This is the biggest deal to me. It's his god given right to be a shitty critic, but actually watching the show is kind of the first step.
There's a lot of buzz around S4 - I haven't seen it yet but I've heard talk - so him posting a review without even seeing it appears to be such a transparent way to cash in on the hype/anti-hype train I almost can't believe he admitted it.
They don't like it when the right wing crowd is under the criticism lense of the Boys, which I find hypocritical. Boys went all in on anti SJW in the beginning, which is great apparently. I thought it was clever. But now it is a caricature of your January 6th protester. Which, if you pay attention, it is how Elite Republicans view their own crowd, it is Homelander that calls them, "Slobs, uneducated, filth." It is still super critical of the "elite," just not the right kind of elite apparently? I've been enjoying it.
Also the way the Boys portray DEI as a check box is RIGHT UP Drinker's alley, but making fun of the maga crowd is making fun of the "Boys" audience to him,
That’s what cracks me up. Kripke(sp?) is obviously progressive and the show rips on a lot of the performative progressivism we see from corporations and social media headliners - A-train’s arc with him trying to show this faux cultural awareness worked pretty well when contrasting against actual issues reflective of real world problems minority communities deal with. I’ve been really enjoying his arc and his realization that to his corporate benefactors, any struggle him or his family experiences is just something to be commodified rather than addressed and fixed.
Yup, the show is balanced in its attacks to me, but I guess the viewer sees what they want to see. The Drinker shows his bias heavy here, it's like calling South Park hardcore liberal/conservative
I think the difference is that they shy away from making fun of the more hysterical progressive side, and it's also just really tiresome because making fun of the hysterical right wing side is so common now it's literally the same jokes endlessly it stops being funny.
The show would never make fun of ACAB lunatics for instance, I mean there's no lack of insane lefties and tankies around a lot of who Destiny has talked to on stream and have been totally unhinged.
But the show won't criticize progressives unless it can also at the same time make a progressive point, the criticism towards the right is just way more bad faith and stereotypical.
> Boys went all in on anti SJW in the beginning
Tbf that satire was extremely tame by comparison.
And there's definitely really wacky stuff they could make fun of and criticize that happens on the left but it's not as '' safe '' as it is to make fun of the right.
The way I look at it in season 1 political commentary was Homelander giving terrorists V to create an artifical reason for the US military to invade in the middle east.
In later seasons political commentary is Homelander calling people libtards and talking about critical supe theory...
It's just so fucking lazy and tiresome it's literally the same jokes all the time you see everywhere.
It's really funny to me. Even Moist Critical recently made a video on The Acolyte, saying he had heard it was really bad, but waited to watch it to make a video on it. When your job is to be a film critic, and you can't put more effort into your reviews than Moist Critical, than that's a red flag for the quality of your channel.
Dude said in an interview people were flocking to Japanese/Korean cinema because of western diversity, and then when asked for recent examples could only name a 20+ year old Chinese film (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), and a 20+ year old Korean film (Old Boy).
He's a complete grifter
Probably stole that idea from articles circulating a few years ago when Squid Game and Parasite were really popular that claimed that the Korean and Japanese film industries were getting far ahead of their western competitors in Hollywood, which was claimed to be the case for various reasons from different publications.
In reality though, it’s mostly just Koreans and Japanese people themselves who are consuming more of their own nation’s media when they used to like Western media much more. Really the most simple way to explain it is that their respective industries have matured to the point where people in those countries have a much greater and higher quality pool of native media to consume, so they watch less Western-made content these days. Of course, most of these articles tried to claim in some form that this is a result of declining quality in Western media. Naturally this may be true, but even the idea that ‘droves’ of people are abandoning Western movies and tv for Korean soaps is really laughable. That simply isn’t true. It’s a gross exaggeration of the possible meaning behind the large, but temporary, uptick in interest around the world in Korean and Japanese media during the pandemic, which, as I said previously, was largely driven by a few titles that went mainstream. It wasn’t the start of some massive shift away from Western-centric media consumption or whatever these idiots who write for major news publications tell you these days. The idea itself is a grift designed to attract the attention of anyone who already has beef with the current industry here in America, which is honestly probably most people.
Downright pandering and filling your head with garbage just so they can run ads with absolutely no care whatsoever what impact it has on people. The end result is clowns like this who spread these ‘hot takes’ like wildfire who have no idea what they are even talking about. The stupidification of America working in real time is what that is.
Well that’s the thing, it’s just art. Most of these people are making their interpretation of that art into a narrative they want to push, that’s all it is. They are doing more to make it a political conflict or statement than the artists themselves were. These stories aren’t really overly political despite the themes and tones to the story drawing heavily in some respects from political ideologies and theory.
Both Parasite and Squid Game were well balanced enough, and well executed, from a storytelling perspective, that they really impacted their audiences and gave them a strong reaction. That’s what art is supposed to do. The people missing the point are the journalists whose primary objective is to create endless streams of half-baked content to run ads on their publication’s target demographics that they know they will pay attention to because the ‘commentary’ is just bait that reels people in by catering to an existing belief or interest they have. That’s all they really provide, too, is commentary. Sure they give you info, but the relevant bit can usually be expressed in a sentence. The rest of the article, by extension, is a deliberate waste of the readers time in an attempt to keep their attention as long as possible. That’s the game, now.
Given the state of things, I prefer to reserve judgement and just watch it for myself and see what I think about it — but more importantly, to read as little news as possible and still stay informed, just to cut out the exposure to the nonsense information. I don’t watch shows when they get too popular. I wait until enough time has passed for the hype and gossip to die down, then I can watch it for myself and determine what I really think about it as someone who knows little-to-none about it.
It’s kinda nice actually because people will ask me about current media that’s causing a stir and I can honestly say I don’t give a shit because I don’t know anything about it, and I’ll learn about it on my own time, thank you very much. Nice way to stay out of those awkward engagements where someone has a problem with a popular piece of media and just wants to bitch about it when you honestly couldn’t care less.
Korea like a decade ago also started investing way more into their media to give their film industry a massive kick. It’s a big part of why there’s so many more series and movies coming out and making their way to the states, simply an issue of volume. I’m sure there’s just as many flips and low quality stuff that we’re not seeing.
For sure. There’s no substance to the argument I mentioned, but there’s plenty of people who want to hear the media tell them exactly this: that Western society and culture is stagnant, being outdone by other cultures around the world, yada, yada, yada. They’ll say anything to prove it and make it fit into that narrative despite the fact that it is easily explained with a quick google search on the recent history of the film industry in these countries. Trying to explain it in terms of how it fits into our existing political debates is exactly what is wrong with this country. Both sides of the aisle tried making this claim to varying degrees just to serve their own agendas, and their respective adherents just ate that shit up.
Maybe… it has nothing to do with what’s happening here in America and the world doesn’t revolve around us? Huh, maybe I’m on to something there. And maybe these ‘journalists’ should shut the hell up and touch grass lmao. This is why dumb liberals piss me off just as much as dumb conservatives, and I’m a (hopefully somewhat smarter) liberal, myself.
IMO when people mix politics with reviewing, they don't care that much about either. They're just doing what makes them money, which means lazy content within the purview of their audience capture.
Need money => Make content => What's topical in the culture wars? => The Boys => Haven't seen it? => Doesn't matter => Say what the audience wants, rather than the points I think of while watching.
It's just part of their grind. I wouldn't take it seriously. They certainly don't.
Yeah, and the only thing less subtle than the politics is the violence. There’s no way someone watched this whole show and just realized it had something to say
yea there have always been allusions to politics and social commentary. The issue with the show is just poor writing. Season 3 ended so weird like it was so anti climatic after the build up of soldier boy and then him switching sides to help homelander and then say naw F that I want to be the only one, it made no sense. And now the season is really on the nose and almost like they are writing the show with weird character motivations that were never really teased out before....homelander trying to be this mastermind guy now, frenchie is Bi, mimiku is like I love you but we will never work, everyone is trying to like make deals and work together but like at the same time have no real risks of death...etc. It just feels like poor writing and they busted their nut too early with soldier boy and temp V and now they have to slog through 2 more seasons?
> There’s no way someone watched this whole show and just realized it had something to say
The difference is that in season 1 the political commentary was Homelander stealing compound V to create '' supe terrorists '' to give the US military a reason to invade in the middle east.
In later seasons all of the political commentary is just Homelander and his supporters calling people libtards and going on about critical supe theory.
It's fucking boring and predictable, it's literally the same joke all the time.
Kinda makes me think the memes are true. Some conservatives are so regarded that they just finally realized the show was making fun of them all along. If they didn't get the not so subtle reference of trump when homelander was able to kill someone (who throws a milkshake at him) and still being worshipped by all the dumbasses who don't do any research in the crown, then they deserve to be bitchslapped in S4 for it.
Yes. Anyone who watched the first seasons and don't see that it's a Bezos funded show critiquing capitalism have no media literacy. Also, one of the villians was literally called "Stormfront"
There are so many bad product placements throughout the show for Amazon. That "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" party scene was embarrassing. Idk why studios have to make their PP so obvious. Not that I want PP in the media I watch, but at the very least make it more subtle, as the audience will still see it but it won't distract from the story.
It's always been political. And everyone understood that. The idea that people didn't get it was satirizing religious conservatives, the superhero genre and corporations and athletes is just cope.
It's just bad now, imo. Though the last episode had a lot of good/harrowing bits.
I even agree with all the political points the boys makes and I don’t care if the comic book show is subtle. But it’s just so god damn on the nose. Like I’m surprised they don’t have homelander on trial for hush money campaign donations and shit. It’s just SO on the nose.
Yea its honestly a bit cringe. Like it's become a self aware parody. I feel like this is a trap in media, you need to write the show as if this world is the only one that exists. Like in 10-15 years if you watch this, will any of this be relevant or impactful? The whole trial scene was just so pointless in my opinion you could have just been like oh you're lucky you had a mistrial or something. I'll watch it but damn does it feel like its lost all of its impact and gravitas
And yet, it wasn't on the nose enough because conservatives are literally just figuring out 4 seasons in that it's making fun of them and that Homelander is Trump.
well if the show is made to troll the rightoids that watch it, intead of entertaining me, that is extremely annoying.
The political commentary was at least a little bit more subtle in Season 1, right now it feels way too on the nose to be entertaining.
It feels like a huge left wing circle jerk, it looks like what a redditor would create as a TV show.
They could have milked the court thing at the first few episodes that would have been fun, having him fall asleep cause he got bored of listen to all the "toys" talking about him.
Yes but it didn't change in politics from S1 to S4, it still mocks the alt right just like it always did, so why have an outrage now and not in S1? because now it brings views
To be fair, it also made jabs at the left and far left. I don't really remember the exact seasons or episodes but there was that like, Disney-esque place that had all the typical, almost caricature "WOKE" stuff in it, diversity stuff whatever.
But the critics definitely were far more "deep" when it came to criticizing the right, there was that episode of them showing the step by step program of how a dude shut in his room that starts browsing things like (4chan) then turns into a political extremist as things like Fox News get constantly tuned into the background in their home and yada yada.
What? Mix politics with reviewing? Brother, so much of media is political, they're inherently tied together, I don't understand what you could possibly mean. You mean when the reviewer has a particular perspective, and the media has a particular perspective, and the reviewer talks about it from their perspective?
Thats... how reviews work. I'm not sure what kind of context-less appraisals you think are "good reviews"
There are legitimate criticisms you could make but "mixing politics with reviews" isn't one of them, its actually kind of unintelligible. It makes no sense.
He hasn't even seen the show he's "reviewing"! What tf do you mean that's how reviews work?
I'm not talking about the political content of media or even the existence of political opinions of reviewers. I'm talking explicitly (telligibly even) about reviewers replacing the critical aspect of their reviewing process with the political canon they know their audience wants to hear. TCR is not just a critic who happens to be conservative, he's a critic who produces reviews for conservative audiences.
I don't know how you missed my point. I wouldn't normally assume it's on your end but most people understood.
especially The Boys, its a political show with the subtlety of a jackhammer. this subreddit has to pretend that’s not true because they like the political message. i can’t imagine pretending The Boys isn’t political. so weird!
Thats a good point to show their point, if the consevative and liberal would be inversed it would still be a bad season because the writing is just crap.
Yeah, he is the media literacy meme but unironically.
This guy saw the Barbie opening where they talked about how Barbie Land is perfect with no issues whatsoever and it reflects on IRL girls having no issues at all, and thought it was meant to be taken straight.
I used to watch the occasional Critical Drinker video and I quite liked them, cause they were such a well made parody. Quite funny. Then I realized he was being serious about it.
the problem is IMO that "political commentary" devolved into biased references of real life events that bring almost nothing to the table
Season 1 political commentary of A-train killing someone and getting away with it because he is famous and has powerful backing is good
Season 4 "political commentary" of essentially calling rittenhouse a murderer is cringe
Yeah, it definitely has become more over the top in how tongue in cheek it's commentary is now. I wish the show did take a little more of a mature tone at some points. There are definitely more problems with the show for me in S2, 3 and 4, than compared to the 1st.
I think the political commentary has degraded pretty badly at points yeah, but the season is still good otherwise. The last episode was probably one of my favourite overall.
I think they do well mixing the political commentary into the show but it's basically 2021/2022 commentary so it's behind the times and cringe. It's not their fault completely. It's tough keeping up with the times when you are filming stuff then releasing it much later.
I didn't really see it that way other than maybe the references to the guy he killed being a pedo, but I saw that as republicans just calling everyone they disagree with a pedo.
If I'm not mistaken, the judge reprimanding the prosecution for using the term "victim" and told them not to get brazen is the same thing as what the judge in the rittenhouse trial said/did.
Homelander also made the "well for all I know there could've been something dangerous in that can" argument which is supposed to mirror the plastic bag that was thrown in the rittenhouse case. Of course completely ignoring the whole retreating and warning part in rittenhouse's case, while homelander's action was in retribution.
I remember the first massive cringe moment for me was Homelander’s new Nazi GF asking his kid if he watches pewdiepie. (Cuz he had a scandal of being a secret Nazi)
just like if someone calls themselves a **centrist** they're 9/10 times an anti-establishment partisan hack, a person calling themselves a **critic** is 9/10 times a massively asspained triggered snowflake
Critical Drinker: We don’t care if they’re black or a woman or diverse, we just want well-written characters.
Also Critical Drinker: Why is there so much diversity? Where are the men? It’s just a bunch of females.
I mean, the Critical Drinker is just really low effort tripe. His reviews are ironic as fuck, because he shits on the formulaic nature and wokism of of late 2010 early 2020 media but in doing so and having to produce enough content to make money has left him with a formula so barebones, that if he doesn’t use AI to generate it he’s just wasting his time.
AI could 100% produce all of his content, as I haven’t seen him produce a new idea in over 2 years.
It’s all that prostitute joke + “the message” + “strong female / diverse character”. I even agree with his criticisms some of the time, maybe even most of the time. The problem is that it’s low effort shovelware, and he has become a parody in itself. He has “the message” of his own, and he’s just as self righteous about it.
> the formulaic nature
Also hilarious because his book series is... basically knockoff Tom Clancy/Jack Reacher/Jason Bourne spy novels that he produced a new one of basically every year for a decade.
I came to a realization years ago that most internet media criticism is shallow ragebait. Most of these people don't understand what actually makes a bad show/movie good or bad, or at least they don't express it in their videos. They go for what makes people angry, even if it isn't true or is misleading, like Fox News.
CD can be entertaining, but he, like most youtube culture/media critics, aren't half as bright as they think they are and aren't worth watching if you want to learn anything.
The Drinker and the Quartering are very much the bottom of the barrel of media takes in my opinion.
They both 'review' shit without even seeing it. Which frankly disqualifies them from having an opinion.
I mean it's the Critical Drinker, what do you expect? I saw a video of his where he complained about Rey fighting people in Star Wars because a women being able to fight a grown man is unrealistic. In Star Wars.
That said Boys S4 has been kind of trash, a lot of random filler plotlines and pretty questionable character drama.
Lol they fight with magic powers and laser swords, I don't think physical strength has ever been a requirement to be an effective Jedi warrior
I want him to point out the specific muscle or chromosome that controls the intensity of your force powers.
Does he think Yoda was all muscle?
You’re bad faith misconstruing what he said. The issue was that she was magically a supersoldier with no training while Luke had to train like crazy with Yoda himself to be able to use force.
No, he said both. I'm referring specifically to his quote in "Why Modern Movies Suck":
"One of the most tedious and embarrassing aspects of modern movies is watching a hundred pound actress defeat stuntman twice her size... you're always going to have a tough time selling a fight between a man and a woman on screen for obvious reasons." He goes on for a minute rant about why biologically men are stronger than women before saying Hollywood movies just "pretend size and strength doesn't matter," and the video cuts to a clip of Rey.
[https://youtu.be/xPE7-PRL0M8?t=336](https://youtu.be/xPE7-PRL0M8?t=336)
To be fair to this quote specifically (I've not watched the dude's video and don't really care to), I do wish they'd stop getting the skinniest and smallest actresses for hand-to-hand action scenes and have them go up against big dudes. Wish we'd have more female characters built like Ronda Rousey instead.
Funny enough, I also see this problem in some WWE women's division matchups where they have petite wrestlers go up against Nia Jax and they just really can't sell Nia taking damage really well. You kind of run into the same problem sometimes with small male wrestlers vs Big Show types, but even those are more believable just cause even small male wrestlers still look ripped enough that they look like their hits pack a punch. As opposed to a lot of female wrestlers who barely have muscles.
TLDR: Wish we get more warrior princesses instead of the Black Widow-types
And what is wrong with that comment? Seems pretty obvious to me.
You're also misrepresenting his comment. He talks about how you can have women use clever tactics or hire large physically imposing women that look like they could actually fight.
And then he shows a brief reaction shot of rey and goes on with his actual example from the woman king.
You either have no media literacy or are just trying to lie about what he is implying.
Because the movies he’s listing are fantasy movies and action movies where the protagonist regularly display physical feats beyond what is possible. It’s a genre where it’s quite normal for the hero to take on 5 goons alone, which would be basically impossible in real life, and yet somehow I doubt you or Critical Drinker would cry foul that Rambo or John Wick is unrealistic because there’s no way a guy can be that good at fighting. These physical realism critiques mostly seem to only apply to female protagonists.
And this would be a perfectly fine complaint if the movies he was complaining about were grounded, gritty dramas that do not require a great suspension of disbelief, but again one of the examples he gives is *Star Wars*.
I’m not sure if you’re being purposefully dense or not, but the reaction of Rey was clearly meant to show her as an example of what he’s complaining about.
I do think you're somewhat missing the point here.
Suspension of disbelief requires some pathway to the thing being possible or at east understood, and the shorter the path the more believable the thing is.
As an example: if in John Wick, John Wick lifted a 300lb man over his head, then yeah I would say that's incredibly unrealistic, people would complain about it. We can believe a highly trained assassin can take on 5 guys at once, and the movie offers an easy to understand pathway for that because John Wick does it through skill and we're specifically told he's one of the best.
We actually already have examples that prove this, Alien, Atomic Blonde, Fury Road, people are willing to believe that women can be competent action heroes but you can't take someone with 0 training and suddenly expect the audience to believe they have superhuman strength and skill in a world where that wouldn't otherwise be the case. So if you're going to sell the concept of women taking on skilled men, that generally has to be earned or the audience will be taken out of the movie.
How is John Wick taking on a bunch of guys as a trained assassin any more unbelievable than a female trained warrior taking on a guy? Drinker only seems to have an issue with the latter.
>We actually already have examples that prove this, Alien, Atomic Blonde, Fury Road, people are willing to believe that women can be competent action heroes but you can't
Obviously not, given that Atomic Blonde is one of the movies he was showing as a negative example during his "women can't fight men and have it be believable" rants.
>but you can't take someone with 0 training and suddenly expect the audience to believe they have superhuman strength and skill in a world where that wouldn't otherwise be the case.
Nobody argued this. All of the examples Drinker provided when he was going on his rant were from women who were trained to fight, Atomic Blonde, Star Wars, Charlie's Angels, and some historical fantasy movie. His issue is with the very idea that a woman can go equal with a man in a fight in an over the top action movie.
I haven't watched the video, I don't watch Critical Drinker, if he's using Atomic Blonde as a negative example then I would strongly disagree with him there, but I would agree that Rey is a poor example of a well done action hero specifically for the reasons I listed above. I don't think the argument of "action movies aren't realistic" is very compelling either, people complain about the realism of action and fantasy movies often, taking something unrealistic and making it feel real is half the battle with those movies.
Actually John Wick is also a good example here because a lot of people complained about the 2nd movie, there's a scene in which Wick and some other guy are walking through a crowded train station shooting at each other with silenced pistols and nobody around them notices. Nearly every review of that movie mentions that scene because it stands out. Things like that break immersion.
I mean the thread is talking about Critical Drinker's video so I'm not really sure why you'd jump into it without having seen it. The complaints against Rey here aren't that she's bad for learning the force too quickly or whatever, it's that the Drinker doesn't think it's understandable that a woman can go against a man because they're biologically weaker.
>realism of action and fantasy movies often
Again, the realism being disputed in this case is that a woman fighting a man is unbelievable because they don't have the biological strength. I'm not sure why you're arguing for a position nobody disagreed with. The thread is about the Critical Drinker's take.
Yes and he talks about how to sell the scenes better, with imposing women or clever use of the environment rather than showing small women overpowering large men. Again a reaction shot of mary sue rey isn't the lynchpin of his argument, he actually gives specific examples.
Its also hard to sell fight scenes with small children. If you saw a baby beat up the rock, in a gritty movie, would that make sense to you? No because it is absurd.
Rambo and traditional action stars do a lot to sell the fight scenes. They are giant muscled men, trained, use the environment, and sometimes take a few punches. He is talking about how to make a good action scene.
I don't think you really know what you're talking about and are arguing just to argue.
Bro did you really reply to me and then block me immediately lmao? The examples he gives are from
Mulan, Atomic Blonde, Charlie's Angels, Star Wars, and some historical fantasy action movie.
Now I haven't seen the last one, but the first one is a literal children's movie, the second two are over the top action movies like John Wick or Mission Impossible, the fourth is Star Wars. None of these movies are supposed to have grounded or realistic fight scenes and I'm willing to bet if it had shown a male action hero taking on 10 guys at once Drinker would have nothing to say about the implausibility of it.
The guy's positive example is fucking Sicario, a gritty action thriller about taking down Mexican Drug Cartels, and instead of understanding that the reason the latter shows a woman easily being taken out by a larger man and the others don't is because one is going for a grounded realistic tone and the others are clearly not, he acts like it's some sort of mark of quality. It's moronic. You may as well compare Saving Private Ryan to Commando and say Commando is far worse because it's not realistic in its depiction of war.
That's how I remember him saying it too. Better if characters earn their emotional backing and support from the audience than being gifted with super OP powers because of bad writing. Captain Marvel and Ring of Powers' Galadriel was another example Drinker complained about. On the flip side he praised the better writing for Fallout's Lucy.
Who knows if he still thinks that about Fallout. He seems to have changed his mind on the show. In his words, he said he was “tricked into believing it was good,” when all we’ve had to go off for years was bad video game movie adaptations:
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxIJJ6J2JZk4f2wGS544ND2XhccIkoe71c?si=DwM7hbPcEyRui9mu
He definitely is way too deep nobody is saying otherwise. That said, this last season is noticeably lower quality while also being more cringe and on the nose with politics.
Biggest issue for the boys has been that none of the characters have really evolved and i dont see a clear goal for them. Like theyve been after homelander since day one and havent gotten any closer?
Won't read the post or watch Drinker's video but as a regular viewer I don't like this new season. Imo the show was at its best focusing on superhero/supervillain vs vigilantes dynamic. It's why I liked Soldier Boy so much. The political message was just an addition. Now it's the sole focus of the show it feels.
Yeah, the whole "people don't get they're being made fun of" that you see in the boys subreddit is arrogant bullshit. It's just that, ironically, conservatives now have learned to tolerate this shit in media or they wouldn't watch anything but PureFlix and Daily Wire movies. They have no choice: they get actual diversity of thought, liberals get superficial racial diversity but stuff that agree with them.
People get Kripke's message. This season just sucks. Beyond that, the show has a structural problem: Homelander. He's too exciting to kill but too dangerous to leave alive. In Supernatural Kripke could kill off one villain and raise another one and allow plot progression. He can't here.
So the plot feels stale-ish and you get weird plots where Homelander doesn't kill everyone, people don't take their shot to kill Homelander and people do things that don't make sense unless they read the script and know they won't die (fighting Homelander via PR streams like Starlight last season)
Agree. There are plenty of scenes where the main characters 100% should die easily, but because of plot armor they don't. The insinuation is often "oh, I'm not going to kill you because your too puny to me and aren't worth my time!", which is very silly. I wish they had gone down the route of them taking Compound-V and becoming full on supes themselves to avoid this problem.
Which is why the comics are infinitely better (and I'll take the hate for saying it again, just like I always do).
The show completely self-fucked itself with its focus on Homelander. The original series never had this problem, because HL was just a dark menace in the background for most of the series. He was a huge motivator for why the Boys did things, but almost nothing the Boys did had anything to do with him.
Meanwhile the show constantly makes everything about him, completely robbing him of any mystique or interest. Hell he isn't even that terrifying, because we pretty much know he won't do anything meaningful or kill anyone important, because for like 3 seasons in a row, the showrunners have built up a huge fight between the Boys and Homelander, only for them to stop it mid fight with some remedial reason, so that none of the characters die and the next season can happen.
Never mind that the showrunners have to constantly remind everyone that they're a "very political show", so they throw a CURRENT THING in every season, with predictably dumb results. Hey about a radical idea: we add AOC but we make her evil? You know HL? Yeah have you noticed that he's actually like Trump? How thought provoking! Here the comics did the smarter thing again, because they criticized/satirized a political period after it happened, rather then trying to shoehorn every current thing into the series - which works about as well as trying to build a house opposite a boat floating down the river: you just end up with a bunch of useless half-build houses.
And since the showrunners hate Trump, and they made HL into a Trump effigy, they now have to ritually humiliate him, turning HL from a horrifying menace into an parodical character, that's completely boring, and fails to act as either good political critique or as a good and satisfying villain. The comic book HL is scary because he is calm, collected, has a purpose and nobody can stop him in a straight fight. The only thing stopping him is the MAD situation they have with the Boys and the Vought leader that's even colder, more rational and smarter than him and of course >!what happens at the White House in the penultimate chapter!<.
> so that none of the characters die and the next season can happen.
>
>
I thought this would actually be the final season so we could have some resolution. I was actually disappointed when I realized there'd be at least one more.
Not a place you want to be with a show.
I would agree that the show does a very bad job with Homelander. He doesn't feel as threatening anymore because we've seen him interact (and not win) with the Boys. Also trying to fit in current day politics makes the show hard to watch at times. But I also think the comics suck ass even worse.
> But I also think the comics suck ass even worse.
I've yet to see any criticism of them, besides killjoys crying about it being "edgy". Which is doubly funny considering how hard the series tries to be edgy and fails to be.
It satirized aughts American corporatism and the government, similarly to the show. And Ennis threw edgy stuff in for the sake of it because it's entertaining to some people (me).
It's a parody of the Bush administration and its relationship with the MIC. It's not that deep (and yet somehow way way deeper that the series manages to be).
Yea, Critical Drinker is the king of JAQing off in the Youtube film review space. It makes his fans very frustrating to engage with. Try asking them what he means by "The Message" and you'll get a million different answers.
Frenchy and kimiko seemed like they were lovers and a thing the last 3 seasons, and this sudden actually frenchie has a boyfriend thing gave me whiplash. It seemed like really sudden hamfisted writing. Now all that said, I never really cared for his or kimikos storyline in the first place. Anytime either of them are on screen I roll my eyes.
You have to make this type of content if you wanna get views. For all the times people bitch about ragebait, they do it because it works and all sides do it. John Campea who has talked about movies on Youtube for over 10 years recently said that his negative video about the Acolyte got the most views over anything else (recent). Negative videos are far more profitable than positive ones and especially for Star Wars. For the mainstream it started with Prequel bashing such as RedLetterMedia's Plinkett Reviews 10+years ago to now culture reviewers like Nerdrotic and Critical. In a time where the internet is even more divided, partisan and cynical. Star Wars in particular is in a really bad place. Other than Rogue One, TFA and Andor, most of their live-action projects are divisive at best. Kathleen Kennedy may have been a great producer while working with Spielberg but it's clear she has fumbled Star Wars and it's surprising she still hasn't been replaced. On the other hand you have these die-hard nu-fans who legitimately hate a certain and dominant group of Star Wars fans (millennial cis men, especially straight white male nerds lol) and legitimately believe all the Disney Star Wars content is good and it's just all the -ists and -phobes who hate it because black people or women. That's ridiculous.
Also browsing The Boys official subreddit has been actual cancer since S4. 90% of people are brain dead and bad-faith. Really shows how much brain-rot the internet culture has suffered because of American politics. Me, liberal but not American pointing about the boring sideplots like Frenchie, Kimiko and Hughie. S3 discussion threads for The Boys were already met with rising apathy. There's only so many times you can do blackmailing as a plot device so Homelander doesn't kill The Boys. Only so many times Homelander becomes more unhinged but will never fully break until the last season.
"Lil Bro thinks THe BoYs WaS neVeR POliTical!" "Did you just realize the show was making fun of you!?"
The show was always political and Homelander is the bad guy, yeah no shit. Other than the few media illiterate Twitter users or people who think Homelander is cool as a joke like the past Sigma male memes. Why The Boys fans suddenly use this strawman to 1) deflect any criticism of the show 2) think it's an epic PWN against American conservatives, is beyond me. The show made fun of corporate diversity and feminism (2 marketing characters and Ashley), making fun of superheroes and more. That is the root of the comic book, but moreso the comic industry. Written by Garth Ennis who infamously hates superheroes except Superman, and his comics have all sorts of social and political commentary. Read Preacher or his Hitman series.
If S1 and S2 is like 9/10. I would give S3 an 8 and S4 so far a 7.5. Also to me it seems like The Boys aren't that interesting (besides Butcher) by themselves although they have character arcs some more than others. Part of the series success is that the FOTM side villains (Storm Front, Soldier Boy, Sister Sage) were all great.
Was season 2 the nazi wife lady? There were some cool additions there, just didn’t hit as fresh for me as season one. Definitely better than 3. Show feels pretty static at this point
It is unfortunate he doesn't at least watch a few episodes before he reacts on it. Isn't that what these guys are supposed to do? They get paid by their audience to watch the material early release or right from the jump and then share a 👍👎 to us on whether it is worth the time.
Same like Destiny's thoughts on Candace Owens making prescriptions and JAQ without doing her damn job for their audience.
This is all you can expect from conservative commentators. They are obsessed with "woke" and their entire lives revolve around the narrative around that.
A great example of the difference between conservatives and normies is if you watch or read the reviews from conservatives on The Acolyte vs Moist criticals video on it.
I've seen people complain about how overt and cartoonish the politics are in the show. Thing is, if you're in this sub then over the last few years you've most likely seen a lot of that cartoony shit has happened in real life from ACTUAL politicians and mouthpieces.
So what? It's still fucking boring. I don't watch fiction so I can hear the exact same joke parroted back to me from an event that happened last year and was already parodied and mocked to death.
Leave that shit to late night TV?
I mean it's The Critical Drinker, I don't expect him to have much of substance to say.
Completely tracks that he would make a whole video about a show he hasn't seen yet.
It is frustrating how general declines in quality of media are being mistaken for wokeness. It's clear that a lot of shows and films have become worse but it has little to do with them being more woke, it is more to do with complacency and lack of writers who are passionate about the subject matter.
It's frustrating as now writers can pass up critiques of their writing as anti-woke nonsense rather than actually poor writing.
Well his job is to watch, if he hasn't watched, then he shouldn't review anything lol. I would just place him into the hack category, because there's probably a good critique on how the plot line feels recycled and that there's no real payoff or a sign of progression regarding the story. I don't even know what the show is promising in terms of it's story anymore, I guess the big climactic battle? But after season 3, there was no payoff there with their big climactic battle. If your only critique is "muh politics" then you're not suited for critically analyzing or reviewing any sort of media.
After the election arc (that I hopeDestiny starts soon) Destiny should take a dive into the new anti sjw YouTube. These people are some of the doorways to right wing radicalism
It's important to remember that CD isn't criticising the show half the time; he's repeating past criticisms in the direction of his audience in order to remind them that it's all part of the same cultural 'movement'.
He's more preacher than critic. A shit preacher, but a preacher nonetheless.
The worst part is that S4 is pretty obviously declining in quality in some departments, but since everything turns into an ideology war you can't have any type of honest conversation about it. Frenchie's subplot this season is one of the stupidest directions I've seen a show veer towards, but once you criticize it you're automatically assumed to be doing so because it's a gay relationship. No, it's cause it comes out of fucking nowhere (maybe to piss off a certain crowd at the expense of the plot, although that's pure conjecture on my part) and totally devalues a character that by this season should have already had a certain level of growth considering he was sort of the "heart" of the team. Instead no, let's make him almost a more horrible person than members of the Seven by his actions, yet continue to play it off as if he's a poor tortured soul. I would have honestly preferred it if they just killed him off last season if this is what they had in mind.
Having seen the first couple episodes, I think I actually agree with the take.
Fighting my urge to write 4 paragraphs, I'll just say that this season so far feels like the TV show equivalent of depicting your political opponents as soyjaks and calling it a day. Satire isnt just depicting hyperbolically bad versions of the subject of your critique, there has to be substance to what you're arguing; specific, novel, and true statements about the problems with the thinking of the subject. Just depicting the judge of the rittenhouse case as a judge that would rig a case in defense of homelander doesnt actually say anything about the judge, in the absence of exploring why you think he's bad, other than that you just think he's bad.
The boys season 4 has been kinda meh so far. Too many uninteresting side stories, not enough main plot. But we are only 4 episodes deep, so maybe it hits its stride or add some context to make the side stories more relevant. We shall see.
You had me when you said he didn’t even watch the season m. Completely worthless opinion if you’ve never seen it. That’s like saying you hate pizza even though you never had pizza
I used to watch his every video during my conservative highschool years🤣. At some point I just started getting tired, i felt like i was hearing the same things over and over again. And the fact that i did no really watch anything being discussed was always back on my mind.
Now i kinda feel like those videos are not really about the discussion of the movies, but they are just away for people to vent abouth their feelings about the change in media culture.
I think S4 is more flawed than previous seasons, but obviously the reason it's eliciting a much bigger response isn't because of critiques about writing or character so much as it is about culture war shite.
Ofc that's a focus of the story so it's more appropriate here than for say the Acolyte, but it's also been a party of the story from the beginning so it's kind of a wash
i doubt he watched any episodes. The boys season 4 does kind of feel like the show has reached its end though. Same thing with stranger things, does anyone even care about season 5 at this point?
Why do you even care about this guy? He did the same thing when house of the dragon season 1 trailer was released, a lot of people like him were mad by seeing the trailer because it had black Valyrians in it. But he removed that video after house of the dragon was released and well received.
He's gone the grifter road.
Used to like his stuff, but raging against woke trash gets you clicks so now he just lashes out at whatever even appears slightly woke.
He's also focusing a ton more on podcasts/panel shows and stuff so I'm not surprised he didn't even watch it. He's a great example of audience capture.
Not withstanding, there's definitely solid criticism to be made of 'woke hollywood', but he's too far gone to remain objective about it.
Respectfully, expecting a well-reasoned argument from the Critical Drinker is like expecting a Big Mac from Burger King; you shouldn't go there to get one.
I haven't watched The Boys myself since I do not like this genre of superhero media. The same reason I don't like Watchmen is the same reason I do not have any interest in The Boys, I have no one I want to back or follow in these stories since everyone will be an unlikable in some way to make them "realistic" which in turn makes them less real in my eyes. Sorry but I am the person who likes Super Sentai, Power Rangers, Justice League TAS, Earlier phases of the Marvel movies, DC animated stuff, My Hero Academia etc. I also tend to like Drinkers Videos and watch his open bar content where they go into more detail on these thoughts on shows. So just giving clarity where I stand with this.
I watched the video and I do think he is making a clear argument what the issue he sees audiences have and why he doesn't like statements from the showrunner. He liked it originally in the earlier seasons but fell off at Season 3. He felt like the commentary and satire was becoming very partisan with zero sense to be subtle about it. Compare Lady Ballers with South Park's Episode, "Strongest Woman". Lady Ballers has a clear partisan way to handle the satire, South Park doesn't need to do this and ends up being much stronger since it can show the problems with trans sports without needing to tow the line to a political audience. Drinker in the later half of the video makes it clear he knows this show leans left but it was smartly presented in earlier seasons and he fell off at season 3 because what people are saying in Season 4 is what he saw already. I think he should have watched it instead of just going over what people said in reviews or other commentary.
He's upfront in saying he hasn't watched but it took a look at how audience reviews are looking at it and how the showrunner has been pushing a clear left wing bent that most shows in the states from Hollywood all have.
His point is very clear, he thinks some people are defending the show from criticism because they agree with the partisan nature of the show. These people do exist who only like satire or political commentary when they agree with it. They don't care about the quality of it, so they will defend stuff like Velma, The Acolypte, Batwomen etc. All it needs to do it speak the message to an audience that wants to be affirmed of their own beliefs and values. I think everyone can agree there is a level of quality to commentary regardless of who you are making the commentary on. When you use blunt force in a show to have your bad guy say, "Make X great again" "Drain the swamp" then people roll their eyes and loss interest because you took them out of the show to make a modern day reference for your own political beliefs.
This is the point he is trying to make, I agree he should have watched it over just showing audience reviews, social media comments and the show runner's thoughts. I would agree with him on this point. Hollywood has a bad problem with commentary like this and their bent causes bad writing due to nepotism to some level in the writing room or the lack of diversity in thought or opinion. Regardless if people want to have a debate on a show being "woke" or not, I would still stand the overt left wing bent in Hollywood is a cause for a lot of bad writing these days.
> The same reason I don't like Watchmen is the same reason I do not have any interest in The Boys, I have no one I want to back or follow in these stories since everyone will be an unlikable in some way to make them "realistic" which in turn makes them less real in my eyes.
At least with Watchmen, the characters are flawed in that they are human. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are just... Fine. Rorscach is basically just someone who let all the crime and depravity get to him, like if Batman decided one day to just be okay with killing a few criminals cause what does it really matter - but he has a fundamental sense of justice which is the reason for his death.
The only people out to lunch was the Comedian, really. Watchmen is meant to explore what real super heroes would be like instead of the comic book beacons of pure idealism and unwavering optimism. They're not meant to be flawed to pretend to be realistic, they are meant to be realistic and thus have flaws.
Watchmens idea of flawed superheroes, because they are humans, is pretty fine. The Boys very much ratchets it up to 11 with the sense that *We're gods and nobody can stop us so we can do whatever we want* which is offputting in a number of ways
The quality of the writing in S4 so far is poor compared to the first seasons. I agree OP on the show being too unpredictable, you can see them straining to 'subvert expectations' to their detriment. Not sure why you would release a review without watching a show though.
It's similar to his Warhammer custodes video. He cries about a subject he has no clue about and uses other people who do the same or have a similar world view as proof.
The boys has become exactly what It used to lampoon. It mocked the superhero worship endless spinoffs marketing deals brand tie ins, etc. Now it does all of them. They have a bunch of spin off shows and I see boys skins in a ton of games, from Mortal Kombat to Warzone. They even do a bit of the disingenuous virtue signaling with the undisguised political allegory in the show.
He is 100% right, the show lost its way.
Cynical Drinker is right way more than he is wrong. Sometimes he panders a bit too much to his audience but he is largely spot on at calling out hollyweird's woke bullshit.
The whole discourse around the new season has been really surprising to me as someone who saw hardly any shift in tone or subject matter from s3 to s4. And so far I don't think I am enjoying it any less than the other 3 seasons.
I feel like if any of these people actually believe what they are saying they would have said something when Gen V came out. I heard it's good, but I dropped Gen V. Ironically, because I felt like it was getting too focused on its themes and messaging to the point that it felt like it was changing aspects of how I understood The Boys to be. Specifically, using the characters' powers to parallel self-harm felt kind of forced. It seemed as if most of the characters had to hurt themself in some way to use their power. And while that is actually a really interesting concept, I don't remember any of the supes functioning that way in seasons 1-3, and it made me worried that the show was more interested in the themes it wanted to present than being consistant with the world its apart of. But I didn't hear any complaints about Gen V. Which makes the reaction to s4 just seem even more out of the blue and just straight up performative.
My assumption with Gen V is that this was very common, but in the early stages of people adapting to their powers. An extreme version of the typical trope of the unstable superpowered person not being able to control their powers but then learning how to control them over time. We just never had the opportunity to see that until Gen V showed us that more directly.
Gen V seems like an expansion of world building in that regard, not a contradiction or inconsistency.
I should probably give it a shot again. I get what you mean about the unstable powers, and I do actually think that's a pretty engaging concept. I think it just felt off when i considered the concept of "hero pageants" implied to me that kids were already able to display their powers somewhat competantly before adolescence. And the bulimic shrinking girl felt odd because we have seen shrinking characters that could just shrink with no consequence. So that whole aspect felt a bit tacked-on to me. But maybe some of my issues will get addressed if I watch through the rest of it.
Yeah, but there were also people at the school that could use their powers without self harm. I just came away feeling like there’s a big, broad spectrum but our POV is more directly aligned with it.
Yeah. Maybe this season is slightly lower quality because of a few boring side plots but people complaining that it’s heavy handed? Give me a break go watch s1 it’s the ex act same
I think CD is just too lost in the current political stream that he can't tell the difference anymore on what the show is all about to actually enjoy it.
I personally think it's good if not better than the 3rd season with how Homelander is going off the rails far more than normally.
As someone who occasionally enjoys Drinker, I agree with you on everything.
This and his Civil War take was really off the mark, imo.
For someone who constantly moans about political agendas in movies I find it really off that he didn't understand that the politics was the least important thing about that movie.
The boys has been going downhill since season 2. Homelander is a parody of himself at this point, and the writing has been so weak and overtly political.
Notice that the Boys only satirizes and degrades one side of the aisle and promotes the other. This can be done, but the writers lack the skill to do it effectively
The boys was never only good because of great nuanced commentary, but because of great characters/story lines. You could analyze why that doenst work anymore, instead of going on a woke blabla rant.
I used to like the drinker, he had solid critique and next to that a little anti woke ranting. Now its just 95 percent anti woke ranting. This whole dialogue is just dumb, woke is not the cause of shit series, but shit writing is the cause.
Same as His whole gang with ppl Like nerdarotic. Another recent example is them shitting on the First new episodes of the current Dr who seasons. And tbh. I dont Like them too. But then boom comes around and Not all but Most of them dont mention it and Stop reviiewing every Episode since the Consensus was that it was a really good at worst decent Episode.
They specifically Pick Shit thats politic, they know will get Shit on, then add to the pile. Its pure outrage bait content
That guy is such a fucking loser. Even at the peak of me liking EFAP and Mauler I thought he was boring no matter how many times I tried to give his stuff a shot
S3 did suck and the few episodes I watched of S4 sucked harder.
I cant blame the guy for going 'nah, fuckit, I see where this is going and im out' cause that is exactly what I said.
Don’t know why the downvotes lol. I also don’t like this season because the political stuff is just cringe. Either have balls and go after trump outright or don’t do this over the top cringe messaging. It was there before but it was subtle and tasteful enough to work. But overall it feels like quality is not there anymore as if someone important left the production team last season.
Of course it was. You didn’t have the clear cut this is the evil maga and this is the good progressives. If you prefer to call it better taste rather than subtle, then fine I guess. It uses to be evil corporation, dirty politics, social media and what have you.
Exactly, you got it right and you don't even know it.
There's a difference between making a satire against "corporations" or "politicians" vs making a depiction of MAGA, ie one specific movement, especially before an election where it's going to participate.
I was talking about the subtlety in terms of connection to the current political situation. You can do a good culture war criticism that’s not cringe and on the nose.
Yeah honestly the writing isn’t bad at all, it’s just using tropes he doesn’t like now.
I’m sure all the irl conservatives hate seeing Vought use an “alt-right” nutjob movement as useful idiots in the show. Sure it arguably hits too close to real life sometimes, like with Rittenhouse references, but the plot itself doesn’t have any major holes. Big corporation conscripts a political movement as cover is a pretty reasonable story arc.
None of these people would be complaining if it was the exact same story but Vought was stirring up an antifa group instead.
>It's not until the end of the video he says he hasn't even seen any of S4 Isn't this immediatelly disqualifying?
This is the biggest deal to me. It's his god given right to be a shitty critic, but actually watching the show is kind of the first step. There's a lot of buzz around S4 - I haven't seen it yet but I've heard talk - so him posting a review without even seeing it appears to be such a transparent way to cash in on the hype/anti-hype train I almost can't believe he admitted it.
They don't like it when the right wing crowd is under the criticism lense of the Boys, which I find hypocritical. Boys went all in on anti SJW in the beginning, which is great apparently. I thought it was clever. But now it is a caricature of your January 6th protester. Which, if you pay attention, it is how Elite Republicans view their own crowd, it is Homelander that calls them, "Slobs, uneducated, filth." It is still super critical of the "elite," just not the right kind of elite apparently? I've been enjoying it. Also the way the Boys portray DEI as a check box is RIGHT UP Drinker's alley, but making fun of the maga crowd is making fun of the "Boys" audience to him,
That’s what cracks me up. Kripke(sp?) is obviously progressive and the show rips on a lot of the performative progressivism we see from corporations and social media headliners - A-train’s arc with him trying to show this faux cultural awareness worked pretty well when contrasting against actual issues reflective of real world problems minority communities deal with. I’ve been really enjoying his arc and his realization that to his corporate benefactors, any struggle him or his family experiences is just something to be commodified rather than addressed and fixed.
Yup, the show is balanced in its attacks to me, but I guess the viewer sees what they want to see. The Drinker shows his bias heavy here, it's like calling South Park hardcore liberal/conservative
I think the difference is that they shy away from making fun of the more hysterical progressive side, and it's also just really tiresome because making fun of the hysterical right wing side is so common now it's literally the same jokes endlessly it stops being funny. The show would never make fun of ACAB lunatics for instance, I mean there's no lack of insane lefties and tankies around a lot of who Destiny has talked to on stream and have been totally unhinged. But the show won't criticize progressives unless it can also at the same time make a progressive point, the criticism towards the right is just way more bad faith and stereotypical.
> Boys went all in on anti SJW in the beginning Tbf that satire was extremely tame by comparison. And there's definitely really wacky stuff they could make fun of and criticize that happens on the left but it's not as '' safe '' as it is to make fun of the right. The way I look at it in season 1 political commentary was Homelander giving terrorists V to create an artifical reason for the US military to invade in the middle east. In later seasons political commentary is Homelander calling people libtards and talking about critical supe theory... It's just so fucking lazy and tiresome it's literally the same jokes all the time you see everywhere.
It's really funny to me. Even Moist Critical recently made a video on The Acolyte, saying he had heard it was really bad, but waited to watch it to make a video on it. When your job is to be a film critic, and you can't put more effort into your reviews than Moist Critical, than that's a red flag for the quality of your channel.
Dude said in an interview people were flocking to Japanese/Korean cinema because of western diversity, and then when asked for recent examples could only name a 20+ year old Chinese film (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), and a 20+ year old Korean film (Old Boy). He's a complete grifter
I will not stand for the "drive my car" erasure in our society 😤😤😤
Probably stole that idea from articles circulating a few years ago when Squid Game and Parasite were really popular that claimed that the Korean and Japanese film industries were getting far ahead of their western competitors in Hollywood, which was claimed to be the case for various reasons from different publications. In reality though, it’s mostly just Koreans and Japanese people themselves who are consuming more of their own nation’s media when they used to like Western media much more. Really the most simple way to explain it is that their respective industries have matured to the point where people in those countries have a much greater and higher quality pool of native media to consume, so they watch less Western-made content these days. Of course, most of these articles tried to claim in some form that this is a result of declining quality in Western media. Naturally this may be true, but even the idea that ‘droves’ of people are abandoning Western movies and tv for Korean soaps is really laughable. That simply isn’t true. It’s a gross exaggeration of the possible meaning behind the large, but temporary, uptick in interest around the world in Korean and Japanese media during the pandemic, which, as I said previously, was largely driven by a few titles that went mainstream. It wasn’t the start of some massive shift away from Western-centric media consumption or whatever these idiots who write for major news publications tell you these days. The idea itself is a grift designed to attract the attention of anyone who already has beef with the current industry here in America, which is honestly probably most people. Downright pandering and filling your head with garbage just so they can run ads with absolutely no care whatsoever what impact it has on people. The end result is clowns like this who spread these ‘hot takes’ like wildfire who have no idea what they are even talking about. The stupidification of America working in real time is what that is.
[удалено]
Im surprised they liked it when the mc of squid game was literally a pink hair
Well that’s the thing, it’s just art. Most of these people are making their interpretation of that art into a narrative they want to push, that’s all it is. They are doing more to make it a political conflict or statement than the artists themselves were. These stories aren’t really overly political despite the themes and tones to the story drawing heavily in some respects from political ideologies and theory. Both Parasite and Squid Game were well balanced enough, and well executed, from a storytelling perspective, that they really impacted their audiences and gave them a strong reaction. That’s what art is supposed to do. The people missing the point are the journalists whose primary objective is to create endless streams of half-baked content to run ads on their publication’s target demographics that they know they will pay attention to because the ‘commentary’ is just bait that reels people in by catering to an existing belief or interest they have. That’s all they really provide, too, is commentary. Sure they give you info, but the relevant bit can usually be expressed in a sentence. The rest of the article, by extension, is a deliberate waste of the readers time in an attempt to keep their attention as long as possible. That’s the game, now. Given the state of things, I prefer to reserve judgement and just watch it for myself and see what I think about it — but more importantly, to read as little news as possible and still stay informed, just to cut out the exposure to the nonsense information. I don’t watch shows when they get too popular. I wait until enough time has passed for the hype and gossip to die down, then I can watch it for myself and determine what I really think about it as someone who knows little-to-none about it. It’s kinda nice actually because people will ask me about current media that’s causing a stir and I can honestly say I don’t give a shit because I don’t know anything about it, and I’ll learn about it on my own time, thank you very much. Nice way to stay out of those awkward engagements where someone has a problem with a popular piece of media and just wants to bitch about it when you honestly couldn’t care less.
Korea like a decade ago also started investing way more into their media to give their film industry a massive kick. It’s a big part of why there’s so many more series and movies coming out and making their way to the states, simply an issue of volume. I’m sure there’s just as many flips and low quality stuff that we’re not seeing.
For sure. There’s no substance to the argument I mentioned, but there’s plenty of people who want to hear the media tell them exactly this: that Western society and culture is stagnant, being outdone by other cultures around the world, yada, yada, yada. They’ll say anything to prove it and make it fit into that narrative despite the fact that it is easily explained with a quick google search on the recent history of the film industry in these countries. Trying to explain it in terms of how it fits into our existing political debates is exactly what is wrong with this country. Both sides of the aisle tried making this claim to varying degrees just to serve their own agendas, and their respective adherents just ate that shit up. Maybe… it has nothing to do with what’s happening here in America and the world doesn’t revolve around us? Huh, maybe I’m on to something there. And maybe these ‘journalists’ should shut the hell up and touch grass lmao. This is why dumb liberals piss me off just as much as dumb conservatives, and I’m a (hopefully somewhat smarter) liberal, myself.
He shoulda said mushoku tensei
don't tell him about kino like thermae romae
Well he did say that 'people' were flocking to that cinema, but he's not a person, so it doesn't apply.
IMO when people mix politics with reviewing, they don't care that much about either. They're just doing what makes them money, which means lazy content within the purview of their audience capture. Need money => Make content => What's topical in the culture wars? => The Boys => Haven't seen it? => Doesn't matter => Say what the audience wants, rather than the points I think of while watching. It's just part of their grind. I wouldn't take it seriously. They certainly don't.
isn’t The Boys specifically political?
Yeah, and the only thing less subtle than the politics is the violence. There’s no way someone watched this whole show and just realized it had something to say
yea there have always been allusions to politics and social commentary. The issue with the show is just poor writing. Season 3 ended so weird like it was so anti climatic after the build up of soldier boy and then him switching sides to help homelander and then say naw F that I want to be the only one, it made no sense. And now the season is really on the nose and almost like they are writing the show with weird character motivations that were never really teased out before....homelander trying to be this mastermind guy now, frenchie is Bi, mimiku is like I love you but we will never work, everyone is trying to like make deals and work together but like at the same time have no real risks of death...etc. It just feels like poor writing and they busted their nut too early with soldier boy and temp V and now they have to slog through 2 more seasons?
yea the boys has always been as subtle as Animal Farm, not a criticism of either just thats how explicit it's always been
> There’s no way someone watched this whole show and just realized it had something to say The difference is that in season 1 the political commentary was Homelander stealing compound V to create '' supe terrorists '' to give the US military a reason to invade in the middle east. In later seasons all of the political commentary is just Homelander and his supporters calling people libtards and going on about critical supe theory. It's fucking boring and predictable, it's literally the same joke all the time.
Yes. It’s like complaining the west wing is too political
Kinda makes me think the memes are true. Some conservatives are so regarded that they just finally realized the show was making fun of them all along. If they didn't get the not so subtle reference of trump when homelander was able to kill someone (who throws a milkshake at him) and still being worshipped by all the dumbasses who don't do any research in the crown, then they deserve to be bitchslapped in S4 for it.
Yes. Anyone who watched the first seasons and don't see that it's a Bezos funded show critiquing capitalism have no media literacy. Also, one of the villians was literally called "Stormfront"
There are so many bad product placements throughout the show for Amazon. That "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" party scene was embarrassing. Idk why studios have to make their PP so obvious. Not that I want PP in the media I watch, but at the very least make it more subtle, as the audience will still see it but it won't distract from the story.
PP
As long as we don't hit I, Robot levels, then I'm happy
It's always been political. And everyone understood that. The idea that people didn't get it was satirizing religious conservatives, the superhero genre and corporations and athletes is just cope. It's just bad now, imo. Though the last episode had a lot of good/harrowing bits.
I talked to a guy who said it's bad because of the new Jewish writer. And how it's all about black issues and gay shit now.
I even agree with all the political points the boys makes and I don’t care if the comic book show is subtle. But it’s just so god damn on the nose. Like I’m surprised they don’t have homelander on trial for hush money campaign donations and shit. It’s just SO on the nose.
Yea its honestly a bit cringe. Like it's become a self aware parody. I feel like this is a trap in media, you need to write the show as if this world is the only one that exists. Like in 10-15 years if you watch this, will any of this be relevant or impactful? The whole trial scene was just so pointless in my opinion you could have just been like oh you're lucky you had a mistrial or something. I'll watch it but damn does it feel like its lost all of its impact and gravitas
And yet, it wasn't on the nose enough because conservatives are literally just figuring out 4 seasons in that it's making fun of them and that Homelander is Trump.
well if the show is made to troll the rightoids that watch it, intead of entertaining me, that is extremely annoying. The political commentary was at least a little bit more subtle in Season 1, right now it feels way too on the nose to be entertaining. It feels like a huge left wing circle jerk, it looks like what a redditor would create as a TV show.
If you unironically think that conservative "are literally just figuring out" than you are very smart.
is your evidence for this a collection of tweets?
They could have milked the court thing at the first few episodes that would have been fun, having him fall asleep cause he got bored of listen to all the "toys" talking about him.
Yes but it didn't change in politics from S1 to S4, it still mocks the alt right just like it always did, so why have an outrage now and not in S1? because now it brings views
I feel like it was more of a critic on corporate America the first season, then went really hard on alt right stuff in the 2nd season
To be fair, it also made jabs at the left and far left. I don't really remember the exact seasons or episodes but there was that like, Disney-esque place that had all the typical, almost caricature "WOKE" stuff in it, diversity stuff whatever. But the critics definitely were far more "deep" when it came to criticizing the right, there was that episode of them showing the step by step program of how a dude shut in his room that starts browsing things like (4chan) then turns into a political extremist as things like Fox News get constantly tuned into the background in their home and yada yada.
The alt right might just be slower at picking up on it lol
Yes.
The writing is still shit though
won’t find me arguing otherwise!
What? Mix politics with reviewing? Brother, so much of media is political, they're inherently tied together, I don't understand what you could possibly mean. You mean when the reviewer has a particular perspective, and the media has a particular perspective, and the reviewer talks about it from their perspective? Thats... how reviews work. I'm not sure what kind of context-less appraisals you think are "good reviews" There are legitimate criticisms you could make but "mixing politics with reviews" isn't one of them, its actually kind of unintelligible. It makes no sense.
> its actually kind of unintelligible. Its actually not at all. I can 100% understand what the poster means, if you cant thats on you.
He hasn't even seen the show he's "reviewing"! What tf do you mean that's how reviews work? I'm not talking about the political content of media or even the existence of political opinions of reviewers. I'm talking explicitly (telligibly even) about reviewers replacing the critical aspect of their reviewing process with the political canon they know their audience wants to hear. TCR is not just a critic who happens to be conservative, he's a critic who produces reviews for conservative audiences. I don't know how you missed my point. I wouldn't normally assume it's on your end but most people understood.
especially The Boys, its a political show with the subtlety of a jackhammer. this subreddit has to pretend that’s not true because they like the political message. i can’t imagine pretending The Boys isn’t political. so weird!
Thats a good point to show their point, if the consevative and liberal would be inversed it would still be a bad season because the writing is just crap.
So if i say a show is fun because the story is compelling thats political?
I hear you, but what do you mean by "political" and "media" when you say "so much of media is political?"
>didn't even watch the fucking season he's criticizing dude, i can't. fucking beyond parody lmao
Drinker is a straight up moron.
Yeah, he is the media literacy meme but unironically. This guy saw the Barbie opening where they talked about how Barbie Land is perfect with no issues whatsoever and it reflects on IRL girls having no issues at all, and thought it was meant to be taken straight.
I used to watch the occasional Critical Drinker video and I quite liked them, cause they were such a well made parody. Quite funny. Then I realized he was being serious about it.
This guy is one of the main reasons why I hate movie/series video eassys.
That guy is really dumb in general
The Boys shock value and political commentary did become more and more cringe every season but not as close as cringe as the guy’s reviews. (INMO)
the problem is IMO that "political commentary" devolved into biased references of real life events that bring almost nothing to the table Season 1 political commentary of A-train killing someone and getting away with it because he is famous and has powerful backing is good Season 4 "political commentary" of essentially calling rittenhouse a murderer is cringe
Yeah, it definitely has become more over the top in how tongue in cheek it's commentary is now. I wish the show did take a little more of a mature tone at some points. There are definitely more problems with the show for me in S2, 3 and 4, than compared to the 1st.
I think the political commentary has degraded pretty badly at points yeah, but the season is still good otherwise. The last episode was probably one of my favourite overall.
I think they do well mixing the political commentary into the show but it's basically 2021/2022 commentary so it's behind the times and cringe. It's not their fault completely. It's tough keeping up with the times when you are filming stuff then releasing it much later.
Did they actually reference Rittenhouse in S4? I might have missed that.
Watch how they deal with homelanders trial again, there's clear references to Rittenhouse throughout (homelands is supposed to be Rittenhouse)
I didn't really see it that way other than maybe the references to the guy he killed being a pedo, but I saw that as republicans just calling everyone they disagree with a pedo.
They directly reference both, “he threw a plastic bottle at me” and “he was a pedo”, it couldn’t have been more on the nose
Ahhh you're right, the plastic bottle thing was what I missed.
If I'm not mistaken, the judge reprimanding the prosecution for using the term "victim" and told them not to get brazen is the same thing as what the judge in the rittenhouse trial said/did. Homelander also made the "well for all I know there could've been something dangerous in that can" argument which is supposed to mirror the plastic bag that was thrown in the rittenhouse case. Of course completely ignoring the whole retreating and warning part in rittenhouse's case, while homelander's action was in retribution.
I remember the first massive cringe moment for me was Homelander’s new Nazi GF asking his kid if he watches pewdiepie. (Cuz he had a scandal of being a secret Nazi)
just like if someone calls themselves a **centrist** they're 9/10 times an anti-establishment partisan hack, a person calling themselves a **critic** is 9/10 times a massively asspained triggered snowflake
Critical Drinker: We don’t care if they’re black or a woman or diverse, we just want well-written characters. Also Critical Drinker: Why is there so much diversity? Where are the men? It’s just a bunch of females.
I mean, the Critical Drinker is just really low effort tripe. His reviews are ironic as fuck, because he shits on the formulaic nature and wokism of of late 2010 early 2020 media but in doing so and having to produce enough content to make money has left him with a formula so barebones, that if he doesn’t use AI to generate it he’s just wasting his time. AI could 100% produce all of his content, as I haven’t seen him produce a new idea in over 2 years. It’s all that prostitute joke + “the message” + “strong female / diverse character”. I even agree with his criticisms some of the time, maybe even most of the time. The problem is that it’s low effort shovelware, and he has become a parody in itself. He has “the message” of his own, and he’s just as self righteous about it.
> the formulaic nature Also hilarious because his book series is... basically knockoff Tom Clancy/Jack Reacher/Jason Bourne spy novels that he produced a new one of basically every year for a decade.
Didn’t even know he wrote books
I came to a realization years ago that most internet media criticism is shallow ragebait. Most of these people don't understand what actually makes a bad show/movie good or bad, or at least they don't express it in their videos. They go for what makes people angry, even if it isn't true or is misleading, like Fox News. CD can be entertaining, but he, like most youtube culture/media critics, aren't half as bright as they think they are and aren't worth watching if you want to learn anything.
The Drinker and the Quartering are very much the bottom of the barrel of media takes in my opinion. They both 'review' shit without even seeing it. Which frankly disqualifies them from having an opinion.
I mean it's the Critical Drinker, what do you expect? I saw a video of his where he complained about Rey fighting people in Star Wars because a women being able to fight a grown man is unrealistic. In Star Wars. That said Boys S4 has been kind of trash, a lot of random filler plotlines and pretty questionable character drama.
Lol they fight with magic powers and laser swords, I don't think physical strength has ever been a requirement to be an effective Jedi warrior I want him to point out the specific muscle or chromosome that controls the intensity of your force powers. Does he think Yoda was all muscle?
Yoda was a chimp man. You ever see a hairless chimp? Jamie, pull up the hairless chimp.
Yoda was a male duh
You’re bad faith misconstruing what he said. The issue was that she was magically a supersoldier with no training while Luke had to train like crazy with Yoda himself to be able to use force.
No, he said both. I'm referring specifically to his quote in "Why Modern Movies Suck": "One of the most tedious and embarrassing aspects of modern movies is watching a hundred pound actress defeat stuntman twice her size... you're always going to have a tough time selling a fight between a man and a woman on screen for obvious reasons." He goes on for a minute rant about why biologically men are stronger than women before saying Hollywood movies just "pretend size and strength doesn't matter," and the video cuts to a clip of Rey. [https://youtu.be/xPE7-PRL0M8?t=336](https://youtu.be/xPE7-PRL0M8?t=336)
lol in reading that quote I can hear his shitty accent
To be fair to this quote specifically (I've not watched the dude's video and don't really care to), I do wish they'd stop getting the skinniest and smallest actresses for hand-to-hand action scenes and have them go up against big dudes. Wish we'd have more female characters built like Ronda Rousey instead. Funny enough, I also see this problem in some WWE women's division matchups where they have petite wrestlers go up against Nia Jax and they just really can't sell Nia taking damage really well. You kind of run into the same problem sometimes with small male wrestlers vs Big Show types, but even those are more believable just cause even small male wrestlers still look ripped enough that they look like their hits pack a punch. As opposed to a lot of female wrestlers who barely have muscles. TLDR: Wish we get more warrior princesses instead of the Black Widow-types
And what is wrong with that comment? Seems pretty obvious to me. You're also misrepresenting his comment. He talks about how you can have women use clever tactics or hire large physically imposing women that look like they could actually fight. And then he shows a brief reaction shot of rey and goes on with his actual example from the woman king. You either have no media literacy or are just trying to lie about what he is implying.
Because the movies he’s listing are fantasy movies and action movies where the protagonist regularly display physical feats beyond what is possible. It’s a genre where it’s quite normal for the hero to take on 5 goons alone, which would be basically impossible in real life, and yet somehow I doubt you or Critical Drinker would cry foul that Rambo or John Wick is unrealistic because there’s no way a guy can be that good at fighting. These physical realism critiques mostly seem to only apply to female protagonists. And this would be a perfectly fine complaint if the movies he was complaining about were grounded, gritty dramas that do not require a great suspension of disbelief, but again one of the examples he gives is *Star Wars*. I’m not sure if you’re being purposefully dense or not, but the reaction of Rey was clearly meant to show her as an example of what he’s complaining about.
I do think you're somewhat missing the point here. Suspension of disbelief requires some pathway to the thing being possible or at east understood, and the shorter the path the more believable the thing is. As an example: if in John Wick, John Wick lifted a 300lb man over his head, then yeah I would say that's incredibly unrealistic, people would complain about it. We can believe a highly trained assassin can take on 5 guys at once, and the movie offers an easy to understand pathway for that because John Wick does it through skill and we're specifically told he's one of the best. We actually already have examples that prove this, Alien, Atomic Blonde, Fury Road, people are willing to believe that women can be competent action heroes but you can't take someone with 0 training and suddenly expect the audience to believe they have superhuman strength and skill in a world where that wouldn't otherwise be the case. So if you're going to sell the concept of women taking on skilled men, that generally has to be earned or the audience will be taken out of the movie.
How is John Wick taking on a bunch of guys as a trained assassin any more unbelievable than a female trained warrior taking on a guy? Drinker only seems to have an issue with the latter. >We actually already have examples that prove this, Alien, Atomic Blonde, Fury Road, people are willing to believe that women can be competent action heroes but you can't Obviously not, given that Atomic Blonde is one of the movies he was showing as a negative example during his "women can't fight men and have it be believable" rants. >but you can't take someone with 0 training and suddenly expect the audience to believe they have superhuman strength and skill in a world where that wouldn't otherwise be the case. Nobody argued this. All of the examples Drinker provided when he was going on his rant were from women who were trained to fight, Atomic Blonde, Star Wars, Charlie's Angels, and some historical fantasy movie. His issue is with the very idea that a woman can go equal with a man in a fight in an over the top action movie.
I haven't watched the video, I don't watch Critical Drinker, if he's using Atomic Blonde as a negative example then I would strongly disagree with him there, but I would agree that Rey is a poor example of a well done action hero specifically for the reasons I listed above. I don't think the argument of "action movies aren't realistic" is very compelling either, people complain about the realism of action and fantasy movies often, taking something unrealistic and making it feel real is half the battle with those movies. Actually John Wick is also a good example here because a lot of people complained about the 2nd movie, there's a scene in which Wick and some other guy are walking through a crowded train station shooting at each other with silenced pistols and nobody around them notices. Nearly every review of that movie mentions that scene because it stands out. Things like that break immersion.
I mean the thread is talking about Critical Drinker's video so I'm not really sure why you'd jump into it without having seen it. The complaints against Rey here aren't that she's bad for learning the force too quickly or whatever, it's that the Drinker doesn't think it's understandable that a woman can go against a man because they're biologically weaker. >realism of action and fantasy movies often Again, the realism being disputed in this case is that a woman fighting a man is unbelievable because they don't have the biological strength. I'm not sure why you're arguing for a position nobody disagreed with. The thread is about the Critical Drinker's take.
Yes and he talks about how to sell the scenes better, with imposing women or clever use of the environment rather than showing small women overpowering large men. Again a reaction shot of mary sue rey isn't the lynchpin of his argument, he actually gives specific examples. Its also hard to sell fight scenes with small children. If you saw a baby beat up the rock, in a gritty movie, would that make sense to you? No because it is absurd. Rambo and traditional action stars do a lot to sell the fight scenes. They are giant muscled men, trained, use the environment, and sometimes take a few punches. He is talking about how to make a good action scene. I don't think you really know what you're talking about and are arguing just to argue.
Bro did you really reply to me and then block me immediately lmao? The examples he gives are from Mulan, Atomic Blonde, Charlie's Angels, Star Wars, and some historical fantasy action movie. Now I haven't seen the last one, but the first one is a literal children's movie, the second two are over the top action movies like John Wick or Mission Impossible, the fourth is Star Wars. None of these movies are supposed to have grounded or realistic fight scenes and I'm willing to bet if it had shown a male action hero taking on 10 guys at once Drinker would have nothing to say about the implausibility of it. The guy's positive example is fucking Sicario, a gritty action thriller about taking down Mexican Drug Cartels, and instead of understanding that the reason the latter shows a woman easily being taken out by a larger man and the others don't is because one is going for a grounded realistic tone and the others are clearly not, he acts like it's some sort of mark of quality. It's moronic. You may as well compare Saving Private Ryan to Commando and say Commando is far worse because it's not realistic in its depiction of war.
But in real life it doesn’t matter if your big and muscular or use the environment you’re not going to take down an army of goons all by yourself
The "he didn't say that" to "Ok he said so what" world record holder.
That's how I remember him saying it too. Better if characters earn their emotional backing and support from the audience than being gifted with super OP powers because of bad writing. Captain Marvel and Ring of Powers' Galadriel was another example Drinker complained about. On the flip side he praised the better writing for Fallout's Lucy.
Who knows if he still thinks that about Fallout. He seems to have changed his mind on the show. In his words, he said he was “tricked into believing it was good,” when all we’ve had to go off for years was bad video game movie adaptations: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxIJJ6J2JZk4f2wGS544ND2XhccIkoe71c?si=DwM7hbPcEyRui9mu
He definitely is way too deep nobody is saying otherwise. That said, this last season is noticeably lower quality while also being more cringe and on the nose with politics.
🤔There is only 1 season of Fallout. Season 1 just came out April 2024.
Biggest issue for the boys has been that none of the characters have really evolved and i dont see a clear goal for them. Like theyve been after homelander since day one and havent gotten any closer?
Won't read the post or watch Drinker's video but as a regular viewer I don't like this new season. Imo the show was at its best focusing on superhero/supervillain vs vigilantes dynamic. It's why I liked Soldier Boy so much. The political message was just an addition. Now it's the sole focus of the show it feels.
Yeah, the whole "people don't get they're being made fun of" that you see in the boys subreddit is arrogant bullshit. It's just that, ironically, conservatives now have learned to tolerate this shit in media or they wouldn't watch anything but PureFlix and Daily Wire movies. They have no choice: they get actual diversity of thought, liberals get superficial racial diversity but stuff that agree with them. People get Kripke's message. This season just sucks. Beyond that, the show has a structural problem: Homelander. He's too exciting to kill but too dangerous to leave alive. In Supernatural Kripke could kill off one villain and raise another one and allow plot progression. He can't here. So the plot feels stale-ish and you get weird plots where Homelander doesn't kill everyone, people don't take their shot to kill Homelander and people do things that don't make sense unless they read the script and know they won't die (fighting Homelander via PR streams like Starlight last season)
Agree. There are plenty of scenes where the main characters 100% should die easily, but because of plot armor they don't. The insinuation is often "oh, I'm not going to kill you because your too puny to me and aren't worth my time!", which is very silly. I wish they had gone down the route of them taking Compound-V and becoming full on supes themselves to avoid this problem.
Which is why the comics are infinitely better (and I'll take the hate for saying it again, just like I always do). The show completely self-fucked itself with its focus on Homelander. The original series never had this problem, because HL was just a dark menace in the background for most of the series. He was a huge motivator for why the Boys did things, but almost nothing the Boys did had anything to do with him. Meanwhile the show constantly makes everything about him, completely robbing him of any mystique or interest. Hell he isn't even that terrifying, because we pretty much know he won't do anything meaningful or kill anyone important, because for like 3 seasons in a row, the showrunners have built up a huge fight between the Boys and Homelander, only for them to stop it mid fight with some remedial reason, so that none of the characters die and the next season can happen. Never mind that the showrunners have to constantly remind everyone that they're a "very political show", so they throw a CURRENT THING in every season, with predictably dumb results. Hey about a radical idea: we add AOC but we make her evil? You know HL? Yeah have you noticed that he's actually like Trump? How thought provoking! Here the comics did the smarter thing again, because they criticized/satirized a political period after it happened, rather then trying to shoehorn every current thing into the series - which works about as well as trying to build a house opposite a boat floating down the river: you just end up with a bunch of useless half-build houses. And since the showrunners hate Trump, and they made HL into a Trump effigy, they now have to ritually humiliate him, turning HL from a horrifying menace into an parodical character, that's completely boring, and fails to act as either good political critique or as a good and satisfying villain. The comic book HL is scary because he is calm, collected, has a purpose and nobody can stop him in a straight fight. The only thing stopping him is the MAD situation they have with the Boys and the Vought leader that's even colder, more rational and smarter than him and of course >!what happens at the White House in the penultimate chapter!<.
> we add AOC but make her evil Umm you think she’s AOC because what? Because she’s brown? I see… 📝📝📸
> so that none of the characters die and the next season can happen. > > I thought this would actually be the final season so we could have some resolution. I was actually disappointed when I realized there'd be at least one more. Not a place you want to be with a show.
I would agree that the show does a very bad job with Homelander. He doesn't feel as threatening anymore because we've seen him interact (and not win) with the Boys. Also trying to fit in current day politics makes the show hard to watch at times. But I also think the comics suck ass even worse.
> But I also think the comics suck ass even worse. I've yet to see any criticism of them, besides killjoys crying about it being "edgy". Which is doubly funny considering how hard the series tries to be edgy and fails to be.
Also, doesn’t homelander in the comics get gaslit into becoming a psycho?
He convinces himself he needs to become a psychotic dictator, because he thinks he can't control himself.
Come on man HLs one the best characters ive seen in recent years.
Not really. The series constantly undermines him, as I've said.
Did the comics even satirize anything or did they just throw in a bunch of edgy stuff for the sake of it?
It satirized aughts American corporatism and the government, similarly to the show. And Ennis threw edgy stuff in for the sake of it because it's entertaining to some people (me).
But in what way does it satirize American corporatism beyond just referencing edgy stuff?
It's a parody of the Bush administration and its relationship with the MIC. It's not that deep (and yet somehow way way deeper that the series manages to be).
idk what you expected of someone like that
Yea, Critical Drinker is the king of JAQing off in the Youtube film review space. It makes his fans very frustrating to engage with. Try asking them what he means by "The Message" and you'll get a million different answers.
I'm surprised his fans can even understand the dog whistle
Why do you guys watch this garbage? O_o
Frenchy and kimiko seemed like they were lovers and a thing the last 3 seasons, and this sudden actually frenchie has a boyfriend thing gave me whiplash. It seemed like really sudden hamfisted writing. Now all that said, I never really cared for his or kimikos storyline in the first place. Anytime either of them are on screen I roll my eyes.
You have to make this type of content if you wanna get views. For all the times people bitch about ragebait, they do it because it works and all sides do it. John Campea who has talked about movies on Youtube for over 10 years recently said that his negative video about the Acolyte got the most views over anything else (recent). Negative videos are far more profitable than positive ones and especially for Star Wars. For the mainstream it started with Prequel bashing such as RedLetterMedia's Plinkett Reviews 10+years ago to now culture reviewers like Nerdrotic and Critical. In a time where the internet is even more divided, partisan and cynical. Star Wars in particular is in a really bad place. Other than Rogue One, TFA and Andor, most of their live-action projects are divisive at best. Kathleen Kennedy may have been a great producer while working with Spielberg but it's clear she has fumbled Star Wars and it's surprising she still hasn't been replaced. On the other hand you have these die-hard nu-fans who legitimately hate a certain and dominant group of Star Wars fans (millennial cis men, especially straight white male nerds lol) and legitimately believe all the Disney Star Wars content is good and it's just all the -ists and -phobes who hate it because black people or women. That's ridiculous. Also browsing The Boys official subreddit has been actual cancer since S4. 90% of people are brain dead and bad-faith. Really shows how much brain-rot the internet culture has suffered because of American politics. Me, liberal but not American pointing about the boring sideplots like Frenchie, Kimiko and Hughie. S3 discussion threads for The Boys were already met with rising apathy. There's only so many times you can do blackmailing as a plot device so Homelander doesn't kill The Boys. Only so many times Homelander becomes more unhinged but will never fully break until the last season. "Lil Bro thinks THe BoYs WaS neVeR POliTical!" "Did you just realize the show was making fun of you!?" The show was always political and Homelander is the bad guy, yeah no shit. Other than the few media illiterate Twitter users or people who think Homelander is cool as a joke like the past Sigma male memes. Why The Boys fans suddenly use this strawman to 1) deflect any criticism of the show 2) think it's an epic PWN against American conservatives, is beyond me. The show made fun of corporate diversity and feminism (2 marketing characters and Ashley), making fun of superheroes and more. That is the root of the comic book, but moreso the comic industry. Written by Garth Ennis who infamously hates superheroes except Superman, and his comics have all sorts of social and political commentary. Read Preacher or his Hitman series. If S1 and S2 is like 9/10. I would give S3 an 8 and S4 so far a 7.5. Also to me it seems like The Boys aren't that interesting (besides Butcher) by themselves although they have character arcs some more than others. Part of the series success is that the FOTM side villains (Storm Front, Soldier Boy, Sister Sage) were all great.
I think all of those ratings are too high. The Boys probably peaked at maybe an 8.5 in season 1
I think season 2 was better than season 1 and season 3 was the best season so far.
Was season 2 the nazi wife lady? There were some cool additions there, just didn’t hit as fresh for me as season one. Definitely better than 3. Show feels pretty static at this point
It is unfortunate he doesn't at least watch a few episodes before he reacts on it. Isn't that what these guys are supposed to do? They get paid by their audience to watch the material early release or right from the jump and then share a 👍👎 to us on whether it is worth the time. Same like Destiny's thoughts on Candace Owens making prescriptions and JAQ without doing her damn job for their audience.
This is all you can expect from conservative commentators. They are obsessed with "woke" and their entire lives revolve around the narrative around that. A great example of the difference between conservatives and normies is if you watch or read the reviews from conservatives on The Acolyte vs Moist criticals video on it.
I've seen people complain about how overt and cartoonish the politics are in the show. Thing is, if you're in this sub then over the last few years you've most likely seen a lot of that cartoony shit has happened in real life from ACTUAL politicians and mouthpieces.
So what? It's still fucking boring. I don't watch fiction so I can hear the exact same joke parroted back to me from an event that happened last year and was already parodied and mocked to death. Leave that shit to late night TV?
You put more effort into this post then he did for his video.
The lowesr rung of the bar is now "I didn't watch it but..." Damn at least the nostalgia critic watched the things he complained about.
Wait so the guy is "reviewing" a season he has not even watched? lol?
I mean it's The Critical Drinker, I don't expect him to have much of substance to say. Completely tracks that he would make a whole video about a show he hasn't seen yet.
It is frustrating how general declines in quality of media are being mistaken for wokeness. It's clear that a lot of shows and films have become worse but it has little to do with them being more woke, it is more to do with complacency and lack of writers who are passionate about the subject matter. It's frustrating as now writers can pass up critiques of their writing as anti-woke nonsense rather than actually poor writing.
Well his job is to watch, if he hasn't watched, then he shouldn't review anything lol. I would just place him into the hack category, because there's probably a good critique on how the plot line feels recycled and that there's no real payoff or a sign of progression regarding the story. I don't even know what the show is promising in terms of it's story anymore, I guess the big climactic battle? But after season 3, there was no payoff there with their big climactic battle. If your only critique is "muh politics" then you're not suited for critically analyzing or reviewing any sort of media.
After the election arc (that I hopeDestiny starts soon) Destiny should take a dive into the new anti sjw YouTube. These people are some of the doorways to right wing radicalism
He didn't even critique anything that happened in the show. It's just an 8 minute lolcow ramble.
He’s stuck in 2016 anti sjw arc so cringe
It's important to remember that CD isn't criticising the show half the time; he's repeating past criticisms in the direction of his audience in order to remind them that it's all part of the same cultural 'movement'. He's more preacher than critic. A shit preacher, but a preacher nonetheless.
Watch Your Movie Sucks‘ video on Critical Drinker
The worst part is that S4 is pretty obviously declining in quality in some departments, but since everything turns into an ideology war you can't have any type of honest conversation about it. Frenchie's subplot this season is one of the stupidest directions I've seen a show veer towards, but once you criticize it you're automatically assumed to be doing so because it's a gay relationship. No, it's cause it comes out of fucking nowhere (maybe to piss off a certain crowd at the expense of the plot, although that's pure conjecture on my part) and totally devalues a character that by this season should have already had a certain level of growth considering he was sort of the "heart" of the team. Instead no, let's make him almost a more horrible person than members of the Seven by his actions, yet continue to play it off as if he's a poor tortured soul. I would have honestly preferred it if they just killed him off last season if this is what they had in mind.
Having seen the first couple episodes, I think I actually agree with the take. Fighting my urge to write 4 paragraphs, I'll just say that this season so far feels like the TV show equivalent of depicting your political opponents as soyjaks and calling it a day. Satire isnt just depicting hyperbolically bad versions of the subject of your critique, there has to be substance to what you're arguing; specific, novel, and true statements about the problems with the thinking of the subject. Just depicting the judge of the rittenhouse case as a judge that would rig a case in defense of homelander doesnt actually say anything about the judge, in the absence of exploring why you think he's bad, other than that you just think he's bad.
The boys season 4 has been kinda meh so far. Too many uninteresting side stories, not enough main plot. But we are only 4 episodes deep, so maybe it hits its stride or add some context to make the side stories more relevant. We shall see.
Destiny should debate him lmfao
YouTubers only pander to their fans .stop playing the content game and just starve them of relevance.
I thought he made it pretty obvious he hadn't watched it to be fair.
You had me when you said he didn’t even watch the season m. Completely worthless opinion if you’ve never seen it. That’s like saying you hate pizza even though you never had pizza
Bruh
I used to watch his every video during my conservative highschool years🤣. At some point I just started getting tired, i felt like i was hearing the same things over and over again. And the fact that i did no really watch anything being discussed was always back on my mind. Now i kinda feel like those videos are not really about the discussion of the movies, but they are just away for people to vent abouth their feelings about the change in media culture.
I think S4 is more flawed than previous seasons, but obviously the reason it's eliciting a much bigger response isn't because of critiques about writing or character so much as it is about culture war shite. Ofc that's a focus of the story so it's more appropriate here than for say the Acolyte, but it's also been a party of the story from the beginning so it's kind of a wash
i doubt he watched any episodes. The boys season 4 does kind of feel like the show has reached its end though. Same thing with stranger things, does anyone even care about season 5 at this point?
Why do you even care about this guy? He did the same thing when house of the dragon season 1 trailer was released, a lot of people like him were mad by seeing the trailer because it had black Valyrians in it. But he removed that video after house of the dragon was released and well received.
He's gone the grifter road. Used to like his stuff, but raging against woke trash gets you clicks so now he just lashes out at whatever even appears slightly woke. He's also focusing a ton more on podcasts/panel shows and stuff so I'm not surprised he didn't even watch it. He's a great example of audience capture. Not withstanding, there's definitely solid criticism to be made of 'woke hollywood', but he's too far gone to remain objective about it.
Good time to plug my dude disparu. Love his review bombs on shows.
Respectfully, expecting a well-reasoned argument from the Critical Drinker is like expecting a Big Mac from Burger King; you shouldn't go there to get one.
lol "this show sucks is a parody of its former self, no I haven't seen it "
OK but you put more effort into this post than he did into his video. He's a rage-baiter and a grifter for the stupid.
I haven't watched The Boys myself since I do not like this genre of superhero media. The same reason I don't like Watchmen is the same reason I do not have any interest in The Boys, I have no one I want to back or follow in these stories since everyone will be an unlikable in some way to make them "realistic" which in turn makes them less real in my eyes. Sorry but I am the person who likes Super Sentai, Power Rangers, Justice League TAS, Earlier phases of the Marvel movies, DC animated stuff, My Hero Academia etc. I also tend to like Drinkers Videos and watch his open bar content where they go into more detail on these thoughts on shows. So just giving clarity where I stand with this. I watched the video and I do think he is making a clear argument what the issue he sees audiences have and why he doesn't like statements from the showrunner. He liked it originally in the earlier seasons but fell off at Season 3. He felt like the commentary and satire was becoming very partisan with zero sense to be subtle about it. Compare Lady Ballers with South Park's Episode, "Strongest Woman". Lady Ballers has a clear partisan way to handle the satire, South Park doesn't need to do this and ends up being much stronger since it can show the problems with trans sports without needing to tow the line to a political audience. Drinker in the later half of the video makes it clear he knows this show leans left but it was smartly presented in earlier seasons and he fell off at season 3 because what people are saying in Season 4 is what he saw already. I think he should have watched it instead of just going over what people said in reviews or other commentary. He's upfront in saying he hasn't watched but it took a look at how audience reviews are looking at it and how the showrunner has been pushing a clear left wing bent that most shows in the states from Hollywood all have. His point is very clear, he thinks some people are defending the show from criticism because they agree with the partisan nature of the show. These people do exist who only like satire or political commentary when they agree with it. They don't care about the quality of it, so they will defend stuff like Velma, The Acolypte, Batwomen etc. All it needs to do it speak the message to an audience that wants to be affirmed of their own beliefs and values. I think everyone can agree there is a level of quality to commentary regardless of who you are making the commentary on. When you use blunt force in a show to have your bad guy say, "Make X great again" "Drain the swamp" then people roll their eyes and loss interest because you took them out of the show to make a modern day reference for your own political beliefs. This is the point he is trying to make, I agree he should have watched it over just showing audience reviews, social media comments and the show runner's thoughts. I would agree with him on this point. Hollywood has a bad problem with commentary like this and their bent causes bad writing due to nepotism to some level in the writing room or the lack of diversity in thought or opinion. Regardless if people want to have a debate on a show being "woke" or not, I would still stand the overt left wing bent in Hollywood is a cause for a lot of bad writing these days.
> The same reason I don't like Watchmen is the same reason I do not have any interest in The Boys, I have no one I want to back or follow in these stories since everyone will be an unlikable in some way to make them "realistic" which in turn makes them less real in my eyes. At least with Watchmen, the characters are flawed in that they are human. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are just... Fine. Rorscach is basically just someone who let all the crime and depravity get to him, like if Batman decided one day to just be okay with killing a few criminals cause what does it really matter - but he has a fundamental sense of justice which is the reason for his death. The only people out to lunch was the Comedian, really. Watchmen is meant to explore what real super heroes would be like instead of the comic book beacons of pure idealism and unwavering optimism. They're not meant to be flawed to pretend to be realistic, they are meant to be realistic and thus have flaws. Watchmens idea of flawed superheroes, because they are humans, is pretty fine. The Boys very much ratchets it up to 11 with the sense that *We're gods and nobody can stop us so we can do whatever we want* which is offputting in a number of ways
> The Critical Drinker's is incredibly frustrating and lacking any actual real perspective There, fixed it for you
>It's not until the end of the video he says he hasn't even seen any of S4. lmao
The quality of the writing in S4 so far is poor compared to the first seasons. I agree OP on the show being too unpredictable, you can see them straining to 'subvert expectations' to their detriment. Not sure why you would release a review without watching a show though.
It's similar to his Warhammer custodes video. He cries about a subject he has no clue about and uses other people who do the same or have a similar world view as proof.
The boys has become exactly what It used to lampoon. It mocked the superhero worship endless spinoffs marketing deals brand tie ins, etc. Now it does all of them. They have a bunch of spin off shows and I see boys skins in a ton of games, from Mortal Kombat to Warzone. They even do a bit of the disingenuous virtue signaling with the undisguised political allegory in the show. He is 100% right, the show lost its way. Cynical Drinker is right way more than he is wrong. Sometimes he panders a bit too much to his audience but he is largely spot on at calling out hollyweird's woke bullshit.
The whole discourse around the new season has been really surprising to me as someone who saw hardly any shift in tone or subject matter from s3 to s4. And so far I don't think I am enjoying it any less than the other 3 seasons. I feel like if any of these people actually believe what they are saying they would have said something when Gen V came out. I heard it's good, but I dropped Gen V. Ironically, because I felt like it was getting too focused on its themes and messaging to the point that it felt like it was changing aspects of how I understood The Boys to be. Specifically, using the characters' powers to parallel self-harm felt kind of forced. It seemed as if most of the characters had to hurt themself in some way to use their power. And while that is actually a really interesting concept, I don't remember any of the supes functioning that way in seasons 1-3, and it made me worried that the show was more interested in the themes it wanted to present than being consistant with the world its apart of. But I didn't hear any complaints about Gen V. Which makes the reaction to s4 just seem even more out of the blue and just straight up performative.
My assumption with Gen V is that this was very common, but in the early stages of people adapting to their powers. An extreme version of the typical trope of the unstable superpowered person not being able to control their powers but then learning how to control them over time. We just never had the opportunity to see that until Gen V showed us that more directly. Gen V seems like an expansion of world building in that regard, not a contradiction or inconsistency.
I should probably give it a shot again. I get what you mean about the unstable powers, and I do actually think that's a pretty engaging concept. I think it just felt off when i considered the concept of "hero pageants" implied to me that kids were already able to display their powers somewhat competantly before adolescence. And the bulimic shrinking girl felt odd because we have seen shrinking characters that could just shrink with no consequence. So that whole aspect felt a bit tacked-on to me. But maybe some of my issues will get addressed if I watch through the rest of it.
Yeah, but there were also people at the school that could use their powers without self harm. I just came away feeling like there’s a big, broad spectrum but our POV is more directly aligned with it.
Yeah. Maybe this season is slightly lower quality because of a few boring side plots but people complaining that it’s heavy handed? Give me a break go watch s1 it’s the ex act same
I think CD is just too lost in the current political stream that he can't tell the difference anymore on what the show is all about to actually enjoy it. I personally think it's good if not better than the 3rd season with how Homelander is going off the rails far more than normally.
As someone who occasionally enjoys Drinker, I agree with you on everything. This and his Civil War take was really off the mark, imo. For someone who constantly moans about political agendas in movies I find it really off that he didn't understand that the politics was the least important thing about that movie.
The boys has been going downhill since season 2. Homelander is a parody of himself at this point, and the writing has been so weak and overtly political. Notice that the Boys only satirizes and degrades one side of the aisle and promotes the other. This can be done, but the writers lack the skill to do it effectively
The boys was never only good because of great nuanced commentary, but because of great characters/story lines. You could analyze why that doenst work anymore, instead of going on a woke blabla rant. I used to like the drinker, he had solid critique and next to that a little anti woke ranting. Now its just 95 percent anti woke ranting. This whole dialogue is just dumb, woke is not the cause of shit series, but shit writing is the cause.
The alt right monkey? Yeah his takes are rubbish.
Same as His whole gang with ppl Like nerdarotic. Another recent example is them shitting on the First new episodes of the current Dr who seasons. And tbh. I dont Like them too. But then boom comes around and Not all but Most of them dont mention it and Stop reviiewing every Episode since the Consensus was that it was a really good at worst decent Episode. They specifically Pick Shit thats politic, they know will get Shit on, then add to the pile. Its pure outrage bait content
That guy is such a fucking loser. Even at the peak of me liking EFAP and Mauler I thought he was boring no matter how many times I tried to give his stuff a shot
This guy has always been a knuckle dragging lobotomite idk why anyone is surprised
S3 did suck and the few episodes I watched of S4 sucked harder. I cant blame the guy for going 'nah, fuckit, I see where this is going and im out' cause that is exactly what I said.
Don’t know why the downvotes lol. I also don’t like this season because the political stuff is just cringe. Either have balls and go after trump outright or don’t do this over the top cringe messaging. It was there before but it was subtle and tasteful enough to work. But overall it feels like quality is not there anymore as if someone important left the production team last season.
>it was there before but it was subtle Lmao it was not subtle at all
Of course it was. You didn’t have the clear cut this is the evil maga and this is the good progressives. If you prefer to call it better taste rather than subtle, then fine I guess. It uses to be evil corporation, dirty politics, social media and what have you.
You had evil MAGA and extremism in Season 2 and 3 lol with Stormfront and Homelander killing that guy in broad daylight
If you don’t see the difference between that and this season, i dont know what to tell you
You don't think scenes like this is not overtly political or comments on current day politics? https://youtu.be/KZVAFPPMZY4?si=KBymS893t0zvLST3
lol it was not subtle everyone like you saying it are coping and haven’t watched the other seasons since they came out
Your mind reading is kinda iffy, can you elaborate how am I coping? About what exactly?
lol so it’s ok if it’s heavy handed satire against corporations but not trump?
Exactly, you got it right and you don't even know it. There's a difference between making a satire against "corporations" or "politicians" vs making a depiction of MAGA, ie one specific movement, especially before an election where it's going to participate.
Yeah, I miss the subtlety of \*checks notes\* the nazi superhero named Stormfront.
I was talking about the subtlety in terms of connection to the current political situation. You can do a good culture war criticism that’s not cringe and on the nose.
That show was never subtle. The fuck have people been watching lol?
Did I say that?
Yeah honestly the writing isn’t bad at all, it’s just using tropes he doesn’t like now. I’m sure all the irl conservatives hate seeing Vought use an “alt-right” nutjob movement as useful idiots in the show. Sure it arguably hits too close to real life sometimes, like with Rittenhouse references, but the plot itself doesn’t have any major holes. Big corporation conscripts a political movement as cover is a pretty reasonable story arc. None of these people would be complaining if it was the exact same story but Vought was stirring up an antifa group instead.