This thread's trajectory is interesting.
It started out in Multimedia where users were overall rather positive on MauLer. That was when he was still coasting off the success of his TLJ videos.
Now, however, his thread is part of the Internet Famous lolcow subforum and he's just another laughingstock among many on this website.
I'd actually compare him to his buddy Sargon in the sense that they both got really big due to one particular thing (GamerGate for Sargon, TLJ for MauLer) and when they tried to branch out, their flaws became more apparent and people started to turn against them (for Sargon, I'd say that was when he embarrassed himself running for office, and with MauLer, it was his laziness when it came to putting out new scripted content and his most recent spat with Synthetic Man among other things). I'd say that MauLer hasn't quite made as much of an ass of himself as Sargon has, although the latter has somewhat recovered from his public humiliation. I think the equivalent of Sargon running for office for him would be making a movie, which I don't see happening due to his laziness.
As far as his method of reviewing media is concerned, I'd say his issues are thus:
1. He tries to act as an authority who can review any given movie with complete impartiality, which has been shown to not be the case. Jonathan Haidt has what he calls Moral Foundations Theory, and its core thesis is that intuitions come first, and strategic reasoning second when it comes to forming political opinions. In other words, a person has a gut reaction to how they feel about any given issue, and they formulate logical reasons to justify why. I think MauLer (and most people tbh) is the way when it comes to movies. There are things that intuitively appeal to his tastes, and he's come up with a list of "objective" standards he uses to justify his arguments. Not really an objective arbiter of quality if you ask me.
2. Acting like the screenplay is the only part of a movie you need to worry about, and downplaying the importance of the shoot and the edit. The way I see it, making a movie is like running a relay race: you start out with the script, which is important to get right don't get me wrong, but that's only the start. After that you need to pass the baton to the shoot, which involves bringing your screenplay to life by practicing the principles of things like good cinematography, lighting, acting, costume design, and set design. Lastly, the baton is handed to the editing department who is in charge of taking the footage shot and creating a coherent story out of sequential images, as well as making sure the sound is mixed right and the movie has a fitting score among other things. Now it's true that some movies are unable to complete the proverbial race because they fumble the screenwriting process so badly. However, it's also possible for a movie to have an acceptable screenplay but have one or both of the other departments not put in the work to carry the baton over the finish line. Or one department lags behind but one or both of the others picks up the slack so that the race is completed. For example, there are a ton of movies that may have very well gone smoothly though the screenwriting process and the actual shoot, but get hacked to pieces to the point of incomprehensibility in the editing bay, and turn out to be shit as a result. So being able to analyze how a given screenplay is brought to life via techniques used in the shooting process and how coherently a movie is edited is important for an aspiring film critics, which MauLer largely neglects.
3. Lack of perspective due to only reviewing basic bitch pop culture products. You'd think for someone who claims to be an authority on media criticism, his tastes are incredibly basic, and you rarely, if ever, hear him talk about movies that aren't contemporary blockbusters.
TL
R MauLer is fat and I would not have sex with him.
EDIT: One other error of his I should add is treating plot holes as the be all end all judge of a film’s quality. This isn’t to say that they don’t matter, but at a certain point, it gets so pedantic that you wanna slam your head against a wall in reaction to the reviewer’s obtuseness. I think a better question to ask is not “do these plot holes exist” but rather “what is gained in return?”. Take
Silence Of The Lambs for instance: I brought this up earlier in the thread, but when one of Jack Crawford’s superiors finds out about he and Clarice’s phony plea deal to Lecter when he escapes prison, he states that “there will be consequences”. However, nothing ever comes of this. This could be argued to constitute a plot hole because a rule that is established (“There will be consequences”) is broken. Now, there were deleted scenes that do show Starling and Crawford getting chewed out and taken off the case, so you may be asking why they were cut. Wouldn’t this make the movie more logically sound? It would, but it would also have killed the narrative momentum that kicked into gear at the end of Act 2 with Lecter’s escape from prison and the ticking clock where Clarice only has so much time to find Buffalo Bill before he takes his next victim. So in other words, logical consistency was sacrificed for tension. Now, you could argue that this isn’t a worthy trade off, but I think exploring whether or not it is is a far more interesting discussion than simply stating it exists.
