Disasters, Damages, and Diatribes

There are any number of reviewers out there screaming out into the void that is the Internet's entire existence. I should know, I'm one of them. We can smell our own. If you go on YouTube you'll find just about anyone with a webcam and their own sets of opinions railing about this, that, or the other. "OMG, here's the latest way that LucasFilm has ruined your childhood!" they'll say while ranting about ladies in Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. without a single iota of irony. Its the way of the Internet, frankly: anyone with a voice can scream that voice for as long as they want.

What I find refreshing are the voices that are calm, and reasoned, and funny. The ones that can review content with an eye towards what's good as well as what's bad. That can do this with grace, and humility, and the right bit of tongue-in-cheek humor that keeps a viewer listening as they pick out everything right and wrong in a film. It's easy to take whats popular and tear it down. It's harder to look as something bad and say, "you know, here's the reasons why I don't entirely hate this." You have to commend a channel for that, especially when they do it well.

PointlessHub is one such channel, a small corner of YouTube that sets its sights on some of the worst media around and says, "hey, here's why I watched through all this and it wasn't just so you don't have to." A place willing to sit down and make six (yes, six) videos about the Sharknado series, one for each film, talking about all the dumb things in the films, yes, but also the things they legitimately liked. It's hard to find nice things to say about any of the Sharknado films, but PointlessHub is able to do just that.

Started by a guy named Cody, as a spin-off of his other, big channel, AlternateHistoryHub, PointlessHub is, as Cody puts it, a place where he can discuss topics with "no educational value". These aren't books or movies where he can actually critically analyze the relevance and historical context for a story. This is for the things with absolutely no relevance what so ever. The garbage and detritus of Hollywood and beyond. The Sharknados and Transformers that clog our minds.

The first real video for the channel (and not just its one minute introduction) covered Deadliest Warrior. Do you remember that show? It was on Spike TV (back when that channel existed) and it asked the hard hitting question: Who would win in a fight, ninjas or Vikings. It was the equivalent of two teams smashing their action figures together, and despite attempts at making the show educational, it was anything but. It was male-fueled testosterone cheese, silly and over the top. And it was great. That was exactly the review Cody gave it in his loving video about the series. And, yes, it was just as silly to revisit as the first time you may have watched the show.

From there, the channel has gone on to review various other works you've likely forgotten. 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and Moonfall for one. These three are part of the Roland Emmerich series of disaster movies, and they are generally just as much disasters in their productions as the disasters playing out on screen. Emmerich, as Cody points out, has one kind of movie he really loves to make -- movies where the Earth blows up good -- and he's milked that for all its worth. Having Cody guide you through these films, and their many stupid twists and turns, is glorious. His low-pitched calming voice talking about massive disasters is great fun.

Or there's the Transformers films. Did you know Michael Bay made five of these films? You might have forgotten, just like the series conveniently forgot plot details (and Megan Fox) from one film to the next. With his critical eye, Cody guides us through the whole series, one film at a time, regretting every decision he made to get us there. But he does it with humor and grace, making these movies almost palatable to sit through. They aren't. They're garbage. But at least Cody is able to find the thin silver linings in each of them.

And, yes, the Sharknados. Oh, the Sharknado films. These beasts are awful, but then they knew what they were when they were getting made. They're ultimate low-grade cheese, factory funneled out by the Asylum on shoe-string budgets that even Roger Corman would say, "hmmm, no, I can't make a movie for that little." It's shocking just how many of these films exist, not just the six main films, but a mockumentary about the creation of the series, and three spin-off productions as well. No one needed this much Sharknado.

Well, no one by Cody. Again, he takes us through all six of the main films in this series, and somehow manages to retain his sanity after sitting through all of them (he notes, his wife bailed out on the watching experience halfway in, proving she has the sense in that marriage). If you haven't watched the films you won't realize just how bad they are, but Cody makes them seem bearable in a way. Hell, after his reviews I honest;y want to go through all of them myself... but I also recognize even I might not have a masochistic enough streak to tolerate it. Thankfully now I don't have to.

Although the channel has only been around for a year and a half (as of the time of this article's writing), and the selection of videos is small (22 at current count) the channel will provide solid hours of entertainment. Most of them come in around 15 minutes long, there are some longer review videos when Cody had a lot to say about a topic. (A recently posted video about Pacific Rim: Uprising clocks in at 23:53 as he discusses the bodge job Universal did on that unneeded sequel.) Sure, it's all for films you're unlikely to ever want to watch (or, at least, for the most part), but his videos on them are very much worth watching.

There are plenty of YouTube producers that will just rant and rave and complain to high heaven about how terrible just about anything will be. The point is to rile people up, to make them say, "yeah, that makes me angry too!" But with PointlessHub you get the opposite reaction, a content creator out there to calmly discuss awful things and share what makes them watchable. It's nice to have this channel, putting out calm reaction videos, out on the Internet.