AVGN's "No Reviews, I Refuse" Controversy

About

The AVGN’s “No Reviews, I refuse” Controversy refers to a video of James Rolfe, best known for his online character and internet show The Angry Video Game Nerd, stating that he won’t go to see the 2016 reboot film of popular franchise Ghostbusters and thus won’t be expected to offer a review of it as a critic.
The video, while met positively by fans of the internet celebrity, was also mocked by various internet outlets as well as comedian Patton Oswalt on Twitter for its use or preemptive assumptions and thoughts about the movie before it was even released.

Origin

On May 16th, 2016, video games and movies critic site Cinemassacre released a six-and-a-half-minute-long video entitled “Ghostbusters 2016. No Review. I refuse.” and featuring James Rolfe, known on the internet as the Angry Video Game Nerd, discussing the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot movie and giving his preemptive thoughts on why, as a critic and fan of the franchise, he won’t go see it (shown below). The video accumulated to about 700 000 views in the next 48 hours of its upload.

The news of the video was also shared on Twitter^[1], reaching over 800 retweets and 2 000 likes.

Spread

On May 17th, Internet comedian Patton Oswalt tweeted about the video^[2] (shown below), mocking the nature of basing one’s opinions about a movie that is not even released on preemptives thoughts. The tweet accumulated to over 300 retweets and 2 200 likes.

I really wanted to hate this Cinemassacre GHOSTBUSTERS review but I'm such a fan of noisy, thick-saliva swallowing it won my heart.
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) 17 mai 2016

As arguments erupted on the social media site discussing the pros and cons of Rolfe’s reasoning behind his video, various entertainment websites and blogs reported on the phenomenon, including The Daily Dot^[3], Pedestrian.tv^[4] and DeathAndTaxesMag^[5] that took a stance in criticizing the video and showing examples of the twitter’s backlash it triggered while others, such as GeekTyrant^[6] and Fansided^[7], had a more nuanced approach on Rolfe’s opinions.

Brad Jones’ Parody

On May 17th as well, Stone Gremlin Production creator and Channel Awesome affiliate Brad Jones, known as the Cinema Snob, released a video (shown below) parodying the initial Rolfe’s video in which he details why he won’t go to see an upcoming reboot film named “Dog Fucker”.