Analysis of Henry Stewart´s Movie Review: Why 12 years a Slave is a Bad Movie

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Recommended: An essay about 12 years as a slave

12 Years a Slave, is a movie based on the story of Soloman Northup, a free African-American man who was sold into slavery. 12 Years a Slave shows the hardships that Northup had to face as well as Northup eventually being set free again. Henry Stewart writes an article titled “Why 12 Years a Slave is a Bad Movie”, in his article Stewart tries to tear down 12 Years a Slave but fails to because of his weak assumptions, lack of evidence to support his claim, and the overall feeling that Stewart did not fully grasp the basic concept of the movie that he is claiming is a bad movie.
Henry Stewart attacks 12 Years a Slave by first by saying that it had an unspoken motto that the main character in a different movie said a lot. Stewart also claims that the writer added things into the movie that were not in Soloman Northup’s autobiography and because of this the movie lost all credibility because it was no longer based on a true story. The last thing that Stewart attacked was the fact that this movie did not include every slave’s story. While trying to make his point Stewart failed to bring up any evidence to back up his bold statements. At one point in Stewart’s argument he brings up a great point about the addition of details that could have help his argument, but Stewart once again failed to give the reader any evidence of false information being added in.

The very first problem with 12 Years a Slave that Henry Stewart brought up was what Stewart says is in “an unspoken motto that felt a lot like something said over and over again in the movie Clerk’s. Stewart is making the assumption that just because there is one similarity between Clerks and 12 Years a Slave, the latter movie of the two is no longer a good movie because it is not ori...

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...de the stories of other people who went through something similar. This assumption is crazy as it is but then Stewart does not even give any examples of other slave stories that could have been used in 12 Years a Slave. Stewart essentially does the exact same thing that he is saying discredited 12 Years a Slave, and because he does this he is saying that he himself is discredited.
The major problem that Stewart had with his entire argument was the feeling that he did not understand what 12 Years a Slave was about. Once the reader reads Henry Stewart’s entire argument on 12 Years a Slave you are left with the assumption that 12 Years a Slave, was not a movie based on one free man being sold into slavery but instead that the movie was just about slavery in general and was supposed to be a documentary that helped people learn about the struggles of slavery as a whole.

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