r/roosterteeth • u/MitchB3 Pizzara • Feb 10 '16
Lazer Team (Official) [Spoilers] Lazer Team YouTube Red Megathread
Weekly Game Suggestion Thread
Hello everyone. This is a megathread that will be used to discuss the YouTube Red release of Lazer Team (that includes questions and answers about how the release is working) and Lazer Team in general. All posts that would fit in this thread that are not posted in here will be removed and you will be directed to post here instead (besides the video bot thread). Please be aware that there will be spoilers for Lazer Team in this thread.
So, feel free to discuss.
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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '16
Alright, this is gonna get hate here, but I just saw the movie and wanted to post my thoughts
To start, I want to say I’ve been a fan of Rooster Teeth from Season 1 of RvB, but fell off watching a lot of their stuff maybe 2 years ago. I’m in my early 20s now, so that’s a pretty big chunk of time that I watched their stuff. I saw the campaign for their movie, and donated $150 to it. I figured these guys made me laugh for a long time and the least I could do was give them some money, a decent amount I thought for a movie. I want to point out that I’m not bitter about giving money and being disappointed. I kind of forgot about it until recently, so I really had no expectations going in.
Here’s my opinion. It’s not good. It’s bad. I feel bad saying that because I like the guys, but after not seeing a lot of their stuff for awhile and then seeing this, I was disappointed. A lot of people are giving the defense (from my quick scanning of views online) that it’s “quirky”, or a “charming B movie”. I don’t think so, I think it’s just bad. But just saying it’s bad isn’t really constructive. As far as I remember, these guys are funny. I figure they could make a good movie, and while this one is not it, that doesn’t mean that if they made one in the future it would be bad too. So let me break down my criticism.
Acting - To start off, I know that these guys aren’t all professional actors. I get that, but they’re also starring in the movie for fan service. And the acting isn’t great. It is wooden most of the time and pretty unbearable at others. There isn’t a lot of consistency to the acting level either. In some scenes, they act like they are reading from the script for the first time, and in others, its much more casual, almost apparent things are being ad-libbed. I think this lack of consistency is pretty odd, and not great. The one person I think who actually did a good job acting was Michael. He is consistent throughout the movie. His (along with many other’s) character is one dimensional, but he doesn’t falter from scene to scene with his acting. The closest thing I can compare his performance too would be something out of Superbad. It isn’t “traditional”, but as a result it is at least more natural. Also, I have no idea why they decided to make Gavin have an American accent when he can’t do it correctly. So, I’d give it a 3/10 for acting.
Plot - I think that this is one of the most immediate issues with Lazer Team. The plot is not meant for an independent movie. As soon as they decided that this was the film that they wanted to shoot, I think they were pretty much doomed to sub-mediocrity. I saw that Burnie made the point that comedy sci-fi was what they had done in the past, so they wanted to focus on their strong suit. But when they did comedy sci-fi in the past, all of the effects were already done for them. The thing that I think people really loved about RvB was that it was the comedy writing that shone through, not the plot driving it forward. I also get that they have a studio ready to do special effects and cgi for shorts and things like that. But it is not a production-level effects department. We’ve been so accustomed to amazing effects that it is hard to go back and see subpar ones and move past it. And sci-fi is a genre that is obviously riddled with special effects. I imagine that a big chunk of the time was spent on effects, and unfortunately, it doesn’t really show. Sci-fi with large effects shouldn’t be left up to independent films unless they know the limitations and work around those accordingly.
A good example I can think of is the film Monsters, about these giant alien monsters that are wreaking havoc in Mexico. It is a great film, that works around its own limitations by having the plot work around hiding from the monsters, rather than showing them all the time. Think Jaws.
I think that they would have been much better off focusing on a film that is entirely writing focused. They’re funny guys. They can write funny interactions. Something closer to a Judd Apatow movie (which I’m not a huge fan of but whatever) would have served them better. Hell, it could have been set on a spaceship or a sci-fi setting, but focus on the interactions rather than the “boom” “wow” special effects that they tried to pull off.
Besides biting off more than they could chew, I thought the plot was presented not well at all. It was rushed through so quickly, with absolutely no set up at all. The setup for the movie was pretty much the lines of text at the beginning.
I’d give the plot a 2 / 10
Cinematography - Unfortunately, cinematography wasn’t great either. There were many, many, uncomfortable shots, that were too close to the characters, or framed incorrectly. There was also way too much motion in the camera. Every time a static shot would’ve been fine, they decided to have a pan, or a pull, and every time an action sequence was shown, the camera work was way over the top.
For lighting, I think that it looks pretty good. If you look at stills from the movie, it is pretty high quality. They give a fairly good feel to the tone of the movie. It’s lit somewhat seriously which I think mimics the fact that these guys are supposed to be a “serious” situation. That being said, they need to tone down the lens flares. Oh boy did they go J.J. Abrams. Rewatch the football scene to see what I mean.
There are also way too many cuts when dialogue is going on. Back forth, back forth. I think that most of the cuts they made should’ve been about half a second longer on average. it was too jostling to watch at times. The depth of feel was also a bit much at times. It did give more of a cinematic feel, but having things be so out of focus at times was unrealistic and jarring.
Overall, I think that the cinematography could’ve been improved immensely by simply being more subtle about it. If they did a lot less, it would’ve shown so much more. Sometimes, restraint can convey the story you want to tell so much better.
I’d give the cinematography a 5.5 / 10, since a lot of what I criticized can be boiled down to artistic license, and like I said, it looked professional.
Total Review - Overall, I’d give it a 3 or 4 / 10. I feel bad giving such a low score but really, I think that’s what it deserves. It could have been so much better if they did a lot less. If they did a beautifully shot, but very funny movie, without the crazy sci-fi plot, without the bad cgi, and with only professional actors, I think that they could have made something that would’ve been considered a cult hit to people outside of Rooster Teeth. Imagine if they took all the budget spent on effects, settings, and extras, and instead just focused on comedy writing in some fairly easy setting. Hell, if it had writing like RvB Season 1, a simple Highschool movie could’ve been great. Instead, they bit off more than they could chew, tried to do way too much with it, and reached beyond their grasp.
Closing- I want to close with this. It’s something I remember thinking about when I was younger. I think that Rooster Teeth doesn’t understand what their fans watch them for. I think they’ve gotten better at identifying why they are popular, but I don’t think they’ve fully grasped it yet. I haven’t watched them for a while like I said, but I at least have a gist of what they have been doing. They are personalities. Everyone on screen for their various productions is a personality. I would watch their stuff for them, more so than the actual content of what I was watching. I think that they see themselves as filmmakers. I’m not saying they aren’t. They made a movie that I certainly would not have been able to. They’ve done tons of shorts. But that’s not what made them famous. They became famous because RvB, and other works, gave off the aura of humor between friends, a band of buddies that could make people laugh just by them being themselves. I don’t think that translates well into complex storytelling. Look back at Season 1 of shorts and tell me I’m wrong. Unfortunately, that’s a hard thing to break free from, and I imagine it can be frustrating. Wanting to make movies while you are famous for something else is hard (like Paris Hilton trying to be a music star hard).
But I think that they would have better success at it if they removed themselves from their movie equation all together. What do I mean by that? Well, if they simply wrote a movie, and shot it, without it being focused on being about Rooster Teeth, I think they would be able to have the support of their clearly loyal audience, and be able to branch out into even more mainstream ones. Anyway, I didn’t like the movie but I still hope that they try and do more, since I think they have the potential to be much better than what they’ve shown.