The Flawed Logic of YouTube Reactionaries

Film criticism has produced some famous personalities and publications. Some famous critics in the US and UK have been Robert Ebert, Gene Siskel, Mark Kermode, Barry Norman, and Kim Newman. YouTube has seen a rise in critics, with one of the most well-known being Chris Struckmann, who is now a filmmaker. However, since the mid-to-late 2010s, there has been a rise of ‘critics’ and ‘creators’ who have monetised hatred by complaining about major films, especially anything with a big fandom like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These people have had a detrimental effect on media criticism and pop culture discourse.

There has always been some draw to negativity in film discourse. Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a show that poked fun at notorious B-movies, such as Manos: The Hands of Fate. Established film critics have produced biting reviews. Robert Ebert made an out of it, and some of Mark Kermode’s popular reviews have been rants. I enjoyed Kermode’s review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, especially his description of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley looking like two chairs mating, and saying he would marry Orlando Bloom if it meant he only had to see the actor once every ten years.

One of the first popular YouTubers was The Angry Video Game Nerd. James Rolfe’s creation rose to prominence in 2006, and the idea was to make comedy reviews of bad video games. This led to similar creators, like the Nostalgia Critic, Linkara, and The Spoony One. It could be argued that these people harmed criticism since they nitpicked and misrepresented their subject matter. However, these people were mostly focused on comedy and their targets were not worth defending, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit: The Game, Biodome, and NFL Superpro. Spoony did a 98-minute critical breakdown of Final Fantasy X, one of the most popular videos. Even people who liked the game enjoyed it.

A change came in the 2010s. One of the first films to suffer a backlash was Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was a small backlash. since Star Wars: The Force Awakens was well received, there was a lot of interest because of all the mysterious boxes, and seen as a palate cleanser after the prequel trilogy. There are legitimate criticisms since the film was a remake of A New Hope. However, there were YouTubers who criticised The Force Awakens, with Vaughn Fry claiming to be one of the first ‘critics’ to ‘call out’ the film with his video review. The video description says ‘MUCHO FEMINIST BULLSHIT’ which says it all.

Other films to receive a backlash at this time were Mad Max: Fury Road and the Ghostbusters reboot. They attempted to lead a boycott of Fury Road. Considering how popular the Australian action movie was, it failed miserably. Ghostbusters was notoriously hated by audiences ever since the first trailer was released. There were legitimate criticisms towards it since it was an unfunny, unnecessary reboot, but the debate around the film turned toxic because it gender swapped the main characters to four women. These critics acted as a perfect defence for Ghostbusters (2016) because genuine criticism could be tarred with the reactionaries.

The Reactionary subculture exploded after the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The Last Jedi was met with near-universal praise, gaining a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 84 rating on Metacritic. It earned perfect scores from conservative outlets like The Daily Telegraph and The Times, and a four out of five from The Daily Mail. It was a massive hit, earning $1.3 billion at the box office, was the highest-grossing film of 2017, and the fifth-highest-grossing Star Wars film based on inflation. There were legitimate issues, like the characterisation of Luke Skywalker, the subplot at the casino, Space Leia, and setting out to dismantle J.J. Abrams’ mysterious boxes. I understand and respect these opinions. I loved The Last Jedi because it dared to be different by exploring the philosophical underpinning of Star Wars, made some daring decisions, and had some incredible action.

Sadly, The Last Jedi received overly heated criticisms online. It was easy to find people who raged about why The Last Jedi was the worst film ever conceived. This backlash turned nasty, with many people involved getting targeted online. Rian Johnson received a lot of abuse, and worst of all, Kelly Marie Tran was bullied off of social media. This backlash had ramifications since the proposed sequel, Duel of the Fates, turned into The Rise of Skywalker, which set out to reverse the controversial decisions of The Last Jedi. This resulted in a film that pleased no one. In 2018, James Mangold, the director of Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma, and Logan, said he was scared off working on Star Wars because of the toxic fandom.

The Last Jedi backlash led to the rise of figures like The Critical Drinker (Will Jordan), Nerdrotic (Gary Beuchler), and Geeks + Gamers. It’s depressing to see the number of subscribers: The Critical Drinker has 2.33 million subscribers, Nerdrotic has 1.21 million subscribers, and Geek + Gamers has 414,000. The Critical Drinker’s videos can garner millions, despite his videos, along with the other people in his community, regurgitating the same points. They complain about ‘woke agendas,’ ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘modern writing.’ They throw out the same buzzwords as they complain about modern blockbusters forcing diversity at the expense of straight-white men and Star Wars and the MCU failing because the studios turned against traditional audiences. Their mantra has been ‘go woke, go broke.’ This argument falls apart when some of the biggest recent movies, which were diverse, female-led movies, i.e. Barbie, Moana 2, and Wicked, whilst The Daily Wire is collapsing in real time.

These are people who developed a business model since they believe in volume rather than quality. Mr. H Reviews is a great example of this since he releases multiple videos a day. Videos from this lot are so repetitive that if you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all.

The reactionary tactics are simple: they pick a target, which is usually a Disney or MCU project, and cultivate their hatred towards it. They will make videos reacting to the trailer or looking at news reports, especially if it’s negative, like a bad test screening. This gets followed up by a nitpicky review, and if the film flops, they will make a video where they claim vindication. Their videos on the live-action remake of Snow White were proof of this, since these people were producing videos for over a year about why it would be a disaster. This method of criticism is so easy that I wrote an article where many classic movies could be seen as ‘woke.’

The other tactic Reactionaries use to create hate figures. Brie Larson, Kathleen Kennedy, and Rachel Zegler have all been on the receiving end of criticisms and insults, and have often been blamed for cinematic failures. Kennedy has been made out to be the bogeywoman of Disney’s control of Star Wars. I want Kennedy to produce an action film led by Larson and Zegler just to watch the Reactionaries’ brains explode.

If a film that they have been complaining about ends up being a hit, then they have two excuses. The first is to claim the film became a success because it was piggybacking on the success of another film. Captain Marvel made over $1 billion at the box office despite a hate campaign against it. Their reaction is that Captain Marvel only did well because of the wider success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This ignores the fact that Ant-Man and The Wasp didn’t break the billion-dollar barrier even though it came out after two billion-dollar successes: Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War. If a film has been well received by audiences, then they will backtrack. The Critical Drinker often changes provocative titles if a film ended up being well received: he did that when he criticised the trailers for No Time to Die and Prey for being woke, and they ended up being popular with audiences.

The reactionaries have developed a narrow critical viewpoint. They see everything through the lens of race and gender: there’s no greater depth to their reviews. Midnight’s Edge claimed that Amazon chose to make a Wheel of Time series instead of Conan the Barbarian because it had a feminist direction. This ignores the fact that The Wheel of Time is one of the most popular fantasy series in literature. These are people who don’t do basic research.

The gender/woke analysis of the reactionaries has conditioned their audience to think the same way, and it has had a detrimental effect on them. The Daily Wire released the Gina Carano vehicle Terror on the Prairie, which led to their audience criticising the film for being a female-led Western where Carano was beating back outlaws. The Critical Drinker made his online career criticising the role of women in action movies, yet when he made a short film based on his thriller novels, his audience criticised Rogue Elements for having a badass female character fighting trained male soldiers. After seeing how difficult filmmaking can be, the Critical Drinker should have gained some perspective, but he still continues to project nothing but negativity.

The Reactionaries are stuck in their own ecosystem. They do podcasts together and speak to similar outlets that focus on culture war issues, like TalkTV, GB News, and Triggernometry. Jeremy Grigg of Geeks + Gamers has even revealed in frustration that they are trapped in a circle where they need outrage so they get engagement, and generate income. These need to be disincentivised from making money out of outrage, lies, and half-truths.

There has finally been some pushback against this wing of the internet. More YouTubers have been critical, with some of the big names being Pillar of Garbage, Edgier Than Thou, and Th3Birdman. Edgier Than Thou and Th3Birdman disassemble these people’s methods of argument and debunk their reviews, whilst Pillar of Garbage goes into deep depth about the connections between these people and who backs them.

More importantly, the viewers are calling out the Reactionaries for their bad takes. One of the Critical Drinker’s most infamous reviews was on Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse, where he claimed Peter Parker was the only white male character in the film, and he was emasculated because he wore a pink bathrobe and took care of his superpowered toddler. Many people called him out for his basic and wrongheaded opinion. A more recent review that audiences have called out The Critical Drinker for was his review on Thunderbolts*  where he mocked Florence Pugh and her appearance, made pointless jabs against feminism, and misrepresented various plot points.

I won’t lie, I have fallen for some of these channels. I thought Midnight’s Edge was insightful regarding behind-the-scenes issues on films like Fantastic Four (2015), Ghostbusters (2016), and The Snowman, and listened to reviews by Deepfocuslens, AKA Maggie Rejino. The longer I listened, the more I noticed comments they made and associated with more questionable figures. Vigilance is needed to ensure you don’t fall for these swindlers who are interested in enforcing their political beliefs instead of sharing a passion or knowledge.