Don’t Watch That Hot Actor’s Old Work: A Cautionary Tale
The saying goes, you shouldn’t meet your idols, but I say don’t watch the filmography of your celebrity crush. It’s a tale as old as time. You see an attractive actor in an amazing show or movie, and you want to see more. It's quite a logical process. If they are great now, they must have had impressive work in the past. Or maybe you’ve only seen their face and their personality in an interview or random clips on the internet, and you have made the executive decision to jump into their filmography.
As you browse through their past work, you may be drawn to a particular synopsis or movie poster. But unfortunately, love is blinding. Despite any red flags, a strange plot, or bad reviews, you sit down and watch. And tragically, more often than not, it’s terrible.
In honor of the release of Dune: Part Two, I predict another acknowledgment of Timothee Chalamet’s attractiveness is imminent. In turn, people may make the same mistakes as I did in the past. When I saw him in Little Women, I made the grave mistake and watched his 2017 film Hot Summer Nights. The film features Chalamet getting involved in dealing drugs and falling in love with his business partner’s sister. To say the least, the 44% Rotten Tomato Score is too generous.
Image Courtesy: Hot Summer Nights, A24
After witnessing the infamous lollipop scene in the movie, my attraction toward him quickly dwindled afterward. By watching a celebrity’s old work, you tend to learn the lesson that celebrities are human, too. They have tragic digital footprints and give us the ick just like everyone else. Even stardom cannot erase Chalamet’s old high school performances and social media accounts.
Recently, I repeated this mistake with Tom Welling, a lesser-known but very attractive actor. His popular show, Smallville, which followed Clark Kent, or Superman, in Smallville, Kansas, yielded interesting emotions, to say the least.
The show starts off with the small town experiencing a meteor shower that causes massive destruction. A disclaimer: the CGI is terrible, not only in this scene but in every scene in the show where it’s used. Granted, it did start airing in 2001.
Martha and Jonathan Kent are driving through a field and ultimately get hit by one of the meteors. After their car flipped, they saw a small child, Clark, emerge from the destruction. Martha’s first instinct? Take him without considering he came from an alien egg-shaped pod. Earlier, the couple wished for a child, but this desperation didn’t really translate when the very meteors the child came from killed their town’s citizens.
Image Courtesy: Smallville / The WB Television Network
The show often does this with the characters. By providing a seemingly small piece of information about a character, the show allows itself to make a massive leap in a character's development without build-up.
At the same time Clark is discovered, Lex Luthor, the son of a billionaire is caught in a cornfield when the shower occurred. When his father searches for him, all of the corn has been wiped out, and the audience thinks Lex is dead. But something much worse has happened: he’s bald. It sounds ridiculous, but he fixates on his baldness throughout the early season. Understandably, he is angry with the meteors, or Clark, for being the reason for his brush with death, but he seems to resent his lack of hair even more.
In general there are many moments where the characters seem one-dimensional. It may be a bad script, bad acting, or even worse, both. Despite all of this strangeness, I still decided to keep watching. Why? Because Tom Welling is nice to look at. The show even played on my weakness by having him tied up on a stake shirtless in the first episode.
The episode that stood out to me was “Craving”. Each episode follows a villain that gains power from the meteor rocks, or kryptonite, that has infiltrated Smallville whether through its water or soil. Amy Adams plays Jodi, who is hellbent on losing weight. By consuming kryptonite without her knowledge through her green drinks, she loses weight rapidly. It leads her to become this Jennifer’s Body type of femme fatale. In order to satisfy her hunger, she essentially sucks the body fat out of her victims. How they convinced her to take this role I’m not sure.
Image Courtesy: Smallville / The WB Television Network / Screen Rant
With all this insanity, Clark and his friends are not as phased as I would like. Even with the knowledge of the meteor rocks, they accept the presence of dead bodies and supervillains without a blink of an eye. They give lackluster reactions to discovering the villains’ shapeshifting, bug characteristics, and fire-bending abilities.
While I enjoy watching the show despite its flaws, I wince at the fact that I’m still stuck with ten seasons of it. So, am I really benefiting from my enjoyment?
The moral of the story is to think twice before watching something new just because it has your favorite actor in it. You may be getting yourself into a predicament you were not expecting. At best you have found yourself a new guilty pleasure to indulge yourself with. At worst, you look at your beloved actor in a new light, and not a positive one. When you go down this rabbit hole, choose at your own risk. If you want to preserve your love, just know ignorance is bliss.
Strike Out,
Kim Nguyen
Boca Raton
Kim Nguyen is a Content Writer for Strike Magazine Boca. When not overthinking, this fangirl is either consuming romance media, Vietnamese coffee, or Beyoncé's discography. You can reach her by email at kimvunguyen14@gmail.com or on Instagram @kimnguyen1_.
