CinemaSins

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. 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 movies 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. As of May 2016, the channel has over 8.3 million views. 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" video 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 movies and Hollywood news, as well as movie reviews and unholy mashups made. 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 Jeremy Scott, Chris Atkinson and Barrett Share discuss various topics related to film and CinemaSins projects.

Everything Wrong With...

CinemaSins' main video series, Everything Wrong With..., explores a certain movie'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; in Everything Wrong With The Phantom Menace the character of Jar Jar Binks was awarded 100 sins.

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 and production companies, like Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, Sony Pictures, DC Comics, Marvel Comics and Paramount Pictures. 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. In contrast, in scenes which are especially "sinful", more than a single sin may be counted. The videos have a "sin count" and "sin timer" throughout, and at the end, the video declares a "verdict" for the movie, which is usually a play on a line from the movie (though at the beginning of the series, the sentences were mostly "Hell" or variations, which reappeared from time to time). On very rare occasions, a movie will start with negative sins because of how good it is. Occasionally, there will be a "bonus round", where additional sins are added to the count for repetitive occurrences in the movie (for example, the abundance of product placement). The sin count rarely dictates 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, except for the Prometheus sins video, which was narrated by Atkinson. Other videos have included special guest narrators. The Underworld: Evolution sins video featured Matthew Santoro. The How the Grinch Stole Christmas! sins video featured Doug Walker of Nostalgia Critic, the Iron Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 sins videos included Jon Bailey of Screen Junkies (in the latter, a switch was done: CinemaSins did an "Honest Trailer" of the film, while Bailey did an "Everything Wrong With" video) while the Gravity, Interstellar and The Martian sins videos included Neil deGrasse Tyson as a guest narrator, and the Star Wars sins video which included Kevin Smith as a guest narrator.

When doing sins videos that are based on other media (such as books, TV shows, or video games), CinemaSins normally never refers to the source materials on which the movies are based, instead believing that a film should stand or fall on its own merit. Their video of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, for example, includes a banner reading, "The books do not matter." They made a one time exception for their sins video of Dragonball: Evolution, including a bonus round in which they pointed out sins referring to the source material.

Usually, at the end of a sins video, clips from the film will be shown over audio or clips from other TV shows, movies, and songs with similar themes or motifs. At times, they will also advertise other sponsored products like Audible, Nature Box or Squarespace and Scott's book The Ables, released on May 1, 2015.

Their sins video for Death Race 2000 was done as a response to a challenge by Roger Corman to sin one of his movies.

The success of this channel subsequently created their respective spin-offs: Music Video Sins and Brand Sins.

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 another 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.

Influences

Many YouTube channels have been influenced by CinemaSins and have created their own spinoffs. Examples include GamingSins, where sins are added for things that are wrong with whatever video game they are reviewing, BrandSins, where sins are counted for things that are wrong with a brand or company (example: Pizza Hut), and CinemareSins, where sins are added for things that are wrong with an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and/or its related media, such as the Equestria Girls film series.