MovieChat Forums > Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014) Discussion > Anyone Here Feel The Nerd Is Going Downh...

Anyone Here Feel The Nerd Is Going Downhill?


I don't know but before he released the movie and now some of the new episodes. I feel like he's trying to keep milking the series. The movie was ok, i kind of got bored after 20 minutes or so. But do guys feel the same? He's just pushing it to keep himself on youtube?

reply

My take on all this is that he really plummeted deep into some kind of a chasm with the movie.

After the movie, however, he has actually given the world some pretty good, if not some excellent AVGN episodes. The christmas-episodes were short, and they begun as kind of lackluster and awful stuff, but they improved in quality considerably towards the end. The last few episodes were already good.

So, I think he still basically 'has it', but as he has so many other things going on, his ability to 'show it' will be limited, compared to how it used to be.

I don't think he is able to surpass the best classic episodes anymore - I think all good things have a timeline - birth, middle, death - and after that, it's just kicking a dead horse. Every good show must jump the shark at some point, if they keep going. Seinfeld was an interesting exception, there was really no quality decline as a whole, despite some sub-par single episodes.

It's just the nature of things - what goes up, must come down. AVGN episodes couldn't have remained as good as they once were.

But there's no reason that there couldn't be more good, even perhaps great episodes made in the future - James has certainly shown that when he really puts his finest self into it, and focuses on the games, he can still produce good stuff.

So, I think, rather than going downhill, he is actually trying to climb uphill from the chasm he fell in.

reply

AVGN peeked like 5-6 years ago.

tHe MuRdER CaPiTaL oF thE woRLd 

"walk into this world with you head up high"

reply

I think 2006-2008 was its best run. Almost every show has its peak and it usually only lasts a couple years before it starts to decline. South Park is a good example. It peaked from like Seasons 6-8. If you want another web show to compare it to, Nostalgia Critic is a good example. It started off okay its first year then it peaked from 2009-2011 I wanna say, then it started to slowly decline as well. After he ended the show in 2012 and brought it back in 2013 it got a lot more narrative and sketch driven which is neither a good nor a bad thing. Shows just evolve. AVGN sorta did the same thing. At first it was more about him reviewing games he played as a kid and looking back and realizing just how bad they really were. It's even in his theme song! "He's gonna take you back to the past..." Of course as time went on he started reviewing games for other consoles and games you probably never even heard of. Same with NC, he originally reviewed nostalgic movies we all watched as kids but didn't realize how bad they were until now. Now he just reviews films from any era. It's just hard for the same characters to stay relevant in a world that changes so often. There's only so many games and movies you played and watched as a kid.

reply

South park peaked at season 4 then just had some unique good episodes..

reply

I won't presume to know how a complete stranger feels, but it comes across like he's totally over it. The earlier episodes have a considerable amount more noticeable work put into them and the character was much more animated. Now it just alternates between one static shot of the nerd and game footage, with games that don't even seem to frustrate him that much.

reply

Exactly. Like he doesn't have any emotional attachment with any of the games he plays now.

reply

Exactly. Like he doesn't have any emotional attachment with any of the games he plays now.


I agree. He probably went already through all the "bad games" he has any nostalgia for from his childhood and now has to deal with games he has absolutely no sentimental or nostalgic value for.
Though even then, back in the day he did videos on stuff he didn't had as a child and they were still really good.

I think the only truly good thing he still has, are the Halloween Countdowns. Here, you can still tell that his heart is fully into it.

Also, ever since he introduced Mike Matei and gave him a speeking role it went downhill. What an obnoxious douchebag...

reply

My interest in AVGN has been slowly declining for the last couple of years. It's just not as good as it used to be, IMO. I'm into other gaming shows now such as Retroware, Game Sack, The Gaming Historian and several others. They're more interesting and more on the informative side. I still watch the classic AVGN episodes, though. They're still great!

reply

I feel that way a little bit. I doesn't seem as funny or creative as it did a few years ago. I think he has just done too much with that character. I wish he would focus mostly on other things now and just do a Nerd episode every once in a while, maybe just couple times a year.

reply

Well it's not like he's releasing them very often now anyway. James and Mike Monday's is the most frequent show on Cinemassacre now. I think because he has a child now we'll see Nerd episodes a lot less frequently because of how time consuming they are compared to the unscripted game playthroughs with Mike.

When he was releasing an episode a fortnight he was a lot more consistent because he was contractually obligated to meet deadlines for his show and making one after the other like he did meant he was able to maintain the same level of quality from episode to episode for the most part. Some might argue that if he has longer to make the episodes then they should be better in quality because he has more time to make them perfect but I think having two week deadlines to meet kept his creative juices flowing better and he was able to produce better stuff because he was constantly working as that character.

reply

If he would stop going to the LJN well every few episodes, that might help.

reply

Personally, I think the "magic" started slipping around episode 100. One particular that I haven't really cared for is around this time, James changed the video quality and style. Now he shoots his videos in that foreground focus style where he is in focus and the background if fuzzy. I miss the cruder video quality days of the Nerd.


Worst episode recently, even though it wasn't really an episode, more like a quick plug, was the Sky Kids review. I never thought of that game as crap. It's hard but charming in a cheesy way. On the plus side of things, I LOVED the 12 days of ****mas he did in December. Felt like a return of the classic Nerd spirit, and we finally got to see the ALF game reviewed. I remember him using scenes from that game in a couple of intros years ago, and wondered when he would tackle it. Much appreciated!


As for future projects, I hope James does another 12 days of ****mas and this time, compile the 12 games from a wish****list from the fans. Tell everybody to write in with ONE particular game that you hated and James will then pick the 12 games with the highest vote count. This might not work very well, because people will most likely go for very recent games and I don't know how up to date James would be on them. Also, if the voting is a flop, we could end up seeing a joke vote like Final Fantasy 7 or Street Fighter 2 or Mario Brothers sneaking through. But if it's successful it would give the fans a chance to scratch some really hateful games off their list of video games the AVGN covered.

reply

If I remember correctly when I rented the movie, I just couldn't stop laughing, sure it's cheesy but I think that was the intention. Overall I think it's a good average movie intended for the fans of the web series. But as for the web series itself, you do realise corners had to be cut because of the movie but now that the movie is finally done, we'll probably will see a lot more episodes this year. But I do agree that the original feel of the show has somewhat disappeared but does it matter? I still come out laughing, even the recent 12 Days of ****mas was pretty good so it's still good.

reply

The blokes probably a millionaire by now, how do you keep motivated to laugh & rant about 30 year old Nintendo games once you have banked the money?

Yeah he is a shadow of his former self but i understand why.

reply

I think it's time James revamped the show. Remember when the Nostalgia Critic came back in 2013? Doug Walker had completely revamped the show to include a new intro, skits, and even removed his cutoff date so he could review ANYTHING, new or old. And now, the Nostalgia Critic is better than before. I think James should do something like that for AVGN, because the traditional reviewing style he sticks to has become outdated, since EVERYBODY started doing it that way. I think Mike should start being on the show again, playing either sketch character or *beep* Mike as the Nerd's new neighbor, and James should also consider reviewing PlayStation 3 and XBOX 360 games in addition to old console games.

reply

Really? Nostalgia Critic is better than before? I think you'll find you're in the minority on that. His skits and recurring cast members in his reviews are almost always awful and unfunny and just get in the way of the actual review. I've seen so many people say they wish he would cut all the fluff out and stick to the reviews like he usually did before.

reply

It's all subjective. I personally feel the NC started to go downhill in 2012, as he was just going through the motions. Then he went behind our backs and ended the show so he could do Demo Reel, a show that crashed harder than a titanium airplane. The only aspect of that show that worked were the sketches, so they were incorporated into the Nostalgia Critic, new life was breathed into the series and now it's bigger and better, at least in my opinion.
But still, I think we all agree that James should make a few changes to AVGN?

reply

[deleted]

I don't think so, because he actually doesn't review anywhere as much as he used to. The fact that he actually releases LESS content is a sign of him NOT milking the series.

reply

In my opinion, he's going through a point in life in which he has lost sight of his true calling due to high popularity. I can't say that I liked the movie, I was actually expecting it to be kind of crappy in the first place. I didn't go to see it because it was about the AVGN, I went to see how Rolfe did in his first time as a filmmaker. I have to say that for a starter film, this actually fared better (in terms of development and production time) than other examples; this is because of the better budget due to huge fan donation and whatnot. In another era, an idea such as this could've been lost in the depths of development hell (See what happened to "The Thief and The Cobbler", for a better example). I believe that Rolfe will eventually realize that he will have to let go of the character as a whole and move on to become a full time filmmaker, which by the looks of it, has been his life's passion (but not without forgetting that it was the fans who helped him reach that point).

The movie itself was lame, but I don't think it was Rolfe's intention for it to be an oh-so-lavish production. IMO it was more of a "making something big for the fans before saying goodbye to the whole thing" scenario. It's also worth noticing that he probably went through the complications of Hollywood's unnecessary policies and moneymaking schemes that got in the way of what James originally had in mind (I don't think Rolfe's wife was the only one insisting in having a token African-American sidekick and tag-along girl in the film, among other things). It's like Fred Fuchs -the producer whose name James' character mocked so much- said in an interview posted in youtube: no matter how solid the project, there's always going to be compromise in some way or another (I think it would be good for James to seek this guy; by the way he speaks about film-making, it looks like he knows some good tricks for successful movie development. He's been in showbiz for quite a while, and thus Rolfe could learn a thing or two from him).

I have also logged into cinemassacre for his "serious" reviews more than the AVGN content. I believe that James has an open mind and is rather insightful and surprisingly appreciative for many kind of films, especially cult b-movies and horror flicks (Monster Madness is still pretty good IMHO). If he doesn't stick to filmmaking and wants to stray away from AVGN, he has potential to go the other way around and become a full-time film critic, like Roger Ebert.

reply

An interesting sidenote; I was speculating here in the IMDb boards, whether it'd have been better to have twelve AVGN episodes, or the movie.

I even mentioned, how in some alternate timeline/dimension/Universe/planet the AVGN audience would have received those twelve episodes, instead of the movie.

So, with this kind of a discussion going on - was it just a coincidence that he chose to "give us 12 AVGN episodes" as a Christmas-present?

Perhaps he felt that this way the audiences could have both - the movie AND the twelve AVGN episodes..

There hasn't been an AVGN episode since.


reply

I don't think Rolfe's wife was the only one insisting in having a token African-American sidekick and tag-along girl in the film


I've been wondering about this for a while. It seems like just because she made a joke about there not being many females or non-caucasians on James' website, people have begun to assume that this was something James' wife had something to do with. The fact that she said that, and the fact that she was executive producer on the movie doesn't prove anything. This also seems to only have become a thing to discuss because some people on 4Chan started talking about it, and let's be honest, if you want any reasonable discussions, 4Chan is almost never the place to go. I will assume that this whole thing about James' wife being a SWJ (or whatever it's called) is a rumor until I see James or anyone who worked on the movie comment on it themselves. She might have had a say in it, but I really doubt it. Especially because James and Kevin Finn was already working on the script for the movie before they were married, and the idea of the characters were already there, though the race of either was probably not decided yet. However, I think it was originally planned for Cooper to be an Asian, since that's what the storyboards made him look like. I know that even though they were not married, they may have been dating, and I guess she could have had given a few suggestions about what to put in the film. Damnit, I'm taking so long to come to my point. Also, by the way, I am not critisizing you since you did say that it might not only have been her idea to do these things in the film, but therein lies my point: We don't even know if she did have those ideas.

Sorry, I just don't like people getting all judgmental and prejudicial, especially when talking about things they don't know all about, and it seems that's what most people are doing in regards to this topic.

reply

Nicely said and agreed, partner. That's the nature of Hollywood, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how the product turns out); there is always going to be someone behind the scenes to make changes to the product before it finalizes (of course, that someone isn't James' wife). Being the smart guy that he is, James will naturally learn his way through this complex money-making system that is the film industry. I think that he is, in a way, going uphill.

reply