The Nostalgia Critic and The Wall

[@cloudyquartz1825]

the funniest part of the og review was doug saying the wall was "a little full of itself" while standing in front of a hall of giant framed posters of himself and his reviews and it wasn't even intentional

[@Kerim9991]

The whole studio looks like a tribute for himself

[@cloudyquartz1825]

@AT Productions no, those are definitely channel awesome posters. see there's nothing wrong with having art of stuff you're proud of, i just thought the juxtaposition of him saying that and spending the whole review calling the movie self-absorbed and being surrounded by posters of himself was funny. hell, i have copies of art i've done

[@THEmuteKi]

@AT Productions see I would have said Ready Player One myself...

[@JacobMcBaggins]

@@THEmuteKi amusingly, I heard the RPO novel had way MORE Spielberg worship, and he made the screenwriters take a lot of it out of the film

[@bean6803]

@AT Productions - the suicide squad one thats fully in frame during that scene is the poster made for his review of suicide squad. Not fanart.

[@flyingteeshirts]

This video is just such a love letter to Doug Walker's The Wall

[@Fionor01]

That's savage! Bravo!

[@JackedThor-so]

Slow clap for that one! 👏 👏 👏

[@SavageGreywolf]

especially the ending. XD

[@canaldofrank7122]

noice

[@mattl.6272]

Fatality!

[@darraghtate440]

I remember reading something on Twitter that really stuck with me - "I want to have the confidence Doug Walker has when he calls a movie unfunny and in the next second he does a skit ".

[@soupalex]

savage

[@gregxcelente4271]

that made me fucking bust laughing

[@thestooshie]

@@DayanaAoM a good joke doesn’t need a big budget

[@soupalex]

@@DayanaAoM yeah, doug's stuff is unfunny completely independently of the size of his budget

[@Yawyna124]

@@DayanaAoM Right, which is exactly why we have Monty Python and the Holy Grail being considered a classic of comedy cinema despite its budget not being massive, even for the 70's, coming up to about $2,000,000 in modern day currency with an extensive amount more put into the physical act of production than any of Doug's videos and not necessarily too much more in the writing department for what is capable for a human being. Doug has been writing for 13 years now, plenty of time to actually become a good writer.

[@karlaeickhoff3594]

I think I might have finally realized how Doug is able to say all this stuff about The Wall and then say with a straight face that he liked it and wrote a love letter to it: it's because he really likes the music, but thinks the meaning is mostly superficial to the music. He doesn't realize that he's criticizing an art film which uses music to convey its story--he thinks it's a jukebox musical which uses a bare-bones plot as an excuse to deliver good music. He makes these kinds of weird, baseless takes all the time, it's foundational to his style, but it usually doesn't offend that many people because you can chalk it up to whatever layer of ironic humor. The reason it failed so spectacularly this time is because it was based off of such an egregious misinterpretation of genre: THE WALL IS NOT MAMMA MIA.

[@myujmes]

this is exactly it and reading it makes me want to rip my hair out

[@maddieb.4282]

EXCELLENT comment, I think you nailed it.

[@tonycampbell1424]

The guys who gets mad at Rage Against the Machine for "getting political instead of just playing the music."

[@gerinight6838]

You're right, Mamma Mia is much more serious and a bleaker examination of a persons life

[@PhileasLiebmann]

Holy shit, you are right. Fuck, that's even more infuriating.

[@nooteloo]

14 yr old me: spends 50ish mins watching Doug Walker review a movie I didn't bother watching 24 yr old me: spends 50ish mins watching Dan Olson review a Doug Walker video I didn't bother watching

[@squidcultist0022]

Character growth

[@isaacleguin2171]

oh, how the turn tables

[@jose13neo]

Biggest babyface turn of all time

[@aparadise.9717]

What happens at 34?

[@VaporeonEnjoyer1]

@@aparadise.9717 Creating your own reviews of Dan Olson videos that you didn't bother watching.

[@Cheezbuckets]

“Yeah, school sucks, stop whining about it,” is a pretty ballsy take from a guy who wrote a song whining about how Twitter sucks.

[@dracocrusher]

I'd honestly like to give Doug the benefit of the doubt and say he probably was just thinking of ways to fit funny lyrics into the song and just thought that changing the lyrics to be about Twitter was just funny without giving it too much more thought. But it's also like, just on a basic fundamental level, man..... That idea does not go with his other ideas about what's not important or handled properly. "Is WWII with monsters too silly" doesn't really work when you took a song about fascism and turned it into a song about Twitter arguments. It's just such a Doug thing to be so focused on trying to work jokes in that he doesn't even realize how hypocritical that makes his actual review.

[@cyanmanta]

Nobody ever accused Doug Walker of being too self aware.

[@AnakhaSilver]

@@dracocrusher I think you give Doug Walker too much credit, given the Change the Channel incident that saw the Channel Awesome site gutted for a large part.

[@dracocrusher]

@@AnakhaSilver Change the Channel honestly does prove my point a lot, if you read through the Not So Awesome document Doug doesn't really come off as someone whose that.... I guess I should say thoughtful...? He's egotistical, sure, but he just wants to make dumb jokes out of whatever he can. Like if you watch their first viewing videos, it's pretty clear that the first ideas they have watching a movie are basically the ones that stick. It's kind-of nuts how often Rob will just say a joke in the moment and then it'll end up in the review as-is word for word. And that HONESTLY feels like it explains a lot of this, doesn't it? Like it really does seem like they were just watching the movie at the school part and Rob was just like "Yeah, fuck highschool!" and that made Doug laugh, so he put it into the review and worked the WWII joke around that one. That might seem super weird, but that's literally the level of thought we're dealing with here. And then once they had the script ready they just got cameos together and went through all this effort as usual without questioning it.

[@rotomfan63]

@@dracocrusher One critique i saw on another video was how if in kept in Run Like Hell he could have changed the lyrica a bit to be about two people yelling at each other on twitter. The guy even did a 10 or so second proof of concept. Idk who made the video any more if i or someone else finds i will do an edit

[@Jupiter065]

It's like a man spent weeks and employed dozens of people to build a huge, spectacular machine whose only function is to shoot the man in the foot

[@HoJoXo]

And it's really just an uzi on a pullstring.

[@chuckthunder781]

@@HoJoXo I think that's a good way to describe Doug's entire career as a creator and reviewer

[@charleswood2066]

Which he did specifically so you would buy the companion album... of him shooting himself in the foot 15 more times.

[@T33K3SS3LCH3N]

This isn't just a simple shot in the foot anymore, but a meticulous execution of each individual toe.

[@JustKrin]

This is just a glamorous Rube Goldberg machine that contains fireworks, lights and explosions just to end on a brick falling onto his foot

[@sydssolanumsamsys]

its truly baffling how doug over-literalizes so much- until its actually supposed to be literal. during the fascism scene, a scene so literal it explicitly refers to "queers" and people who "look jewish," he reads this as... "yeah well that doesnt really mean anything, does it?"

[@TaCo0oCaT]

Do you think this is because he thought it sounded just like a modern politician he's seen? Because that would be scary

[@Taylor-gb5gf]

I do honestly think he views Hitler as a reference you make when you want to win an argument and not like an actual person

[@motalux]

also might have something with Malcom (the black guy in the NC vids) apparently being one of those "facts over feelings" types

[@Arian545]

Guy dressed as a fascist telling his followers at a rally to put jewish people, gay people, and black people against a wall: "hmm, I wonder what they meant with that"

[@NeonValleys]

I don't see that as literal tho because as an actual fascist we don't target those things we target those who "actually are Jewish" and who "look queer" 😊

[@wendynerd1199]

Doug: This movie is completely devoid of subtlety Also Doug: This movie is so vague I don't get it.

[@maximeteppe7627]

what he means is that the symbolism is clearly on display - rather than hidden in the background - but yeah, clearly he is unable to interpret or connect any of it.

[@PMelling2293]

This man didn’t get the very basic visual metaphors of Disney’s Hercules (featuring concept art by Gerald Scarfe, the guy behind The Wall’s animations). The Wall wasn’t going to threat him any better.

[@Nosmo90]

@@PMelling2293 Can you expand on what Doug didn't get about Disney's Hercules, please? I'm unfamiliar with that video.

[@ColeYote]

Doug: this film is whiny and Roger Waters doesn't care about other people's problems Also Doug: (uses entire song to moan about people on Twitter not liking him without even slightly attempting to link it to the film he's criticizing)

[@maximeteppe7627]

@Nate Clampitt quite probably. the tragedy being that good comedians come up with jokes that actually make sense while accurately expressing their ideas. That's their job. Otherwise you're just telling jokes on the school playground.

[@jeffh6516]

"Cringe. There's no other word for it. This makes me cringe. It's embarassing." It must have been tough deciding where to put this line.

[@willnash7907]

Top tier comment.

[@rabiasaif7008]

Yeah, no kidding. What a cringe-ass video. And from a grown-ass man, too, which makes it doubly embarrassing.

[@Ehh.....]

It would have slotted perfectly into the Video's title Imo. Or at least the Thumbnail.

[@Josearnaldomanuel2]

He could've put it at every other sentence and it would've fit. I guess the challenge was where to put it best because if he overused it, the impact would've been less.

[@erikbihari3625]

@@Josearnaldomanuel2. still, we can't complain about the final product.

[@NA-ys9ib]

My favorite part is Dan explaining as kindly as he can to Doug that WWII exists beyond being part of Captain America's backstory.

[@jessehenderson2967]

Gold. I found gold.

[@doctorwholover1012]

Dan: "now, Doug, I need to remind you that this historical event mentioned in this piece of media is a HISTORICAL EVENT, not a fictional one, and thus actually happened, to real people, who were affected deeply by the reality/consequences of that event. This *shows picture of mad max* is fictional, and this *shows picture of movie about WW2* is a real historical event. Write that on the board 50 times before you leave."

[@morganqorishchi8181]

Dan trying to explain that WWII's effects were felt even after WWII ended reminds me of my high school World History professor trying to explain to a jock that goths, emo kids, and Visigoths are unrelated concepts.

[@hedgehog3180]

It's always so bizarre to me that people can be so disconnected from WWII when to me it's always been extremely close to home, both sides of my family was in the resistance and my granddad told me a lot about it. At the same time my mom's side of my family was tremendously shaped by her mom's trauma from being the kid of a high ranking resistance member during the war. I know it's at this point 80 years old but it's always felt more like 20 years ago to me, something that happened in the past but only just and a thing that people were still constantly talking about. It's like it hasn't quite receded into history yet but is still part of the lives of the people who are alive right now. Some of it might be location, it's probably also just closer when you live in mainland Europe. But all of this just makes it so weird to me when people seem to be mostly unaware of it, or don't really conceive of it as a real thing.

[@JustKrin]

Also the fact that Doug's knowledge of WWII begins and ends with the Holocaust. Yes Doug, jews were killed during that time period but also more than half of Europe was left scarred beyond reason, not to say of what was happening in Asia. Why does he think is called WORLD War?

[@anatolevilbois9210]

I'd never listened to the Wall before, but I did after watching this video, and the way Doug mangled When the Tiger Broke Free genuinely did not sit well with me. I wonder how deeply, catastrophically irony-poisoned you have to become to parody the strangled cry of rage and sorrow of a man crying out for his father, almost reverting to the child he was in his powerless anger, as just being whiny. What a bleak world he must live in, where sincerity and rawness need to ne derided, belittled. What a bleak, uncaring little man.

[@aliencafe]

He’s the type of person that sees someone experiencing an emotion on a deep level and immediately wants to call them whiny. To him, the only valid emotion to have is blind rage at something you consider to be slightly wrong

[@7r3v0r]

and this guy made a career out of pretending to get super emotional about his video games.

[@austinroundsgallery83]

I bet that's not the *only* little thing about Doug, lol.

[@teetee1640]

This video also made me watch The Wall, and it made “the review” even more disgusting to me. Like it’s fine if you disagree with the film’s messaging or dislike the movie, but to dismiss everything at just whiny without even understanding it is so infuriating.

[@JohnGardnerAlhadis]

"Irony-poisoned" is my new favourite word, thank you.

[@CodytheVictorian]

The funniest thing about this is Walker calling Roger Waters a selfish, whiny asshole when the whole purpose of the album was Waters examining himself to find out WHY he was becoming such an asshole. The inspiring incident for the Wall was Waters spitting on a fan in disgust at a concert. He was horrified by his action and more horrified by the fans EXCITEMENT at being spat upon which led to Waters basically putting himself on the therapist couch for the album.

[@oof-rr5nf]

that's fascinating

[@doctorwholover1012]

Yes! One of my parents grew up in an abusive household and listened to Pink Floyd as a coping strategy (being a similar age to roger waters + experiencing a lot of similar things) as soon as the album was available, and I grew up hearing it constantly around the house. I was talking to them about it the other day after my therapy appt and said something like “I think it’s kinda depressing how people of your generation didn’t have access to mental health services and were just kinda expected to Keep Calm and Carry On, like, sometimes I think that ppl ur age didn’t go to therapy they just waited for someone in their age bracket to become a musician, make an album about their trauma, and glean as much emotional support as possible from it before going back to suffering internally” and they just looked at me like 👁👄👁 It’s like, sometimes I come back from therapy and talk about it w/my parents and they’ll say “well when I was a kid (insert fcked up thing happened) and that was normal and fine!” And I’ll look at them and go “👀 no. it wasn’t. You didn’t deserve that. They shouldn’t have done that to you. Your feelings about it were and are valid, and you deserve to be able to feel/discuss them without fear of worse retaliation.” And they’ll like, scoff?

[@TheBonkleFox]

It's ironic. Doug has become the exact kind of person The Wall was written to warn about, and yet he possesses zero self-awareness.

[@CodytheVictorian]

@@TheBonkleFox Personally I think that's WHY he missed the point so much, If he saw it for what it was, he would've seen himself.

[@protodvd]

@@doctorwholover1012 For the sake of my curiosity - what, in words, were you trying to get across with those emoji after the first paragraph?

[@gbeaudette]

Never before have I realized what a harsh burn "incurious" is.

[@connorgibes709]

"Fundamentally incurious" Any insult becomes worse when it's ascribed to you on a basic level

[@ConvincingPeople]

It's the perfect blow because merely not knowing or understanding things, as implied by calling an opinion or a person "ignorant" or "foolish" or even "stupid," suggests that the problem is ultimately one of a lack of sufficient information or comprehension. At worst, learning new things and processing them effectively might be hard for such a person, but a patient friend or mentor can help with that; in fact, they may have a hunger for knowledge that they had never before had a chance to feed. Contrarily, an incurious person may well be fairly intelligent and well-educated, but there is a fundamental flaw in their character wherein there is simply no interest in expanding their horizons, of becoming less ignorant and more open to unexplored possibilities. This, to me, is a horrifying thing to be.

[@thatkidwiththehoodie]

@@ConvincingPeople it’s the difference between not knowing and not *wanting* to know.

[@NightSkeptic]

I'm working on a project I hope people will like. I am now scared to death that I'm on any level like Doug.

[@thatkidwiththehoodie]

@@NightSkeptic the fact that you’re worried about that at all shows you’re already doing better than he is.

[@5ft4inprotagonist24]

my favorite thing bad film reviewers do is complain about a movie's lack of subtlety and then proceed to completely miss the very obvious points being unsubtly shown to them

[@MysteriumArcanum]

A lot of people who do reaction videos are like this too. In particular people who react to One by Metallica. They're always like "omg this is so sad and messed up" and then at the end they complain that they didn't get it. Even though the message of the song is about as subtle as a mortar blast to the face

[@robertluong3024]

I hope you've seen Dan's video about Annihilation, it is so beautiful, I love it. It's about too many KZbinrs engaging too much with the literal.

[@wadespencer3623]

@@robertluong3024 We need to trick Doug into reviewing Annihilation so that Dan has to talk about that too.

[@Elmo9001]

I genuinely don't understand how Doug went from sarcastically saying "School is evil because it prepares you to get a job, how awful!" but also "School doesn't teach you about taxes or mortgages or job interviews, just useless stuff like algebra!" because... that means that even his basic, misguided surface-level criticisms are completely contradicting each other?!?

[@Doubtfulgrace101]

What we have to understand about Doug is that he doesn't actually believe that there is any struggle in school that can't be overcome... unless it's other kids comparing him to the cartoon character Doug to the point of continuing to angst about it into his mid 30s.

[@kelseyh3255]

I also like that Doug Walker considers algebra "useless", even outside of my math-intensive job I use algebra to scale recipes when I'm cooking

[@Raidmasterprod]

@@Doubtfulgrace101 It would have been truly awesome if in "We need more Victimization," the theme from Doug played and he shat his pants right there. Well, GROW A PAIR OF DAMN BALLS YOURSELF, DOUG. Pissing your pants because you were compared to a cute cartoon character, when Eric Cartman existed at the same decade! For the record, as someone who entered school in the late 90's when South Park premiered who shares the same name as that psychopath, it's a genuine miracle that I wasn't compared to Cartman until recently, when a dumb shit right-wing gun nut mocked me and said "You're Eric Cartman, with his small penis!" *BIG eyeroll* Maybe if I were a child, a lowbrow attack like this would have hurt more than it did as a fully grown adult.

[@Traumafreak11]

I've thought about this too hard and I've come up with a few reasons for this. 1) Doug forces comedy in all of his reviews even at the expense of saying something focused, meaningful, or relevant. 2) he committed to this long form re-creation of The Wall, so he had to pad runtime by filling in whatever the hell he could say about the subject matter even if there are contradictions in his messages. And most importantly 3) he refused to engage with The Wall on its own terms, and if he had taken the effort to really get to know the movie on multiple open-minded viewings, he likely could've had enough honest and perhaps genuinely funny content to fill up the runtime. He has and continues to be just a hack.

[@DarklordKermit77]

no im pretty sure he was doing the second bit sarcastically

[@acehealer4212]

I, too, write love letters telling the recipient that they’re whiny and full of themselves.

[@fernandoc5536]

Is this the fabled "tsundere"?

[@acehealer4212]

@@fernandoc5536 “I-it’s not like I liked your movie or anything, b-baka!”

[@Abahple]

That, or it's the equivalent of someone getting rejected, and then turning it into "Oh, yeah? Well you're not even that hot, I was just hitting on you out of pity!"

[@theomegajuice8660]

Roses are red Violets are blue You should smile more Then maybe I'd like you

[@unblorbosyourshows9635]

I mean, I have conflicted feelings with a lot of my favorite stuff

[@meddle98]

The overwhelming sense of dread I got from enjoying the first 8 minutes of this video and then suddenly realizing that I'm about to be subjected to Doug Walker

[@hankwicklund2182]

One never watches Doug Walker. One is only *subjected* to him.

[@UnfortunatelyTheHunger]

the cheese trap scene from kill la kill alone, has elicited more laughs from me than anything doug has made the past 8 years

[@eater_of_garbage_]

Doug walker jumpscare

[@josephkolar3443]

Roger Waters: sings a song explicitly about the child abuse he and his classmates suffered. Some internet guy 40 years after the song and 60 years after Waters’ schooling: Everyone thinks school sucks! Stop whining and pandering!

[@lanterns_glow]

The critic that is

[@hairohukosu433]

@@lanterns_glow "The critic" didnt write the script

[@ill232]

He also doesnt seem to grasp the idea that his experiences in education in the late 80s are not equivalent to the experience of someone educated in the mid 50s.

[@lanterns_glow]

@@hairohukosu433 then who DID

[@bozotheclown1142]

"Ugh, come on, 1950's British education was just like 1980's American education!"

[@confoglclips4865]

"The problem with using Fenna's horny edgelord steampunk furry OCs" felt like the verbal equivalent of watching someone load a shotgun before using every shell on a single target. Brutal.

[@spark154]

It's even more impactful when Dan by his own admission has no clue who Fenna is. But his art (as art tends to do) exposes his true self by just looking at it.

[@maddieb.4282]

@@spark154this response really made me laugh. So true

[@_BatCountry]

This analogy made me laugh so hard

[@reveriewisp]

43:25 for anyone looking to experience this multiple times

[@WobblesandBean]

I mean, where is the lie, though?

[@LilDeuceDeuce]

I have not seen The Wall. I have not seen Doug Walker's The Wall. Yet I still have an endless thirst for meta breakdowns of Doug Walker's The Wall

[@foreignpaul]

JAR Media's podcast took a dump on it for over an hour. It's pretty funny.

[@lowpolyzoe]

Yep that's why I'm here too

[@nhagan001]

I have many media like that. I don't think I have played nearly as many video games as I have watched reviews of them by various streamers.

[@americanherstoryx]

Seriously this must be how people in the early 2000s felt when they saw The Room. It’s been a year and a half and I’m still ecstatic to see another video on it

[@TindraSan]

same

[@MakeVarahHappen]

"Is world war two with monsters too silly?" Doug, the most famous giant monster of all time is literally a metaphor for the end of the war.

[@KirbyLinkACW]

Literally what I was thinking!

[@cl8804]

DOGzilla??

[@paultapping9510]

Prog-Zilla, if you will

[@PyckledNyk]

Cthulhu?! /s

[@EmpireAnts42]

@@PyckledNyk Godzilla

[@epicjoyfulcreations4580]

I’m sure Doug making a “satirical” song called “We Need More Victimization” only had to do with his criticism of The Wall. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Not-So-Awesome document which called him and his friends out for blatant mistreatment of the female members on the site and hazardous negligence on their film sets. Nope, nothing to do with that at all.

[@qwellen7521]

And that wasn’t even the worst thing in the document.

[@Joe90h]

I mean, it's not like they made an official statement that amounted to "We're sorry they felt that way, but please be nice on the internet pls oh and oops we totally outed which now deceased member of our channel was a sexual predator by badly editing an image of some DMs!"... Channel Awesome is a mess, and that it still has defenders baffles me.

[@Alucard-A-La-Carte]

He and folks like The Cinema Snob are ALL ABOARD the "I'm not racist/misogynist/phobic, I just hate PC culture" train. They are ONE mean tweet from going full alt-reich and BLAMING "culture war" for it.

[@josephineparsons78]

@@Joe90h wait what?

[@Joe90h]

@@josephineparsons78 Don't want to get into the specifics as reading it all yourself is recommended if you're curious enough and have a couple of hours to sink into the topic. There are probably more videos on KZbin covering it than Nostagia Critic 'reviews' by this point.

[@noiseformusic]

if Dan Olson ever publicly called me "incurious" I would simply blink out of existence

[@holliebrokaw3716]

FUNDAMENTALLY incurious That hurts so much worse somehow

[@tatehildyard5332]

If someone said that about me, I’d be done. That’s it, I’m going into the woods. It’s been a nice ride

[@FernandoZamudioVideoEditor]

honestly that sentence hunts me haha

[@DAsrada]

I've been called incurious and "rather shallow", the thing is I absolutely acknowledge that I'm just...well, a Cali bodybuilder actor. I'm a jock. I don't pretend to be anything else. I don't demand people take me seriously. I'd be perfectly happy starring in schlock like Attack of the Killer Giant Murder Hornets if it gave me a nice paycheck. Doug Walker likes to think he's a serious man who can make serious projects.

[@Tailon76]

​@@DAsrada this comment about openly being a shallow person shows more introspection and capacity for understanding the viewpoints of others than the entirety of Doug's The Wall so I guess make of that what you will

[@TalkingVidya]

There's nothing more ominous than a whole segment just called "Doug"

[@Stephen-Fox]

Even if it was about the cartoon that would still be ominous.

[@starsINSPACE]

@@Stephen-Fox lol

[@seekittycat]

/whistling theme song intensifies

[@100billionsubscriberswithn4]

It has such a threatening aura, especially when you know all the channel awesome controversies.

[@Alucard-A-La-Carte]

"Father...am I Doug?" "Yes, son. I'm afraid so. The doctors insist you live."

[@spinshocker]

You know, one of the most ironic parts of Doug's criticism is that he makes such a big deal about how tone deaf it is to "compare World War II to high school", only to then clumsily compare FASCISM to TWITTER DISCOURSE

[@zachflag6506]

Right after that massive scandal where Channel Awesome was accused (with tons of evidence) of cruelty and abuse of its employees, as well as a hefty dose of sexual harassment. I've seen musicals about police brutality that were less tone-deaf.

[@xXFlameHaze92Xx]

@@zachflag6506 another ?

[@zachflag6506]

@@xXFlameHaze92Xx another what?

[@xXFlameHaze92Xx]

@@zachflag6506 another scandal

[@EggheadsGuide]

The sad part is there is an interesting comparison to make with fascism to twitter but he completely misses it.

[@KeegoTheWise]

years later, i *still* can’t get over how, even ignoring the visual aspect, Doug heard a song that contains multiple slurs across only a handful of lines and thought “yeah, this is vague enough to be about anyone”

[@TaCo0oCaT]

"This sounds exactly like that modern politician, so it could be about anything"

[@monsterfurby]

I guess in a way, the slurs used in the song are meant to illustrate something; it doesn't specifically target those groups, because its purpose is to show Pink basically going "So you want me to have this power, all this power, no matter the cost to you, to me, to anyone? Okay then, then I'll use it, but I'll use it as destructively as I possibly can and hopefully destroy either myself or all of you in the process" - note that the line is "if I had my way, I'd have *all of you* shot", and my reading is that he's not talking about any specific group there, but rather lashing out at the people around him and the people who enable him in general. So there's a point to it being vague, but not in the way Doug sees it. Sure, it's not a "Pink is turning racist" situation, but a "hatred is the false escape that deeply injured, damaged, angry people turn to - including those in positions of power" is still damn specific enough.

[@leowilliamson1573]

I distinctly remember Doug playing that exact clip of the movie, slurs and all, in his review of the Felix the Cat movie about a decade prior to illustrate how "crazy" some setpiece in the cartoon was.

[@dogski2822]

"Queer, black, and Jewish people are just random demographics that have no specific historical meaning or commonalities. You could replace them with gamers and weebs, and it'd mean the same thing." -- Doug, probably

[@abbywolffe4114]

And the thing is, even if it can be about any modern day politician... that's also valid in its own right? Criticizing Thatcherism also applies to modern politicians who upheld or expanded upon Thatcherism in its aftermath

[@sneeznoodle]

People really can't see the irony in a statement like "algebra sucks, you should be teaching us how to calculate our taxes and understand mortgage repayment" huh

[@baronvonbeandip]

wOtS tHaT hAvE tO dO wItH iT?

[@SorowFame]

How have I never noticed that? That’s hilarious, gotta remember that.

[@diegomo1413]

Why do people go to the gym and lift weights? Who is going to spend their everyday life lifting heavy pieces of iron over and over? What a waste of time! 🙄🥱😴

[@agilemind6241]

​@gothicchad6293(1) kids don't spend that much time in school and it's actually a huge problem now that both parents are usually working full time. If school's job is to prepare kids of adulthood then kids should be in school 9-5 every day just like they will be at work for the rest of their lives. (2) understanding the fundamentals is crucial because it gives kids a flexible foundation for life-time learning, which everyone needs if they don't want to be made permanently unemployed by automation. (3) schooling needs to teach less "just follow the instructions" and more "understand why the instructions work" because it is only the latter that allows students to think of new ways to do things - again which will be crucial to avoid them being replaced by robots and AI. (4) parents will not allow schools to actually teach the systems behind taxes & mortgages because its "too political" - e.g. you'd never get permission to teach kids that taxes are so excessively complicated because of a century of different governments pandering to different industries and voter blocks by writing in specific loop hole, exemptions, and tax credits that specifically favour them, or that audits are biased towards low/middle earners because the rich can afford better lawyers & accountants than the gov't agencies trying to police them.

[@GentleIceZ]

I'm still stuck on "High school should teach people useful things like first aid and how to do taxes, but why are you complaining? High school sucks for everyone! Get over it!"

[@seventeenducks7212]

Nothing has ever quite highlighted the way Doug views art like him calling imagery that evokes the Holocaust “a World War II reference”

[@Winasaurus]

*Sees swastika* "HOLY SHIT is that a MOTHERFUCKING WORLD WAR 2 REFERENCE???"

[@kaemonbonet4931]

Yup

[@iwakeupandboomimarat]

it reminded me of when obscuruslupa was speaking to doug and he asked her about a joke voice she did (not sure exactly which one) and what it was referencing. when she said it wasnt a reference to any pop culture and just an inside joke she found funny he geniunely didnt understand how something humourous couldnt be a reference to pop culture. like this man lives and breathes references

[@bensmith8682]

in this day and age you can't really say the hard H word without invoking the ire of the sani-bots

[@slightlyoffensivedadjokes]

@@iwakeupandboomimarat he's like abed from community with none of the heart.

[@UFL3]

A guy who grew up in the aftermath of WWII made art about WWII with a scene where the villainous head of a fascist mob orders the execution of jews, homosexuals, and blacks, and this absolute gord’s actual reaction was “Ugh, everyone’s a Nazi to you.”

[@jadefalcon001]

"absolute gord" is a most excellent. Also, yes, all of this.

[@Kaipyro67ALT]

I feel like Doug is kind of a "Nazi without calories." Like, he's a shitty person with bad opinions and an awful form of storytelling, but he doesn't have the metaphorical backbone to actively support any of his opinions, hence why they all come off as very sarcastic, self-deprecating jokes.

[@Nassifeh]

It's not just him, there's a pervasive attitude that WW2 represented a sort of fairy tale where the good guys won. If you buy into that, it's very easy to use Nazi to start talking about anything you think of as "bad guys" without any reference to the nationalism and fascism. But it's also very easy to pretend it all went away and dismiss any criticism of these ideas set after 1945. And if anything, stuff like this gets more relevant every year.

[@THEmuteKi]

@@Kaipyro67ALT The nicest thing I can say about him is he doesn't understand fascism. But then, the fact that this project was made in the heady, pastoral days of 2019 makes me suspect that he has, a la Adorno and Sinclair, chosen not to understand it. Hence a parody song not actually grappling with the content of the source whose great message is "people are mean to me on the internet" And given that the backlash related to the way that the channel awesome organization was covering up significant abusive behavior came the previous year, I am not feeling very charitable about what Doug is trying to say here!

[@mzelk995]

couldn't agree more, but we prefer to be called gay people lol and also "blacks" is a dehumanizing way to refer to Black people. completely agree w the point you were making tho

[@cassandracole4589]

I'm not finished, but I just need to say. Walking out to a room that says 'echo chamber', filled with public facing internet personalities who work for you and several of whom stood by you during a massive abuse scandal a year or two ago is........ I'm gonna go with 'a bold directing choice'.

[@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick]

It’s easily one of the biggest Freudian slips I’ve ever seen.

[@Planag7]

And the best part is Brad still goes on double toasted and things like that to defend him

[@ccateni28]

@@Planag7 of course he would...

[@Fragenzeichenplatte]

@@Planag7 Brad Jones, the Cinema Snob? I very much dislike how he kept totally quiet on everything and acted like nothing happened. If you cannot call out the abuses at the place you chose to upload your videos then you agree with them. Seems like that is indeed the case.

[@Planag7]

@@Fragenzeichenplatte there is an interview with him one of the double toasted hosted on a live stream where he basically thought it wasn't a big deal and because he was harassed he cited against the people who did that. I completely agree him getting swatted and threatened was not cool but to buckle down it's kind of insulting... Especially with everything that came out. Korey from that channel had him on a month back. So yeah. Didn't really press the issue

[@NexusSomnia]

I still struggle to overcome Doug saying "high school" when both the film and original song aggressively make clear it's about grade school

[@ProjectXA3]

You know, I didn't even think about that part but you're absolutely right.

[@zubetp]

the connection he made was to his teenage self because that's when he felt angry about being in school. it's baffling, though, that he was like, "being 8 in britain sixty years ago is the same as being 16 in america fifteen years ago," and saw _nothing wrong with that_ lol.

[@NexusSomnia]

@@zubetp But he kept making claims about what the *film* was doing and what *Waters* was saying about *high school*, like he truly didn't see what was right in front of him

[@henrymorgan6552]

I mean the term 'grade school' doesn't really mean anything in the UK so it's not really about that either.

[@NexusSomnia]

@@henrymorgan6552 this is pedantry

[@augustwilson9633]

This video is such an earnest love letter to Doug's; I can't wait to buy the companion album that's just 40 minutes of Hat Dan firing off finger lasers

[@michaelgraham9774]

I'd rather buy that than listen to an album of Doug hating on The Wall while simultaneously trying to profit off of it.

[@daphnerogers4277]

I'd buy that.

[@kaygeo]

But is it ALSO sponsored by online data harvesting scheme Honey?

[@alisonpurgatory85]

*online data harvesting scam

[@daelen.cclark]

@@kaygeo Is it really? I wanna make sure about it.

[@Grushvak]

"Doug wants to be a filmmaker, he wants to make art, but he can't because he's a fundamentally incurious person who isn't much interested in what other people think or feel." Why did such a polite takedown feel like a gruesome murder? Jesus Christ. Please let me lead my life in such a way that Dan never talks about me like that.

[@nathanhall9345]

There's got to be an equation to learn from this. The more insightful and less malicious an insult is, the more it hurts.

[@Mantafirefly]

Because Dan is established as a person who doesn't do the angry shouty nonsense in any of his youtube videos, even for things that provoke genuine anger. Combine that with how Dan also usually tries to keep things professional and factual and then it's clear why him stepping out of that, even just a little, feels so vicious.

[@tatehildyard5332]

@@nathanhall9345 I call it "disappointed dad" energy.

[@thomasderosso5625]

A lot of internet takedowns are like someone charging at their target screaming and swinging an axe. This was a slow knife between the ribs.

[@milok2444]

incurious is one of the worst things to be, so no matter how true it is about Doug Walker, it stings

[@MakeVarahHappen]

"Building so many layers of self-protective irony that it becomes unintentionally revealing" is a line that did not need to punch through my own layers of self-protective irony.

[@LimeyLassen]

I'm just using layers of self-protective irony ironically!!

[@franksonjohnson]

@@LimeyLassen metapod used harden

[@MakeVarahHappen]

@@LimeyLassen Yes, the comment was self-referential.

[@tsawy6]

@@franksonjohnson Fuck, at this point it's Pod used meta-harden

[@guerricdeveauxv.h4261]

Still hurts bruh

[@miiimuu622]

"soldiers sent to war don't die for their country, they just die"

[@simonoliver4751]

I get chills every time I get to that part.

[@amesville]

total gut punch@@simonoliver4751

[@KeDe1606]

This plus „The boys beat the Germans and came home just in time to build the atom bombs.“ might be my favorite part of the whole video

[@fossilfighters101]

++++

[@dogski2822]

"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer." -ME3

[@ansel569]

Dan's demeanor in this entire video is what my dad looks like when my siblings and I would do something so outrageously stupid that he's past the point of anger, just bewilderment

[@carly2033]

There is a distinct “I can’t believe I have to explain this shit” vibe to this one. 🤣🤣

[@fulldisclosureiamamonster2786]

E.g.: Gordon Ramsay's reaction to a chef adding cold water to boiling water to make it boil more intensely(?)

[@yvette4948]

He’s not mad. He’s disappointed.

[@666lupine666]

No matter what you do your dad will always value you as his son and as a legit human being. Doug on the other hand....

[@bella-tt9hk]

oh my god you’re so right

[@johnvinals7423]

Doug: “This film’s not bound by characters! It’s a visual affair!” The Wall: *Is an autobiographical character study*

[@doctorwholover1012]

Doug “ isn’t it silly to put WW2 with monsters into a movie that also sings about how high school sucks, it’s childish and immature to depict those things with equal weight/seriousness” The Wall: *is an entire movie detailing a single person’s life and experiences, from their parents history, their birth, up to their current day, and therefore at least a third of the movie HAS to contain depictions of that person’s CHILDHOOD because adults don’t pop into existence fully formed at 21 from nothing*

[@lazulitrueblue]

@@doctorwholover1012 I’m late to this, but don’t forget: Also Doug: *Makes a… whatever you call his abomination against The Wall, despite being one of the most popular childish/immature reviewers on KZbin, with a similar sense of humour and writing to match.*

[@minastone155]

Pink Floyd’s The Wall is basically Rodger Waters’ 10,000 word response essay to everyone who ever said “why can’t you just open up to people, Roger?”

[@braydentobin5150]

@@minastone155 you have won the comment section, congratulations

[@romxxii]

@@lazulitrueblue Tell me about it. The way he rants about the Bat-credit card like it's an offense to the very characterization of Batman. Like, dude, that's not even the silliest thing an on-screen Batman has pulled out of his Bat Utility Belt, let alone a _comic book_ Batman. And the funny thing is, as silly as a visual is of Batman pulling out a credit card, it...sorta makes sense? After all, his alter ego is a billionaire who buys hotels on a whim. Why wouldn't he give his costumed persona the same purchasing power?

[@jakek1735]

"Doug wants to be a filmmaker, he wants to make art, but he can't because he's a fundamentally in-curious person who isn't much interested in what other people think or feel, and all his ideas boil down to 'wHaT iF bAtMaN mEt MaRiO?!?!'" God fucking DAMN

[@xXRickTrolledXx]

This sentence was the rapture. I’m in heaven now.

[@McCammalot]

And he said it so calmly and mellow I had to rewind.

[@cyanmanta]

I mean... yeah? He's not wrong about that.

[@Solaire_of_Astora13]

Folding Ideas eviscerated the entire career of Dough with that quote. He could have said just that and his career wouldn't be any less roasted beyond recognition.

[@Rycluse]

Low-key one of the most brutal things I've ever heard someone say of a fellow human, damn

[@neighbourhoodmusician]

31:20 - The idea that anyone could think Roger Waters is insincere is insane. For all his many faults (and there are many) he has always been obviously and relentlessly sincere in his art.

[@Wveth]

I like your comment but I want to keep the 69 likes. My hands are tied.

[@eliminmax]

It's at 70 likes now. You have no excuse

[@xXKris_DreemurrXx]

​@Wveth "THE BLEEDING HEARTS AND ARTISTS-"

[@DaMaster012]

projection | noun | prə-ˈjek-shən 6b : the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects, especially : the externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety Doug Walker really needs to look that one up.

[@SethonanGaming]

To the point nowadays unless tou are a raging tankie, best you can so ia dissociate the music from the man, or else stop listening to his music because he is a ragingasshole.

[@shadowLurker4v]

"Oh yeah? Your whole childhood was mired in the shadow of the greatest tragedy in human history? Well GROW UP, I hated school too!"

[@xXRickTrolledXx]

Doug Walker makes me want to remove my arteries by hand.

[@LynetteTheMadScientist]

That’s the conceit of The Wall. He believes his pain is Special and he wants to inflict it on an audience because misery loves company. But traumadumping isn’t Art. It’s not Art unless you can demonstrate how you’ve healed from your damage.

[@11gingin]

@@LynetteTheMadScientist i dont believe theres a connection between trauma and overcoming it, if that ever even happens. instead the wall is an attempt to use art to describe the depth of the trauma which can never be fully rationalized. i think every single thing in dougs work was just grasping at straws to imitate weird al.

[@elipse371]

@@LynetteTheMadScientist Where do you get that definition for art? I’m genuinely curious, I’ve never heard that perspective on it, that only when you overcome/heal your trauma, does something you make become art. What about the creations of people who have committed suicide, died before they truly “recovered” from their trauma, or made art during it?

[@vaiyt]

​@@LynetteTheMadScientist"my pain is unique" said roger waters never as he depicted an entire generation being treated like cattle

[@KnowingBetter]

"Certain things are going to take all week, no matter how half you ass them." I'm going to start using that in my every day speech. No matter how half you ass them. Genius.

[@mikedinunzio1]

dido lol

[@mikedinunzio1]

totally love your channel to Knowing Better, i have watched the scientology vid a bunch of time's, very informative. how did you get Tom Cruise to cameo LOL. Red Pill is also great as i also had to stop and ask myself "how many times have i been THAT guy" thanks for helping people know better.

[@RogerNbr]

hey it's my two favorite creators together

[@klausillo]

Look behind you! It's an alien!

[@christianbrown7959]

I need a film written by Dan. His lines are always devastating.

[@vitalepitts]

Hat Dan being filmed shot reverse shot thus not needing to be green screened in yet still green screened in poorly is a better joke than Doug has ever made in his life tbh

[@kamueladoe5615]

True

[@supermutantsam1160]

I also love the added touch of the finger gun bursts still appearing where his fingers would be, even when his fingers are cut off by the intentionally bad greenscreening. Just so many layers of visual comedy on display

[@zegreenemachine8160]

That’s hat Dan. The Dan with a hat. He could shoot you all up with one wave of his hands. I advise not getting shot by him. His hat contains the souls of its victims.

[@justadddiesel]

So true

[@ConvincingPeople]

@@zegreenemachine8160 And yet, Linkara turned out to be a decent human being. (Old heads know.)

[@CalebDennis1]

Doug comparing Looney Tunes to Mad Max: Fury Road somehow seems disrespectful to both of them.

[@Traumafreak11]

I didn't see the original review so I thought that roadrunner praise was gonna be in isolation. When he compares Fury Road to it I busted out laughing at the absurdity.

[@antdorf0825]

I tried to find the context of him talking about looney toons, because him reducing them to simple slap stick gags 'with little' put into them is infuriating. There is so much craft and effort put into old school hand drawn animation. What makes them work is the artistry of the animators putting subtle detail into fluid motions and expressions. Not to mention the voice actors ( well sometimes just voice actor ) and the orchestral music. Is he really completely blind to all that?

[@zbsfm]

i actually don't hate this... it's weirdly phrased and the comparison doesn't exactly work, but i think doug is right that roadrunner and fury road are both excellent and do a lot with a little. roadrunner has minimal dialogue or plot, but carries itself on great animation, great sound/music, and creative absurd situations. i think those points can also apply to fury road on some level. you know?

[@adriantallent8557]

@@zbsfm I can kind of see it. Road-Runner cartoons were about the chase. The cat-and-mouse between Coyote and the bird. There was no dialog (Coyote didn't even have a voice actor until somewhat recently). Fury Road...the entire movie is a chase sequence. They set it up expeditiously with no exposition and tell the audience only what they need to know to stay invested in the chase. In both these things the framing and general presentation do much of the work. Still, I'm not sure if I'd call Fury Road 'minimalist', despite it being 'just a chase sequence filmed in a desert'.

[@dm121984]

​@@adriantallent8557In some ways it is minimalist - we see little of the internal culture of the war boys but we see them worshipping machine parts, see them demanding their fellows "witness" them as they die in a brave act, and hear mention of them having a "half life". From that we can infer so much about the culture of the war boys despite seeing little of it between each other; they clearly live short lives, worship the durable machines they ride, and believe brave acts witnessed by fellow boys seems to result in a reward in an afterlife. The movie is using minimal details spelled out, relying on subtly to show you everything you need to know about the war boys and hinting at the rest; the same is true of nearly everything else in the movie. It shows you a slice of a different world where we as outsiders won't fully understand everything but is detailed enough to make you believe that those explanations exist. Fury Road is pretty amazing is what I'm getting at. And visually its great too with excellent attention to focusing the viewers attention constantly in action, and full of a surprising amount of colour for a post apocalypse - the signal fireworks early are a stand out 'pop' of colour early on. The road runner is similar to Fury Road in many of these ways: you never had an explanation of why the Coyote is obsessed with eating this one particular bird, you have no idea how Acme became so diverse as to sell everything the Coyote needs; the difference is the world of the Road Runner doesn't need to make sense as it's an absurdist comedy about a hype intelligence Coyote constantly fooled in his attempts to eat a bird in ways that often defy physics and/or reason. Now, that said, even though I think Doug Walker's point is actually not a bad one, the rest of the review is pretty garbage. And as I've gotten older, I look at his work that I used to enjoy greatly and see more and more flaws with both his old work and the new. Doug Walker is, as Dan puts it, fundamental incurious. He's also quite intellectual lazy, and often seems to ignore key details of the works he reviews, writing off complaints about it as being "just whining about unimportant details". He used to do episodes where he'd admit his mistakes, but it's been probably a decade since he reflected on his mistakes so openly. I wonder if he genuinely thinks it's not worthwhile to be accurate to the work he is reviewing.

[@somedipshtinthecomments2507]

Roger Waters: "The lingering trauma of my fathers death in WW2 haunts me into adulthood." Doug: "God! not everythings about YOU, yaknow! Some people have to deal with getting dragged on Twitter!"

[@PlahaKumar]

Doug was being an idiot.

[@atortarr]

@@PlahaKumar "jokes on you! Doug was being an incurious and obtuse dumbass on purpose"

[@herrklugscheiser2330]

@@atortarr Sure...

[@asimpletallarndesertraider9874]

WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE VEGAS ?

[@yannilibbes8219]

I need to hear Doug's take on Herculad

[@ROCKit2grave]

This is the calmest and most mature murder by words I have even seen.

[@nayannmartinelli300]

Dan just went full Hannibal Lecter!

[@cthulhupthagn5771]

yes. "mature". Thats the word I was looking for to describe a video breaking down a video over a year old by someone that YEARS AFTER HE STOPPED WORKING WITH THEM, he cant let go. Mature. It doesn't mean what you think it means. Now petty, childish, "pandering to the CTC lynchmob", or "being a male Lupa" - tbose do come to mind. I love all his content but this - this is horribly disappointing

[@mookinbabysealfurmittens]

Canadian. ⊂(ᗝ𓂋ᗝ ∩͜ )

[@macskasbogre133]

​@@cthulhupthagn5771 Why do you consider this pandering? Last I remember, people were canceling Channel Awesome two(?) years ago, granted I haven't followed them for years.

[@mookinbabysealfurmittens]

@@cthulhupthagn5771 Whoa, who died? Ohh, the murder. (っの_,の)ᕗ| 𒐪𒐪 ^That's a fence. Heh. But wow, you're, erm, very upset. Pull yourself together, m8. I think you'll be fine.

[@pushinguproses]

I have such a hard time understanding how Doug can want to be a filmmaker and have such a rudimentary, if not non-existent, understanding of art and abstract concepts. You can dislike The Wall, or find it difficult to watch, but to call it heartless is just objectively wrong. Also: Hat Dan. Oh you.

[@carly2033]

Arrogance outweighs competence, for some, I guess...

[@Talisguy]

I think he understands them, but he just...refuses to put the effort in if he doesn't like the work, or acknowledge that it might have more meaning to someone else. I have never connected with Blade Runner on any level beyond a kind of detached appreciation for its craftsmanship or thinking "ooh, pretty", but I absolutely understand why so many people love it. I get that there's more beneath the surface that I'm just not invested enough to get into. ....I get the sense that Doug has never thought about a film that way, has never thought "I don't like it much, I don't care enough to unravel it, but I can see why other people might."

[@AstraVex]

I think that's what I found most interesting: He's spent about 20 years making videos/movies, and he's STILL doing the same stuff that most kids used to do with a handy-cam and Windows Movie Maker. Only difference is he's just got better/more expensive filming equipment. The unwillingness to grow and rigidly stick to the most basic of formulas (same dutch angles for the same overdrawn sketches and the same bad impressions, same royalty-free music for everything, always using the camera's onboard mic for bloody everything!, etc) all because he thinks his fans don't expect better. Ironically, as Doug asked in his Cat In The Hat Review:- "Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe people don't know what's best for them, and by continually giving them the same crap they'll never know what's different so they'll just keep asking for the same crap?"

[@Talisguy]

@@AstraVex Well, there is one other difference. When he started out, he actually seemed like he wanted to be doing what he was doing. I haven't watched any of his stuff in years and I don't intend to ever again, but there was a period of time where I'd seriously soured on the Nostalgia Critic but could enjoy his thoughts on, say, the Disney films, and I think a large part of that was that he wasn't obviously going through the motions in those videos. ...It's a lot easier to forgive amateurish flaws in a work if that work feels like it's coming from some kind of place of passion, and there's none of that sense in his...I keep wanting to call it his "recent" output, but this started almost a decade ago. His post-giving a fuck output?

[@kyubii972]

Thx for your vids rose keep it up.

[@apirateoftheair]

The number of visual "metaphors" that are directly labelled in this reminds me of Ben Garrison cartoons

[@andrewcramer9200]

🤣 sadly accurate.

[@lilhonor5425]

Doug really said 'let's make fun of someone's artistic expression of their trauma surrounding world war two."

[@justme0910]

Even worse, he framed it like it was a piece about generic teenage angst that appropriated WWII imagery in an attempt to seem "deep". Because clearly, to Doug, the horrors of the war and the Holocaust are something abstract, something that might as well have happened centuries ago or in a movie, not one of the worst atrocities in human history, that is still very much alive in people's memories and that affects millions of people to this day. I'm German. I was born in '91 and I still ended up with a boat load of generational trauma that took me years to unpack. Doug treating our history and our suffering like a fairytale, like the people who inflicted it were a bunch of comic book villains is just gross and offensive in a way that fills me with rage I cannot even begin to express.

[@ems9616]

+

[@ems9616]

@@justme0910 ++

[@ethansloan]

@@justme0910 +++

[@sketchysketchist]

@@justme0910 It's even worst than that. Doug play off someone's artistic expression of their experiences of world war two as a generic piece of teenage angst trying to be deep, to then push his own egotistical agenda of everyone around him feeling like they're the victim in an eco chamber of self pity despite him being both wrong and a hypocrite. Seriously, there's a reason #changethechannel and the Channel Awesome incident caused him to lose a lot of viewers.

[@flyingcosmograma]

This video is such a love letter to nostalgia critic’s the wall.

[@pwoolcoc]

underrated comment

[@nicanornunez9787]

@@pwoolcoc we should buy this comment, to support the unsupportable

[@yunikage]

I'm investing everything I have in this comment

[@clintonwilcox4690]

Well played.

[@cragnog]

that name and that pfp, u r me

[@patrickking3124]

Can we take a moment to appreciate that Doug said the wall was devoid of subtlety then still managed to completely miss the point.

[@chaosbringer82]

I think I'm gonna call this the bad-faith catch-22 of symbolism "If I get it(or think I do), it's unsubtle and preachy, if I don't get i, it's pretentious and meaningless." like, he saw some stuff he recognised and so derides it as on the nose but anything he didn't get he just dismissed as random nonsense.

[@Fluffkitscripts]

I remember the moment it hit me that he was complaining it was too obvious while completely, utterly missing the point.

[@TortoiseNotTurtle]

​@Ultramechabotron, multiversal defendinator I mean of course he is. He needs to claim its unsubtle or else he seems dumb. If he says, "You need a smart mind to understand it" and horrifically misses the point then he seems like a fool, but if he paints it as unsubtle and pretentious, no longer is it that he's missing the point, it's that he gets it and if you don't then you fail to understand something so basic

[@unk4140]

Doug Walker saying that ANYthing lacks subtlety is one of the craziest things I've ever heard

[@erikbihari3625]

@@unk4140. Please, he wouldn't even know what subtlety is, especially if it hit him with a sledgehammer!

[@Juliett-A]

I feel like it's important to emphasize that Doug couldn't get his message across even when literally writing words on his "symbols." And yet The Wall manages to convey infinitely more while looking like a mushroom trip.

[@pande1461]

The difference between someone who takes time to consider how to make their creative statement...and someone who scribbles over the result in crayon.

[@clsisman]

Ugh, you're right, he has to literally LABEL his imagery. It's pitiful.

[@adambaryliuk3393]

@@clsismanBen Garrison inspired.

[@SchizoSchematic]

This is the most respectful and calculated aim at a man's jugular that I've ever seen.

[@xXRickTrolledXx]

>Deeply incurious and uninterested >Respectful >Wheeze*

[@liriodendronlasianthus]

Discombobulate

[@Greendalewitch]

@J N No, you were just like others back then. Internet humour was different back then and has since evolved. Doug just didnt evolve with the times. He keeps making videos that belong in 2009.

[@Shawouin]

Not really. It's just a dude's ranting about something... Jugular? Way to be overdramatic!! But that'S why this video was made, drama. And a lot of people love drama on KZbin. Especially those having difficulty creating good content. Like Folding ideas...

[@fulldisclosureiamamonster2786]

@@Shawouin Nah this was a good video. Great love letter to Nostalgia Critic's The Wall ;)

[@er1530]

Another unkind reading about Doug's "'In The Flesh' is technically about the Thatcher administration, but it's so vague you can substitute Thatcher for anyone you hate": Doug thinks that calling someone antisemitic, homophobic, etc is just...a way to smear your enemies, and not something people ever do in good faith.

[@ApolloVIIIYouAreGoForTLI]

I’m reading your comments & was so confusd for a second ”the

[@AstralMarmot]

Well said, and honestly, I don't even know if you can call that unkind. Unflattering? Absolutely. But given his ongoing regurgitation of hackneyed 4chan-level anti-"culture war" talking points, it's hard to arrive at any other conclusion.

[@paulbadman8509]

I mean, often it is?...

[@lemmingsgopop]

That is part of the defense mechanism of people who make sexist, antisemitic, homophobic (and bad) work. They are in denial and refuse to acknowledge the criticism. Doug's job description is ostensibly a critic.

[@what-uu3zn]

@@paulbadman8509 when

[@MarioDude44]

"This is Hat Dan; he's got my back." "I advise not being killed by him... his hat is said to trap the souls of its victims."

[@theunwelcome]

that hat, of course, is the safest in its class

[@AstralMarmot]

"His hat's on! We can end this."

[@antiguy360]

So what, you're saying this is some kind of Hat Squad?

[@rhaeven]

incredible

[@QuikVidGuy]

@@antiguy360 the hat that can climb anything

[@Adminn_1_ov_NEFX]

The thing to remember about Doug’s The Wall review is that it came out long after Doug decided he had done all he wanted to with the Nostalgia Critic character, retired it, tried to do something else only to not find adequate support for it, and forced himself back into the character to stay afloat. His decision to even review The Wall is completely calculated - he saw that he had success and warm reception before when he reviewed certain movies from the past in a certain style, so he assumed that if he just picked out an old movie connected to something fondly remembered, watched it while already planning to make fun of it, and applied his usual schtick with some added production value and celebrity cameo that it would work. That’s why the review seems both hastily shoved out and weirdly labored over at the same time. It’s a specific kind of jaded business scheme that could only come out of the fast-paced online video content ecosystem of the past 10 years or so.

[@gigachadbodypillow614]

Doug also just kind of sucks and is a complete nit wit.

[@CyckOne]

“It’s trying to be impressive without being vulnerable”. There it is. The perfect sum up I’ve always been looking for without realizing it.

[@sketchysketchist]

Essentially what Doug depends on for when anyone calls his reviews out for being shoddy cash grabs that definitely don't fall under fair use.

[@CrackerJack06]

@@sketchysketchist How do they not fall under fair use? Do you even know what that means? And how is not every single KZbin video made of not for subs and eventual cash?

[@artbysarf]

@@sketchysketchist oh come on I don’t like him as much as the next guy, but you don’t have to be GOOD at criticism for your reviews of things to be fair use. And in the case of his The Wall video, it was almost entirely original content - let’s not bring up copyright when creators are already struggling to do anything involving media critique under KZbin’s auto-claim system.

[@carsonspears8568]

@@CrackerJack06 I, personally, think the album takes it a little too far. What parody artist parodies entire albums? They mix and match artists for a reason. Legally, basically anything is fair use, but usually when people critique a piece, they actually engage with the ideas. He basically showed the world that he hadn't put any thought into it beyond "it's well recieved, which must mean they're sellouts". Then, he dubbed his poorly written "parody" vocals over the soundtrack, and proceeded to sell it. Im sure it legally qualifies as fair use, but holy shit... Is that the bar? I'd hate to defend someone with the argument, that it's technically legal. Plus, this guys is a third rate AVGN from a time when youtube was full of second rate AVGNs. Who's still watching him?

[@dunjunart]

@@CrackerJack06 Many people who make videos and post them to KZbin dot com do so because they enjoy making videos and/or feel they have something meaningful or entertaining or interesting to say with them. Many, *many* people do not see a dime from KZbin for their videos and do not expect to.

[@infernocop1009]

real talk though, Doug Walker with the words "Person you hate" written on his face is so unintentionally fantastic.

[@doctorwholover1012]

I hope people start replying to every tweet of his with screenshots of that scene with his stupid shit eating grin to piss him off lmao 😅

[@aarons1811]

Doug didn't listen... the wind changed.

[@Fruckert]

It's like he knew it meant something, but didn't know exactly what

[@AlexiconPrime]

Don't forget him preaching to a room labeled "Echo Chamber"... Filled with people he employs. Like I get that it was meant to be ironic but its just like comfortably dumb. Its not ironically true, its just true.

[@theorganizationxiii9765]

Holy shit is inferno cop

[@kidkap4]

Doug's response to the story is like, "Oh, you were scarred by World War 2? Your dad died? You're scared? Suck it up."

[@howareyoumoreofaclownthanme]

"Your mother was both emotionally distant and overprotective and that lead to an innate distrust of femininity? You're scared that a woman will not only be dissatisfied, she will consume you? Grow some balls!"

[@angusmarch1066]

@@howareyoumoreofaclownthanme "oh did your little tory government, villify gay people and poor people, brazenly try to quell opposition and set up barriers to stop people voting and echo the exact same sentiments as the nazis just with a quaint british accent?? Grow a pair, ya snowflake!"

[@pippip4911]

I cant believe he thought shaming a man for grieving his father would make a good joke

[@vickymc9695]

It just comes off as f*ck your PTSD

[@ghagefuoco8373]

“Lost, frightened, confused? Good! Hahahahahahaha” -I. M. Bad At Media Literacy

[@veronicakrynock4742]

Every time I watch this video, I forget that long-running character Hat Dan (the Dan with a hat) is coming, and every time it absolutely kills me.

[@cogsworther1639]

Dan Olsen calmly saying, "I'm going to have to say some unkind things," is really a wonderful moment where we get to see him politely remove his gloves before committing a murder because he wants everyone to know it was him

[@carsonhowe3071]

😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅5😅😅😅😅😅😅😅5😅😅5

[@carsonhowe3071]

😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅t😅😅f

[@carsonhowe3071]

😮😅

[@carsonhowe3071]

😅

[@carsonhowe3071]

5tttþþ

[@BeegMonkee]

"It's trying to be impressive, without being vulnerable, and criticizing something else for being vulnerable." That line resonated with me.

[@andriygriffin4782]

stood up and gave the laptop an applause at that point. Parents wonder if I’m getting enough rest.

[@thevoidlord1796]

Doug calling holocaust imagery a "World War 2 reference" is a perfect glimpse into the mind of Doug, where the only way to make media is to perpetually make surface level references and parodies of other pieces of media, thus creating an unending cycle of nauseating, painfully misguided homages that only serve to remind the audience that the thing exists, and that the people who made this movie also remember what the thing is. Hence, why Doug thinks using the imagery of WW2 is "too silly", he cannot imagine using metaphor or metatextual iconography to make a poignant moment, only to make barebones comedy.

[@pigeonfood420]

doug's the type of person to watch grave of the fireflies and sincerely go 'ugh why didn't anyone just call CPS on these kids?' or call the brother stupid for leaving or refusing help from adults i swear

[@yeenbean3052]

Man who calls himself "movie critic" doesn't understand that monsters are metaphor for fear and it's hillarious

[@hedgehog3180]

Not to mention that like WWII was not the only time that people were transported in cattle wagons, and like it happened for reasons other than the holocaust too. This is a multilayered metaphor that you can approach from many angles really but all of them lead you to roughly the same reading which is why it works.

[@JustKrin]

Also reference, I make references all the time but using that word in that context feels wrong, at least say imagery or something.

[@commandrogyne]

No this is exactly it, calling a stylistic decision intended to paralell the way children are forced to conform to a rigid and uncaring school system to the systematic dehumanization of state enemies a 'reference' in the same way you would call a mortal kombat easter egg in a video game a 'reference' is just. So weird and really serves to dowbplay the severity and weight of the former by pretending the two are in any way equivalent

[@drmajalis1583]

People who think the AVGN video was a hit piece clearly haven't seen this video. THIS is a hit piece, and a fucking glorious one.

[@EnanoPancracio]

It's funny because they're both aspiring filmmakers who found early online success and are now somewhat trapped by the character who made them famous, with every attempt to move beyond said character being poorly received. Also, much like Doug Walker's The Wall was actually about Doug Dan Olson's James Rolfe video was about Dan Olson

[@PhileasLiebmann]

Admittedly it's mostly Doug hitting himself over and over again.

[@arturoaguilar6002]

@@EnanoPancracio But unlike Doug Walker's The Wall, Dan was aware of his own deconstruction (while Doug thought he was just being funny).

[@QuietM4n]

“The Wall isn’t subtle” said Doug “And yet you didn’t seem to understand it” responded everyone. The fact he has the nuts to make a whole thing about echo chambers while the whole reason this exists is because his own echo chamber yes and’d him into its creation.

[@Daftanemone]

The fact he complains about a films runtime when all those god awful channel awesome movies are over double the length of the wall boggles the mind

[@Taikunable]

I like to think there is an extra layer of irony where Doug is actually a subversive genius and has been pulling an elaborate Andy Kaufman-esque gag on his audience for the last dozen years.

[@QuietM4n]

@@Taikunable that would be amazing. Though it’d be the most “oof” energy I’d ever seen in anti comedy

[@ToruKun1]

@@Taikunable Speaking of Andy Kaufman, Doug fucking LOVES him, and it shows in his review of Man on the Moon, where you can tell he actually did lots of research on Kaufman's life. This just speaks to how Doug is a lazy fucking hack who, if he simply doesn't like or care about a piece of media, he won't engage with it critically in good faith.

[@adrenalinevan]

Lol can you imagine if the In The Flesh segment were instead about Doug being carted off in front of the white wall room and camera by Rob Walker and Mike Michaud, shoddily dressed in the Nostalgia Critic's uniform, and being forced to insert their agenda of "everyone in change the channel just lied about us to take some innocent men down for their own careers" into a fake in-universe review of whatever.

[@cbreezy1221121]

I love how at the start Doug accuses The Wall of having absolutely no subtlety, then says the literal Neo Nazi rally scene is vague enough to be about anything or anyone

[@troodon1096]

I mean, whatever you think about it, it's not hard to figure out what message it's trying to get across. It's not wrapped in vague or dense symbolism at all.

[@micahchildress554]

Subtlety ≠ vagueness

[@doctorwholover1012]

I guess much like you can take a horse to water but cant make it drink, you can hold glasses to a man's face but you can't make him see 🙄

[@LadyTylerBioRodriguez]

Most people in England will immediately pick up the allusions to Oswald Mosley with the black outfit and even those born outside the UK can so clearly see the nazi like imagery and rhetoric. How anyone could say that is vague has to be lying.

[@lagg1e]

@@LadyTylerBioRodriguez Yeah, it's obviously very close to the look of the british fascist guy with the unadorned black clothes. For anyone with no interest in history it probably looks like a riff on hitler or kane from the c&c games.

[@ziviarich220]

On rewatch I’m struck by how … genuinely cruel it is to rewrite when the tigers broke free, a song about your dad dying in ww2, to call the guy talking about his dad dying “whiny”. Like????????

[@APPEALtoFEAR]

Doug is like that guy in school who no one liked , but for some reason everyone tolerated having him around.

[@kalreynolds5829]

@@APPEALtoFEAR I think it's more, Doug is that guy who nobody liked, and never realised that it was entirely because of who he is as a person, and that people only tolerate him because of what he can do for them. Like a rich bully, or that guy who was a dick and just rude, but owned the only xbox so you couldn't just ditch him.

[@APPEALtoFEAR]

@@kalreynolds5829 Lmfao you're funny , that's pretty creative , but maybe a little too specific to be correct... I'm just joking, that actually cracked me up. That's pretty much exactly what I said. Only with more detail 🤣

[@hannahb2306]

Idk how you can listen to that song in all its fucking heartbreaking bitterness, hear “and that’s how the high command took my daddy from me,” and conclude “eh it’s just some rich guy whining”

[@APPEALtoFEAR]

@@hannahb2306 It's not like Doug Iis great with his criticism under normal circumstances, but he was definitely reaching on this one.

[@unicornman147]

39:19 - The mind blowing irony of Doug accusing the Wall of being a "misguided ego trip" while standing next to a GIANT POSTER OF HIMSELF

[@aidanwarren4980]

And the next shot is perfectly angled to capture his face *and* his KZbin plaques. We can see where the effort went into the cinematography.

[@DaMaster012]

"Pink Floyd's The Wall is just pretentious, self absorbed, nonsensical, guileless, blunt, overly-vague whining with no story! It's not _reeeal_ art, like my skit reenactment review of Suicide Squad, or Suburban Knights, where me and my friends play dress up and pretend in my backyard, or To Boldly Flee, my three-and-a-half hour long magnum opus where I sacrifice myself to save the entire universe! And Roger Waters doesn't know true pain, like when I was persecuted on Twitter for nough reason!" - Doug Walker

[@lukew6725]

Are you actually stupid enough to not realize that was intentional?????

[@osirisatot19]

If Doug had any self-awareness, he could be one of the funniest people on the planet.

[@SethonanGaming]

Thats not irony, thats lack of self awareness.

[@brokensilence3268]

Imagine a guy who didn't live through the Blitz telling a guy who did that him telling his experience of the Blitz in his art is tasteless.

[@MiloKuroshiro]

And that he's too whiny and should "grow a pair"

[@fortunecris]

every tankie these days

[@ConvincingPeople]

@@fortunecris Yeah, but tankies have an excuse. A bad excuse, and one worsened by how privileged and LARP-y they generally are, but an excuse nonetheless.

[@Cocojonut-fp8ek]

@@fortunecris the hell is a tankie?

[@Ezekiel_Allium]

@@Cocojonut-fp8ek as I understand it: modern authoritarian communists that either excuse/defend the crimes of the USSR or say they didnt even happen in a vein very similar to holocaust denial. They are easily one of the single most exhausting group of leftists and also way more rare than people think The term is also, in my experience at least, very rarely used in good faith.

[@Fruckert]

I still find it impressive and vicious that Dan did in seven minutes what Doug failed to do in a short film; a review of The Wall discussing it's shortcomings, strengths, and the context behind the plot. All as preamble for a takedown of a mean, petty, self centered video project.

[@8Rincewind]

I don't want to simp for Dan too hard, but I think he is possibly one of the most articulate and insightful people on the platform. The thing you just praised him for, he also did for the An American Tail Video Game review. In just over 4 and half minutes he gave a relatively insightful review of An American Tail, discussing its historical context, its strengths, its weaknesses, and everything else, all as a preamble for a review of one of the worst video games of all time. I love re-listening to Dan's videos because it feels I'm being serenaded with every bit of nuance a piece of media (or its flaws) has to reveal. Oftentimes it feels like Dan is opening my eyes to the fundamental tools we use to communicate (primarily in media), like I'm not only learning a language but also learning why it is beautiful. I re-listen to plenty of KZbinrs and many of them are able to summarise a key topic to set the scene for a broader discussion. However, I don't think I've seen any other KZbinr where their context setting preamble could be released and stand on its own as a separate video.

[@andmicbro1]

I mean, all of Doug's reviews are long, bloated, and often fail to get to a real review before I've lost my interest completely. I don't think I've ever watched one of his "reviews" all the way through. The incredibly long skits that never really seem to have a point or a punchline (or if they do are uninsightful or unfunny, respectively) get old really fast.

[@zegreenemachine8160]

@@andmicbro1 something I particularly detest about reviews like The Nostalgia Critic, CinemaSins, and others is that they are so unwilling to be honest with their reviews. That ending bit where Doug says “I liked it fine” is such a lame cop out, and it irritates me so much that he didn’t have the guts to stick by his own super petty review. And when you claim that there are incorrect observations in their reviews, they just call it “SaTiRe” as if there are cheat codes to get you out of defending your beliefs. That second one really grinds my gears because It reinforces the idea that shallow, literal criticism is acceptable, criticism that enables blatant ignorance, that lets you get away with saying things that are obviously wrong, and that there are people who WANT to engage with art in this banal way without actually thinking about it critically and videos like this are rewarding people for purposefully being uncritical. Also Jesus, Doug’s video is just Hideous to look at. Saying they are subpar for early 2000s is being generous.

[@cadethumann8605]

@@andmicbro1 To he honest, I used to really like his reviews (at least pre-revival in 2013, which I enjoyed some of them before losing interest). As a teen, I felt NC was a fun way of critiquing fiction and it taught me to try to find logical inconsistencies, plot holes, and other things in stories I wrote. However, as my parenthesis stated, I lost interest in NC after several reveies of his revival. Reflecting back at his works, I find them to not be as good as I remembered. While some jokes I still kind of like, as a humble man who likes to see peoppe be at their best, I detest with how negative NC was. Not only did he just pick apart works and present them as badly as he wanted (even if meant going overboard like with Captain Planet and Full House (they may not be great shows, but man, he acted as if they were abominations)). Hell, he even presented artists like directors as straight up evil and/or idiots. He didn't present them as humans who are trying to express their vision and either made mistakes, had troubled productions, etc. When I got older, I realized just how smug and pretentious he always was. It was only more pronounced in his later works. Nowadays, the closest reviewer who has NCs style that I enjoy is Linkara of Atop the 4th wall. While he is not perfect, he at least tries to engage with stories, strengths and weaknesses and all, while making jokes here and there. More importantly imo, he is more humble and kind.

[@JaredPresleyExperience]

Honestly the biggest shade thrown at Doug was doing what he couldn't.... review the movie. Who is Doug's audience now? I remember him from the early days of KZbin. Now it's grown so much, and there's more competition. His subscription numbers really aren't that big in comparison with a lot of content creators imo

[@michaelfraser1073]

Anyone else find it interesting that Doug Walker, the public face of a company credibly accused of exploitation, intentionally mistreating workers, and a hell of a lot of mysoginy, wrote We Need More Victimzation, a song which takes the stance that if you're being mistreated by an exploitative system you need to shut the hell up, grow some balls and accept it?

[@mastermarkus5307]

I thought that was _suspicious_ .

[@murciadoxial8056]

Not only that, isn't it suspicious that he calls this entire mess 'a love letter to pink floyd's music'?, if he really thinks that then he is a legitimately disturbed individual and needs to go to therapy asap, and if that's just for the marketing then he is a despicable sleezebag that will say anything to sell his shit.

[@crapnuggets202]

Which is hilarious because the genesis of the Nostalgia Critic is an act of systemic rebellion in the form of Doug publicly, disruptively and theatrically quitting his mundane dayjob to go make movies

[@lordoftherats8215]

@@murciadoxial8056 nah mental illness has nothing to do with it, some people are exploitative and self aggrandizing assholes. If he wants to change that’s a decision he can make for himself, but not everyone that’s a dick is mentally ill

[@DesolatedChild018]

sus amogus

[@clcsqueejy04]

Calling someone "fundamentally incurious" is probably one of the harshest insults I've ever heard. Absolutely devastating.

[@electricperfume7870]

I watched this video years ago and I still think about this line. Ice cold.

[@Tama-Hero]

Nothing breaks my heart more than someone I once cared about, even as a fan, refusing to grow for their own sake.

[@wellesradio]

What in the hell could Doug Walker ever have done to inspire being "cared about" ?

[@KetsubanSolo]

I was NOT expecting seeing you here lol

[@KetsubanSolo]

@@wellesradio I mean as a teen I "cared" about Doug in the sense of "when is the next Nostalgia Critic coming out."

[@whateverIFeelLike]

@tama hero I used to be huge fan until he talked about a movie I actually know a lot about and it made me realize how hollow a lot of his criticisms are. If I didn't know better I'd swear he intentionally misinterprets movies. Regardless some of his reviews still make me crack up so I am conflicted at his lack of understanding

[@llostGD]

@@whateverIFeelLike "If I didn't know better I'd swear he intentionally misinterprets movies." Wow, I think you just summed up his whole character

[@antonioreis8394]

Doug: You're comparing schools to concentration camps?? How dramatic!!! Also Doug: Let me just transform this song about fascist propaganda into a song about twitter, I mean it's basically the same thing right?

[@gvd72]

Holy shit good point

[@TensaZangetsu1200]

@Tucker Johnson That's literally what a parody is. Reaches aren't needed when Doug is so hypocritical.

[@isaacleguin2171]

In his defense, there is a lot of literal fascist propaganda on Twitter.

[@coltonbates629]

@Tucker Johnson I agree that a parody doesn’t have to retain the same message or even critique that message in the first place. However, I disagree that what Doug did was a parody at all. It WAS a critique, Doug even says so himself. It is officially a review of the movie. It’s just so vapid and aimless that he had to put it into Pink Floyd’s amazing music to make it even a semblance of entertainment. I think that it only looks like a reach through the lens of a critiquing a parody when in reality we’re criticizing a critique, if that word salad makes any sense. Either way, half of Doug’s video is criticizing The Wall and the other half is him winging about Twitter in some weird anger-projection onto the audience and Pink Floyd’s art. Personally, I think his video is a beautiful testament to a type of “artist” who is only creative enough to destroy actually talented people’s work, and even that he fails to do without actually criticizing himself, wether he knows that or not.

[@Logan912]

@@isaacleguin2171 While true, that’s not what Doug was singing about. He’s singing about people who criticize him on Twitter because they disagree with his reviews.

[@corgisaregood]

"Fury Road has all the substance of a Road-Runner skit" is certainly a... revealing take on the film.

[@DrZuluGaming]

Maybe if Immortan Joe got crushed, blowned, fell many time off a cliff, got hit by paintings of road he made himself, got hurt by defective Acme products and kept being startled by Furiosa and Max going "Beep Beep' behind him, then yes, Fury Road is like a Road-Runner skit. Doug, what were you smoking when you did this script?

[@amiefortman7220]

I'm semi-convinced Doug thinks that Looney Tunes cartoons are the absolute height of not just comedy, but all of cinema.

[@TheLingo56]

@@amiefortman7220 He’s done top tens before and Terry Gilliam is his top inspiration/favourite filmmaker. I feel like you can very much see Gilliam’s style in Doug’s work, but it’s missing all of the nuance and wit.

[@AlexiconPrime]

@@TheLingo56 His content is Gilliam without understanding what makes Gilliam beloved.

[@amiefortman7220]

He's also cited "Amadeus" and "Ed Wood" as some of his favorite movies, but he doesn't seem to understand what makes them actual good movies. The way I see it, he's obsessed with the *idea* of great cinema without grasping the *craft* of great cinema... another way the Tommy Wiseau comparison is really apt.

[@janjanbinks1710]

The Wall is something that's very close to me personally. Despite being made about the aftermath of WWII, it resonated with me during the war in Syria that started in 2011. The image of the abusive school institution, the sheer horrors of war.... It was all things I had to face from a very young age, things that are bricks in my own wall. "Goodbye Blue Sky" might be my favorite piece of art ever made. I was once a fan of Doug Walker. His style of comedy really worked for me when I was younger and I grew out of it, but to see him so deliberately and desperately bad mouth this movie and make a mockery of it is just so pathetic. It's been years since the internet dunked on this piece of crap "review" and rightfully so, but I just felt inclined to comment

[@ChristopherRMoore]

The fact that you never once refer to NC's the wall as 'the film', but only ever as 'the video' is such an underrated burn

[@sketchysketchist]

Video still sounds too positive for what that was. It was more like someone forgot how to function a camera and accidentally downloaded it to the internet.

[@Superphilipp]

Why? That's just what it is, isn't it?

[@rabidrabbitshuggers]

There was never one more deserving.

[@imaginekudryavka9485]

@@Superphilipp Technically yes, it's a video. But I think Doug has been calling it a film, thus subtly elevating its status beyond a mere KZbin video

[@Kaipyro67ALT]

@@imaginekudryavka9485 Doug Walker has no right to give his opinion on definitions or film in general considering the fact that he thinks comedy must include misery.

[@danielheflick1529]

What sticks out to me most rewatching this is how Doug insists that comparing high school to WWII is like the most inappropriate metaphor they could have used. Meanwhile, he’s literally using explicit imagery of fascism to complain about film-Twitter. Jesus Christ.

[@MysteriumArcanum]

What do you expect? In this same review Doug constantly bitched about how vague and subtle certain things were only to turn around and complain about how blunt and in your face it is.

[@willnash7907]

But he is doing it "IrOnIcAlLy."

[@RariettyC]

​@@willnash7907 Genuinely caring about things is cringe, that's why Doug only cares about how much other people care about criticizing him

[@timothymclean]

To be fair, Doug's understanding of the explicit fascist imagery is so poor that he _literally says_ it could be used for anyone you don't like. Doug does not recognize it as fascist imagery, so we can't really judge him as someone who uses fascist imagery to complain about Twitter. Whether this is a defense of Doug or an accusation of a far worse mistake is up to interpretation.

[@ophello]

I mean…isn’t that the point of the parody, to show how ridiculous he thinks it is to compare those things? I think you’re actually missing Doug’s point, even though it’s I’ll-conceived.

[@xavierwashington7848]

I can see why my english teacher was so aggressive on media literacy and critical thinking. It was so that I wouldn't end up like NC.

[@AJKiesel]

Absolutely, this 'review' of The Wall is the best example why those things are necessary and should be taught. I was always bad at analyzing a novel or poem, but this is a dimension of missing the point I never thought possible.

[@nman551]

I understand now

[@Rfp601]

It’s weird having grown out of the nostalgia critic a decade ago and looking back and seeing Doug hasn’t grown at all

[@Billiamwoods]

There's this thing I always say that very often the worst thing to find out about a comedian or other creator is that they're not really playing a character. Doug reallt just is like that. It's funny to watch a guy misread movies and shout into a camera when you're 12, but imagine the kind of person who decides to make that into a career at 25.

[@PuzzlingGoal]

The most scary part is I can see myself watching the original review back when it was released (actually perhaps not, let's say 2017) and actually agreeing with a lot of his own opinions on it. Does 17 yo me being a shallow being with no media literacy excuse 35yo Doug for making this? No. If anything it highlights the actual problems with education that Walker talked about a full half century ago.

[@lsebastian9086]

If i have to be honest, due of the problems that happened and stuff i cant even look at Doug Walker the same without contempt

[@falolklands5475]

One thing I think Doug and American audiences miss about Brick in the Wall is that the imagery of faceless children on trains, in 1950s British historical memory, isn't so much intended evoke the Holocaust as it is the mass evacuation of English children from the cities during the Blitz, to rural foster homes where they remained often for years. That dislocation and separation from their families had a huge psychological impact. Even when I was growing up in England in the 1990s one of the big images associated with WW2 was the Evacuees: children in gas masks being shipped off to the care of (often abusive) strangers. We would watch movies about it in class. Maybe I'm off base with what Waters intended, but that was the connection I immediately made with Brick in the Wall, especially coming right after Blue Sky.

[@romxxii]

Ah, so that's where that Doctor Who episode of the zombie child with the gas mask came from. No wonder it's used as a subject of horror.

[@bettyjojoeharperre-imagina7322]

That’s fascinating and I’ll bet the imagery is meant to remind you of both the Holocaust and kids getting evacuated

[@johnvinals7423]

Also, literally one of the most famous British children's stories of all time features evacuated children fleeing the Blitz.

[@eamonndeane587]

@@johnvinals7423 That comment makes me want to Buy Turkish Delight to distract myself from how awful Doug Walker is these days.

[@darwinlp9860]

Ah... That makes a lot of sense, and reminds me of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - all four siblings get sent off to a rural home during wartime. It never clicked for me that it took place during WWII.

[@mordredt02]

Pink Floyd: “The system has betrayed the people and fascism is on the rise again.” Nostalgia Critic: “Stop crying you big baby! Buy my album.”

[@cheetonips6399]

Roger Waters: “I am not perfect by any means, I am deeply flawed and troubled but these are mine and my generation’s experiences as children through a war we couldn’t understand; and the world it left behind for us to grow up in, accepting fascist realities after we supposedly beat them to live in a free world” Doug: “Yes but how can I make it about myself and mock you along the way?”

[@LocalMoonie]

Ah a love letter to Doug walkers the wall I see

[@scottkirby5016]

comment of support for algo reasons.

[@johnvinals7423]

Roger Waters: Run, Walker, run Dig that hole, forget the sun When, at last, the work is done Don't sit down, it's time to dig another one Long you live and high you fly But because you only ride the tide Balanced on the Internet’s airwave, May you soon reach an early grave

[@JasonBeam7]

This is exactly what this conversation would be.

[@JeanMarceaux]

Replace "Yes, but" with "Whatever" and Doug's response would be 100% accurate.

[@kingcalamity6276]

I've watched this video a ton of times and the finger guns bit at the end still kills me. I just noticed that Hat Dan: The Dan with a Hat is poorly greenscreened in despite the fact that the Dans are never in the same shot

[@DaMaster012]

Hat Dan is amateurishly green screened (the software didn't remove the screen entirely, causing an aliased outline), the hat is only meant to hide his hairline, the footage was filmed on a phone in vertical so he keeps clipping off screen, the backdrop is just a shot of a house so the green screen was redundant, the acting is atrocious, he keeps looking directly into the camera like a child looking for validation and praise, his summary is disingenuous, and the skit they do at the end is unrelated, overly-long, ostentatious, and as unfunny as cancer. (Which is what makes it hilarious.) There are so many levels on which the Hat Dan joke works so perfectly to be a scornful mockery of Doug Walker that it feels like trying to follow the plot of Inception trying to follow them all.

[@kingcalamity6276]

@@DaMaster012 just reading this and giggling, so good

[@DocteurZeuhl]

@@DaMaster012 Also, the fact that Hat Dan is introduced as a "long-running character" but did not appear in the video yet, which is a nice nudge to the furry Trial itself. This is an absolutely savage way to condense most of the criticisms he has about Doug Walker's The Wall and about Doug Walker himself into a hilarious outro. The fact that, during this skit, he thanks his patrons by stating "THIS IS YOUR FAULT" made me laugh even louder.

[@Blutzen]

@@DocteurZeuhl >The fact that, during this skit, he thanks his patrons by stating "THIS IS YOUR FAULT" made me laugh even louder. Fun _Dan Lore_ time! This is because when NC's The Wall came out Dan had a few people asking him to make a video review about it, and he did not want to put the effort required to make a review (like watching and engaging with NC's The Wall several times) and eventually said "Okay, fine, if my Patreon reaches 800 members I'll do it" and then got a flood of new patrons.

[@noizepusher7594]

Well you see, Hat Dan was overseas at the time while normal Dan was back in Canada, so they needed the green screen for the distance to work, otherwise Hat Dan wouldn’t have been able to be in the shoot.

[@PuppetMasterIX]

"Like _The Room,_ it's a deeply cynical product made by a fundamentally untalented man, bored by the idea of personal growth, building so many layers of self-protective irony that it becomes unintentionally revealing." In just that one sentence, you put into words all of my frustrations with Doug as a creator better than I ever could. That was brutal.

[@calmarsden8692]

This video breaks down every single thing that is wrong with Doug himself and his view of The Wall, and summarises it all in this sentence

[@charmandyorton006]

“Hello FBI, I’d like to report a murder”

[@oscarnewman1374]

I actually disagree with it I've seen the room and whatever else you can say about it I'd argue Tommy Wiseau definitely meant to communicate sincere emotions and feelings

[@marcen12]

@@oscarnewman1374 If anything, The Room is MORE coherant. Its a bad movie but its more coherent that Walker's Wall.

[@thatkidwiththehoodie]

Too many layers of irony will inevitably fuse under their own weight into honesty.

[@bane2201]

I'm amazed Doug criticized The Wall for being too long. He made To Boldly Flee, which is 120% longer (209 minutes compared to 95) and has 100% less meaning.

[@GeoNeilUK]

Plus this skit happened in a 40 minute video that could have been done in 10.

[@bane2201]

@@GeoNeilUK Very true! Although the video would've been better if it was 0 minutes.

[@JohnDarksoul69]

damn. i never cared to know how long that shit was... imagine sitting through 209 minutes of an obnoxious doug walker movie lol

[@bane2201]

@@JohnDarksoul69 I looked it up on IMDB, I didn't watch it. I'd rather be waterboarded until it was over.

[@esprit101]

@@JohnDarksoul69 I watched the NC from 2008 to around 2012 when he retired the character for the first time. To boldly flee was released in segments on their site so you could let it run while doing stuff. It was still terrible, the skits had taken over the show years ago and the terrible CG was just too much for me.

[@Illicitpopsicle]

“Some things are going to take all week no matter how half you ass them” Words to live by

[@Jammermaker]

I love this.

[@marshabrew7447]

“busty nightmare squirrel” is a phrase that has yet to escape my mind since this video first came out

[@T-Jex]

The fact that he green screen himself over a picture of a livingroom instead of just moving the camera to a different angle really made that final gag work

[@_BatCountry]

Ha! I didn't even think of that, that really adds something brilliant.

[@Nulono]

Also that Hat!Dan is filmed in vertical video format.

[@Djarnor]

Also he messed up the white-balance of the background!

[@cappeca]

Also his arm is cropped

[@orangealice5136]

Also it's not levelled

[@meghan______669]

Now that we’re all adults, I hope that we can admit that Batman having a bat credit card is funny

[@geckovonparsley8200]

It's extra funny to me because the first Batman comics I read as a child were the original ones from the 40s and 50s, and a bat credit card would not have been out of place there.

[@santiagogallego8695]

@@geckovonparsley8200 yeah i mean batman has a giant penny but a credit card is too much?

[@Horus4302]

Him having a bat credit card is funny. But not the reaction of Doug going on for 5 minutes "A bat credit card, really?! A BAT CREDIT CARD?! They gave him a bat credit card?! He really has a bat credit card?!"

[@_xv_b]

yes. joel schumacher was clearly trying to recreate the high camp 60s adam west batman he grew up with - a series in which a bat credit card would have fit in like a puzzle piece. also, no matter how dark and serious batman is now, he is still a billionaire who spends his evenings dressed like a bat and canonically drives a batmobile, flies a batwing or a batcopter, throws batarangs, looks up criminals on his batcomputer and keeps all his toys in a batcave. the bat credit card was not an unreasonable joke.

[@chiarasulis3575]

Well, his superpower is basically being rich, so it fits very well

[@nickchambers3935]

You know that tweet that says "it is never explained how the Statue of Liberty was transported from Earth to the Planet of the Apes"? I feel like that's a pretty good representation of how much Doug Walker missed the point of this film

[@Mightypi]

I am howling

[@lagg1e]

Someone actually tweeted that. My god, I didn't expect stupidity on this level today.

[@nickchambers3935]

The tweet was a joke, it's satire of people like Doug who make ridiculous criticisms of media that just show how little they understand it

[@simons.2281]

@@nickchambers3935 Why does your comment make me think of CinemaSins?

[@FALL-LAFF-7477]

@@simons.2281 Same. But, as the previous comments, it depicts the whole internet critiques...

[@harborlarsen1662]

Funny that in reviewing an autobiographical character study, Doug has accidentally made an autobiographical character study himself. There's so many points in the video where he's clearly projecting himself and his own insecurities onto the character of Pink. Truly a disasterpiece of cinema.

[@buckleygeneration]

“He’s a fundamentally incurious person who isn’t much interested in what other people think or feel”. That’s probably the single most articulate and spot-on criticism of Doug I’ve heard. Not to mention beautifully savage.

[@lordquaz7154]

In layman's terms, Doug feels like he already knows everything there is to know so he doesn't bother with bettering himself. He is perpetually stuck in the middle school phase of his life.

[@whosaidthat84]

@@lordquaz7154 Yeup. He was also one of KZbin's 1st big names so his ego is through the roof. All his films have shitty camera work, bad sound design and mixing, and boring cinematography. He thinks his "star power" is all the audience wants.

[@FernieCanto]

"Incurious" is such a violent critique of anyone who sees themselves as an artist.

[@lordquaz7154]

@@whosaidthat84 As an ex fan it worked for me. But back then I was a dumb kid.

[@USEY0URILLUSI0N]

@@FernieCanto I don’t think Doug understands what art really is. He seems to be the type of person that thinks art is this perfect thing acclaimed by critics and is so full of himself that he thinks he’s capable of deconstruct media, when in reality he’s just a clown that watched too many movies

[@pheebs9255]

I know it's got nothing to do with Doug but "English Nationalism is just blood in the gutter - soldiers sent to war don't die for their country, they just die" is a quote I think about all the time

[@fullmetalanarchist6521]

it cuts deep into the retroactive heroacism we place on the soilders during the world wars, like nothing has been quite as harrowing as seeing veterans of those wars lamenting how they never wanted any of this.

[@hl6994]

I think about it constantly, especially being British. We are all taught so much in school and in British society to focus on heroism and bravery, but we don't focus nearly enough on the terrible waste of life. That line hit me out of nowhere.

[@trapadvisor]

Yeah that line has stuck with me and made me research and learn a lot. I didn’t know if I agreed with it when I watched this last year but yeah he’s right.0

[@trapadvisor]

@@hl6994 yeah here in America too we all live with a hero complex. You constantly see people with a gun on their hip and it’s obvious they’re just trying to intimidate people or they want someone to reach for their gun so they can “save the day”. Or they hope a shooting happens so they can be the one to save the day.

[@justine.exehasstopped5114]

I come back to watch this video every so often and every single time I say that line along with him because it's such an honest and powerful message that really resonates with me

[@dampowl]

I remember Doug saying something along the lines of, "at least Adam Sandler has enough self-awareness to stick with dumb comedy, he's not trying to do Holocaust movies". And I agree, it's good to be self aware. Anyway, Doug doesn't get the jokes in Shrek but he still decided to try and critique Pink Floyd.

[@ThePandemicvideos]

Achtcually, from time to time Adam Sandler plays in great movie and showcase his immense talent as an actor just to remind us the each shitty paycheck unfunny movie he does, is 100% a choice on his part, out of lazyness, not because he lack talent. How he can go from Jack And Jill to Uncut Gems is a huge mystery to me So again, this showcase Doug ignorance of what he's talking about. Sandler is succesfull when he try to do deep movie, he just choose to make movie about fart and fat people

[@benjamincarrillo6810]

@@ThePandemicvideos That's actually pretty simple: When he does someting like uncut Gems it's someone else remembering he has talent hiring him and then forcing him to act like a goddamed adult. When left to his own devices he decides he or one of his buddies needs money or a vacation and puts Doug's levels of effort with a Hollywood's level of budget that money or vacation.

[@onthefaultline]

@@ThePandemicvideos I kid you not: Sandler's toilet humor movies are excuses to take his friends out on vacation. He knows of the BS accounting Hollywood uses to not pay actors/directors, so hey! Might as well go to Hawaii on Sony money while he's here!

[@sambradley9091]

@@onthefaultline gonna be honest, if nobody recognized my talent as an actor often enough to give me a real spotlight, and instead casts me in dumb watered down roles, I'd also take it for free vacations

[@HOTD108_]

How did he not get Shrek? Shrek isn't a complex or particularly deep film.

[@pinkcupcake4717]

I'm reviewing this for comparison to Dan's treatment on AVGN. My takeaway: Dan harpoons Doug's inability to be emotionally sincere and utter disregard for emotions in art and it yields this sharp and devastating review. Dan is sent into an existential crisis from James's childish stagnation, which, while immature, is ultimately rooted in something sincere. Dan's loves him some emotional honesty in art.

[@Pundit07]

So basically, Dan has more respect for James than he does for Doug?

[@XanthinZarda]

@@Pundit07 In a manner of speaking, Dan can see more of himself, more humanity reflected in James.

[@lsebastian9086]

@@Pundit07 Knowing the fiascos that happened on channel awesome and the ways things are handled, i could not help but feel that

[@WWFanatic0]

@@Pundit07 I would certainly say so. I don't think he'd ever call James an intellectually incurious person. As others pointed out, the AVGN video was as much a self examination. Perhaps the most telling part is how he notes James' dedication to his family and the absolute vitriol that he (and especially his wife) get for it. I'm sure Dan has had some similar experiences of being a young film school grad, looking to make "something" or chase the career/fame/passion project but ultimately finding the satisfaction and happiness in being whatever he is at career wise if it means he can enjoy time with his friends and family.

[@Liliquan]

"Doug wants to be a filmmaker, he wants to make art, but he can’t, because he’s a fundamentally incurious person who isn’t much interested in what other people think or feel, and all his ideas boil down to “what if Batman met Mario?”" What a description. I've seen quite a few people who could also be described as such.

[@Liliquan]

But what if batman did meet mario tho?

[@GP1138]

It's like that guy in school whose sole purpose for communicating with anyone else was to recount funny moments from movies like: "hey, you remember that episode of Family Guy where the dog does the Peanut Butter Jelly Time dance???" before collapsing in laughter. Doug is that person at 40.

[@sorio99]

See, I see where the description comes from, but I don’t think that’s an entirely accurate depiction of Doug. Someone like Linkara WANTS to be a filmmaker, or story teller, or artist of some kind. The problem with Doug is that he thinks he already IS a filmmaker, despite even his best work being mind-numbingly devoid of value.

[@vene]

Just a love letter to Doug Walker, I see nothing wrong here.

[@teifan6674]

This is one of the sickest burns I have ever heard and it is not even technically an insult

[@PapaHeavy1]

Calling Doug Walker, a guy who has been in the game for over a decade, an aspiring filmmaker is such a sick burn

[@thisisawsome34253212]

He was aspiring back in 2007

[@zubetp]

@@thisisawsome34253212yeah, exactly. by the time this video was posted, ideally he'd have reached such an aspiration. his ruination of the wall is the best "film" he's ever made. i say that agreeing with every single thing in this video.

[@thisisawsome34253212]

@@zubetp A massive chunk of Doug's incompetence is from refusing to learn how a camera works and never hiring an actual crew. If I can guess why the videos always look as bad as they do, then here are my points: 1. No Camera Focusing 2. No Lighting 3. No White Balancing 4. No Color Correction That's all I've got so far. Please let me know if you can notice more.

[@Jay22222]

@@thisisawsome34253212You uh... Hmm... Did you uh... Doug good buddy, did you uhm, mean to leave the lens cap on there by any chance? “Shit!” “Not again.”

[@project-mk-ultra]

but this is not a sick burn, it's just reality. Guy refused to grow and stayed where he was decade ago.

[@samfivedot]

Dude blasts The Wall for not being subtle enough and then in his parody he slaps labels on all the visuals to make sure you understand that the flowers symbolize pity

[@adrenalinevan]

I think Doug still has a very juvenile and early understanding of symbolism in a film, where every symbol is simply a code word from the author, to hint at a riddle to be decrypted by the audience. Symbolism being a pretentious, rare technique in art, where every symbol, at least ultimately, has only one main meaning. So for a film like the Wall, where not only the symbols have many different meanings on their own and together, but also everyone being able to have their own interpretation that might give a new perspective if they shared it with a friend; Doug couldn't possibly have prepared. His obsession with films really doesn't go deep enough to watch them for their art, he only watches them for entertainment, so the only thing he can ever talk about is whether or not they entertained him.

[@peachy_lili]

@@adrenalinevan Spot on. I think the way Dan explains early on that the Wall does a typical artistic move where there are parallels and symbols have multiple shared meanings brings this point home by contrast. Doug can't understand this, and it's standard for art house movies so he was kind of doomed from the start. It's going to sound snobby but I mean, if it's not a Marvel movie he really doesn't know what to do with it. He has the brain of a spoiled 13 year old boy thanks to surrounding himself with "yes-men" for a decade plus

[@adrenalinevan]

@@peachy_lili one of the worst aspects about this for me is the fact that the wall clearly couldn't have been a request. There may have been people who wanted his take on it, but this was such unusual scale that he must have really believed his opinions would be popular. He openly admits he hasn't got a lot to say about it, so clearly him riffing on it and pointing out how understanding symbolism requires thinking, is clearly him trying to be relatable. Trouble is, he's unique in his juvenility. Most people his age are mature enough to understand the film, and most people his mental age are too young to have seen it. The review could only have appealed to manchildren.

[@flourislioness]

Not to mention when The Wall TELLS YOU WHAT'S HAPPENING it still sails over his head. The only time he applies any critical thinking is for the parts that don't need it, like the train/classroom scenes

[@adrenalinevan]

@@flourislioness Pink was literally fully dressed as Oswald Mosley and Doug called it vague

[@robinadams]

This made me rethink Doug's Moulin Rouge review, which he considered the best thing he'd done up to then, and was another elaborate recreation of a musical film with parody versions of the songs. Moulin Rouge is hyperstylised, clearly deliberately, and it arguably saved the idea of movie musicals, reminding audiences that you're not supposed to take them seriously or literally. The review was mostly Doug calling out the stylistic choices as mistakes, and pointing out that it's over the top. (And putting those opinions in the mouths of his collaboraters, which we later learned they don't share). He concluded that people only enjoy it as a guilty pleasure. Moulin Rouge being over-the-top, and The Wall comparing school to the Holocaust - these are obviously deliberate choices. You can say you don't like them, but if you call them mistakes, you've missed something fundamental.

[@alternativebassist]

Honestly that review is what sent up red flags for me too. Particularly the part where he took the piss out Kidman’s acting when she first has the duke in her room for being silly and unsexy. All I could think was: “yeah that’s the whole point?” She’s meant to be completely flustered trying to hide Christian?