Kong: Skull Island Director Slams Popular YouTube Series CinemaSins
In a twist of irony, someone's explaining everything wrong with CinemaSins.
A popular YouTube video series that gives the run-down on apparent errors, flaws, and so-called "sins" in movies, CinemaSins has garnered quite a bit of flack in the past. Now, a more noteworthy critic has stepped forward: Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. His monster movie was the subject of the latest CinemaSins video.
The footage took aim at Vogt-Roberts' take on the King Kong franchise, which debuted in theaters this spring, listing all the mistakes, cliches, and contradictions apparently present in the movie. Shortly after the filmmaker caught wind of the video, he turned the tables to criticize the CinemaSins series as a whole.
Vogt-Roberts wrote on Twitter, "Things like CinemaSins simply suck the life blood of other people and are often just wrong about intent or how cinema works. It's terrible." He continued, addressing a number of "sins" the video's creators mentioned were present in Kong: Skull Island. Vogt-Roberts rebutted each one, which include such points of contention as accusation that "half [the film's] budget was spent on rain machines... so we couldn't hear the s****y dialogue" and that the use of a "cliched" Vietnam War-era song.
"Literally not another scene in the film has rain in it after this. Literally two scenes in the whole film," Vogt-Roberts said of the rain machine remark. He also commented on the "sin" of him not showing a victim falling out of King Kong's mouth. "It's called a match cut or graphic rhyming. So yes. I could have shown it. This is a choice that has nothing to do with a graphic shot later," he stated in a later tweet.
Vogt-Roberts went on to tackle an apparent "attempt at a cheap laugh," writing that the joke "got no reaction prior to the election [but it] gets a reaction because the black mirror of the '70's we're living in."
The director wrapped this up with a series of tweets that collectively read: "I just wanted to point out why these videos are infuriating. They're often just wrong or think they're smarter than you. I love film criticism and I love reading negative reviews if the author makes compelling and well-written arguments. To anyone who thinks this video makes me mad or hurts me, it doesn't. I just wanted to point out a few obvious examples that are just wrong. It just makes me sad they get so many views [and] contribute to the dumbing down of cinema as they syphon other people's work for their own gain... I make movies because I love film. These guys are just trolling the art form we love and profiting from it while dumbing [down] the conversation."
Hours after Vogt-Roberts' whirlwind of tweets, the CinemaSins Twitter account posted, "Hey, everyone! I stepped away from the computer for a few hours to run errands and stuff. Did I miss anything?" Leave it to them to reply with a tongue-in-cheek remark.
Despite getting kind of torn apart by the minds behind CinemaSins, Kong: Skull Island still performed quite well at the box office and received generally positive reviews from critics. The film currently sits at a 76 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and pulled in $566.6 million USD worldwide.
While we wait for the dust to settle on this CinemaSins controversy, take a look at some of the scariest new movie and television monsters of 2017.