YMMV / Atop the Fourth Wall: The Movie

• Continuity Lock-Out: This film serves as a follow up to To Boldly Flee, so the events of that have heavily plot-relevant impacts here. Anyone who hasn't seen it or the other Channel Awesome Anniversary specials might be confused about what Linkara and the others are talking about, such as the Plot Hole, the Executor, and Mechakara's involvement in those events. Although the anniversary specials were referenced in Atop the Fourth Wall previously, this film almost makes them feel like they are required to fully understand the exact context.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Cinema Snob's extended presence and comic relief role naturally aged badly after Brad Jones's relationship with ex-Channel Awesome creators broke apart, but the scenes where he and Lupa share screen time (such as flying a fighter together as Snob sings "The Heat Is On") come off especially bad as Allison Pregler reacted more strongly than most, deleting all their collaboration videos on her channel.
• So Bad, It's Good: Though the film hasn't been spared the same sort of criticisms that Atop the Fourth Wall storylines and Channel Awesome films in general have gotten, some feel it has enough quirks that its critics see it as entertainingly bad and enjoy it in that respect. Quinton Reviews in particular judging the film this way has gone over well with Lewis, who's since become cordial with Quinton and collaborated in several of his projects.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Comicron-1 looks really fake compared to the show, which is not helped by the poor lighting and textures used during these sequences or the abundance of dramatic flyby shots that intensify these issues.
  • The sets leave a lot to be desired. For instance, the bar at the beginning has a bookshelf off to the side; the bridge of Comicron-1 looks desolate and made of cardboard; and the space station's control room is clearly someone's basement (which is lampshaded since it's a Call-Back to To Boldly Flee).
  • The chroma-keying fares no better. This is obvious during all the scenes in the engine room, which look like they came out of something from the mid-'90s with very obvious artifacts around the characters.
  • The effects used for Mechakara's torn up face and later, his endo-skeleton, look worse than the CGI on display. The latter simply being a classroom skeleton model painted silver, with tin cans for shoulders. It's really disappointing compared to the makeup in To Boldly Flee.

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