Chris Stuckmann

At the age of 14, Chris Stuckmann received a camcorder from his mother, which, according to him, changed his life. He started making fan films inspired by the biggest Hollywood productions. He also started writing brief film reviews during his teenage years. However, he was in his twenties when he realized that YouTube can be used as a platform for film criticism. He admits that he was not the first one to use the platform for this purpose, as he did watch a few other YouTubers who inspired him to do the same. Nevertheless, he was so hooked to it that he created his YouTube channel in early 2011 and started posting blog type videos on film criticism. He mastered his craft for the next few years and attracted subscribers steadily. After he released a criticism video of the movie Dragonball Evolution, branding it as his least favorite movie of all time, a protest website on the movie put it on their homepage. This gave his channel a huge boost, helping him reach nearly one million subscribers. The most popular video on his channel is currently "Prometheus EXPLAINED", which gained over 2.7 million views.

Growing up, Chris Stuckmann was very much influenced by the movies in the ‘Star Wars’ series and the ‘Indiana Jones’ series. He would not only watch them again and again in his youth, wearing out his VHS tapes, but he also started acting out scenes from the films with his friends. After his mother took him to see the movie ‘Signs’ in 2002, he developed a deep passion to understand the art of making films. The more he learnt the craft of filmmaking, the more he started to examine movies critically. He started reconstructing the thought process of the director, the writer, and the cinematographer to understand what went into the making of a particular film. He became inspired by famous film critic Roger Ebert and started writing his own reviews. He realized that in film criticism, there is no right or wrong; critics express their thoughts in order to debate various aspects of a film in a respectable manner. He uses such knowledge to make his reviews as legitimate as reviews from the print media. Realizing the potential YouTube has as a platform for film criticism, he wishes to see it gain the credibility the press has, and is eager to contribute to that as best as he can.

Chris Stuckmann was one of the first film critics to receive a review copy of the 2010 film ‘The Last Airbender’. People were initially skeptic of whether it was a genuine review or not, but when they found out it was genuine, more and more people started to take him seriously. Before starting his career as a film critic on YouTube, he worked as an aid to handicapped children for Akron Public Schools. He is also a talented dancer who can flawlessly perform some of Michael Jackson's dance routines.