The Bottom Feeders peer review of Timothy Sexton
I have a Yahoo email account. If you’re like me that means you’ve read more about the Kardashians, spicing up a floundering romance and which celebrities are fat now (Kirstie Alley, every time) than you ever thought you cared to. Yahoo is a terrible example of what human beings have done to the internet and I just can’t stop reading them. So when I saw a link with the words ‘Star Wars’ in the title I clicked on it as excitedly as I do dick-growing ads and was just as disappointed with the results, because what I read was an article by Timothy Sexton about the Star Wars prequels and how ‘superior’ they were to the originals.
I know...take as much time as you need.
Because I specialize in bad movies and review pop culture in general, this was THE article for me. I’m in the vast majority of people that think the prequels are in fact terrible, but I’m always willing to be proved wrong. It can be interesting to hear what other people have to say about something you like and it’s always healthy to listen to some opposing viewpoints so I figured I would be at least mildly entertained. I was not. Now let’s talk about why Tim is an idiot. First of all, this:
Nothing says "I'm a smug asshole" like dressing and looking like one.
Second of all, whenever you review something it’s important to put your own spin on it. There’s enough ‘prequels suck’ reviews out there and you want to try something different. Understandable. But the most obvious thing you can do is just take the popular opinion and push it to the other extreme so people see how smart and different you are, or at least how dumb they are. I end up doing this a lot. I’ve also been reviewing movies for about a year and still have a lot to learn. If you’ve been doing this for a while, you should be past this phase unless you’re a hack. Which you are, because hacks always write down the first thing they think of without reasoning it through.
And isn't that what got us here in the first place?
Being a contrarian only makes other people be contrarian back and it pushes everyone further away from the truth, which is almost always somewhere in the middle. It also manages to make you look smug and stupid at the same time and that’s a terrible combo. So if you’re going to review something bad and say it’s good, have an amazing argument because people are going to try and tear you apart. Here is Sexton’s:
- The originals are based on Cold War era opinions and view Americans as badass rebels.
- The prequels are a post 9/11 examination of American hypocrisy and moral corruption.
- The prequels are better.
I don’t really have an opinion about politics because politics aren’t movies and thus don’t matter. What I will say is that being a Republican or a Democrat is just another way of dividing everyone up into a right half and wrong half and saying you picked the better one. It’s just racism with more exciting colors, like red and blue. If you’re still determined to pick sides, keep it out of your articles. I’m here to read about Star Wars, not why Bush is Hitler. There’s a reason Girlscout cookies get bought and Jehovah’s Witnesses get ignored – cookies are delicious and preachy assholes are preachy and assholish. Here is the only sentence in the entire article that has anything at all to do with the actual quality of the movies:
“Just in case you didn’t notice in your rush to castigate Jar-Jar Binks and complain about the wooden dialogue of the prequel…”
In that one statement, he’s basically telling you that the prequels are worse as movies, before explaining that they’re better as a political statement and thus better as movies, which you’ll notice as the logic of a retard. But apparently you won’t because you’re too busy trying to enjoy stupid things like plot or characters or acting. And he’d still be ok if any of that were true. If you do any research at all on George Lucas – which you probably should since you’re writing about him – you’ll know that he doesn’t write in terms of themes or motifs, he writes scenes. He comes up with an idea for something he thinks will look awesome and tries to find ways to get the characters from one awesome scene to the next. When someone like Lawrence Kasdan helps Lucas do this, you get Indiana Jones. When someone like Lucas helps Lucas do this, you get this:
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?
The Trade Federation isn’t there because Bush Lied, People Died, the droids don’t represent brainwashed Americans and Jar Jar Binks isn’t a lampoon on the way white America views the black man. He thought ‘Trade Federation’ sounded cool, wanted a big fight with droids and decided a goofy sidekick who talked funny would be neat. It’s not that hard to figure out. The only way you can fuck it up is by inserting whatever dumb political jargon you think makes you right into a movie designed to sell these:
Someone vastly over-estimated our desire to make out with a frog.
This is exactly how you don’t write about pop culture. It’s hacky, it’s personally motivated and it doesn’t make fucking sense. The prequels are bad movies and the originals are amazing. There’s a huge emotional attachment to them and so people do look too harshly on I-III and I’ve fallen into that trap plenty. The solution still isn’t to take the opposite view just to show how clever you are. That’s how douches and assholes handle things and apparently acting like that gets you a sweet gig at Yahoo, so ignore everything I just said. – DT
Am I right or am I right? Did you find this article by googling yourself, Timothy Sexton? Email all opinions, in the form of a yes or no answer, to [email protected] and explain yourself before you cause pain to yourself. Or, follow me on Twitter @Dan_Tompkins. You can shout at me there and as a bonus, I will amuse you.