Mark Rober's Revengineers (2023– ) User Reviews

Revengineers: A Swing and a Miss for Mark Rober

[LionLostInTV · 1/10 · 21 May 2023]

I've recently been tuning into Mark Rober's new TV show, Revengineers, and I hate to say it, but it's complete garbage. Now, if you're familiar with Mark Rober's YouTube videos, you know he's got this knack for combining science, engineering, and entertainment in a way that's genuinely engaging. But when it comes to Revengineers, it seems like a lot of that charm gets lost.

One of the biggest issues is that the whole thing feels pretty staged. You're watching these pranks unfold and it's hard not to feel like everything's just a bit too perfect, a bit too planned out.

Let's talk about the shopping cart prank from the first episode.

On the surface, the idea is pretty genius: they motorize shopping carts and use remote control to drive them behind the cars of people who can't be bothered to return their carts. It's a clever, humorous way to call out a common and annoying behavior. But the execution? Not so great.

Here's the thing: as soon as the people targeted by the prank start to get upset or try to leave, the Revengineers team just...stops. There's no confrontation, no effort to explain the point of the prank, and no attempt to let the prank play out until the people figure out what they did wrong. It feels like a missed opportunity to really drive the point home.

Instead of using the prank as a teachable moment, they let the people go without any real resolution, which ends up being pretty frustrating to watch. It's like they're pulling their punches and the result is a prank that doesn't quite hit the mark.

In short, as much as I've loved Mark Rober's YouTube content, Revengineers falls short. It leans too heavily into the clichés of reality TV, losing much of the authenticity that made Mark's YouTube videos so popular. It could have been a platform for social change, but it ends up feeling inauthentic and formulaic.

So if you're a fan of Mark's YouTube channel, you might want to lower your expectations for Revengineers.

Here's hoping they can bring more of that YouTube magic into future episodes, but for now, it's not quite hitting the mark.

Mark Rober in name only; don't waste your time

[zimbico · 2/10 · 2 June 2023]

When I saw in a short on Mark Rober's YouTube channel that he had a TV show now, I was intrigued.

Sadly, this is nothing at all like his (fantastic) YouTube videos. It's simply a bad reality pranks show.

They're supposedly trying to teach people a lesson in response to an act of rudeness, but most of the time, the people pranked don't understand, and there's no attempt to explain why they were pranked.

The pranks aren't even very well executed (or that funny); and unlike on YouTube, there's no analysis as to why, or getting into much of the engineering of anything. It's all enormously dumbed down, and interactions among the team feel kinda staged.

It's like it's just some naive attempt to appeal to the unintellectual masses. It's so off-brand, it makes me wonder what involvement Mark actually had in its creation!

Don't waste your time.

Sorry Mark. I don't think this was worth the damage to your brand. I hope they paid you well at least!

A fun and goofy show

[kayleigher-89715 · 10/10 · 28 May 2023]

I really enjoyed the light-hearted and goofy nature of this show. It is not like Mark Rober's YouTube channel and that is okay, it's not supposed to be. It's just a fun little show where we get to see people who violate social norms(bike theft, smoking in non-smoking zone, using phone durring movie, etc) get their comeuppance. This made me laugh so hard during every episode. I can't say that it cured my depression but it sure didn't hurt. I love the science and engineering elements and his team of fellow revengeneers that made the show reminiscent of Mythbusters. All that being said, this was not a perfect show but it is a good time. Just enjoy it for what it is rather than wishing it were somthing else and you are in for a good time.

It's like Mark joined a random fill game of squads

[moradtfarouk · 1/10 · 28 May 2023]

Look elsewhere if you came here expecting the same fun stuff he does on Youtube.

The cast and the execution pranks are the cringest and the worst I have ever endured

Beware of spoilers ahead if you still want to waste 20 minutes of your life

It's like Mark joined a random fill game of squads Thea, supposedly the "tHe WeLdR", yet the show puts almost 100% emphasise on her acrobatic moves and her skimpy suits Estefannie, "ThE pRoGRaMmEr", who does nothing about coding and instead solders (badly, her hands are shakey and I'm fairly confident she made a bunch of cold solder joints) and makes a contraption using kevlar wire and finally Alan, "The Maker", because they felt like they have to include an asain dude because yeah sCiEncE and sTuFf.

No offense to the man, he's actually the most tolerable of show hosts, but like he does nothing at all during the episodes.

Sterilized and overly safe, 2 min of content stretched to 22

[krupocin-1 · 2/10 · 30 May 2023]

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.

Horrible premise - horrible execution

[bloppdota · 1/10 · 2 July 2023]

Watching this made me change my opinion of Mark Rober by 180°.

Making a show where u wanna punish people for minor things like taking too many samples at a supermarket (oh no they only make billions of profits), taking 10 seconds to order food (my day is ruined i had to wait 10 seconds longer) or reading on your phone in a cinema (oh no a 5cm screen is so bright compared to the cinema projector) is just stupid.

It feels overall staged & you constantly cringe - good luck watching this for longer than 5 minutes.

Mark Rober can only hope that not many people watch this. From doing something honorable like hunting porch pirates to this ... what a steep fall.

Super cringy and fake

[Nerdfury · 1/10 · 20 May 2023]

I like Mark Rober's stuff, even if he does use his popularity and net worth purely to play act at charity-washing - by selecting one (and one only) photogenic sick kid per year with a guaranteed positive outcome and play up how philanthropic he is, making maddening amounts of money for himself in the process.

This show is just like Mark - fake and designed to fleece money from his fans with the pretence of being for the public good. It has all the trappings on mid-2000s science-entertainment cringe TV.

The cast are himself, a token Asian, a token Latina woman, and a token white woman - the Latina wears short skirts and tights and presents herself as a 'coder and hacker' while displaying fake code on her setup of four monitors in a square configuration, pretending it's super secret. Oh, and in addition to being an elite hacker, she's also apparently able to solder, build, and paint.

The welder gets about wearing tight overalls and boiler suits, all designed to show off her 'assets.' They make sure to remind you that she's super flexible by having her put her foot on top of the bench when she's cutting and welding, as well as making sure we see the footage of her acrobatics where she contorts herself into shapes in skimpy outfits.

The Asian 'maker,' (whatever the hell that is) is just there. He exists in the show.

The whole show is centred around getting revenge on people that do things that are minor inconveniences like not putting away shopping trolleys, over-engineering low grade pranks on people that are well and truly in on the gag.

I got one episode in and deleted the rest. Not worth your time or brain cells.

Moronic and Cringy

[blueapp123 · 1/10 · 30 October 2023]

While the show seems to aim for a diverse cast, it unfortunately falls flat when it comes to delivering compelling content. The execution feels like a cringeworthy, low-budget imitation of shows like MythBusters.

Rather than offering engaging, quality material, it comes off as cheap B movie footage pieced together without much thought.

The end result left me regretting the time I invested in watching it and wishing for something more substantive. In summary, the show tries to give off a certain vibe but fails to deliver, making me wish I could get my time back.

In particular, the storytelling lacked depth and originality, making the entire experience even more unsatisfying.

It's like someone used AI to generate Mark's face into this atrocity.