I'm a big fan of Mark Rober, sure not all of his YouTube videos are great but a large percentage of them are and some of them are downright classics (squirrel obstacle courses, stolen package revenge, Indian scam caller revenge, etc.), and I don't know a ton about him but he does seem like a great guy who truly cares about getting young people to think like scientists and understand the world on a deeper level. Sure he makes money while doing it which another reviewer mentioned (as if that's a bad thing) but it's not like he's mining for Tungsten in a developing nation, he's doing something good, he deserves to make some cash!
Anyway, as for Revengineers, I was excited when I saw this on HBO Max (or whatever they've changed their name to this week). Mark Rober with an HBO budget? Sounds awesome, especially since his revenge videos are often his best.
Well, I watched a couple (the two most interesting sounding) and they were about 10x worse than his most boring YT video. Mark and his diversity crew (which would be cool if they actually hired great people from different backgrounds, but it seems like they were much more interested in checking boxes than anything else, besides Alan). It's clear these people aren't actually doing much and are more so glorified hosts. One of them is "an artist and welder", not sure what that has to do with engineering and science besides her being the "attractive" one.
All of that wouldn't really matter if the show was great though...but it's not, it's terrible!! They take about literally 2 minutes worth of actual content and stretch it to over 20. The production is grating and unwatchable essentially, with loud transitions, quick cutaways and editing, obnoxious graphics, and the dialogue and presentation which comes off completely fake and scripted (when they're, for example, supposed to be discussing someone's innovation or project - just talk about it! Who wants it to seem like the person is hiding their secret invention from Mark?! All of this just done to extend run time).
Just take the bike theft episode. We get 4 different bikes (including Mark's) with fun ways to deter theft. Each scene with the theft and the bike doing something to backfire on the thief takes about 15-20 seconds each. That's it! They only do it to one person each. Only Alan's really works as planned. They don't engage the person who tried to steal it (despite being right there), they don't try to get multiple people, they don't try to make a commentary or discuss one of the many POVs about why this is happening, and worst of all the pranks are just terrible. Other than Alan's (the bike separated into 2) the rest aren't even inconveniences. You steal a bike and the back tire locks...omg how will you recover?! Ofc the person just drops the bike and leaves.
Skip this unless they drastically improve and completely change it for S2.
Anyway, as for Revengineers, I was excited when I saw this on HBO Max (or whatever they've changed their name to this week). Mark Rober with an HBO budget? Sounds awesome, especially since his revenge videos are often his best.
Well, I watched a couple (the two most interesting sounding) and they were about 10x worse than his most boring YT video. Mark and his diversity crew (which would be cool if they actually hired great people from different backgrounds, but it seems like they were much more interested in checking boxes than anything else, besides Alan). It's clear these people aren't actually doing much and are more so glorified hosts. One of them is "an artist and welder", not sure what that has to do with engineering and science besides her being the "attractive" one.
All of that wouldn't really matter if the show was great though...but it's not, it's terrible!! They take about literally 2 minutes worth of actual content and stretch it to over 20. The production is grating and unwatchable essentially, with loud transitions, quick cutaways and editing, obnoxious graphics, and the dialogue and presentation which comes off completely fake and scripted (when they're, for example, supposed to be discussing someone's innovation or project - just talk about it! Who wants it to seem like the person is hiding their secret invention from Mark?! All of this just done to extend run time).
Just take the bike theft episode. We get 4 different bikes (including Mark's) with fun ways to deter theft. Each scene with the theft and the bike doing something to backfire on the thief takes about 15-20 seconds each. That's it! They only do it to one person each. Only Alan's really works as planned. They don't engage the person who tried to steal it (despite being right there), they don't try to get multiple people, they don't try to make a commentary or discuss one of the many POVs about why this is happening, and worst of all the pranks are just terrible. Other than Alan's (the bike separated into 2) the rest aren't even inconveniences. You steal a bike and the back tire locks...omg how will you recover?! Ofc the person just drops the bike and leaves.
Skip this unless they drastically improve and completely change it for S2.