Red Letter Media

FounderMike StoklasaHeadquarters, WorldwideProductsOwnerMike StoklasaYears active2007–presentGenresSubscribers1.5 million^[1]Total views1.10 billion^[1]

Creator Awards
	100,000 subscribers	2012
	1,000,000 subscribers	2019

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Last updated: March 2024 Websitewww.redlettermedia.comFootnotes / references
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Red Letter Media, LLC is an American film and video production company operated by independent filmmakers Mike Stoklasa, Jay Bauman, and Rich Evans. It was formed by Stoklasa in 2004 while he was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, but has long been based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company and its members have produced a number of low-budget productions including Oranges: Revenge of the Eggplant, Feeding Frenzy, The Recovered, and Space Cop.

The company attracted significant attention in 2009 through Stoklasa's 70-minute Mr Plinkett Review video essay review of the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Red Letter Media have produced a number of other web series', including movie and TV reviews (Half in the Bag, Best of the Worst, and re:View), satirical fandom parodies (The Nerd Crew), and video game-based web series (Game Station 2.0, Previously Recorded).

Stoklasa created his first video review for Star Trek Generations after watching the film again in 2008. Stoklasa believed his own voice sounded "too boring" for the review and adopted the persona of Harry S. Plinkett, a character he had previously used in several short films (originally played by Rich Evans).^[3] Plinkett has been described as "cranky", a "schizophrenic", and "psychotic"^[4][5] with a voice that has been called "a cross between Dan Aykroyd in The Blues Brothers and The Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill".^[4][6]

In an interview, Stoklasa stated that in creating a review, he and a friend would watch the film only once while taking notes, frequently pausing the film to take a drink and discuss scenes. After that, he would write a 20–30 page script for it in the Plinkett character, voice it, and edit it together along with some improvisations.^[7]

The Star Trek Generations Plinkett review was met with many favorable comments, inspiring Stoklasa to review the other three Star Trek: The Next Generation films—First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998), and Nemesis (2002).^[3] When creating his review for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Stoklasa cited his dislike of the franchise's prequel trilogy, in particular how it influenced a trend of films characterized by CGI spectacle in lieu of the live-action stunts and meticulously crafted sets that characterized films of earlier decades.^[4]

Despite a long run-time of 70 minutes, Stoklasa's review of The Phantom Menace went viral, receiving over a million views in the first four months of its release^[3] and being shared on social media by Simon Pegg and Damon Lindelof.^[6] The review took Stoklasa between seven and ten days to complete.^[8] Red Letter Media has also released an audio commentary track done in the Plinkett character for Star Wars, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.^[9]

Subsequent Plinkett reviews have covered the James Cameron films Avatar^[10] and Titanic, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones,^[11] Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,^[12] Baby's Day Out,^[13] Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,^[14], J. J. Abrams' Star Trek^[15], Paul Feig's Ghostbusters (2016) ^[16], Star Wars: The Force Awakens ^[17], Star Wars: The Last Jedi ^[18], and the first season of Star Trek: Picard^[19].

Half in the Bag is a movie and TV review series in which Stoklasa and Bauman review films in a more traditional format, while being framed by an overarching plot where Stoklasa and Bauman play VCR repairmen who discuss movies while finding ways of avoiding their scheduled repair work. The show often features the character of Mr. Plinkett being portrayed by Rich Evans. Stoklasa has described it as a cross between Siskel and Ebert and a 1980s sitcom.^{[citation needed]}

The series premiered on March 12, 2011, with a review of Drive Angry and The Adjustment Bureau.^[20]

Best of the Worst is a comedic series where a panel of participants watch and review multiple home media items ranging from B-movies to instructional videos. Panels typically consist of any combination of Mike Stoklasa, Jay Bauman, Rich Evans along with friends or special guests. Panel participants then individually decide upon which film or video represents the "Best of the Worst", generally defined as most entertaining that night for any reason, while viewing material that is deemed to be insulting, offensive, or especially poor is sometimes destroyed. Special episodes for Halloween and Christmas are a regular feature, usually featuring more elaborate sets and seasonally-themed videos.

Best of the Worst has also featured a number of subseries. These include those based around specific gimmicks used to select videos to watch, which includes "Wheel of the Worst", "Plinketto", and "Black Spine Edition" (tapes lacking any identifying information as to content), as well as their "Spotlight" series, in which the panel has an in-depth discussion on a single, specific B-movie that they find noteworthy.

The series premiered January 23, 2013, featuring Russian Terminator, Ninja Vengeance, and Never Too Young To Die.^[21]

re:View is a review series with a more stripped down format where two participants will examine a typically personally important film or television series in detail, offering thoughts and insight on their productions, structure, and motifs. Films chosen for this feature are often cult classics such as Pink Flamingos, Freddy Got Fingered and Martin, or well renowned genre-defining films like The Thing and Ghostbusters, while television series' featured have included Twin Peaks and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The series premiered 24 May, 2016, with an episode on Tremors.^[22]

The Nerd Crew is a parody series that features Stoklasa, Bauman, and Evans playing self-described "manchildren" demonstrating excessive enthusiasm for popular media properties such as Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where it is frequently made clear that such enthusiasm is performative due to having either received payment to promote the properties or in the hopes of receiving future preferential treatment from the owners of said properties. The videos produced as part of this series have been identified as parodying the content created by groups such as Screen Junkies and Collider.^[23]

The series premiered January 5, 2017.^[24]

Previously Recorded was a video game oriented channel run by Rich Evans and frequent Red Letter Media collaborator Jack Packard. The channel's content. The channel was Red Letter Media's second attempt at producing gaming content after Game Station 2.0 (2012). The channel premiered July 18, 2014, with a discussion on Risk of Rain^[25] and ended with a livestream in July 2018.^[26]

Since 2012, Red Letter Media has produced commentary tracks for various films, releasing them on Bandcamp.^[27] These began with three commentary tracks by Stoklasa as Mr. Plinkett, but the company has since released tracks by Stoklasa, Bauman, and Evans as themselves.

In early 2023 Red Letter Media auctioned off a graded VHS copy of the "infamously bad" 1987 film Nukie for charity, with the auction being inspired by reports that a VHS copy of Back to the Future had previously sold for $75,000.^[28] Alongside the auction, the group released a video documenting the practice of grading previously otherwise disposable media items, such as VHS tapes, to create a form of desired rarity. The company explained that they had collected over 100 copies of the film over the previous decade after fans began mailing them copies of the film, and had destroyed all of them bar the one they had sent off for grading via a woodchipper to increase the remaining tape's rarity.^[29] The release of the video saw some social media controversy over the perceived ethics regarding the destruction of the other tapes to raise the price of the auction.^[30][31][32]

The auction closed at $80,600 and was believed to have set a record for the most expensive VHS tape sold of all time.^[33] Proceeds from the auction were donated to the Wisconsin Humane Society and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, with the donation to the Wisconsin Humane Society being the largest donation in the organization's history.^[34]

Red Letter Media has received positive reception and has been called "the reigning champ of online review culture"^[35]. Chicago-based newspaper Daily Herald praised the company for their "wonderful" videos, identifying Best of the Worst as their most entertaining series.^[36].

Renowned film critic Roger Ebert spoke positively about Red Letter Media prior to his death; upon viewing Mr. Plinkett's Revenge of the Sith review, Ebert posted it on his website, stating, "I was pretty much sure I didn’t have it with me to endure another review of this one. Mr. Plinkett demonstrates to me that I was mistaken."^[37] He later shared links on his Twitter account to the Half in the Bag reviews of Jack and Jill and Prometheus.^[38][39]

In an interview with Esquire, comedian Patton Oswalt noted that the Mr. Plinkett reviews are an example of "amazing film scholarship" on the Star Wars prequels that demonstrate how much of the Star Wars universe is squandered by them.^[40] The Daily Telegraph called the reviews "legendary" and described them as being more popular than the actual films.^[41]

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, whilst critiquing CinemaSins' Everything Wrong With ... video of his film, Kong: Skull Island, for bad film criticism masked under the guise of "satire", praised Red Letter Media for good film criticism and satire, stating that "Red Letter Media's Phantom Menace review IS satire. They lampoon a certain type of nerd culture AND their takedown is accurate & thoughtful. Red Letter Media's critiques hold up under scrutiny. CinemaSins just wants to shit on things for the sake of shitting on them."^[42]

Graham Linehan praised Red Letter Media in an interview with British comedian and writer Richard Herring on Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast. He spoke particularly about the Half in the Bag review of Jack and Jill, which he described as "brilliant".^[43]

Literary and cultural critic Benjamin Kirbach argues that Plinkett enacts a kind of détournement by recontextualizing images that would otherwise serve as Star Wars marketing material (such as behind-the-scenes footage and interviews). Defined by Guy Debord as "the reuse of preexisting artistic elements in a new ensemble", détournement is a way of generating meaning out of cultural texts that is antithetical to their original intent.^[44] Kirbach argues that Stoklasa uses this tactic to construct a subversive narrative that frames George Lucas as "a lazy, out-of-touch, and thoroughly unchallenged filmmaker".^[45]

Kirbach also argues that Plinkett's popularity can be explained, in part, as a form of catharsis. Because he is portrayed as insane, the Plinkett shtick "legitimates our nerd-rage by literalizing it".^[46] Plinkett enrolls George Lucas in an ongoing Oedipal drama as the castrating father figure, a father figure we are invited to rage against owing to his flagrant ineptitude. But aside from raw catharsis, Kirbach claims that Plinkett's insanity is also a critique of the film industry itself. By fictionalizing his critic, Stoklasa constructs a character who is unable to speak at a safe distance from the text he analyzes. "Plinkett becomes the figure of a consumer culture that has been force-fed Hollywood schlock beyond its carrying capacity," Kirbach writes.^[47] And further:

Stoklasa's major conceit—that someone would have to be "crazy" to watch movies the way Plinkett does—also implies a barely hidden inverse: that the film industry has induced a consumerist fantasy in people who don't watch movies this way. Plinkett's obscenity and jokiness are without a doubt designed to garner viewership, but they are also Stoklasa's apology for—or defense against—a culture that already construes his level of passion as pathological. This central irony leads us to question what is actually more insane: the consumer who rejects the expressions of a massive culture industry, or the massive culture industry itself. Plinkett satirizes the kind of consumer such a system generates: psychotic, sexist, homicidal.^[46]

Conversely, some Star Wars fans have been critical of the Mr. Plinkett reviews. Stoklasa stated that he feels "Star Wars to some people is like a religion, and so they respond to attacks on it as such."^[7] One fan wrote a 108-page-long point-by-point response to the Phantom Menace review, taking issue with many of Stoklasa's criticisms,^[48] which Stoklasa mocked in an announcement video for his Revenge of the Sith review.^[49]

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