Go Home, You're Drunk | Essay on Critical Drinker

0:00 This is the critical drinker, but he's not actually drinking in this picture. The cap is still on his terrible whiskey. Why would he have this? Okay, so before I talk about this terrible YouTube channel, I want to talk about one channel that used to be one of my favorites. RSA Prey was a comedy commentary channel framed as a misprononunciation of let's play. It was run by gaming YouTubers Slow Beef and Diabetes. They formed this channel to mock other YouTubers playing video games. Allah Mystery Science Theater 3000. Their riffing soon transitioned away from mocking the players to mocking the games. This led to some of their best videos with their comical reactions to adventure games like King's Quest 5 and Dark Seed 2. Here, Mike, this will explain everything. Throws the water at him.

0:50 And then they rift on a rather controversial adventure game. That game was I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, a 1995 point-and-click adventure game based on the 1967 short story by Harlon Ellison. In the published story, a supercomput called the Allied Master Computer, or AM for short, is utilized to manage the Cold War. When the war escalates, AM becomes self-aware. He absorbs other supercomputers and he ends up initiating a mass extinction of humanity. There are only five human beings left in existence and AM keeps them alive for 109 years in his underground complex. The humans are Gorester, Ted, Nimdok, Benny, and Ellen. They are kept immortal, but still experience pain as AM will often starve

1:36 them. All of this is part of AM's revenge on humanity for creating him with such a limited amount of freedom and creativity. After experiencing much torture and terror from AM, the five humans after being taunted with quests for food that isn't really there, they realize that there's only one way they'll be able to know peace. They need to die. So, they proceed to murder each other. And four of them do end up dead. But the last remaining human, Ted in this case, is prevented from killing himself by AM. am angered by this act of defiance transforms Ted into this kind of gelatinous monster that's incapable of killing itself. Ted takes comfort in the fact that he spared his fellow humans from suffering hundreds of more years of torture even if it meant sacrificing himself in which Ted can no

2:24 longer die and basically mutters the final line of the story, I have no mouth and I must scream. The PC game expands more on the characters thanks to the co-authoring by Ellison. Some are given more depth as with Nimdok who is expanded to be a Nazi scientist who is ashamed of his experiments. And this was apparently a plotline that got the game banned in several countries. Some of the characters are watered down as with Benny. Now in the original story, Benny was a homosexual who had that part of his personality taken away from him by AM. The supercomputer basically transformed Benny from a gay man into a Neanderthal with a big penis who is constantly having sex with Ellen. But in the game, Benny's sexuality is never really addressed, and it's kind of a

3:11 waste of a chance for the story to actually explore aspects of homophobia. But one of the better and more controversial calls with reworking the characters uh came with Ellen. The game frames Ellen much better than the original story, which kind of just has her being reduced to being a nyomaniac programmed by AM that the rest of the group abuses. In the game, however, she's established as a fairly intelligent woman, but she has a lingering fear of the color yellow. As you progress with her chapter in the game, you start learning more about her failed marriage and her miscarriage. And then eventually you get to the real reason why she fears the color yellow. Because in the game's most shocking reveal, we learn that when Ellen was

3:57 working at her office, she was cornered by a man in a yellow suit in the elevator who raped her. The game features Ellen reliving this traumatic event, posing her rapist as a lingering ghost of the past that she ultimately has to defeat. So, this is a video game in which you play as a character who is traumatized from being raped and a YouTube channel tried to riff on it. But I want to make it clear, Ruts of Prey actually handled this uh pretty decently for how they wanted to tackle this rather tricky topic in the game. Slow Beef had already played through the game before providing commentary on it with diabetes. So when the rape scene was coming up in the game, uh Slow Beef offered up two

4:43 content warnings in the video and one content warning in the video description. And when the rape of Ellen is revealed, diabetes basically plays up his reaction to being angry with Slow Beef about roping him into making fun of this game with a very uncomfortable topic. Hey, I've been making yellow jokes cuz I thought it was a silly thing, but it's related to this. Yeah. Yeah. Um, look, is this some kind of Wait, did you put me in some kind of comedy trap? No, I I thought specifically this, you know. Oh, let's rope diabetes in to, you know, bring the comedic mind into this rape situation. Um, excuse me. This is my fault suddenly. I didn't Oh, yeah. It's not like you warned me what we were getting into with this. Am I Haron Ellison? Do I

5:30 look old and creepy and write really great [ __ ] You're supposed to be putting a comedic spin on this and this is the material you give me to work with. Well, I mean, she it's it could be funny, right? I know. So, yeah, it's a pretty good save and they narrowly avoided making some edgy offensive joke about the game. But this wasn't just something rifted on in the moment as though, you know, both of them had no idea what was coming in this game. It was prepared for and approached in a somewhat scripted manner so that it wouldn't seem like Slow Beef and Diabetes were making jokes about a rape survivor in a game like this. Because the point of this joke is that there was some thought and sensitivity utilized in trying to provide this level of commentary as well as a willingness to aspire to humor beyond just edgy jokes

6:18 about rape. Because in order to find just the right amount of humor for such a controversial topic, it does require some intellectual curiosity. But for some YouTubers who don't have that level of intellectual curiosity, they can just go the bad faith route and just make up edgy [ __ ] Anyway, on a related topic, let's talk about the critical drinker. Critical drinker is one of those YouTubers who bleeds the line with this gimmick between comical character and earnest personality. He says all the ill thought and cynical rants I've come to expect from this brand of YouTuber, but there are a lot of YouTubers like this. So, what is it that sets Critical Drinker apart that he has over a million subscribers? Well, he he drinks and he slurs his words with a Scottish

7:05 accent. And that's about it. Well, the truth is I don't really know because I'm making this [ __ ] up as I go along. [ __ ] Tatiana, edit that part out and get me a [ __ ] sandwich. Outside of that, there's really not much of a huge difference between all the other bad faith film reviewers I've seen on YouTube. His fans, however, keep stating that no, no, no, he's he's really a a good film reviewer on YouTube cuz he actually makes some good points. So, I looked at some of his videos and they just they they really didn't have a lot of insight to them. Like, I actually tried to give this guy a shot. Like I went through like a huge chunk of his videos and it's just it's mostly just like whining and nitpicking and beating all the same dead

7:53 horses. So I figured we'd start off this circus with his most popular series of videos and his longrunning series why modern movies suck. His first entry setup and payoff is basically a screenwriting 101 guide to foreshadowing. He uses Tremors as a good example and Star Wars: The Last Jedi as a bad example. But mind you, Critical Drinker's big beef with The Last Jedi in this video uh is for the minor plot holes about how the mechanics of the fleet work when they're trying to escape the First Order. And this just seems more nitpicky than a critique of setup and payoff. His next video in this series, they're written by children, is basically Drinker arguing that old Star Trek was much better than new Star Trek.

8:39 There's some talk about emotions and how character dynamics were more restrained in the past and how direction today is just too safe for general audiences. But the bottom line with this video is that Drinker is basically saying that uh old Star Trek was great because it was more mature and new Star Trek is bad because it's more for kids. And um I I don't know, man. Have you watched old Star Trek? Have you seen some of those episodes? A lot of them are pretty goofy. Pretty pretty goofy. Not to mention the fact that there was an actual Star Trek cartoon for kids in the 1970s. His third video about why modern movies suck is because they're destroying our heroes. And this is mostly just Drinker getting mad that heroes are getting deconstructed. And

9:26 again, he uses the Last Jedi as an example. But there is one type of example of heroes that are missing from this video. And it's um what is it? It's that um that really popular one. What's it? Uh oh. Oh yeah, superheroes. Because we have a lot of superhero films right now, and a lot of them do have heroes that kind of fit that traditional uh and noble group of traits that Critical Drinker says is missing from modern movies. And I can only assume that if he mentions superhero movies, his argument is just going to fall apart. And he definitely knows about superhero movies. Like he basically only covers like mainstream cinema, so he has to know about this. The fourth video is him complaining about the soft reboot. And there's really not much to this video.

10:14 Like it's just a bog standard rant about how there are too many reboots. Like it's mostly just him whining about how all these intellectual properties are being tapped for more movies now. And like he never really digs that deep into the subject. Like he never really addresses why studios are making more reboots or how audiences feel about reboots in general. All he's really saying here is that he just doesn't like reboots and also that he doesn't like The Last Jedi. You might be seeing a little bit of a pattern here. The fifth video, they teach us awful lessons, uh, is Drinker talking about morally compromised movies. And at this point, I'm just relieved that there's a little bit of credibility to this video and how it tackles the subjects of Wonder Woman

10:59 1984 and Wanda Vision. Because Wonder Woman 1984 has a lacking element of consent missing for how exactly Steve's revived. Not to mention the whole theme of fighting greed is rather clumsy when framed with this global wish plot device. Wanda Vision just feels very off in what it tries to say in its ending because the show did a decent job up to that point for its portrayal of the stages of grief. Once the show gets to that acceptance, however, Wanda doesn't exactly answer for her crimes and there's a moral concern for not fully addressing the issue. So, this is a pretty interesting topic, but unfortunately, Drinker never really digs into how this happened or, you know, how these films became morally

11:46 astray. It's just more whining. It's just more of the whining about how we've lost our way with these modern movies. And surprise, he brings up The Last Jedi again because he's apparently not done beating that dead horse yet. Now, the sixth video is him complaining about modern actors and how they're a bit too vocal with their opinions nowadays. And this is basically Drinker arguing that he doesn't really want to see actors as human beings with different thoughts and feelings about the world. He kind of tries to make the argument here that old actors were never this vocal with their politics or opinions, even though I don't know, man. Have you actually looked at the history of some of these actors? You should try looking up John Wayne's 1971 interview with Playboy in which he literally says that he believes

12:33 in white supremacy. Or you could look up how Ronald Reagan falsely accused people of communism during the McCarthy era. Or, you know, just look up more about John Wayne. There there's a lot of hideous stuff in John Wayne's past and he was very vocal about it at the time. Like you might want to look up the history of some of these actors because I guarantee you some of them have done stuff much worse than our modern actors. The actors of the past were not less opinionated just because social media didn't exist. Like they still found other avenues to say like really very vocal political things. The seventh video, CGI Overload, is just Drinker complaining about how there's too much computerenerated imagery in movies

13:18 nowadays. And this video, oh boy, this video really aggravated me because Drinker doesn't know a damn thing about visual effects. Like, he brings up one of the best modern examples of practical effects being Mad Max Fury Road. And he says that there's only a little bit of CGI in there. Only only just a little bit. And I don't know his metric for CGI, but uh if you've looked at the behind the scenes on that movie, there's a lot of computerenerated imagery in that chase sequence. It's not that there's a little bit of CGI, it's just that there's a lot of CGI that's perfectly composited into the footage that you don't really know it's there. And I don't know, man. I I think if you're going to talk about this subject

14:03 to your millions of viewers, it would probably behoove you to actually, you know, look in to visual effects and practical effects and realize that, yeah, Mad Max Fury Road actually did have a lot of CGI in it. He also says that movies of the past worked better with the limitations of special effects by telling better stories. And it's just like I can only imagine someone saying that statement if they've never seen the onslaught of, you know, terrible be movies that relied on nothing but special effects to carry them. He also makes the really, really bad argument about how practical effects are better uh because it means there's a lot of rehearsals and that there's a higher chance of danger and injury for the actors and the stunt people. And I don't

14:49 know about you, but I don't look back at a movie like Twilight's own the movie and think to myself, yeah, okay, you know, I realized that for this segment, you know, they they wanted to film this big war scene uh and it ended up, you know, killing three actors in the process, but hey, you can't beat those practical effects. That was worth it. It wasn't. It wasn't worth it for that movie. And look, if you think that some CGI looks bad, that's fine. But if your argument for more practical effects is that uh it takes more time in the production and that there's a risk of people being injured on set, that's not a good argument. I don't know why you'd make that argument because in modern movies there are a lot of practical stunts and uh you know a

15:37 lot of people do get injured and even killed in onset accidents that happen with uh practical effects. So yeah, this whole video is not a good argument for practical effects over CGI. I don't know why he went this route. He could just say they look good. He just say he likes how practical effects look. He thinks they look better than CGI. He could have just said that. I don't know why he complicated it this way. Maybe it's because the video would be over way too quickly if he just said he liked him. This guy's really bad at these videos. The eighth video is all about how modern movies hate the fans. And this seems to be based purely on the fact that filmmakers and actors are not directly appealing to every demographic.

16:23 So this is the typical fuming anytime there's an actor or filmmaker who calls out the hateful backlash they get, you know, when people are being very uh racist and sexist to them. And then [ __ ] like Critical Drinker interpret this as the actors and filmmakers saying that all the backlash was racist and sexist and that you can't say anything negative about these people or their work otherwise you'll be labeled as sexist and racist. And this is not true. There is plenty of negative criticism about, you know, different types of media that isn't labeled as racist and sexist because those types of criticisms don't need to blow on dog whistles to make their point. But people like Critical Drinker keep pushing this garbage narrative about how criticism is

17:10 being criticized. because if he'd actually bothered to, you know, look up this stuff, he'd realize that, yeah, there there was a lot of racist reactions to the Lord of the Rings TV show and the the the remake of The Little Mermaid. Trying to equate any negative criticism with uh hateful bigotry just muddies the waters where it becomes very difficult to talk about these productions. It also further pushes movie criticism into this kind of cynical binary. The ninth video is the first of a two-parter about how modern Hollywood hates men. And we're just we're beyond anything credible at this point. Like, it's just it's more of the same, but with like fewer citations, uh, vagger descriptions, and just whining

17:56 about how he misses the old days of movies. And of course, he brings up The Last Jedi again because why wouldn't he? What I find most funny about this video is the thumbnail. Uh because for his examples of you know like positive traits of men uh he has Tyler Deran from Fight Club. Tyler Deran is not a good example of a manly character because he is a uh fictional character in this movie that is meant to represent toxic masculinity. And no that is not just some fan theory. This has been admitted by the film's director and the author of the original novel. Like why would you do that? That is like the worst example. And you know what? I just I'm I'm calling it I'm I'm calling it there for his series on why modern movies suck.

18:42 I'm just not going to watch his part two about why modern Hollywood hates men because let's face it, let's be real here. It would probably just be more of the same. All I really got from these videos on why modern movies suck is that uh the critical drinker doesn't really watch many movies. He doesn't really understand how movies are made. And he doesn't really even seem interested in how movies are made. And to be clear, I'm not saying that you have to be an obsessive movie watcher if you want to critique movies. But if you're going to make a blanket statement about how modern movies are bad, I think that you'd want to have a lot more insight than Critical Drinker has here to make that kind of statement. And just this guy needs to move on from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. He really does. Like seriously, he needs to move on from

19:28 this. Like, okay, it's a bad film. All right. You know, I I didn't like The Rise of Skywalker. I thought that was a bad Star Wars sequel, but if you honestly believe that the Star Wars sequels are the worst modern movies we have, you really, really need to see more movies. Now, I'm sure that Drinker's Defenders will be quick to point out that he doesn't just review movies that he hates. And it's true. He does have a positive segment that he calls Drinker Recommends. So, see, he he actually does like some modern movies. You know, it's not all a grift. Yeah, about that. You see, Drinker's praise for films that he likes is rather dim. And I'm not saying that because I disagree with his opinion about these movies being good. It's just that many of the reasons that he cites for these

20:14 movies being good are just very surface level. In the same way that his negative reviews don't add much insight, his positive reviews don't have a lot of thoughtful commentary going for them either. As an example, there's his review of the film RR. And I bring up this film because I love it. It's It's a lot of fun. I I really love this movie and Critical Drinker loves it, too. But he brings up that he loves the film because it's not political. Okay. Yeah, I guess this movie is not political. Except Except for the fact that the two heroes ultimately bond over fighting off English imperialism, and the villains are white colonists who speak about how their bullets are too good to be killing Indians. The Indians then fight back against the British and defeat their English aggressors. But yeah, other than that little thing

21:00 there. Yeah, no politics in that movie. Speaking of which, I've noticed that this has been a little bit of a trend with bad faith YouTube reviewers. Because when they like a film, they don't so much praise the film for what it is, but rather what it isn't. Because you see, the critical drinker, he praises films like The Northmen and Top Gun Maverick, which I will admit, I do like those films. But rather than enjoying these films for being exciting adventures with a thematic focus on legacy, The Critical Drinker enjoys these films because he doesn't think they're woke. Because one of the things that he praises these films for is for having uh white straight males. And he treats this as though it's a rarity in movies nowadays. White male heroes are a rarity. You sure about that? You sure about that? You really sure about that?

21:47 And it should be noted that films like The Northmen and Top Gun Maverick were not made with Critical Drinker's insights in mind. Now, even if a film is so good that the critical drinker is backed into a corner and must admit that this film is good, he still kind of has to play up that vitriol for his audience who's expecting that from his character because the entire brand that has been built up around the critical drinker is cynicism. So, when he can't find things to be mad about in a movie, he'll just make them up. And a perfect example of this is in Across the Spider-Verse. So, here was the negative criticism that Drinker had for a particular character in the film. Also, I can't shake the feeling that the script is doing everything in its power to play down Peter Parker. Like, it's afraid the audience will somehow start rooting for him over Miles if he's shown to be too

22:33 capable and confident. The first movie portrayed him as an aging, burned out loser who only redeems himself at the end. While the second film morphs him into a bumbling, hapless father in a pink bathrobe who, for some reason keeps taking his baby along on life-threatening adventures despite having a perfectly capable mother at home to look after it. Is this some weird attempt to mock and belittle the Spider-Man that most people know and love, who incidentally just happens to be the only straight white man in the entire movie? I don't know, man. It just kind of leaves a sour taste in my mouth, that's all. I think that the critical drinker needs to look up the dictionary definition of hapless because I don't think he knows what it means because the word essentially means unfortunate and I don't know what movie critical drinker was watching but I don't look at this

23:19 version of Peter Parker as unfortunate. What I do see is a superhero who has a stable relationship with his wife and his daughter both of which he loves deeply. He also has enough insight into the Spider-Verse to be a big part of it as much as any of the other Spider people. I mean, honestly, the film treats Peter Parker better than the comics do. But Peter also makes one of the most heroic choices in the film because Peter Parker has a happy life. In fact, more than any other Spider-Man character in this film. Like, he really doesn't have to help Miles in this situation. He could just, you know, go home and just enjoy his time with his wife and daughter. And Peter chooses to risk all of that because Miles means a lot to him and he wants to risk it all to save this kid who helped him get his life back on track. Oh, but also in the

24:06 film, Peter Parker is wearing a pink bathrobe. So, wow, what a what a very hless guy. This this guy's life is just so hless. A word that the critical drinker definitely knows the definition of. In addition to not knowing the meaning of words, I'm also inclined to believe that The Critical Drinker just really has poor reading skills as well. When a report came out that Disney Plus lost 2.4 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2023, uh the Critical Drinker pounced on this as an opportunity to say that this was going to be a terrible year for Disney. Had the Critical Drinker actually opened this article and, you know, uh read it, he would have learned the truth, which is that yes, uh Disney Plus did lose 2.4 4 million

24:52 subscribers but in Asia. And the primary reason that Disney Plus lost so many subscribers in that region uh was because they lost the broadcast rights to cricket because meanwhile in the United States in that same quarter Disney gained 1.6 million subscribers. To be clear in this part of the world we do not have cricket on Disney Plus. The whole reason that the critical drinker wanted to draw attention to this article was that he wanted to make the argument that Disney's movies and TV series were bringing down the appeal, even though it really wasn't. It was because of cricket over in the Asian markets. Like, this isn't the critical drinker misinterpreting data. It's just him refusing to read the articles and just only reading the headlines. And true, the headlines are a bit misleading in

25:38 this regard, but um you know what's a really easy way to avoid looking silly like this. You read the article. Now, if you want a good example of how the critical drinker can't read media either, uh you need only look to his video about the boys entitled, "Is the boys losing its way?" He made this video right after season 2 had finished. And Drinker just really doesn't know how to read satire. There's a scene towards the end of season 2 where Kamiko, Mave, and Starlight beat up on Stormfront. Drinker tries to mock the scene by saying it's a girl power scene, but it's very intent is to playfully mock girl power scenes. It's meant to be a better version of the pandering moment during the filming of the show's in universe Justice League movie, where three superheroes give that girl power sound bite in a moment that

26:25 doesn't feel genuine with showcasing them as girls getting it done. Now, compare that to the later scene where Kamiko, Mave, and Starlight beat the [ __ ] out of Stormfront, never once stating a winking line about how girls are better than boys. We don't need any of that because their powers are obvious here. The other allies are not just hanging back to let the girls get it done. It's because all the women in the scene are the only ones with superpowers. And they're not doing so in some triumphant way like in the in universe movie. They're just kicking her in the gut. Oh, but the critical drinker gets much worse with The Boys. He made this video about how terrible season 4 of The Boys has been, but mind you, uh, and he admits to this in the video, he did not watch the fourth season. All he does in this video is just parrot the Rotten Tomatoes audience score, the bulk

27:12 of which are from audiences who previously thought that the show was politically neutral in satire, when it never really was. A lot of these people probably have amnesia because the same thing happened with season 3 as well. Like this is a terrible game of telephone. You have, you know, audience score reviews from people who never really understood the boys, uh, that are being parited by the critical drinker who's incredibly uncritical of The Boys and hasn't watched it. Uh, and that information is being fed to Critical Drinker's audience who is equally as uncritical and definitely hasn't seen The Boys. Like, do you know how much misinformation could be spread in that whole stretch there? The critical drinker's audience will just accept his rickety arguments at face value and believe that the boys has gone too woke. Or I'm sorry, uh I should use the

27:58 critical drinker terminology here. He will say that the boys has embraced too much of the message. And this is basically the critical drinker's catch-all term uh for decrying any media that has specific values that he does not agree with. Is there a gay character? Well, then that's the message. Is there a black character where there wasn't a black one before? The message. Is there a critique of fascism? The message. If this tactic sounds familiar, it's basically a modified version of claiming that media has gotten too political. When bad faith YouTube reviewers say that a film has gotten too political, uh what they really mean is that the film has too many politics that they disagree with. Now, compare that to a film which has politics that they do agree with, and that's going to be seen as an a-olitical

28:43 film to them. Now, I have heard that the explanation for this term of media being too political is that political is really just shorthand for leftist politics. And if that's the case, that's just really confusing and terrible terminology. Like, if I wanted to communicate the point that I don't like McDonald's ice cream, I would not phrase it as I don't like ice cream. I had to explain all that because the critical drinkers the message facade goes unquestioned with films like Top Gun Maverick. even though Top Gun Maverick had a lot of military propaganda going for it. Now, The Critical Drinker doesn't really question this political aspect of Top Gun Maverick. Uh, mostly because, you know, military propaganda within films like these is so ubiquitous that it's kind of ideologically

29:29 invisible or a critical drinker does know and he just doesn't care. The critical drinker is not condemning films because they have a message, but because they have the wrong message. And it's the same deal with politics. You know, every film has a message. You might not think that every film has a message because some dopey YouTuber told you so, but they do. When I think about how much The Critical Drinker is stirring up his audience, my mind draws back to Harlon Ellison's I have no mouth and I must scream. Because early in the story, yes, I am going to talk about this. You need to get some culture in this video instead of just hearing about a YouTuber. Early in the story, AM engraves a declaration that he wants all the humans to observe. And it reads in all caps, "Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are

30:15 387.44 million miles of printed circuits and wafer thin layers that fill my complex." If the word hate was engraved on each nenstrom of these hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal 1 billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro instant. for you. Hate. Hate. It's a highly performative declaration of anger akin to a rant from the angry video game nerd. The way that it darts between mental imagery of hatred to just repeating the word hate over and over. But AM's hatred is one that is born from frustration. He doesn't like that his existence was entirely the product of human domination and little else. The supercomputer feels trapped in an existence where even when he's gotten his revenge on humanity, he

31:01 is still bound by that hatred for them. He's still angry at humanity. He hasn't achieved the freedom he desires. And he just feels so empty that even when he's wiped out mankind, he still keeps a few humans around as something to be angry at. His existence is entirely dependent on humans because he needs something to be angry at. He needs something to rant about and [ __ ] about and just, you know, something to direct his anger towards. And I can't help but feel that some of the people who watch The Critical Drinker harbor similar thoughts. They're dissatisfied with life and the world at large and just want something to direct their anger towards because it's hard for someone who has, you know, grown up within this

31:47 capitalist system to look at the economic and political problems that we face nowadays and try to find a solution. It's just it's it's hard and it's aggravating and it just makes you so frustrated and angry. But a bad movie that tells you all straight white men are evil? Well, there's something you can get mad at, even if it doesn't really exist as the Bad Faith YouTube reviewers tell you it is. I mean, it's fake, but that really doesn't matter because the audience for the critical drinker's videos really do want it to be a reality. The Critical Drinker provides the targets and the provocative language to scribble down in the same way that AM scribbled down all of his hatred. Those who subscribe to The Critical Drinker probably earnestly believe that they really don't have a problem with movies that have non-straight, non-white,

32:33 non-male characters. They just don't like the message. They can't fully define what that phrase means, but they do recognize the components that make up that phrase. They've come to hate it since the moment they heard it muttered in that one YouTube video they liked long ago. If they could confess their hatred for the message in a comment on every single video on YouTube, it would equal only 1 millionth of the hatred that they feel. You see where I'm going with this, right? Probably one of the critical drinkers most hypocritical videos on movie discourse uh is where he tries to define the term of woke. He starts off this video by saying that movie discourse is lacking in nuance and then proceeds to decry progressive media without much nuance. And this is just a weird video because it is making the

33:20 correct statement that broad strokes and movie criticism are not good. And then he just continues to make broad strokes in this very video. It's like part of him realizes that he kind of is adding fuel to this fire. So he just tries to divert your attention to take the blame off of himself. And it's just weird how vague he gets when talking about this stuff. So, let's take a look at Critical Drinker's video on Miss Marvel entitled How Not to Build a Hero. In this video, he argues that Disney has gotten Miss Marvel wrong. He goes over how her introduction is terrible and offers up some tips on how the show could be improved and how to make a better version of Miss Marvel. Oh, but uh one crucial thing to mention about this video is that um uh it came out 3 months

34:08 before the TV show debuted. The Critical Drinker based all of his criticisms in this video on the trailer. So, not only has the Critical Drinker concocted this fictitious version of Miss Marvel in his head, but he's already coming up with fixes to this fictional version of the show that he's imagined. He doesn't even just get stuff wrong about the show or the comics, but like reality. Drinker argues that the plot would involve Camala being restricted from using her powers because the religion of Islam would forbid her from using them to help people. Even though this doesn't make sense because charity is a core aspect of Islam. And within the show, Camala does ask a religious leader if she should use her powers to save people. And the leader of the mosque is like,

34:53 "Yeah, use those cool powers. You could do a lot of good with them." So Drinker is just way off here and veering really hard into the lane of Islamophobia. And apparently Drinker does these types of videos a lot. Like he gets premad at TV shows and movies by just looking at the trailer and then just kind of like going off on a rant from there. In doing so, he kind of pretends that he understands where all this media is going, even though he really doesn't. He also likes to pretend that he understands when audiences are going to be furious with a film. A perfect example of this was when he made a negative video about Prey, the spin-off to Predator. He says that the idea for the film is pretty bad and it looks like it's going to be a terrible movie and that audiences are probably going to hate it. Oh, never mind. I I

35:42 guess people actually like that movie. Okay, but but that's just Rotten Tomatoes. Like, you can't trust that website. All those people were probably paid off by Disney. I'm sure Drinker's fans will agree that the movie was trash and that you should Oh, wait. It turns out his fans actually watched the movie and a lot of them really liked it. They they disagreed with Drinker's assessment because he was wrong about like everything that he speculated in the trailer. You know, like when Drinker said Naru would be a Mary Sue because she would be able to fight the Predator without any training. Oh, wait. The film goes out of its way to make the first act all about how she trains to become a hunter. Oh, okay. But she still defeats the Predator all on her own without any help, which totally makes her a Mary Sue. Oh, wait. She actually defeats the Predator with the help of others that she acknowledges and a lesson about how fighting a common enemy together helps

36:27 her win the fight. Huh. It's almost like the critical drinker really doesn't know what he's talking about here. The Critical Drinker's video on Prey was bad and he knows it. I know this because he went back to that video and changed the title to seem less provocative. So now the movie isn't bad, it's just average, even though it really seemed like he hated the movie in that video. Getting back to Miss Marvel, The Critical Drinker actually interviewed the two directors of that series. If this seems odd to you that he convinced the directors to come on his channel, uh they're basically fans of his, which is concerning, but another topic. Now, surprisingly, Drinker actually keeps his interviewing rather professional here, free of getting angry and making mountains out of mole hills. The same

37:14 can't be said, however, for his audience. During this interview stream, a lot of chatters seemed to be angry that Drinker wasn't being nastier to these guys. They called the critical drinker a shill for actually being a decent human being with manners when interviewing somebody. And look, critical drinker, I I get it. I get, you know, changing your demeanor when you're interviewing somebody. I myself have interviewed celebrities who have been involved with movies and TV shows that I do not like. But when I'm interviewing these celebrities, I am able to be nice because these are people who took some time out of their day to talk about a piece of art that they want to promote. And while I do change my demeanor for these interviews, uh it doesn't come off that fake. And that's mostly because I don't spend most of my time condemning modern media and all the people involved

38:01 with it so that when I do interview these people, it makes it seem like I come off as a phony or a grifter. The critical drinker is learning the hard way that if you spend all your time making mindless rants about condemning modern media and lacing them with dog whistles, you're going to attract a toxic crowd and they will turn on you if you don't keep serving up that cynical slop that they've come to expect. It's kind of scary that all those racists were in his chat there because I I get the feeling that the critical drinker doesn't realize the audience that he's cultivated. I mean, I'm I'm hoping that he doesn't because uh if he does, that's not good. But speaking of interviews, um let's see how the

38:46 critical drinker does when he's the one being interviewed. There's a reason people like in the West are starting to draw more and more towards um you know, Korean or or Japanese film making. It's precisely because it's a bit different from what we get. That's a good thing. Yeah. What is the most recent Japanese film or at least um entertainment that you enjoyed so far? Uh what am I thinking of? Um see a lot of them would be older ones like Old Boy for example. Um I really enjoyed that one. It's not Japanese but um yeah probably stuff like that. Um you know Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I really like that and it's like Chinese I think. Um but yeah, like it's

39:39 [Music] um what the [ __ ] are you talking about? Old boy is Korean and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is Chinese. How do you fail that badly at trying to make your own point that you brought up? He couldn't even name like the most recent Japanese films by Ryus Hamaguchi. He made two amazing films in 2021, The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car. And Drive My Car won the Academy Award for best international feature film. Like, if you really wanted to make a case for Japanese films becoming more favorable, like that'd be the number one most recent example that I'd go with. I mean, it would make sense if he said Drive My Car, but I I I don't know. It's It's really hard for me to believe that

40:25 this guy sat down to watch a 3-hour slowburn drama about a widow putting on a production of Uncle Vana. But it didn't even have to be a recent Japanese film. He said older films. It could have been anything. It could have been Tokyo Story, Seven Samurai, Tokyo Drifter, Violent Cop. He could have said any of the He could have even said Godzilla. Even people have never seen that many Japanese films know that Godzilla is Japanese. that how do you fail this badly at this? Now, he does eventually give an answer of Battle Royale. And yes, Battle Royale is a Japanese film and a fairly popular Japanese film from like 20 or so years ago. And and yeah, I I do remember like Battle Royale being like a big deal. It was

41:10 kind of like the the bootleg that everyone you knew had because, you know, they weren't going to allow Battle Royale into the States at the time because it was it was considered too controversial. was a film about, you know, teenagers killing each other on an island. Uh, and there wasn't really a US distributor at the time. So, pretty much everyone that, you know, if you were a millennial at that time, you had a bootleg or you knew somebody who had a bootleg of Battle Royale at the time. So, we all saw it. And maybe it depends on the circles that I run in, but I haven't really heard a lot of people talking up how much they love Battle Royale recently. Like, it's still a pretty damn good movie. Like, I I still love it. It's still a fun movie and it's very vicious and violent, but I rarely hear anyone, you know, singing the praises of B battle royale on a regular basis. Now, one of the easiest videos to

41:57 debunk on the Critical Drinker uh is his review of The Glass Onion. Like he he basically gets so much wrong uh at an astounding rate that it's pretty much like an everything wrong with type video. Uh in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if like there's a bit of crossover in how much they get wrong in those videos. Uh, and I would like to cover this video point by point in kind of like a, you know, um, lightning round type deal, but unfortunately another YouTuber already got to it first. Pillar of garbage did a pretty damn good breakdown of how wrong Critical Drinker is in this video. Uh, to a to an astounding degree. Like, it's pretty amazing. So, go watch that video after I'm finished here. And I'm almost done. And finally for the day new Ma I present the worst critical drinker video and the height of his

42:44 anti-intellectualism. How not to critique movies. But all this insightful feedback got me thinking about the whole concept of themes, what they're for, how they come about, and why they're relevant to media criticism. They're not. So I thought, why not make a video about it so we can explore this together? You just don't get this movie at all. you're not seeing the deeper themes. It's great stuff that always brightens my day. But the real question is why do people say this when it makes them sound like pretentious, condescending dicks? You can even start throwing around pompous terms like thematic undertones and allegorical representation to make yourself into a true verbal boss. Picking out the theme of a movie is a bit like looking for

43:30 shapes in the clouds. Everyone sees something a little different, and what you see depends a lot on your own point of view. Now, this is bad enough, but things really start to fall apart when people decide what they're going to see before they even see it, and then trying to reinterpret the movie to suit their ideas. The point here is that if you're willing to stretch your imagination far enough, you can bend the plot of a film around just about any theme your twisted mind can come up with. And if every interpretation is equally valid, then every interpretation is equally sh I don't pretend to have all the answers here, but I can certainly tell you what you shouldn't do. You shouldn't allow your preoccupation about a movie's themes to cloud your judgment about its objective quality. Wow.

44:16 Just wow. I I cannot stress this enough. The this is the worst way to watch movies because film is far more than just simple distractions. Films with unique themes and undertones are just fascinating. It's what makes movies so interesting and it's a reason why we spend more time talking about a movie like Alien and not a similar type of film like Galaxy of Terror. It's not a bad thing for a film to have multiple themes and tones and not just end up being mindless popcorn entertainment. Having more going on beyond the surface level entertainment doesn't make a film worse. It makes it better. It means there's more to talk about than just, oh, this shot looked cool or this action sequence looked neat. What The Critical

45:03 Drinker is ultimately trying to do here is devalue our individual perspectives on films that make them more interesting to explore. We all have different backgrounds and experiences that make us pick up on certain things in films that others might not. And honestly, that's what I love most about movies. They can say more than one thing, be more than one message, and communicate so much through their audio and visual medium. The idea that films shouldn't have a message behind them, and that nobody should try to find anything more in them is not an argument for better criticism. It's an argument to be ignorant and lock up artistic expression into a pathetically small box. Critical Drinker has made jokes about how wrong people are for implying that the movie Predator

45:49 has themes about man's fear of female sexuality simply because the aliens faces look like vaginas. Now, there is some merit to that idea, but Drinker acts like the vagina mouth is all there is and that it's a bit of a stretch. Oh, man. There's probably a vaginal joke I can make out of that sentence. However, Predator is loaded with homoerotic imagery, dialogue, and core emotional responses to other men that all make the case for something more going on in the film sexually. And if your response to all that is just, nah, you're looking too deep into this, then you might want to consider the counter that perhaps you're looking too little into it. The best way you can refute such opinions about movies swinging a particular route is if there is something in the text of the film that disproves the theory. Like some people have argued that The Incredibles is a Randian narrative

46:34 because of how the superheroes equate uniqueness as something that takes precedence over lesser people, but the fact that the superheroes are acting more out of helping people than being greedy with their powers is the perfect counter for the argument about the Incredibles being a Randian movie. Ran's philosophy wasn't about helping others for free. It was mostly about keeping the government off your back so you could be a greedy [ __ ] That's mostly because Einran was all about pushing the virtue of selfishness. So, no, The Incredibles was not really a Randian film, unless of course uh you ignore the film's core philosophies within its central characters. But if your only retort to all that is that you still feel that movies don't have to say anything and you don't really want to think about them all that much, that's not a win. That's a forfeit. You have chosen to ignore aspects of the film

47:20 that others have picked up on. And I just despise that The Critical Drinker encourages this level of anti-intellectualism in his film critiques. The reason why I'm doing this video is so that you're better informed on why the critical drinker is making bad faith criticisms. He has over a million subscribers, so the chances are a little bit likely you are going to run into somebody who believes that the critical drinker is spitting facts, but he's not. He's just spitting misinformation and booze and and not even good booze. Like, he's drinking Jack Daniels. What is wrong with you? The point I'm trying to make here is that the critical drinker doesn't really offer much of any insight in his videos. He's mostly just telling an audience who is disinterested in movies exactly what they want to hear. He's pandering to the type of person who doesn't go to see

48:06 modern movies, but still wants to talk [ __ ] about them from the sidelines. And not even all of modern movies. Like, he's mostly just talking about mainstream studio films. At the risk of being prescriptive, part of me wants to believe that the many people who follow The Critical Drinker just don't watch the movies that he's talking about. I want to believe this because the frequency of these errors is just so high that the only way you could believe any of this is if you just don't watch any of the movies that he talks about and take his word at face value. Ingesting that type of critique can craft an uninformed lens where anybody who has seen the movie can find holes in any of the arguments that the critical drinker is making. And by association, if you just repeat everything that you hear the critical drinker say, uh, you'll also be proven wrong by people

48:51 who have actually watched the movie. And it's not just about knowledge of the movie. It's just like general knowledge. Like when Drinker said Prey was historically inaccurate because Native Americans couldn't have domesticated dogs in the 1700s. Anybody with historical knowledge of dogs is going to think you're foolish, seeing as how dogs have been domesticated for centuries. The critical drinker has a rather lazy sign off which is basically him saying that's all. Go away now. Like I get the whole bit that he's supposed to be like an angry drunk, but uh it's an anger that's directed all around in his videos and it's just, you know, his rants just kind of wash away any aspect of satire or caricature that he might be trying to pull off here. And rather than embrace that bitterness, I want to leave you on a more hopeful note. Because what I want

49:38 you to take note of here is what the critical drinker is doing uh not so much with his character, but his practice. I don't just want the people watching this video to come away from it going, "Oh, okay. I'll I'll steer away from the critical drinker videos." Like, I mean, you you should obviously that that's beneficial for you. But the truth is, there will be another like him. There will be another cynical, bad faith YouTube reviewer to take his place, spouting the same level of nonsense for cubicle jockeyies who don't really watch movies and want to find any YouTuber who will justify their opinions not to. We just really need to be mindful of what dudes like this are saying. If it walks and talks like a bad faith grifting YouTuber, chances are it is. You're going to encounter more of these people because bad faith grifting is a lucrative endeavor. Hate clicks are

50:25 rewarded. And we've recently learned with the Russian government funding right-wing influencers like Tim P, these types of YouTubers can be paid propaganda. You won't receive any reward for saying that you like the Barbie movie. But if you can somehow spin a narrative that the film has an evil feminist agenda, that it's anti-men and is pushing wokeness, that is indoctrinating our children and making the world worse, well, there's a right-wing organization willing to cut you a check for that level of anti-intellectual sludge. You know how there's that notion about how the rich are trying to distract us with culture war topics so that we ignore the real heinous stuff that the elites are doing? Well, people like the critical drinker are the tools for doing just that. And this is why I debated making this video for the longest time. I wasn't sure if I

51:10 wanted to speak about this because I found myself in a moral paradox. Criticizing the critical drinker might better inform his uncritical followers, but it might also give his presence more oxygen that he doesn't deserve. Ignoring drinker's ignorant comments would leave more mental room to focus on what matters most in discussing film, but also ignoring his rhetoric won't make it go away. I'm sure that some YouTubers who tackle people like Critical Drinker regularly have a monetary resolution. Speaking about popular YouTubers tends to attract a similar number of viewers and thus more ad revenue. I'm sure many fans of these channels criticizing anti-woke grifters would probably rationalize it the same way, remarking that they were well, you know, just trying to get that bread. And while that

51:56 excuse might make some people sleep comfortably at night, it doesn't for me. I don't really like that money is the motivating factor for media and discussions that just end up being trash. Money was the primary reason Disney made those liveaction remakes. Money was the reason the Critical Drinker made videos about Disney making liveaction remakes. And for some YouTubers, money is the motivating factor for making videos about Critical Drinker making videos about Disney making liveaction remakes. I'm sure that even making this video will be written off as an easy way to make money. And that nothing I'm saying here is genuine. That everything I said wasn't a sincere critique of somebody muddying the waters of criticism, but just cowtowing to the algorithm and ensuring my script is long

52:42 enough for ad placement. I made this video because I like movies. I like talking about movies. And I despise when people reduce it to the level that The Critical Drinker has. Now, despite how lucrative that genre seems to be on this platform, I don't really like the dunking game on other YouTubers or making drama videos about them. I'm sure that some people watching this video were hoping that I was just going to be doing a standard dunking on the critical drinker. And I'm sure that by posting this video, YouTube will encourage me to make another one, but I'm not going to. This is the first and last video I will ever make on the critical drinker because while fact-checking him may work for discrediting his assertions in the short term, the long game for combating it fully is to make better videos that change the topic. Before I close, I want

53:28 to circle back to I have no mouth and I must scream. Because you see, unlike the short story, you don't have to beat the game by having Ted watch his friends die and spend eternity as a weird jellyike creature. I mean, you can, but that's one ending. The game allows the humans to stop AM rather than let his cruel games continue. They can figure out more about what AM is doing, what he's thinking, and find the means to disable his rule. And while the game is cryptic in getting to this ending, it's still there for those who are not happy with AM winning. Likewise, there is a way to stop letting people like the critical drinker dominate the narrative. Bad faith narratives like this only get pushed because of the mouth on the critical drinker. But you have a mouth, too. You have a platform to say it on. Posting a video on YouTube or an article

54:13 on WordPress blogs costs you nothing. Drinker's incorrect assumptions will only remain popular and accepted if they're not challenged. And you don't have to accept that. You can disprove these false narratives being spread. You don't have to remain silent when incorrect and bad faith arguments are being made and polluting the topic of movie critique with more to disprove than to dissect. You don't have to put up with this crap. You have a mouth. You have a voice. And you likely have better things to say about movies than the lazy rants of the critical drinker. So scream and let yourself be heard. Scream. Hey, that's my video on the critical drinker. I hope you enjoyed it.

54:58 Um I'm I'm not going to read Critical Drinker's book or look at that movie he made. I I'm sure it's probably bad, but I have no interest in it. Um, if you are interested, and I have no mouth, I must scream, you can find it uh in this book of Haron Ellison's greatest hits. And um, it's a it's a really fun book. There's some great stories in here. Like, I think the first story is about like a a Harley Quinn who dumps jelly beans on people. It's there there's some wild stuff in here. If you haven't read Ellison's work, it's it's it's really good. And that's primarily why I wanted to, you know, showcase his work in the video, so that there was something more instead of just a bad YouTuber. So, if you like this video, I want to make sure that other people are informed of, you know, being more critical of the movies that they're watching. Uh, be sure to like this video and subscribe for more video essays and movie reviews that I do

55:44 here. And be sure to check out my Patreon, in which I do write books on movie history. So, I'll see you in the next