My very first Cinema Sins video I ever watched was not actually from Cinema Sins itself. That video came from a review of the video game, Sonic Adventure 2. During that review, there was a section that the reviewer went into great details of the plot of that game and counted the number of bugs, plot holes, inconsistences, convivences, etc. that the story itself contained. This was not meant to be a rip off of Cinema Sins itself. As a matter of fact, that review actually got uploaded on YouTube just ONE day AFTER Cinema Sins released their first ever video. Unless that reviewer was able to crave up an entire half-an-hour long review overnight after watching Cinema Sin’s first video and being able to submit it through YouTube just one day later, that was strictly meant to be it’s own thing that the reviewer just came up with without any influence involved. Little did I know that video would ultimately be a foreshadow has to not just the rise of Cinema Sins but also the fall of it as well, at least when it comes to losing their appeal to me.
Cinema Sins has been going on for ten years now, just coming off their ten-year anniversary last month with they released their first video titled Everything Wrong With The Amazing Spider-Man, which was uploaded on YouTube on December 11, 2012. Since then, I think it’s fairly safe to say that they have had a big impact on the way that people on social media critiques feature films. While I’m sure that was not the intention from the beginning and the folks behind those videos just wanted to have some fun, their influence has become clear the more time passes and each new video that they uploaded. The kind of critiquing that goes beyond simply cherry picking certain things you didn’t like or notice about a movie initially but more of opening the flood gates to the most insane nitpicking and grasping through straws imaginable. Creating these one-note mindsets to always trying to find some sort of overarching flaw that makes the movie one is critiquing as “objectively bad”. Two words I am sick and tired of seeing come together for just about everything.
I’ll admit during their early years, mostly between 2012-2015, I was actually a big fan of them. I thought it was a neat idea to finding the most pointless nitpicks just for shits and giggles while seeing how much “sins” they could actually find in the shortest span of time possible. I found it to be nothing more than pure entertainment with discovering the kind of extras or random things that I didn’t recognize before on a first viewing and mostly getting a chuckle out of it without it changing my overall opinion on each film in a big way. I would never recommend their videos to anyone who wanted to hear in-depth arguments as to why a certain film is bad or flawed but more to those that want to pass their time by watching someone point out random or pointless things they didn’t notice when they first watch said movie. Sure, some of the puns and jokes can be a bit tasteless and even at times, misogynist (*scene does not contain lap dance*), but it’s a fun idea involving movie discourse that is not meant to be taken that seriously. However, as time went on, it seems as though that those involved with Cinema Sins didn’t seem well aware of this and have gone WAY overboard with the thing that they created. So overboard that they have become the thing that they likely did not attend to be.
Even taken out the awful impact that Cinema Sins itself created, their videos now are such an absolute drag to sit through. The videos are now longer, more tedious, less self aware, extra nitpicky, and seems to miss the point of their original intention they hard when they first made their videos. It’s now gotten to the point where it’s the little things that take you out of their videos. Things such as the sins they find mostly don’t make any sense, their jokes are forced, constantly drawn out, and aren’t very funny, and even key features such as the movie sin timer feel pointless as they don’t seem to add to the pace and length of each video. Instead of keeping things short, sweet, and simple like they did in the beginning, it’s now long, sour, and overly complicated.
I’ve been thinking for months just how I can find the perfect example as to what I’m talking about and how Cinema Sins itself has changed for the worse for the better part of a decade. It was then I found out that they have not begun to go back and “re-sin” the films that they did when they first started. These mostly consists of big movies that came out in 2012 such as The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Hunger Games, and Prometheus along with other big movies that were highly requested for them at the time by their viewers. I don’t think there is a better example to see how far that Cinema Sins itself has fallen in terms of quality or entertainment value than comparing two sinful videos they did of the same movie. The example I’m gonna use is the previously mentioned The Amazing Spider-Man.
First, here is the original video that they did of it back in 2012.
Now, this is the kind of videos that I enjoyed from Cinema Sins. The ones that were quick, snappy, funny, and got straight to the point. Not only does it perfectly display the clear intent of just poking fun and finding things I imagine most folks didn’t notice the first time around, but it move at just the right pace where it doesn’t feel like a chore to sit through. Regardless of what you actual feel about the movie itself, the creators of Cinema Sins were showing that this is clearly being made for entertainment purposes and not to show the world how smart and clever they are with critiquing films.
The best part about it all is how each one of the features that they included here actually serves a purpose. There’s the sin counter which is to help keep track of how many sins they could find within the movie. There’s the timer which is to show how much time it took to find as many sins in the movie as they could find. Then there’s the sentence which is basically to give the verdict on each movie largely depending on how many sins it actually contained. This is all basically like the equivalent of a game show where there comes the part where each team is trying to score as much points as possible in the limited amount of time that they have. It’s that exact pace and intensity that made their earlier videos more enjoyable to watch. It wasn’t trying to too hard or doing too much in too little time. It was just there to be entertainment and show off things no one else was mentioning with whatever film they are discussing.
Now, let’s get to the one that they recently uploaded of the same film. The one which they “re-sinned” that is pretty much the exact opposite of the true intentions as the original video.
I’m not going to go into every little detail as to why this sins video is flawed as hell but you can definitely see there is a clear difference between their original one and this one. Where as the original video was quick, quippy, snappy, and movie at a fast clip, this one feels much slower, more tedious, very forced, and constantly drags. It’s the things pointed out in the first minute that take you out of it such as referencing Ready or Not, a movie that came literally SEVEN years after this movie did, or sinning the movie because it (or any other Spider-Man movie) didn’t have Chameleon. Or how there are sins being made mostly because it didn’t make the narrator’s fan theories for the movie come into fruition and not really actuals sins of the movie itself. That’s not even mentioning how the original was able to find 53 sins in the span of just two minutes, but here only EIGHT of them are found in the first two minutes and takes almost 10 minutes before even getting to 53 this time around. All of this is and more is a perfect example of the absolute downgrade in quality that Cinema Sins itself has had as time moves on.
What makes it stand out more is how pointless some of the key features are now, most notably the movie sin timer. What’s even the point of keeping track the certain amount of time it takes you to find the number of sins? Especially since you are now in no rush and you simple take your sweet ass time critiquing and finding the most bizarre nitpick you can think off that you think can qualify as a sin. You might as well get rid of it altogether as it doesn’t seem to matter to the amount of sins you find over it’s overall verdict that it receives.
The funniest thing of all is that I’m not even a fan of The Amazing Spider-Man or every single movie that they sin but even I know, that most of it is just completely nonsensical nitpicking that doesn’t really make any sense. All of this could be fine if it was funnier, moved faster, or was at least more self aware that it’s not meant to be taken seriously. But, that doesn’t seem like the intention here.
It comes off more as one of those obnoxious youtubers who make 10+ hour long reviews that are somehow much longer than the actual films they are critiquing. Just constantly finding the most random little things to get upset about and act as if they are smarter than the people who made the movies. The ones that loves to use the term “objectively bad”. I’m not saying that is the actual intent from the creators of Cinema Sins nowadays but it just comes across as that with these newer videos.
Instead of feeling like a race against time, it now feels as slow as a tortoise. Instead of being funny, it’s being cringe. Instead of getting to the point, it’s now feels the need to drag itself before getting to the point. Instead of laughing at the random things pointing out, you know are just puzzled and wonder why those things were even pointed out in the first place. Instead of feeling like entertainment, it now feels like a waste of time. Instead of finding a way, it has now lost it’s way.
I do want to make something clear that all of this is NOT meant to take a hit on the creators of Cinema Sins themselves. I’m sure they are all nice people that are just happy to be able to do this as their main job. If they still enjoy providing their own form of entertainment to their millions of subscribers, then good for them and I hope they continue to enjoy that in the near future. This is more on why I can’t stand to watch them anymore and how far they fell when it came to what I believe was their true intent when they first started their YouTube channel.
Perhaps this might have to do with the folks at Cinema Sins fallen to the same trappings that most big YouTubers tend to suffer them once they become more famous. Things such as feeling that they are bigger than they first thought they were, believing they have to live up to a specific ego, or seeing the inspiration they caused and now have the mindset to be just like them because that’s what they think they actually are now. I don’t know if any of that is true but I wouldn’t be surprised if any of that was the case.
When thinking about the run of Cinema Sins thus far, I go back to that one line that Tony Stark said at the end of Iron Man 3, “You start with something pour, something exciting. Then comes the mistakes. The compromises. We created our own demons.”
I imagine that might be the reputation that most sees Cinema Sins as and even the one that even the folks behind Cinema Sins might agree on one day if they haven’t already. Inspiring to be a positive force to movie discourse only to end up being a negative force of it. You start off with a fun idea that becomes successful which only aspires multiple copycats that ultimately took the wrong idea of what you originally intended to do. I don’t know if any of that is the case but that’s just the way I see it and why I believe Cinema Sins has feel hard and completely lost it’s way.
And just for the heck of it, here’s that Sonic Adventure 2 review that I mentioned at the beginning of the video.
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