HBO in censorship row as YouTuber says ‘woke’ The Last of Us critique was shut down: ‘They tried to silence me’
YouTuber Critical Drinker has taken aim at HBO’s latest hit series The Last of Us after claiming that his critique of the series was “shut down” by the company.
The movie reviewer shed light on his verdict on the latest instalment of the television adaptation of the video game, and claimed the company “filed a copyright claim” against his review.
Speaking to GB News, Critical Drinker told reporter Steven Edginton what he thought of the second season: “I actually did like season one – I thought it was a pretty good approximation of the game, and I think it was a fairly mature bit of storytelling. So that was all great.
“But for people who’ve played the games, they, they would know where this is all heading. There’s some very controversial plot points in that basically involve killing off the main character from the first game, and sure enough, they went ahead with it. It was wildly unpopular when they did it in the video game five years ago, and it’s been just as unpopular now.”
He added: “So I think that decision combined with arguably some pretty bad casting decisions, and in some cases actually, implementing the storylines even worse than they did in the games, it’s all combined together to make a horrendously unpopular second season of this show. It’s a real shame to see where it’s gone.”
After publishing his review on YouTube, the YouTuber revealed that HBO “filed a complaint” against his content.
Critical Drinker explained: “They gave it a copyright claim – not a copyright strike against my channel, which has been reported by some people – it wasn’t as severe as that, but they did block it worldwide for pretty shady reasons.
“It’s really just a case of abusing the copyright system, because I am a pretty high profile channel, and I’ve been quite critical of the show for, I think, very valid reasons. They tried to silence me by copyright claiming the entire video and blocking it worldwide, which caused quite a stir, as it turned out, because it happened while I was asleep.”
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Expressing his thanks to his viewers and other channels for supporting him and helping get the video restored, he added: “I was able to make a quite a noise about it on social media, and a lot of other channels really helped me out on this one, and I’m very appreciative of that, by making videos of their own – highlighting the hypocrisy of a company like that that tries to silence legitimate criticism of their products.
“And so those two things combined was enough to convince them that, yes, we can’t get away with this and we should probably restore the video.”
Highlighting the “usual modern tropes” placed within the show, Critical Drinker explained how the two female lead characters, who are romantically involved, are featured around pride symbolism within the show.
He told GB News: “You’ve got the usual tropes of 100lb teenage girls can somehow beat up 250lb stunt men with ease because, yeah, that’s definitely believable. The main characters really become quite unlikable and very abrasive, very obnoxious, and so that certainly doesn’t help.
“There’s even just silly things like these two characters are walking through the ruins of a city in the latest episode that I saw, and there’s still somehow magically pride flags and pride murals everywhere. You’d think after 20 years of the apocalypse, that stuff would all have disappeared.
“But no, apparently it hasn’t, because they just really wanted to show that on screen. So it’s just a culmination of lots of small things like that that just gradually chips away at people’s patience with this show.”
He concluded: “And I think a lot of people have got to the point of thinking, no, this just sucks, it completely sucks, and I’m not going to waste any more time with it.
“I think people who played the games obviously knew where this was heading. People who just came into it and were enjoying the TV show and enjoyed season one didn’t know where it was heading necessarily, and so they’re getting confronted with all of this stuff and they don’t like it. And by all accounts, their viewing figures are down quite significantly.”