CinemaSins


CinemaSins is a YouTube channel created by Jeremy Scott and Chris Atkinson. The channel produces the Everything Wrong With... series that offers comedic critique and commentary on movies. As of , CinemaSins has over 8.9 million subscribers and over 3 billion video views. Its slogan is "No Movie Is Without Sin", indicating that even the most beloved and critically acclaimed films have flaws. The channel's founders have since established a stand-alone website, CinemaSins.com, operating concurrently with the YouTube channel.

History

Scott and Atkinson met in 1999 while working as managers at a movie theater. They both shared a love for movies, with Scott having developed cinephilia in college after not being allowed to see many movies as a child, and Atkinson having worked at the theater since he was a teenager. When they had dinner together, they talked over the channel. The two began to preview new Friday releases the prior Thursday after the theater closed, and would criticize and crack jokes during the early showing. On May 9, 2011, they launched the YouTube channel "thecussingchannel" which contains supercuts of various films such as "Just the Cussing" for Pulp Fiction and "Just the Spells" for all eight of the Harry Potter films, as well as four Apple ad parodies narrated by Scott. In addition to writing articles for ReelSEO, Scott founded the Internet marketing firm The Viral Orchard, and Atkinson wrote for his movie review blog.
On December 11, 2012, after a few unsuccessful channel attempts, they released "Everything Wrong With The Amazing Spiderman In 2 Minutes Or Less", which garnered over 250,000 views in the first week partly due to a Buzzfeed post. Since then, they have consistently put out at least two "Movie Sins" videos each week, and now work full-time on the channel. In May 2014, Scott started the channel CinemaSins Jeremy, in which he makes videos detailing his thoughts and criticisms about trends in films and Hollywood news, as well as reviews and unholy mashups. Two other spin-off channels featuring the Everything Wrong With... format have been launched.
In October 2014, Brand Sins was launched with content that highlights flaws in companies and in January 2015, Music Video Sins with content revolving around sins and inconsistencies in music videos. On January 9, 2016, CinemaSins started a podcast called The SinCast in which Scott, Atkinson and Barrett Share discuss various topics related to film and CinemaSins projects. In September 2018, TV Sins was created which focuses on highlighting errors in popular TV shows. As of , the channel has amassed over two billion views and eight million subscribers, and over 700 films were sinned.

Video series

CinemaSins was launched on December 11, 2012 on YouTube, and uploaded their first two-minute long video titled "Everything Wrong With The Amazing Spider-Man" by Jeremy Scott. Due to the success, CinemaSins have released seven other series.

''Everything Wrong With...''

CinemaSins main video series, Everything Wrong With..., explores a certain film's amusing, generally poor writing, acting, direction, production values, deus ex machina examples, cliches, instances that defy logic and physics, factual errors, poor visual effects, derivative premises and other content that they deem "sins." Most transgressions are awarded a single sin, but on occasion more sins are awarded for effect, and even "broke" the sin counter on one episode. However, there are times when sins are removed due to the presence of a scene which is considered exceptionally good, which makes up for the original sin, the sin counter additionally counted sins by mistake or added by the narrator.
CinemaSins has been known to show great disdain for certain directors, such as Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, McG, Joel Schumacher, Zack Snyder and M. Night Shyamalan.
Each video begins with two taglines added on the film's title card, and "Spoilers! " ); the video was then played with an on-screen "sin count" and "sin timer" throughout, and ends with a "verdict" for the film. The early videos usually featured generic verdicts like "Hell", though eventually they came to employ words or phrases that refer to the film's content, such as lines of dialogue or settings, accompanied with audio samples or snippets to narrate the verdict. On rare occasions, a film will start with negative sins because of how good it is or because of a good decision early in the film, such as not overexposing the studios' logos. Frequently, the first sin listed is the total length of the logo sequences of the various production companies involved in the film. Usually all of the sins are written by Scott and Atkinson; in one case, Iron Man 3s sins are described by the subscribers instead.
Some videos feature a "bonus round", in which additional sins are added to the count for repetitive occurrences in the film The sin count rarely reflects the reviewer's relative overall opinion of the film, so their true opinion is usually made clear in the video descriptions. These videos are almost exclusively narrated by Scott, with the following videos being exceptions, which usually featured special guest narrators:
Each episode consist of one video playing about 15-20 minutes or more, but four episodes were split into two parts due to video overruns; Furious 7 episode was also split into two videos but had the audio outtakes separated into another video.
Certain stock criticisms are used as running gags, a number of which are ironic references to certain films, such as someone/something having "gone to the Prometheus school of running away from things" and " would be excellent at CinemaSins" or "No one will be seated during the..." suggesting that a given scene is excessively boring or drawn out. Sometimes these criticisms are used in a doubly-ironic fashion within the very films that they reference, such as the alien characters in Signs being sinned for having "the same weakness as the aliens in Signs". During every movie made by a Comcast company, like Universal or DreamWorks, "Comcast" sin was always played first. Whenever a film title is mentioned in a movie, "Roll Credits" sin is played.
Movies made for children tend to be less harshly criticized. For example Megamind receives its share of sins but they are delivered in a more lighthearted manner.
"Everything Wrong With" videos are typically added every Tuesday and Thursday of the week. Videos are selected and sinned, most commonly chosen by popular demand, though usually by at least one of the following reasons:
  • A prequel film to promote an upcoming film, usually sequels, and sometimes film reboots or remakes;
  • An actor or director's prior film role in relation to the upcoming film;
  • A seasonal-themed film to celebrate holidays; or any Academy Award-accolade film to promote the annual Academy Awards;
  • A particular theme, genre or company in relation to an upcoming film;
  • In rare cases, anniversaries for the film or a particular director/actor;
  • Other reasons, through special cases if the aforementioned reasons do not fit in the criteria.
When doing sins videos that are based on other media, such as books, television series or video games, CinemaSins normally never refers to the source materials on which the films are based, instead believing that the feature should stand or fall on its own merit.
Usually, at the end of a sins video, audio from other TV shows, films or songs with similar themes or motifs will be played over clips from the film. At times, they will also advertise other sponsored products like Audible, Nature Box, Crunchyroll, Squarespace and Scott's book The Ables'', released on May 1, 2015.
Since September 2018, re-uploads of older episodes are found on YouTube, with some of the videos done by reworked sins, while the older uploads are removed.

Spin-off series

CinemaSins success had led to the production of three other spin-off channels under the "Everything Wrong With..." subtitle. On April 3, 2014, CinemaSins launched their Music Video Sins channel. On October 8, 2014, Brand Sins was launched. On September 4, 2018, a third spin-off channel, TV Sins, featuring reviews of popular drama serials, was launched.

''Conversations With Myself About Movies''

In the Conversations With Myself About Movies series, Scott has a conversation with an edited-in version of himself about a movie. The "Conversations" videos also included clues as to the next "Sins" video, as well as a few red herrings.

''Movie Recipes''

Movie Recipes is a series that makes food that tastes "exactly like the movie", usually taking elements from the movie and putting it into the recipe in different ways. The videos were put on hiatus with the final of the original entries being Scott's cameo in the Nostalgia Critic's review of A Christmas Story 2. The behind-the-scenes video showcasing the filming of the cameo featured Scott mentioning that the repulsive and possibly hazardous taste of the resultant foods was the reason he stopped making the videos. Scott retooled the series in March 2016, with dishes prepared by professional chefs instead.

''What's the Damage?''

What's the Damage is a video series where CinemaSins counts the actual cost of things damaged in a movie, with the prices coinciding with their worth at the time of release.

Podcast

On January 9, 2016, the podcast "Sincast, presented by CinemaSins" was launched. It is hosted by Scott, Atkinson and Music Video Sins writer Barrett Share. Early episodes were about half an hour long, but since late 2016 most of them are around two hours long. The format has changed a few times since launch, but generally the trio discuss a larger topic for the greater part of the episode and then round of the episode by answering a couple of questions from listeners. The topics include discussion about upcoming movies, their favorite movies in different genres, stories from the host trio's time as movie theatre employees and recasting classic movies.
On a few occasions the podcast has had a special guest, among them movie critic Aaron Dicer, storyboard artist Jeremy Simser, movie critic Jessie Maltin and the people behind the horror movie website Modern Horrors.
There is also the occasional "MiniPod", where the hosts review recently released high-profile movies, such as , Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Get Out and Dunkirk. The first half of the episode is spoiler-free, whereas the other half contains spoilers to allow the hosts to go into deeper discussion about the movie.
In September 2017, Scott, Atkinson and Share appeared at the Wizard World Comic Con in Nashville and taped their first podcast in front of a live audience. Jason Mewes and Brian O'Halloran appeared as guests on the episode.
On May 16, 2019, CinemaSins announced that the podcast channel along with its archives can be listened and viewed on YouTube.

Special Themes

In addition to the regular content consisting of news, rants, recommendations, warnings, and Q&A, some episodes will partially or entirely focus on a theme. These include:
CinemaSins has attracted criticism from several filmmakers, including Oscar-nominated Rian Johnson, Damon Lindelof, C. Robert Cargill, David F. Sandberg, and Jordan Vogt-Roberts. The filmmakers assert that the channel largely fails as genuine criticism because of its excessive and trivial nitpicking, lack of understanding of the filmmaking process, and its often mean-spirited, reductive nature; as Vogt-Roberts put it, "these guys are just trolling the art form we love and profiting from it while dumbing down the conversation." YouTuber "Bobvids" created a series of videos criticizing specific videos of the series as well as the motivations for the series itself, ranging from specific rebuttals to sweeping. Jeremy Scott has claimed that the series is not supposed to be entirely serious in terms of criticism and that most of his nitpicks are intended as comedy; in their response on June 7, 2014, Scott uploaded "Everything Wrong With CinemaSins", a self-parodying sins video that pokes fun at filmmakers and commenters who have disliked the channel as well as poking fun at the hosts themselves explaining that their videos are filled with sarcasm. The video was set as the channel's preview page and, as of January 1, 2019, went on to become their most watched video at 29 million views; a sequel of the video was made and released on May 7, 2019, and replaced the channel preview video on May 17, 2019.
On October 10, 2015, Scott created a video on his personal channel, regarding Screen Junkies and their new series "The Review Crew", alleging plagiarism of his own review format at the time due to similarities. After both CinemaSins and Screen Junkies received backlash from each other's fans, Scott deleted the video and posted an apology on Twitter the following day. Screen Junkies apologized as well and subsequently cancelled the series.