, meaning that it can manifest powerfully in anyone. It's also far less of a cop out for him than her being a "Secret Skywalker" or a descendant of Obi-Wan.
• The Big Guy: Marcus absolutely LOATHES this trope. He finds this character archetype to be boring and lazy. During his Star Wars: Rebels video, he actually went off script during when he ranted about how much he hates this character archetype.
• Camera Abuse: Something that Marcus hates in general, especially Dutch Angles which he finds to be amateur, lame and nauseating as its done over and over in bad movies that try to be clever. It comes to a head in Man of Steel when Zach Synder keeps using the quick zoom and shaky cam for a variety of shots much to his anger.
  '''Wayne''': EXTREME CLOSE-UP! WOAH!!!!
• Camp: It's a major part of Marcus's discussion of the Spider-Man Trilogy. While the series is really hokey, he found the campiness one of the most endearing parts of the movies and a core reason of why it was superior to The Amazing Spider-Man Series.
• Character Derailment: Discussed In-Universe.
  • Marcus finds most of the characters in Game of Thrones to hardly resemble what they were in the past seasons by the time season 8 roles around, to the point where he goes down one-by-one and lists how he found each character derailed, with Daenerys and Jaime being the worst offenders for him.
  • Marcus considers Yoda's portrayal in the prequels to be this. He points out how in the prequels, he's portrayed as being a war general and commanding troops without searching for peaceful solutions first-hand, where in the original trilogy he was wise, pacifistic and peaceful. He also admits that it bothers him on some level that no one else seems to care about this.
• Cliché Storm: Discussed In-Universe. Marcus hardly considers this a bad thing. What he cares about is the film's overall quality as a film rather than whether or not it's original. While he acknowledges that current Star Wars films are largely unoriginal in story and set pieces, he considers them done well enough for them to be good movies despite their flaws. This puts them above the prequels for him, which he acknowledges as having plenty of original ideas, but none that he considers to be executed well. He also points to Stranger Things as another example of this, as it has strong characters and story-telling despite the whole show being an amalgamation of tropes and cliches seen in Stephen King stories.
• Critical Backlash: In-Universe, Marcus has mentioned, shown, or stated that he enjoys movies and shows that he's aware aren't really popular with their fan-bases, such as Solo, Teen Titans Go!, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and The Last Jedi. He also legitimately enjoys unpopular changes from the source material in adaptations such as the changes made to the Mandarin in Iron Man 3.
• Designated Hero: Marcus's In-Universe view on particularly jerkass characters.
  • He has nothing but hate for the The Amazing Spider-Man version of Peter Parker and this trope is one of the many reasons. Besides stealing an ID card from someone who earned it just to get into OsCorp, he also makes jokes while the Rhino kills people and just seems to goof off instead of doing what Spider-Man should be doing. However, the biggest reason for his hate is the motivation; Peter is out for revenge, not the "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" aspect that's so integral to his character.
  • He also comments on how much of a self-centered jerk Kaz Kaan is and how he never develops into a better person.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Discussed In-Universe. Something that Marcus found really frustrating with a lot of peoples' complaining about Joel's death in The Last of Us Part II is that people lionize him and complain that a "beloved character" died, which he's quick to point out that they're referring to a man who's killed countless people without hesitation and willingly doomed humanity to die for his own selfishness.
• Dutch Angle: Marcus really hates this trope and considers it a sign of a bad movie. This was something he lambasted Thor and Pacific Rim: Uprising for having.
• The Everyman: Marcus seems to enjoy these types of characters, as they come across as more relatable to him.
  • Part of why he loves Spider-Man so much is that he's just the average guy who gained powers and uses them for good. He makes it clear that he greatly dislikes when writers try to make it seem like it was always Peter's destiny to become the Wall-Crawler, such as in The Amazing Spider-Man. Another aspect that he loved about Spider Man Into The Spiderverse is how it emphasizes that anyone can be Spider-Man.
  • What Marcus enjoyed so much about Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was that he was more or less the average Joe who just happened to get roped up into everything, which helped make him easy to relate to. This also plays into a part of why he hates Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, since the film has to come up with ludicrous justifications for why the Wizarding World equivalent of a zoo keeper needs to be involved in a magical war against Grindelwald.
• Fan Boy:
  • Marcus is one for Marvel, usually involving the MCU films. While he does his best to try and avoid shilling them too much, he has admitted to being biased in favor of them.
  • Marcus is also a pretty big Star Wars fan, as a lot of the content he covers outside of the MCU revolves around Star Wars, and he is shown to be a big fan of the original trilogy and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
  • Marcus is also one for the Harry Potter series, though that doesn't stop him from calling J.K. Rowling out on her blunders.
• Fanservice: Discussed, both for good and for bad.
  • In terms of a positive example of this trope, Marcus describes Avengers: Endgame as "a love letter to all the other Marvel movies" and loves how it has moments that show that the writers care about the universe they're telling stories in.
  • In terms of a negative example of this trope, Marcus derides the last few seasons of Game of Thrones for was bringing back characters when there was no reason to do so outside of this trope, which is opposite to how the show typically handles characters when their role in the story ends.
• Franchise Original Sin: In-Universe. Marcus observes that this happens a lot in long-running franchise. Weaker elements in later installments can usually be traced back to the well regarded older installments.
  • His videos on the Disney Star Wars movies brings this up a lot as he feels the flaws of those films have always been present in the series, but they're much more pronounced. Such as having rather pointless sub-plots that go absolutely nowhere and just come across as padding.
  • It's brought up that while Spider-Man 3 had multiple sub-plots, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has just as many, only they happen at the same time, making for a confusing mess of a movie.
• I Knew It!: Before Avengers: Endgame came out, he predicted that Captain America would retire and Iron Man would die. He was right.invoked
• In Spite of a Nail: One of the criticisms Marcus has towards Bright is that despite magic and fantasy creatures existing on Earth for thousands of years and having constant interactions with humans, world history is one-to-one identical to real life.
• Insult to Rocks: In his review of Suicide Squad (2016), Marcus states that the character with the most development is Rick Flagg, and saying that he's a developed character is like saying that Bob the Tomato is a developed character. He then immediately takes it back since it's an insult...to Bob.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: In-Universe. Marcus got zero challenge and zero enjoyment from Star Wars Battlefront 2, and he had to frequently remind the audience that he picked the hardest difficulty.
• It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars: Part of why Marcus loves superhero movies comes from his perception of them. He reviews and watches them as enjoyable adventure films rather than "masterpieces of cinema".invoked
• Lighter and Softer: A major reason for Marcus's hatred of Star Wars Rebels is that it's basically a kiddy version of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He states that he actually wouldn't mind this too much if the show was just for kids, yet the show tries to appeal to more adult audiences and it fails to achieve that in his eyes.
• Lying Creator: Discussed In-Universe. Something that Marcus really hates about J.K. Rowling when he starts reviewing all the Harry Potter films is that despite obvious plot holes that make it clear she was writing her series as she went along, she keeps trying to save face and pretend like everything was planned out since the beginning.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: In Marcus's review of the fourth season of Star Wars: Rebels, he lampshades this trope and how The Mentor archetype is one of the easiest characters to kill off, leading to him stating that Kanan was digging his grave since season one.
• Mondegreen Gag: In Marcus's The Amazing Spider-Man review, he mishears Gwen Stacy's "Easy, Bugboy" as "Easy, Fuckboi".
• Mood Whiplash: Part of his hate for both Star Wars: Rebels and The Crimes of Grindelwald is that they shift from being dark and depressing to goofy and comical in jarring shifts that lack a consistent tone.
• Mugged for Disguise: Marcus has really grown to hate this trope, particularly in Star Wars: Rebels due to how often the heroes knock stormtroopers out and take their armor. When it happened in Battlefront 2, he ranted on why this keeps happening in Star Wars and how old it is.
• Never Mess with Granny: One of his complaints with Space Jam: A New Legacy is that this is the only joke Granny has in the movie and it gets repetitive, noting one scene where she does an homage to The Matrix that got a negative reception on Twitter.
• Old Shame: Discussed In-Universe. Marcus views this as the reason why J. K. Rowling makes constant Flip-Flop of God statements that alter things in Harry Potter canon; she made an "all white all straight" story in the 90s and is embarrassed that it doesn't feel diverse in today's culture, so she's changing things to pretend that it always was.
• The Oner:
  • In Marcus's review of the film Ax 'Em he notes that there's only one camera, meaning that many scenes end up being single long takes.
    "Every scene is just one take. Normally this is a pretty impressive feat, but since this movie is just ten people yelling at each other, it's a fucking mess."
  • He also praises Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings for this, saying it has the best action scenes of the MCU in part because of it.
• Out of Focus: Something that Marcus praises Avengers: Endgame for is keeping the focus on the original Avengers that started the cinematic universe and putting the new phase 3 characters in the background.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Something that he believed happened to Boba Fett when he referred to the The Book of Boba Fett in his "Cosmonaut Catch Up" video. He says that because the Mandalorian has become so critically acclaimed and beloved for being a Mandalorian super soldier that looks cool, he has basically become Boba Fett himself, or at least the Boba Fett that existed in legends. This means that the modern canonical Boba Fett has to differentiate itself to avoid being the exact same character even though this only results in the Mandalorian being seen as cooler and more interesting than Boba Fett as a result.
• Overtook the Manga: In Marcus's "Game of Thrones - How to Ruin a Great Show" video, he cited this as where the show started failing. While he commends David Beinoff and D.B. Weiss for being great at adapting from source material, he also considers them to be terrible when it comes to writing original material. When they ran out of books to adapt and had to rely mostly on their own material and the plot points George R. R. Martin gave them for later seasons, that's when things went downhill for him.invoked
• Quirky Mini Boss Squad: Marcus treats the Knights of Ren in this regard as a bunch of action figures with little to no backstory provided to any of them, even when he comments on how there is supposedly such detailed lore about them which does not appear in the movies. In his rewrite for "Rise of Skywalker" he describes how he would provide these characters with speaking roles so that they actually had some interactions with Kylo Ren. Furthermore, he laments on how they were not used effectively as these terrifying mooks above the class of stormtroopers and such when they very easily could have been such. As is in the movie, he describes them as basically the same as General Grievous in terms of function in the story, even admitting that General Grievous looks like the better villain in comparison.
• Questionable Casting: Two-fold with both the Raimi Spider-Man and the Amazing Spider-Man for Marcus In-Universe.
  • He dislikes Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man for being too much of a meek doofus even after becoming Spider-Man. He also considers his acting in the films to be pretty bad.
  • He also dislikes Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man due to not fitting the mold of what Peter Parker should be due to coming off as a skater punk and not a bullied geek, lacking the shy wallflower qualities that Marcus considers to be essential to the character.
• Red Shirt Army: Something that Marcus dislikes about Stormtroopers is that they never come across as threatening due to how easy they get taken out, despite being the iconic soldiers of the Star Wars universe. He questions why media feels the need to only portray them as incompetent disposable units rather than the intimidating imperial army that has control over the galaxy. One of the things he gives praise to for Rogue One was actually making the Empire seem legitimately scary, showing why they're the supreme power in the galaxy.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • Something that Marcus has grown to hate Arya Stark for was how this trope is averted with her character. While other characters who seek revenge suffer terrible fates, Arya completely gets away with whatever she sets her mind to no matter how bad it is. He also doesn't consider her learning her lesson about this to be valid since by the time she learns it everyone she wanted to kill is either 1.) already dead by her hand, or 2.) already dead before she got to them.
  • The main reason why Marcus dislikes the The Amazing Spider-Man version of Peter Parker is that the reason he became Spider-Man wasn't because of "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". Instead, Peter took up the mantle so he could avenge Ben Parker's death. As Marcus points out, he's not even arresting the criminals he fights, Spider-Man lets some of them go solely because they weren't the perpetrator he was looking for.
• Rewatch Bonus: Averted. In his revisit of The Force Awakens, he gives the film minor criticism for being largely a one-and-done film for him since there isn't much for him to take away on the second viewing. invoked
• Romantic Plot Tumor: In-Universe for the Spider-Man movies reviewed by Marcus:
  • In the original trilogy, the Mary Jane romance had no chemistry and fell flat for him because of how much of an awful person Mary Jane came across as.
  • From the Amazing Spider-Man films, he considers the Gwen Stacy romance this for the opposite reasons. Unlike with Mary Jane, where they had no chemistry, in these films they have too much chemistry and it causes the films' pacing to slow to a crawl for him.
• Saved by Canon: A complaint that Marcus has towards the "Siege of Mandalore" arc in Season 7 of The Clone Wars is that because of Star Wars Rebels, it's pretty clear that Ahsoka, Rex, and Maul will survive to the end and it drains a lot of the tension since the last few episode focus on these characters.
• Sequelitis: In-Universe. Marcus loves Kingdom Hearts to death and none of the subsequent sequels or spin-offs come anywhere near the first game for him, to the point where he often hates them. The key exception to this is Kingdom Hearts III, but he finds that game to be So Okay, It's Average at best and still nowhere close to how good the first game was.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe, this is the Cosmonaut group's reaction to Dragon Ball Evolution. They don't really find it to be that bad because its flaws are just so much fun to make fun of. They end up laughing multiple times at the absurdity of the movie.
  • In his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice review, Marcus states one of the reasons why he personally hates the movie so much is because it isn’t even entertainingly bad like Daredevil and Catwoman. While he acknowledges that it is not as bad as those two films, it is also very boring to sit through.
• So Okay, It's Average: In-Universe, this is how Marcus considers the "Bad Batch" arc of The Clone Wars's seventh season. It's not bad by any stretch of the margin, but it's very much a standard TCW arc and only serves as filler, though made better by the greatly improved animation of the show. Out of universe, this is how he regards Star Wars Rebels as a whole, since it is a simplified version of Clone Wars that doesn't leave any lasting impact on him... aside from how it makes him angry.
• Stealth Pun: During the fight scene between Peter and Harry near the beginning of Spider-Man 3, Marcus notes that Peter attempting to protect the wedding ring is "good for making the audience engaged".
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: In-Universe in regards to Iron Man 3. Marcus was quite impressed with the film noting that it had a lot of decent action, humor, and shook up the Marvel formula enough to make it stand out, especially over Iron Man 2 which he found fairly boring.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-Universe. Marcus discusses this trope a lot in terms of adaptations. Change itself is neither bad nor good, it is simply different. What the change is and if it works is a major point of discussion.
  • Films like Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) are shown as a positive example of change with the changes working with the overall narrative and allowing the story to flow in spite of its unfaithfulness to the comics.
  • He also cites the changes made to Thor in the MCU as for the better since his comic book self wasn't resonating with audiences.
  • As far as negative changes go, the changes made in The Amazing Spider-Man, with a more jerkass Peter Parker, and Batman grabbing firearms and killing people in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are negative examples of change with said changes altering the core of the property and distorting it into a bad product.
  • Another example of a negative change in his books is the alterations to Wolverine in the X-Men Film Series, as while he enjoys Hugh Jackman's performances as the character, he dislikes how Logan is made to be more of The Watson who's out of his depth, in contrast to the comics where he's Seen It All.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In-Universe.
  • Marcus views Captain America's story line in Avengers: Infinity War as rather wasted. He stays on Earth, fights aliens, and not much else. Even his reunion with Bucky is rather short. Meanwhile, Iron Man and Thor have their own space odysseys with a good deal of character development.
  • In spite of the build-up and reveal of Jon Snow's true parentage in Game of Thrones, Marcus criticizes the fact that they didn't do anything major with it in the final season and that his character was largely unimportant in the last season overall.
• Tragic Hero: One of Marcus' praises for Star Wars: The Clone Wars is that it retools Anakin's character arc into this trope. His desire to save everyone and do what he thinks is right continues to endanger him and others as his morality and unwillingness to compromise his principles highlights an underlying selfishness to him. His fall to Darth Vader is much much more believable than in the prequels because of this tragedy.
• Video Game Movies Suck: In-Universe.
  • This was the subject of Marcus's Video Game Movies - Why They Always Suck video. He notes the problems come from many places: sometimes it's the game's story-line not being all that good, sometimes it's the people adapting not understanding why the story worked, sometimes its that a film has less run-time than a game to tell the story and sometimes it's just that stories formed for an interactive medium like gaming don't work in a non-interactive one like film. Though Marcus also discusses Castlevania (2017) (Castlevania's second season having premiered before the video was released) and all of the reasons why it works and so many others fail. In particular, he credits the creators having a love for the series and an understanding of how to properly tell a story with the lore given, as well as having far more time given to tell the story rather than a 2-3 hour run time.
  • He considered Pokémon Detective Pikachu to be the first aversion of this trope that he's seen so far (though he considers it more "watchable" than outright great), as he enjoyed the world-building, realistic but faithful take on the franchise, and Pikachu himself. He even states that he'd actually like to see more sequels of this film in the future.
• Vindicated by Historyinvoked:
  • In regards to Black Widow in the MCU, Marcus didn't like Scarlett Johansson at first during Iron Man 2, but feels that she comes into her own in the later films.
  • Inverted with the Ant-Man films. Marcus initially felt both were alright movies, but as time went on, he grew to hate them.
  • In regards to Aquaman (2018), Marcus initially despised the film, to the point where one of his channel's jokes was when he disliked a movie, he'd end by saying that it was "still better than Aquaman". When he reviewed the movie a couple years later in mid-2020, he was shocked to find that despite still finding a number of things in it to be pretty dumb, he actually grew to really enjoy the film.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: A minor gripe that Marcus had with Pokémon Detective Pikachu is that a lot of what Ryan Reynolds says as Pikachu sounds more in-line with what he'd say as Deadpool, and isn't very appropriate for a kids movie.invoked
• What's a Henway?: To illustrate a point about how it's confusing in The Hobbit that the 13 dwarves are all constantly being shown and the viewer can't possibly keep track of all of them, Marcus shows one of the dwarves on screen and asks the audience to say which dwarf that is.
  Marcus: His name is Bofur. BOFUR DEEZ NU-
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The aversion of this is one of the reasons why Marcus thinks the Saiyan and Frieza Sagas make up the best part of Dragon Ball Z. He finds the two arcs to be tightly written and planned out, as opposed to later arcs where Ass Pulls are more common.invoked
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Marcus's In-Universe viewpoint on some of the costume design in certain films.
  • Marcus found the first Spider suit in The Amazing Spider-Man to "[look] like fucking shit". Averted with the sequel where he saw it as the best looking Spider suit out of all the movies, including the MCU films.
  • Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts movies looks completely ridiculous. Marcus brings up that he looked rather normal in present day Harry Potter and during the flashbacks, so it just makes how he looks in the films all the more outlandish.

---