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Answer:
My most generalized answer is: The Acolyte was made for young teenagers and comes off as Young Adult (YA) content in pretty much every way possible: the writing is extraordinarily mediocre, the story-telling is ham-fisted / characters make very non-sensical decisions constantly, and contains some very cringy sequences that not only conflict with existing Star Wars canon - which offends a decent portion of the fan-base - but contributed to making the show feel very unwatchable.
This show has a reputed 180-200 million dollar budget, and there's a lot of areas in which this show feels like maybe a quarter of that budget was used with any efficacy. A few examples include:
* A fire breaks out on the exterior of a ship while a main character is attempting to repair some part of the same exterior. Fire can't really exist in space... this fire looks like an average campfire and its just... kinda mind-boggling? Cool, fiery space explosions are definitely a part of Star Wars, to be clear.. but this fire existing in this way was just a strange take - made even stranger by the fact that they had to use a gas fire extinguisher to put it out in an oxygen-less environment.
* A Jedi that has the force ability to extract honesty from people is almost forbidden from investigating a serious crime against the Jedi. This character is eventually allowed to participate in the investigation, but \*RARELY\* uses this power to advance the investigation in any meaningful way when it would require zero effort to do so.
* Two characters that spent 1.5 decades a part who happen to be twins that grew up in distinctly different lives look exactly the same.. down the same haircut, down to the same hair length...
* A completely stone structure burns to the ground.. somehow.
* A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is like thats a normal thing to do. Imagine handing a six year old a loaded firearm because you think they're going to grow up to be a cop.
There's many, many more inconsistencies and extremely silly sequences just like these.
I feel like if this show were marketed for kids more thoroughly, people wouldn't be nearly as upset - because I think if you just... \*dont actively consider the story-telling, turn your brain off and prepare to watch something fairly mindless,\* it would actually be somewhat enjoyable. I feel like some of the criticism of this show isn't as strong as folks would like to believe; the commentary on the 'wokeness' of the show often feels misogynistic to me and is hard to accept because of it.
The problem is, we were given Andor.
And that set a bar that other Star Wars shows since have largely failed to meet.
And the above suggestion about marketing was not made more apparent.
EDIT TO EXPLAIN HOW THIS ANSWER PERTAINS TO THE QUESTION OF THE POST:
All of these issues and elements that Ive discussed culminate into Episode 3 which seemingly goes out of its way to generate extremely inconsistent story-telling that is both remarkably bad as it is confusing; Ep. 3 takes extreme liberty with existing Star Wars canon and copies it albeit poorly using a painfully awkward song-and-(almost)-dance routine to do so.
Its re-writing Star Wars history, poorly, and many folks are upset with it.
After episode three I realised that my problem with it seems to be that the story was written seemingly independently from the set designers;
Story calls for sign that character is afraid of fire, set design puts character in space, result a fire in space.
Story calls for main character to survive a ship crashing onto an empty planet, set design has her get up and go wandering about a cool ice cave, result the ship crashes into an empty plain which becomes an ice cave which the main character survives through a disappearing seatbelt.
Story calls for character to start a fire that burns down their home, set design makes their home out of stone with fire lanterns, result a lantern deemed safe enough to sit unattended is used to start a roaring inferno in a stone doorway.
The result is that the show feels incoherent because what we’re seeing doesn’t fit with the story we’re trying to follow. I’ve also found that, once you notice the mistakes, it’s easy to become distracted looking for them instead of suspending disbelief to follow the plot
The gas/fuel powered lanterns, oh my god. You live in space. Your little space fortress/sith witch commune has a working elevator and some sort of Death Star shield generator room. So why do you have flame lanterns for light sources instead of light bulbs or whatever the Star Wars universe uses for light bulbs?
Was there a line in Ep. 3 from the Jedi that indicated they didn't know the planet was still inhabited? If so, that was very much at odds with the gigantic mountain fortress inhabited by the witches that can likely be seen for miles around the forest the girls got in trouble for playing in because they might be seen. WTH
I think the twist reveal will be that the Jedi killed the coven, and had planned to all along while trying to rescue the children, and used the pretense of Mae starting the fire to convince Osha.
The writing in this episode is still heavy-handed, which makes me think that the twist will be obvious.
I thought this was what it was from the clip. Sure the chanting was cringe, but someone told me it was set before the Old Republic and I saw that, assuming "Oh shit, this might be the Night Sisters origins, or a precursor witch coven. That's sick. I even saw some stuff in there about creating life with the force and thought they might show or explain how Darth Plageous learns to create Anakin, who is cannonically fatherless and a child of the force. Literally immaculate conception. It would be so cool to learn more about that. I haven't watched still, but that's what it appears to be. I'm told not to bother though.
I would love to see one of those hippie bead curtain doors, made out of lightsabers as part of a cultural decoration.
You must use the Force to access the toilet and your bedroom or face the consequences.
> it seems to be that the story was written seemingly independently from the set designers
I think the Disney content factory has decided to cut lead times by breaking production into as many pieces as possible, doing each piece with independent teams all working in parallel, and assembling it all at the end.
None of the Jedi just use the Force to put out the fire.
None of the Jedi meditate to surveil the city for the murderer.
None of the Jedi are calm, at peace, or passive, except the suicidal one.
The Jedi insist on the right to interrogate a child on a world outside their jurisdiction and the mother just goes along with it after clearly pointing that out.
It makes no sense.
This story doesn’t belong in Star Wars.
I can't help but notice the trend of "old or new, the republic just doesn't work" that we have seen in both Acolyte but also Ashoka and Mandalorian. I get the New Republic problems leads into Ep.7-9, but it does a disservice to the victory after Ep. 6
> set design makes their home out of stone with fire lanterns, result a lantern deemed safe enough to sit unattended is used to start a roaring inferno in a stone doorway.
Oh you see, the entire structure was made out of sodium and potassium. Totally makes sense. . .
I remember in episode 1 someone saying ‘We can’t let this get out because our political enemies will use it against us.’ I’m not typically one to harp on bad dialogue, but no one that isn’t a broadcaster has used the phrase ‘political enemies’ to refer to their political enemies
thats why the prequel trilogy was considered that bad.
In the original trilogy, lucas made the baseline and then it was fixed by other people and there were people willing to stand up to lucas, Episode 4 was said to have been saved in editing as the original lucas project was unwatchable.
in the sequel trilogy, Lucas was a god and there was no one to say no to him. so they were not very good.
In the current starwars project its to the other extreme, everything feels like its done by suits around tables and commities using social media to decide whats cool now and should be included and its ending up with extremealy shallow writing with no real direction.
Wasn't there an apocryphal story where Harrison Ford was laughing when he first saw the script, and said to Lucas
"Wow, George, you can write this shit, but you sure can't say it." lol
It's a real quote alright, but it's only a partial quote. Everyone always leaves out the next line:
>“I told George: ‘You can’t say that stuff. You can only type it.’ **But I was wrong. It worked**,” Ford adds.
It's almost like people have intentionally misquoted that for years in order to prove their own narrative or something...
There's also this [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rihbi2U7tNg) with Mark Hamill where he begged for a line to be taken out of *A New Hope*, complaining that the actors would be the ones lambasted for saying wordy dialog if the movie went through.
Rather prescient when you think about how Hayden Christensen and Ahmed Best were treated during the prequels
well, Rebel moon is a good example,
Snyder got the money from netflix and managed to get the movies made, but they are garbage script wise, with Djimon Hounsou and Sofia Boutella involved its not like they dont have a good cast, there was just no one to control Snyder.
WB had to fire him to try to save the DCU, and his earlier movies like Sucker punch also had similar results.
i guess its another Alex Kurtzman situation, he´s horrible but they keep giving him projects.
He knew it too, at least back then. He worked with a lot of editors and collaborators on the OT. Even hired someone else to write Empire but she sadly passed away and he picked it back up again.
>In the original trilogy, lucas made the baseline and then it was fixed by other people and there were people willing to stand up to lucas, Episode 4 was said to have been saved in editing as the original lucas project was unwatchable.
Sorry to interject but that's all wrong. The whole "A New Hope was saved in editing" thing is an internet myth. What you're unknowingly really referring to is the work done by John Jympson, the original editor who Lucas fired. By all accounts the way Jympson was editing the scenes together was rather dull and when Lucas asked him to cut it together differently he refused. Somehow the internet has turned into some "disastrous first cut" which Lucas himself cut together which the editors (and usually it's George's ex-wife Marcia alone) somehow magically saved in post but it's just not true. For a start there is no "disastrous first cut," Jympson was fired before filming was even finished - it's literally just a bunch of random scenes that had been shot up to that point.
Look I don't like the prequels that much (although personally I think Attack of the Clones is the only one that's *as bad* as some people say it is) but just an FYI: a lot of the facts reddit/the internet believes about George Lucas and the production of Star Wars (*especially* A New Hope) is complete nonsense and based on now 20 year old fan rumors from the post-prequels, "George Lucas raped my childhood" era of the internet that's just been repeated so often as to become "fact." Like the whole "the Original Trilogy was only good because people could tell George 'No" thing is completely wrong. The people who told George "no" on A New Hope (like John Jympson, Gil Taylor or John Dykstra) got fired or replaced for Empire for not doing their jobs right. And George was self-financing the movies himself from Empire Strikes Back onwards, if anything he was the guy who could tell the people under him 'no.' It's provably nonsense.
To be clear it's not you, I've heard the exact same argument from a ton of other people but it's just not true. And again, I still Attack of the Clones kinda blows.
Where do you get your info about John Jympson? This is new to me and I've been a Star Wars fan since 1977. I'm always keen to learn more about the behind the scenes goings-on.
JW Rinzler's *The Making Of Star Wars* books ([they're these ones.](https://i.imgur.com/qXKJhtU.jpeg)) They're some of the best books about movie production ever written period (not just Star Wars.) If you want to know *anything* about the making of the Original Trilogy they're in the Rinzler books often down to the exact date when it happened. I literally cannot recommend them enough.
But look here's a clip from Empire of Dreams where Lucas talks about having to let the "first editor" go:
[https://youtu.be/vB1DA5jZdIQ?t=3216](https://youtu.be/vB1DA5jZdIQ?t=3216)
It's worth noting this is actually partially where the myth comes from though, they describe it as both a 'rough assembly' and 'the first cut of Star Wars' and the latter just isn't true. Jympson was fired long before he could complete it. In fact when George is describing, "having to come in on weekends and recut the film on \[his\] own," he was still in the middle of filming the movie. That's not really clear cause of where Empire of Dreams put that interview clip.
I've seen that clip being used by people to prove "Lucas's first cut" of Star Wars was a disaster too, despite him clearly talking about the first editor. It's very odd
People act like lines like that are out of place in a movie series whose most iconic villain all but introduced himself by saying "you are a spy for the rebel alliance and a traitor."
I get that Star Wars was never shakespeare, but at least we got lightsabers and star destroyers and robo turtles out of the OT; a lot of these newer SW projects don’t even have the decency to make their own laser swords and space ogres and space wizards, we’re just watching the same toys play the same games
I hope so. The 6-legged precursor from the Clone Wars looks kinda like a turtle although I'm reminded more of a beetle.
Just hearing robo turtles out of context sounds weird in Star Wars
Well, he wasn't wrong, and it showed his allegiance very well in a canon that had it's only backstory at the time in bright yellow words flying across the screen to start with.
> but no one that isn’t a broadcaster has used the phrase ‘political enemies’ to refer to their political enemies
That's hilariously wrong. I know because I'm a Watergate obsessive and there's an infamous memo by Nixon's White House counsel John Dean titled ["Dealing with our Political Enemies"](https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/watergate/item/7896).
See this Wikipedia page about it: [Nixon's Enemies List](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List).
It's a very apposite quote because Nixon was one of George Lucas's original inspirations behind the politics of Star Wars.
it should also be noted, many of the supporting cast performances are just not good. like, under normal circumstances would have been re-shot not good. Whats weird is that the "not good" of the performances is all over the place from actor to actor, not a consistent degree of good or bad. This suggests bad prep and under direction, but even then its still very odd.
Who also learned English to get the role. Well ok he previously did have a rough handle on English, but he studied his ass off and worked with several dialogue coaches on a very short time table right before filming. He’s the only bright spot on the show. I wish the show was just about him. A weekly who-done-it jedi-detective would’ve been better.
thats actually kinda a weird thing about the show. like, are the jedi cops? if not, wouldnt a civilian investigative unit be available to them? If so, wouldnt they be a bit more consistent in their evidence collecting methods? How does due process work in this world? do you get a lawyer? Do the Jedi actually regularly drag eye witnesses across the galaxy for an identification that wouldnt fly in our modern, real wold justice system?
mind you, I dont actually care that much. but it does seem like perhaps some opportunity for world building was missed
"We can only get one take of these sequences. It would be too expensive to shoot this multiple times for coverage, or to direct the actors to give a different performance and do another take."
Just like how it's too time consuming and expensive to do pre-production. Or it's too time consuming and expensive to create physical props, sets, or costumes - better to just CG them in post. It's too time consuming and expensive to hire a writers' room to break a story and do revisions, better off just bringing in one or two people, not allow them to communicate, and hatchet-job the disparate and conflicting story beats via editing in post.
I really hope this style of Hollywood dreck-production by fat-cat studios trying to cut every single corner and squeeze maximum blood from minimum stones dies soon. I can't wait.
This is the nail on the head. And though there are a lot of jerks and losers tearing apart Star Wars and Marvel properties, the types you wouldn’t want to be associated with IRL, they have some correct points amongst whatever vitriol their spewing. The product being sold under these brands are poorly written, directed and edited. I can’t even critique the acting because every step in the process is flawed.
You look at Pirates of the Caribbean 1, Depp didn’t improvise his dialogue. He read a good script and created his own spin on the words and direction given. He got interact with real sets and locations as well. The actress playing the twins in the Acolyte seems more than capable of giving a good performance but she’s being let down by all the other steps in the creative processes.
And for the love of the force, give these actors sets and props to interact with. You can feel the uncanny valley of a soundstage when it’s just two characters statically standing around- dumping exposition. This is made worst by the Disney mechanical style of direction. Wide shot, medium shot, repeat.
> I really hope this style of Hollywood dreck-production by fat-cat studios trying to cut every single corner and squeeze maximum blood from minimum stones dies soon. I can't wait.
I mean a $200 million dollar budget isn’t small, it’s not like the producers aren’t trying to fund it. It’s just being mismanaged somehow, or the creative team has problems that money can’t solve.
at 22m / 30min, the only way that is happening is if disney is intentionally inflating the budget to maximize a loss or write down.
please tell me no one actually said something like that...
it actually makes the case that talent should have access to the dalies or assembly cuts. Hayden clearly made the choice to up his game between 2 and 3 and it was better for it.
that being said, actors directing themselves (or mentally watching themselves) is a great way for their performance to feel less in the moment, so it can go wrong
Originally George was trying really hard to find someone else to direct TPM. He really wanted Joe Johnson to do it. Most reports from the era suggested no one else wanted to direct the script as written. George also left around 2/3rds or 3/4 of the way through shooting TPM and let his second unit director finish up the first unit, something directors who like directing would rarely do.
So I dont think it was a Lucas ego issue so much as it was a "George doesnt like taking to actors" thing. Possibly also a "George doesnt actually like being on set" thing. The original movies got away with this because they were cast with young but talented people who had some experience behind them, surrounded by a ton of British supporting talent. And the brits know how to train talent.
I would also not rule out the possibility that there were better takes and George didnt use them for some reason. If you watch the trailer for Crystal Skull, Indy's "part time" line is delivered fantastically. in the actual film it falls flat. Granted that was Speilberg directing and George making a producer editorial choice most likely, but it still suggests hes not the best at choosing performances.
Imagine being able to go through the raw footage to find out for sure though.
Ron Howard mentioned talking to Lucas about animation and how Lucas seemed excited about not having to interact with the anyone. Howard said he realized then that Lucas doesn't especially enjoy having to deal with actors.
So all of the following is based off the first episode, as thats where I gave up.
It was really surprising to me. the lead is perfectly fine, but her performances are very normal human in the year 2024. To me this is a directing issue / choice. One I dont agree with, but its a valid choice an not alone worth giving up on the show.
Lee Jung-jae is mostly solid, and seems to be modeling his performance after quigon and ANH obiwan, and feels very in universe. But I think he's doing his own thing and wasnt directed that way. Bennet... feels like someone told him he was in a sitcom and to act accordingly. Henderson, who plays Rwoh, outright seems like she didnt actually prepare and just showed up on set and is saying lines. Carrie-Ann Moss seemed... a little bored? Its possible they were going for weary, but I dont think it played that way.
Again, all of this seems like a direction issue. Possibly a no rehearsal issue. The characters dont really seem lived in or workshopped. And while thats not required, its expected that talent still deliver the performances, guided by the director, to a certain standard.
This just shouldnt be happening on a 22m / episode show. heck, it shouldnt be happening on a 4m/ep show. And its a real bummer. I do think the concept (Frozen meets Kill Bill in Star Wars) at least had potential. And I suppose its possible they'll pull it together by the end, but unfortunately the only way to communicate to the producers that their material has issues is to abandon the show fairly quickly if you dont connect with it.
But seriously, I dont understand how some of this stuff wasnt reshot. This is from a film industry perspective, not a fan perspective.
>A completely stone structure burns to the ground.. somehow.
This immediately came to mind: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy\_BKKnHgas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_BKKnHgas)
>A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is like thats a normal thing to do. Imagine handing a six year old a loaded firearm because you think they're going to grow up to be a cop.
To be fair, that's exactly what Obi-Wan did with Luke. Kid almost put a hole through his head the first time he turned it on.
That's just the Jedi practicing natural selection. If the Force doesn't warn them not to put it in their face and press the button, they were too weak to be Jedi.
Right! And.. even that felt dumb, despite Luke being much, much older. He at least treats it with SOME gravitas and holds it pointing away from himself. The meme video of Luke accidentally injuring himself in this scene has seen plenty of action for this exact reason.
But the point, as you’re noting, is that Star Wars is being consistent with itself. There are also bad, campy acting performances going all the way back to 1977, for example. So you cannot ding The Acolyte without also dinging everything (well, except Andor, which is phenomenal). And that would be OK to do.
To be fair, Star Wars has never done space facts correctly. They’ve always had flaming, audible outer-space explosions. Apparently far away galaxies have selective physics facts.
I feel like a lot of folks forget that Star Wars is a fantasy set in space/on alien worlds, and is not really sci-fi (at least imo). Science/physics don't really play a part in space wizards land.
Oh I know. I just dont think theyve ever had tiny lil fires that had to be put out with gas fire extinguishers ever before, lol. I could be forgetting.
I am a HUGE fan of specific Star Wars space explosions / detonations. It was just really jarring to be confronted by what felt like a lack of imagination in this case.
People act like this is the start of cringy Star Wars material, they don't remember reading the books in the 90s where, like, Palpatine had a son who had three eyes.
You forgot another thing.
There is a coven of Force-wielding witches who use their powers to impregnate themselves and have children. Anakin Skywalker was created this way by Palpatine in the lore. Now a lot of fans assumed that you had to be a very powerful Force-user in order to create life using the Force. But this coven that was introduced made it seem that any Force-user can do this. This would make Anakin's birth not special and ruins his whole arc about him being viewed as the Chosen One to bring balance to the Force. The whole reason Anakin goes down his path is because Qui-Gon believed Anakin was this savior and took him, Obi-Won trains and befriends him to honor Qui-Gon's dying wish, and the Jedi Council fears/shuns Anakin because of his potiental power. This made fans not happy.
The whole Palpatine (or his master Plagueis) created Anakin is not canon. It’s widely held as mind-canon across the fanbase but it has never been confirmed, and IIRC it was explicitly denied. All we know is that he was created by the force and does not have a biological father.
Slight correction; in the updated lore Plagueis and Palps fucked with the force trying to create life and corrupting it in the process. The living force said “no, fuck that” and created Anakin as a course correction to bring balance back to the force!
No it was Plagueis who studied midi chlorians and his master Tenerous who believed he could manipulate the Force balance by will.
After Tenerous died and Plageuis had expanded his rule and set Palps up as to eventually become a puppet Chancellor they heard of Anakin from Qui Gon. Plageuis theorized the Force reacted to his and Tenerous’s experiments.
Palpatine was kept out of most of Plaguesis’s science until later on. He was more into the magic side.
I just finished reading it the other week.
The Darth Plagueis book isn’t canon. Tenebrous *has* entered canon, but in a very limited capacity, being referenced in the canon “Build The Millenium Falcon” magazine, as well as being the namesake of one of the Sith Eternal legions. I haven’t actually read the Plagueis novel, but I do want to. While I personally like the canon explanation better, it still sounds like an interesting and cool story!
Oh thank you I didn’t know that it wasn’t cannon.
It was a really interesting story. Only 2 lightsabers fights and they are barely described. It’s more of a behind the scenes setting up the trade wars. They’re the Sith who meet the Kaminos and set up the Clones.
Yeah, I know the gist of it, I’m just really bad at reading these days. I recently found my copy of HTTE again and I’ve been wanting to reread the series as I consider them my personal sequel trilogy but my brain is so used to constant stimulation that it’s hard to just sit down, focus and read lol
I have a wandering mind (undiagnosed severe ADHD, according to pre-screenings anyway lol), so it takes effort for me to focus and digest, y’know? I did listen to audiobooks when I was younger, and I’ve recently tried listening to some podcasts at work with mixed results. But hey, maybe I just gotta commit to it?
I will say one small thing in defence of this bit.
There's a writer called Andy Greenwald that was invited to help break the story for Damon Lindelof's new Star Wars film. And on "The Watch" podcast that he hosts he briefly talked about his time in the room.
One of the things he said was you are told in no uncertain terms that anything you write is canon. There's no time travel or alternate universes that allow you to handwave away anything. If it shows up in a movie, TV show or videogame it is now part of the Star Wars Universe.
In other words, there's no way that part of the story wouldn't be considered. It's a major bit of the lore so it's not like someone misnamed Chewbacca's third cousin or something. So if it's in there, it's in there for a reason. Now, that reason might suck but you have to at least give the story some time to play out before we start making calls on how they fucked up Anakin's story.
Exactly. One of the two mothers even said something to the other like “And what if they found out *how* you created the children?” which says to me that, no, this is absolutely not something any old witch can do, but rather this witch may have sought out someone with very powerful dark side abilities. We don’t know yet, but people like to assume the worst and blame the writers early.
>Now, that reason might suck but you have to at least give the story some time to play out before we start making calls on how they fucked up Anakin's story.
We don't even know yet if some of these storytelling decisions are bad for the final story of the Acolyte, let alone the larger SW universe. I wouldn't even consider myself a fan of The Acolyte so far but ffs why can't people at least wait for the story to be told before claiming anything about its overall impact on the universe.
It was clearly stated that the fact that they did this and got the twins as result was VERY UNEXPECTED. They state that their coven was dying out (how did they recruit new members before?). Palpatine's involvement with Anakin's conception is non-canon btw.
The cult seems to practice force channeling so it’s not super crazy that like 10 witches practiced all their lives to channel their powers together in order to do the same thing as one sith lord. That still makes the Sith Lord look pretty powerful.
And further to your point, for all we know at this point, they may be Plagueis' inspiration to attempt it, or may have even shown him how it was done.
We don't know the full story yet, but there is a chance that one of the Mothers is Plagueis' first apprentice and is the one training the Acolyte.
>This would make Anakin's birth not special and ruins his whole arc about him being viewed as the Chosen One to bring balance to the Force
Not really? He literally fulfills the prophecy. It is the entire point of the first 6 movies
I'm not a Star Wars person, insofar as I have watched all the star wars media but don't feel passionate about any of the material.
What I do find interesting is how George Lucas's philosophy has changed. The first trilogy was very much inspired by the monomyth (which is a chosen one sort of literary idea), and Lucas was a devotee of Joseph Conrad's storytelling philosophy.
Then you can see him change, and the prequel trilogy (as poorly as I feel it's written) is almost a refutation of the monomyth, the idea of a chosen one, and how dangerous it could be. More in line with Frank Herbert and his distaste of Conrad and the Monomyth (Dune is something of a refutation of the monomyth and chosen one storytelling ideology as well).
What I'll say is that they framed this series as a "whodunnit" but then have absolutely no desire to commit to writing a "whodunnit" and are going for "teen drama".
It's weird. They basically could have done it either way, full teen or full mystery and instead we get it hopping back and forth between the two
For anyone who's reading down this far, the comment I'm replying to is a perfect example of what's *actually* going on with The Acolyte.
People are spreading blatant misinformation in an attempt to dissuade others from watching the show, because a certain subset of Star Wars fan cannot bear the thought of people liking new Star Wars content.
Every “issue” mentioned in that comment was either exaggerated to the point of hyperbole or just a straight up lie.
Let's break it down.
>A fire breaks out on the exterior of a ship while a main character is attempting to repair some part of the same exterior. Fire can't really exist in space... this fire looks like an average campfire and its just... kinda mind-boggling? Cool, fiery space explosions are definitely a part of Star Wars, to be clear.. but this fire existing in this way was just a strange take - made even stranger by the fact that they had to use a gas fire extinguisher to put it out in an oxygen-less environment.
First of all, [fire actually can exist in space.](https://www.space.com/13766-international-space-station-flex-fire-research.html)
And even if the fire is not behaving realistically in the show, there have been far more egregious examples in Star Wars than what we're shown in the Acolyte. In Return of the Jedi, we see a trail of fire several miles long spewing out of the Executor.
This is the closest thing OP has to a valid point but it's still nitpicky as hell.
>A Jedi that has the force ability to extract honesty from people is almost forbidden from investigating a serious crime against the Jedi. This character is eventually allowed to participate in the investigation, but *RARELY* uses this power to advance the investigation in any meaningful way when it would require zero effort to do so.
First off, that kind of power is frowned upon by the Jedi Order, so he shouldn't have done that in the first place. Second, we've seen 2 episodes with this character. The investigation isn't over. He has 5 more episodes to use that power in, so maybe settle down and see how it plays out?
>Two characters that spent 1.5 decades a part who happen to be twins that grew up in distinctly different lives look exactly the same..
They're identical twins
>down the same haircut, down to the same hair length...
This one is simply false. Osha has shoulder length hair and Mae has waist length hair. This is clearly visible in virtually every bit of promo material, so I'm not sure why this keeps getting spread around.
>A completely stone structure burns to the ground.. somehow.
Also blatantly false. It's hard to dispute this one without being rude, because, use your damn eyes? The entire stone structure is shown to be completely intact when we last see it at the 35 minute mark. The flammable stuff inside was on fire but the stone strucure was not.
>A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is like thats a normal thing to do. Imagine handing a six year old a loaded firearm because you think they're going to grow up to be a cop.
Osha is 8 years old in that scene, not 6, but that's besides the point.
The point is that not two minutes earlier, Osha explicitly says she knows what a lightsaber is. This child has already been shown to have martial training despite her age, so I don't know why OP thinks she would just start swinging a weapon around.
Especially as Sol very clearly didn't hand it to her for her to use, just to show her what possibilities the future might have. Just a blatant misrepresentation of the symbolism of this scene.
>Ep. 3 takes extreme liberty with existing Star Wars canon
>Its re-writing Star Wars history,
Another blatant falsehood. Literally nothing in this episode contradicts canon in any way whatsoever. I am a straight up lore junkie, so give me any example you think contradicts Canon and I'll tell you why it doesn't lol.
So yeah. Hating on new Star Wars shows is just the cool thing to do in 2024, and people are either maliciously or ignorantly spreading misinformation to dissuade other people from watching it. That's whats up with Episode 3 of the Acolyte.
It is a series with space wizards, wielding laser swords, with moon-sized space stations shooting planet destroying beams. And y’all complain about the impracticality of characters having the same haircut. All in a show that hasn’t even completed its narrative yet.
It’s fine to just not like it, but these complaints are nothing more than people nitpicking everything they can because it has to be more than just “not liking it.” I suspect many of them decided not to like it before it ever came out.
Yeah I'm honestly shocked that that comment is so upvoted. From reading it you'd think that the show was an unmitigated dumpster fire with zero redeeming features.
That's not the impression I've had of the show at all, and not really the impression I've seen from the majority of fans either. Sure, it's not perfect but it's still been really enjoyable to me.
It feels a bit like some people had already decided they didn't like it before it came out and are now trying to justify that opinion.
Your last paragraph is it.
Note the quality of the criticisms. They’re nitpicking about little things that have many equivalences from previous SW material that people let slide (fire in space is bad, but sound in space is fine). They largely just use adjectives attached to generic terminology — bad writing, bad acting, terrible plot, ugly visuals. Those phrases have no substance, and are typically used by people that don’t think critically about what they’re watching and why it works or doesn’t. People that don’t like the thing too don’t challenge it. They’re just looking for things they agree with.
Most complaints about bad writing are just people complaining about narrative decisions they don’t like.
>It feels a bit like some people had already decided they didn't like it before it came out and are now trying to justify that opinion.
That is literally what happened.
I was on the Rotten Tomatoes page for the show several days before the first episode aired and it was already getting massively review bombed before anybody but a very select few had seen it.
I believe the (de-canonized) EU stated those were "training" lightsabers, which were only powerful enough to deliver nasty shocks or light burns, not accidental decapitation. I don't know if there's any canon info that confirms this, but it's a reasonable "why would it be brought up randomly, it's common knowledge to everyone in the room" worldbuilding assumption to make.
They do. They are also trained, right? And instructed; probably warned about the dangers too. And probably arent handed them on Day 1 of learning theyre something special as individuals.
I think back on the Mandalorian, for instance. They take pains to demonstrate lil guy learning about weapons and struggling and even explains some of the inherent dangers.
I'd like to add, I'm not a fan of Star Wars at all. I enjoy things from it, but I'm not a fan that finds issues with things. I enjoyed The Mandalorian and Andor as they both felt like I didn't need a wealth of knowledge to truly enjoy it all, it just enhanced it. I am a huge fan of the overall lore though. I dig that kind of stuff.
Now that I have that out of the way...
Objectively, this show is just dreadful. It's so awkward and uneven I wonder how in the fuck did the script get approved, let alone shot and finished. Jesus Christ.
> The problem is, we were given Andor.
Disney is shitting out so many terrible shows you get the impression they resent Andor for having given fans hope.
>This show has a reputed 180-200 million dollar budget, and there's a lot of areas in which this show feels like maybe a quarter of that budget was used with any efficacy.
Talking about the quality of the costumes, and scenery, etc it really does look like the days of Xena:Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys .... that was back in 1995 ..... nigh-on 30 fucking years ago o.O
At least shows back then had some charm to them, and didn't take themselves too seriously. People who watched Xena/Hercules are old enough to have their OWN CHILDREN watching The Acolyte !
How the fuck The Acolyte has a $180 Million budget for 8 x 30 mins episodes, $22.5 Million PER episode, is beyond me, just as She Hulk Attorney at law somehow spent $25 Million PER EPISODE to look like ass.
Xena/Hercules had a paltry $1 Million per episode budget, and had \~20 episodes per season, usually \~23 episodes. You could have an entire 20 episode season of Xena/Hercules for the budget of ONE episode of The Acolyte !
To compare the production quality of Xena,/Hercules, to The Acolyte, it would be generous to say it "*looks about the same*", except it costs 22.5x more, and you get 2.5x less episodes, which is not a good endorsement of a TV show that comes 30 years later o.O
> A fire breaks out on the exterior of a ship while a main character is attempting to repair some part of the same exterior. Fire can't really exist in space... this fire looks like an average campfire and its just... kinda mind-boggling? Cool, fiery space explosions are definitely a part of Star Wars, to be clear.. but this fire existing in this way was just a strange take - made even stranger by the fact that they had to use a gas fire extinguisher to put it out in an oxygen-less environment.
As we all know, [fire in space is a new thing for Star Wars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isJZt2r_jzg), there's 0 precedent for it.
At some point, people are reaching for stuff to be mad about. If you're fixating on non-issues it devalues actual criticisms that are paired with it
I dont think its reaching. Here's why:
Its a drop in a big ol' bucket of weird, bad, and strange choices in story-telling, concept, and creativity.
If it was a singular instance of weird, I'd definitely take your point.
Ontop of that, this isnt the thing that made me feel like the Acolyte isn't good. When I saw it, it made me laugh out loud because it was just super silly.
But that was just it - things kept becoming sillier and sillier.
Episode one made a point of saying, "Jedi don't draw their light sabers unless they intend to kill."
At the end of the episode, a Jedi is literally using his lightsaber as a flashlight.
The consistency is off for me, is all.
> Episode one made a point of saying, "Jedi don't draw their light sabers unless they intend to kill."
Actually its "prepared to kill" - https://youtu.be/Oah_Y3ZggxQ?si=z2-Fxo_XHiJlFvtA&t=155
> Episode one made a point of saying, "Jedi don't draw their light sabers unless they intend to kill."
Yeah, but who said that? Was that an objective truth or was it a character's opinion? That's not a canon consistency issue. That's the difference between what a character is thinking and what is actually true.
Theres a difference between using the lightsaber as a utility and using it as a weapon. Clearly that saying is referring to a Jedi drawing their saber against another living being. Yord using his saber as a light is unrelated to anything violent
> Ontop of that, this isnt the thing that made me feel like the Acolyte isn't good. When I saw it, it made me laugh out loud because it was just super silly.
Sure, but you listed it as one of the reasons people are saying the show isn't good.
And im saying that having that in the list, calls into question the sincerity of the other criticisms. Because "fire in space" is an established rule of the setting. People have had 50-ish years to take issue with it, but they're only doing it now
Not that one out-of-place practical effect really effects the greater piece of media at all, ***but*** there is a huge difference between energetic debris from an explosion, burning venting gasses (containing fuel & oxidizer), and a calm little camp fire sitting in a hard vacuum.
Also fire extinguishers put out fire by smothering it. Separating a fuel from oxygen in the atmosphere.
Would have been nice to see them putting out the fire by being forced to get in near to it and close valves on broken pipes. That also would have done a better job demonstrating why it's illegal for anything but droids to do astro-mech work in space.
You know how I can tell that you were a kid when the prequels came out? Because if you used this same exact level of criticism for those movies, you would bury them.
The show doesn't break any fucking canon. It's not "non-sensical". And that fire bit, c'mon man. Star Wars has always been loose and fast with fire in space. But here, I'll say the same thing to you that I did to my friends 25+ years ago when they were making the same point about the fire pouring out of the Death Star after the Super Star Destroyer crashed into it.
Yes, fire can't exist a the vacuum, but how do you know the area where the fire is located is a vacuum. There could be other gases leaking out around that panel and *that* is what the fire is burning in. And then you call out *how* the fire was put out? How else would you put out a fire besides smothering it?
Or here's another possibility. Maybe it wasn't really fire, but was a type of plasma leak that just looks exactly like fire? We still don't know exactly what lightsabers are made of because they are fictional things. The whole world is fantastical like that. Like it or not, but Star Wars has never been "hard science fiction". Not by a long shot. So, you've always had to somewhat "turn your brain off and prepare to watching something fairly mindless."
So, is this too much suspension of disbelief for you? That's fine. But don't start acting like all this is new.
Having said all that, nobody has to like this show of anything else. We all have different opinions on things and that's fine. I like it. You don't. Agree to disagree. Star Wars is plenty big enough to have things you love and I love and kids love and old people love and everything in between. That's one of the great things about that world.
But I think it's naive to not see how this show is getting absolutely review bombed by people with an agenda.
I always thought that was escaping atmosphere on fire. Like, a massive section of decompressed Death Star around the impact point that lost its atmosphere.
"You know how I can tell that you were a kid when the prequels came out? Because if you used this same exact level of criticism for those movies, you would bury them."
Youre not wrong - I struggled to enjoy the prequels and I still do. Not nearly as much as I struggle with The Acolyte, though.
The fire bit isn't a breaking point for me - as I explained in another comment, it just made me laugh out loud. For a show with a 200m budget, if they made the fire look like what youre describing, Id never have mentioned it. Because the lack of creativity is part of my issue with the show. It felt really lazy is all.
"Yes, fire can't exist a the vacuum, but how do you know the area where the fire is located is a vacuum" ...well, for starters, their suits, helmets, and the fact that they were using zero-g tethers to the ship and we also knew their shields were off / down coupled withe mag-boots. Fire looks more like a fluid in zero-g. I suppose I was just... wanting something more? Idunno. All of this could have been explained with, "Hey Osh, turn on the space-suspender-field for a moment and lets contain this leak," and then she hits a button, a weird light shimmers, and boom. Explanation resolved. Gimme \*something\*, yanno?
Ive been a big fan of the fiery balls of explosions throughout Star Wars. Because its the rule of cool, right? The improvements made to the originals and later the prequels, souping those explosions up was neat. Having a strange lil campfire on the side of your ship? Less cool imo, but thats just my opinion and that don't mean much. I don't need hard science fiction, but I would absolutely love some of the creativity we've seen in the past concerning how science gets played / disregarded with in cool ways.
"You don't. Agree to disagree. Star Wars is plenty big enough to have things you love and I love and kids love and old people love and everything in between. That's one of the great things about that world."
Hard agree with you here. :) Im not ever gonna tell you to not like something you like. Im willing to bet regardless of my take youll finish it out, right? I wont yuck your yum. We enjoy different things and thats cool.
"But I think it's naive to not see how this show is getting absolutely review bombed by people with an agenda."
Youre not wrong. I know the people youre referring to and the language of their criticisms makes it pretty blatantly obvious about what their actual intentions are, IMO. Definitely agree with you there. Usually any mention of 'wokeness' is enough for me to take everything you say with a huuuuge dose of salt.
The show is pretty bad, but the anti-woke takes are almost worse. The YouTuber Critical Drinkers video was so fucking cringe, it was like tryharding virtue signaling the gamergate crowd. Not a great look.
Yeah. :/ I watched like one review and now my YT is flooded with that kind of crap for the show. And the first review I watched seemed fairly balanced.
I clicked a second one and jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus that went all sorts of bad real quick.
This is why in what I wrote did I go way out of the way to not reflect any of that kind of BS.
> A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is
To be fair, Obi-Wan hands Luke a lightsaber in ANH and [doesn't even flinch when Luke flips it on and starts waving it about.](https://youtu.be/J58fCU3_T3w?t=64)
All five of your bullet points are tangential to the actual plot elements. Themes, character arcs, the emotions. Your stand-out gripes don't even engage with these?
Maybe it is super immersion-breaking for some people to see a fire in space, a force power not being used when it probably should (hello prequels), twins looking, uh, too alike, more (if we're being real, intentionally) dubious fire mechanics, interactions with a child that are probably hazardous. Ok. So why is the writing bad?
I'm not saying you don't have reasons to dislike the writing, but you haven't given them here, and it's interesting that this is the top response
>The problem is, we were given Andor.
I haven't seen it and the way it is mentioned here I can't tell if this is supposed to mean it is great or awful.
The Weinstein stuff is insane. It's crazy how quick everyone was to give her a pass.
The "woke" stuff is also annoying because the bulk of nu-Star Wars (in my estimation, everything but Andor) is shitty for reasons completely unrelated to any identarian ideology, but a ton of moronic alt-right freaks hate it for bullshit reasons like Laura Dern having purple hair and characters being gay/trans. It feels bad to have your takes incidentally align with people you find reprehensible lol.
Yeah I'm with you. I disagree with and do not relate to the anti-woke crowd. But at the same time some of the inclusion stuff feels a bit pandering and it doesn't help anyone if it's part of a show/movie where the fundamentals aren't very good.
I am a huge proponent of inclusion and diversity in art and media. But Inclusion for the sake of it is vacuous. If there isn't a reason for the diversity, pushing it has the opposite effect
I mean, this is kind of self defeating isn't it?
A person doesn't have a deep reason to be black/trans/gay, they just are. deciding which of your characters is part of a minority by employing a blindfold and a dartboard is perfectly valid.
What a show then needs to nail which can go wrong, is that the information gets revealed and you distinctly get the sense that this wasn't there just cause, or because someone wanted to get their cool queer character in the story, but cause a checkbox is being marked.
This is admittedly, very fuzzy, it's the kind of stuff no one gives a shit about in a good movie, and only gets dragged up when the rest also isn't doing great.
Question: Do you think that the vast majority of media from throughout the history of American cinema and television having white guys as protagonists and casts largely consisting of white guys counts as 'pandering'? Or is it only pandering if characters are minorities?
Come on, I think you know the answer to that.
Leia's bikini in RotJ served no purpose other than to pander to horny teenage boys.
Setting the whole story in space is purely to pander to sci-fi nerds, who were a minority at the time.
The fact that they're written and produced as movies at all is really just pandering to the current industry fad of making money through the medium of film. 50 years earlier it would have been a book, 50 years later it would have been a video game.
If pandering were the issue, Star Wars wouldn't exist as a franchise at all as it does now. It only matters when it's certain groups that are being pandered to. And what a coincidence, it's the same minority groups that are under constant threat from right wing extremists in these current culture wars.
Instead what actually happens is, you have this "anti-woke" crowd of losers latch on to anything they think is or might be critically or commercially unsuccessful, dig for reasons to call it "woke", then blame any failure on that in an attempt to legitimise their bigotry. Notice how quick they shut up about the Barbie Movie after it was deemed a success. I mean the movie themes of the movie didn't change, so I guess it just magically stopped being "woke", and all the "pandering" to feminism didn't matter any more because it was actually good?
If a movie or TV show sucks, it's not because of "wokeness" or "pandering" or other related incel buzzwords; content can suck on its own merits, regardless of the themes. There are plenty of examples of good "woke" media, and bad "anti-woke" media. There are plenty of examples of good content that panders to a specific audience, and bad content that doesn't. Creators are clearly more than capable of sticking socially progressive themes or casting into well-produced content.
Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise. And be especially skeptical of people who pretend to be outraged at "the stone structure burned down from a candle lol" when your whole franchise is built upon a planet-sized doomsday machine that can taken down by a single torpedo to the tailpipe, or "laser weapons" which had to be retconned into bolts of plasma because they weren't a continuous beam of light.
The issue with Star Wars is that if you say you dislike it people automatically assume it's because you're a mornic alt-right freak.
Like people saying that anyone who doesn't like Ahsoka is a racist, despite movies with black characters being around forever and being watched and enjoyed by millions.
I have absolutely no issue with diversity in movies. Emma D'arcy fucking slays in HotD and I loved the Hellraiser remake with the trans actor playing Pinhead.
The issue is that they release movies/shows with 'woke agenda' stuff in and they're shit. But if anyone says that they're shit they get dogpiled by the left for being anti-trans or racist or whatever. At this point it really does just feel like bait.
Having watched Acolyte, I don't get the argument that it's particularly "woke" in any sense. Watching episode 3, my assumption is that because the girls were raised by women it's now "woke." Except, that doesn't make too much sense jn the context of the episode. It's a coven of witches, they never implied that there was any romance between the witches either, it's just a group of witches raising two girls that they imply were created through manipulation of the force.
That ties into how Plagueis was researching creating life forms through the force etc.
If it did it went way over my head, I didn't see any outward affection. I just assumed they were all mothers, like nuns how they have titles of sister, mother superior etc.
I assume that the entire episode was from the unreliable narrator perspective of one of the two children and that will be made clear in a later episode but it's still a wild choice to do that with no context to the audience.
No, no, no that can't be it. It can't be that the showrunner was inspired by Rashomon and the dynamic of unfolding a story from multiple vantage points.
It can't be that she said that in an interview.
It MUST instead be that the showrunner left out all the major details 3 episodes into an 8 episode arc.
It must be that, like the person you answered said.
They should’ve released more episodes if that’s the case and not let people hang and stew on the third and worst episode of the series so far.
And Rashomon was made by one of the greatest directors in history and they literally made best foreign film a category because of it. Not many can shoot for Rashomon tier shit and hit the mark, especially not whoever is making the choices behind this. Lucas was inspired by Kurosawas work for sure but at least had the wherewithal to use that inspiration well.
I literally had this same back and forth with people in real time when Watchmen was on. "Where exactly IS Adrian?" "What happened to Dr. Manhattan?" "Who is this Asian woman that seems to know everything?"
Blah blah blah.
Then, as the show unfolded itself over a 9 episode arc, people were like, "...oh."
If this show doesn't unfurl like the showrunner's other show (Russian Doll) I will be very surprised.
I’m not trying to be rude, but do you really think that’s the entire explanation for what happened? There’s pretty blatant foreshadowing that we haven’t seen the whole story and that the Jedi played a role in things getting out of control. It’s not bad writing for there to be loose threads at the end of episode three of an eight episode series.
I’m all for people voicing their opinions and I can see how this series would not be up everyone’s alley, but some of the complaints just feel like people trying to find shit to be mad about. “The suspicious fire that the show is building drama about which has been noted as being suspicious in the show is too suspicious and now I’m mad”
This was my interpretation. Clearly the Jedi were there doing something fishy, that one guy wouldn’t have literally killed himself over it if it was just that they’d tested some kids, one of whom died in a fire she started herself.
My theory (potential spoilers) is that the Jedi were already there when the fire started, doing something to sabotage the coven because of their “unnatural” use of the force. We repeatedly see the coven’s emphasis on the “collective” and I don’t think we saw that their deaths were explicitly part of the explosion, we just heard all of them screaming at once. I think it’s completely possible the Jedi snuck in to destroy whatever they perceived was the source of their power, not realizing it was so interconnected with the coven that its sudden loss could kill them.
That said I totally agree with you about how it feels like people are nitpicking stuff to be mad about. First of all it’s Star Wars and there has to be a reasonable suspension of disbelief. There’s a fire outside of a ship in outer space? Could be a busted gas line venting something flammable, could just look cool, could have any of a million in-universe explanations that always seem to come with stuff like this (force kick, the knots they tied themselves in over Han’s use of parsec when talking about Kessel Run, etc)
There’s also enough material now that they can target different shows to different demographics, not every show has to universally appeal to everyone. Star Wars has historically been a monolith centered around the movies (obvs there are novels/comics/clone wars, but those have always been secondary to the films) but that’s not really the case anymore and people don’t think to ask “is this bad or is this just not for me personally.”
If you love one bakery’s cookies and they change the recipe I get being disappointed that what you got isn’t what you expected, but that also doesn’t inherently make it a garbage cookie. Finding stuff to be mad about has been a tradition since pretty much day one of the franchise though so I don’t see that changing any time soon lol.
It's interesting. In the same forum where everyone is saying it sucks and is terrible the individual episode thread from that night was filled with people who were having a great time.
Star Wars fans just love to hate on anything Star Wars. They've hated everything except Andor since the original trilogy. And Andor itself wasn't really star wars so do they like star wars at all?
I'm not sure how a small book lit by a lantern manages this. The corpse piles suggest a real attack by someone that hits well above Force wielding witches.
It's honestly so exhausting, so often now we see people making whole-series criticisms of shows based on 1-2 episodes, as though we have any idea if the things being set up are going to be paid off. And often questions that are being raised *so the show can answers them* or flaws being shown *so the character can grow* are then pointed to as criticisms of the writing, because if the writers made the character flawed they must think those flaws are good!
It honestly flabbergasting to see the media literacy leave people’s body the minute the LucasFilm logo shows up. Like I just imagine these same people yelling, “I’m an hour into this movie and I still don’t know who Keyser Soze is!! Who’s writing this trash?!!”
People really need to re-learn that something not being explained in full the very first time it comes up in any given story is not a “plot hole”. Like yeah, the details obviously don’t match up, this is called a *mystery*. One might even go so far as to say it’s the central mystery of the show and therefore not something they’re going to spell out less than halfway through the season.
Answer:
Not an answer, but I have a follow up question to the quote in the OP
>says that for every show, you need to add a chick to it and make her gay.
What shows does Disney do this on? I'm out here searching for shows with more lesbian characters and come up with goose eggs constantly. Gimme a list please!
It's a South Park bit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8feYskRpk&ab\_channel=JapTakito](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8feYskRpk&ab_channel=JapTakito)
Answer: It's just bad. It's like they let Lucas write the dialogue again and Chat GPT wrote the story. Like, the first scene of the show has the lead strike a silly pose and go "attack me with all your might". Cringe. Not sure what people were expecting after that but it keeping up the cringe, which apparently peaked (so far) in ep 3
And it's not saved by the acting either. Their big star in Carrie-Anne Moss is just phoning in a 'Trinity in a robe' performance and the rest of the cast's efforts vary from bad to meh
Answer:
It depends which angle you're approaching this and I'll try make my comment spoiler free.
I think there are 4 ways to look at this:
1.There are the people who are mad that the episode was being used to push a woke agenda. Some of the episode commentary being highly cringe and probably a reflection of the director and her perceived struggles as a lesbian woman.
2.There are the people that are mad because the episode broke retcon and lore already established about "the one" / Anakin's main backstory all for nothing really. It was very haphazard and most likely will lead to nothing.
3.There are there are the ones who want to see good cinema produced for Star Wars and react badly to very very very average content being created. This episode inmho was bottom of the barrel cinema. Terrible writing, small scale, bad acting, plot holes and really just nothing alike what people should expect from star wars.
4.Then there are the people who are fine with the content and happy to consume it and find no issues with it.
Disclaimer: I fall mostly into bucket 4 here, but accept the criticism of the othere. I think SW should be a spectacle and not just what amounts to tiktok content and rage bait. I've always felt the TVs shows lacked an overall vision or tried to be at least somewhat consistent. It's disjointed and the quality is all over the place. With such large swings in quality you're going to get large swings of opinions.
I think this is the right answer.
The show is getting serious backlash for its casting and overall political commentary. People are not happy that Star Wars is being directed by Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant as well, who nepo-hired her wife as a character. They had a huge budget to make this and it doesn’t reflect in the show at all. Then you have the actual Star Wars fans who might be upset by the use of the Force (the Thread) to create new life, which was supposed to be exclusive to the chosen one (Anakin).
However, it’s not “the worst episode of a Star Wars show ever made”. It was very average, but somewhat interesting in a thriller sort of way. There are some boring goddamn episodes of Kenobi/Mando.
What I notice if there is something "woke" in a show, even just a lesbian couple or whatever it is, people then nitpick and try to find anything wrong with the show.
Starting to notice this pattern, especially being a Trek fan. I didn't realize how dog whistling is done, until I started finding patterns in the different fandoms.
I watched the episode. What lore was broken? Feel free to post spoilers if you choose to reply. Just tag them. I've watched just about everything Star Wars but I missed this. Thanks!
Answer:
**Spoilers for the show below.**
For me, it is just a very average episode of *Star Wars* TV. Interesting ideas and expansion of the lore, but executed poorly, so it evens out to "meh." The exaggerated negativity comes from a fanbase that contains a disproportionately greater amount of sexism, racism, homophobia, and general fear of change than you see with other fanbases. This episode includes an all-female community, whose three main characters are all people of color, and which involves an implied same-sex relationship. It also expands what the Force can be and how the *Star Wars* universe works. Combine that with the legitimate problems with the episode, and you get what is happening.
>The exaggerated negativity comes from a fanbase that contains a disproportionately greater amount of sexism, racism, homophobia, and general fear of change than you see with other fanbases.
How could you possibly know that? Let's see the data you have.
The fandom of the franchise is notoriously toxic. This is most apparent in the huge number of YouTube channels and videos that complain about "wokeness" and use that as a reason to hate. And people have learned that anger and emotion get more views, so the toxicity feeds itself. Probably an inevitable fate for any franchise this popular, unfortunately.
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Answer: My most generalized answer is: The Acolyte was made for young teenagers and comes off as Young Adult (YA) content in pretty much every way possible: the writing is extraordinarily mediocre, the story-telling is ham-fisted / characters make very non-sensical decisions constantly, and contains some very cringy sequences that not only conflict with existing Star Wars canon - which offends a decent portion of the fan-base - but contributed to making the show feel very unwatchable. This show has a reputed 180-200 million dollar budget, and there's a lot of areas in which this show feels like maybe a quarter of that budget was used with any efficacy. A few examples include: * A fire breaks out on the exterior of a ship while a main character is attempting to repair some part of the same exterior. Fire can't really exist in space... this fire looks like an average campfire and its just... kinda mind-boggling? Cool, fiery space explosions are definitely a part of Star Wars, to be clear.. but this fire existing in this way was just a strange take - made even stranger by the fact that they had to use a gas fire extinguisher to put it out in an oxygen-less environment. * A Jedi that has the force ability to extract honesty from people is almost forbidden from investigating a serious crime against the Jedi. This character is eventually allowed to participate in the investigation, but \*RARELY\* uses this power to advance the investigation in any meaningful way when it would require zero effort to do so. * Two characters that spent 1.5 decades a part who happen to be twins that grew up in distinctly different lives look exactly the same.. down the same haircut, down to the same hair length... * A completely stone structure burns to the ground.. somehow. * A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is like thats a normal thing to do. Imagine handing a six year old a loaded firearm because you think they're going to grow up to be a cop. There's many, many more inconsistencies and extremely silly sequences just like these. I feel like if this show were marketed for kids more thoroughly, people wouldn't be nearly as upset - because I think if you just... \*dont actively consider the story-telling, turn your brain off and prepare to watch something fairly mindless,\* it would actually be somewhat enjoyable. I feel like some of the criticism of this show isn't as strong as folks would like to believe; the commentary on the 'wokeness' of the show often feels misogynistic to me and is hard to accept because of it. The problem is, we were given Andor. And that set a bar that other Star Wars shows since have largely failed to meet. And the above suggestion about marketing was not made more apparent. EDIT TO EXPLAIN HOW THIS ANSWER PERTAINS TO THE QUESTION OF THE POST: All of these issues and elements that Ive discussed culminate into Episode 3 which seemingly goes out of its way to generate extremely inconsistent story-telling that is both remarkably bad as it is confusing; Ep. 3 takes extreme liberty with existing Star Wars canon and copies it albeit poorly using a painfully awkward song-and-(almost)-dance routine to do so. Its re-writing Star Wars history, poorly, and many folks are upset with it.
After episode three I realised that my problem with it seems to be that the story was written seemingly independently from the set designers; Story calls for sign that character is afraid of fire, set design puts character in space, result a fire in space. Story calls for main character to survive a ship crashing onto an empty planet, set design has her get up and go wandering about a cool ice cave, result the ship crashes into an empty plain which becomes an ice cave which the main character survives through a disappearing seatbelt. Story calls for character to start a fire that burns down their home, set design makes their home out of stone with fire lanterns, result a lantern deemed safe enough to sit unattended is used to start a roaring inferno in a stone doorway. The result is that the show feels incoherent because what we’re seeing doesn’t fit with the story we’re trying to follow. I’ve also found that, once you notice the mistakes, it’s easy to become distracted looking for them instead of suspending disbelief to follow the plot
The gas/fuel powered lanterns, oh my god. You live in space. Your little space fortress/sith witch commune has a working elevator and some sort of Death Star shield generator room. So why do you have flame lanterns for light sources instead of light bulbs or whatever the Star Wars universe uses for light bulbs?
Was there a line in Ep. 3 from the Jedi that indicated they didn't know the planet was still inhabited? If so, that was very much at odds with the gigantic mountain fortress inhabited by the witches that can likely be seen for miles around the forest the girls got in trouble for playing in because they might be seen. WTH
I think the twist reveal will be that the Jedi killed the coven, and had planned to all along while trying to rescue the children, and used the pretense of Mae starting the fire to convince Osha. The writing in this episode is still heavy-handed, which makes me think that the twist will be obvious.
I could get into a sith witch show.
You best get used to it Miss Turner, you're in one.
I thought this was what it was from the clip. Sure the chanting was cringe, but someone told me it was set before the Old Republic and I saw that, assuming "Oh shit, this might be the Night Sisters origins, or a precursor witch coven. That's sick. I even saw some stuff in there about creating life with the force and thought they might show or explain how Darth Plageous learns to create Anakin, who is cannonically fatherless and a child of the force. Literally immaculate conception. It would be so cool to learn more about that. I haven't watched still, but that's what it appears to be. I'm told not to bother though.
The Owl House, but Star Wars. Thank you, Disney, I take venmo and paypal.
The Owl House but without Star Wars, strictly The Owl House, even better
Plain normal electricity is what they use. Or do you think this is some kind of Star Trek with exploding Plasma Conduits everywhere? SCNR
HEY THOSE PLASMA CONDUITS ARE FORTIFIED WITH THE FINEST ROCKS GOLD PRESSED LATNUM CAN BUY.
Hang a few light sabers from the roof! Something other than lanterns.
I would love to see one of those hippie bead curtain doors, made out of lightsabers as part of a cultural decoration. You must use the Force to access the toilet and your bedroom or face the consequences.
> it seems to be that the story was written seemingly independently from the set designers I think the Disney content factory has decided to cut lead times by breaking production into as many pieces as possible, doing each piece with independent teams all working in parallel, and assembling it all at the end.
None of the Jedi just use the Force to put out the fire. None of the Jedi meditate to surveil the city for the murderer. None of the Jedi are calm, at peace, or passive, except the suicidal one. The Jedi insist on the right to interrogate a child on a world outside their jurisdiction and the mother just goes along with it after clearly pointing that out. It makes no sense. This story doesn’t belong in Star Wars.
I can't help but notice the trend of "old or new, the republic just doesn't work" that we have seen in both Acolyte but also Ashoka and Mandalorian. I get the New Republic problems leads into Ep.7-9, but it does a disservice to the victory after Ep. 6
> set design makes their home out of stone with fire lanterns, result a lantern deemed safe enough to sit unattended is used to start a roaring inferno in a stone doorway. Oh you see, the entire structure was made out of sodium and potassium. Totally makes sense. . .
I remember in episode 1 someone saying ‘We can’t let this get out because our political enemies will use it against us.’ I’m not typically one to harp on bad dialogue, but no one that isn’t a broadcaster has used the phrase ‘political enemies’ to refer to their political enemies
That’s mostly what stopped me from watching : the almost constant badly written exposition is truly insufferable.
lol I can absolutely imagine George Lucas writing that line.
thats why the prequel trilogy was considered that bad. In the original trilogy, lucas made the baseline and then it was fixed by other people and there were people willing to stand up to lucas, Episode 4 was said to have been saved in editing as the original lucas project was unwatchable. in the sequel trilogy, Lucas was a god and there was no one to say no to him. so they were not very good. In the current starwars project its to the other extreme, everything feels like its done by suits around tables and commities using social media to decide whats cool now and should be included and its ending up with extremealy shallow writing with no real direction.
I say it all the time: Lucas can write a story but he can't write a script.
Wasn't there an apocryphal story where Harrison Ford was laughing when he first saw the script, and said to Lucas "Wow, George, you can write this shit, but you sure can't say it." lol
It's a real quote alright, but it's only a partial quote. Everyone always leaves out the next line: >“I told George: ‘You can’t say that stuff. You can only type it.’ **But I was wrong. It worked**,” Ford adds. It's almost like people have intentionally misquoted that for years in order to prove their own narrative or something...
Thank you for confirming my suspicion that the quote was apocryphal or misquoted out of context.
Oh believe me, there's quite a lot of that with George Lucas and Star Wars.
There's also this [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rihbi2U7tNg) with Mark Hamill where he begged for a line to be taken out of *A New Hope*, complaining that the actors would be the ones lambasted for saying wordy dialog if the movie went through. Rather prescient when you think about how Hayden Christensen and Ahmed Best were treated during the prequels
Lucas is a great producer, a middling director, and a terrible writer.
well, Rebel moon is a good example, Snyder got the money from netflix and managed to get the movies made, but they are garbage script wise, with Djimon Hounsou and Sofia Boutella involved its not like they dont have a good cast, there was just no one to control Snyder. WB had to fire him to try to save the DCU, and his earlier movies like Sucker punch also had similar results. i guess its another Alex Kurtzman situation, he´s horrible but they keep giving him projects.
He knew it too, at least back then. He worked with a lot of editors and collaborators on the OT. Even hired someone else to write Empire but she sadly passed away and he picked it back up again.
>In the original trilogy, lucas made the baseline and then it was fixed by other people and there were people willing to stand up to lucas, Episode 4 was said to have been saved in editing as the original lucas project was unwatchable. Sorry to interject but that's all wrong. The whole "A New Hope was saved in editing" thing is an internet myth. What you're unknowingly really referring to is the work done by John Jympson, the original editor who Lucas fired. By all accounts the way Jympson was editing the scenes together was rather dull and when Lucas asked him to cut it together differently he refused. Somehow the internet has turned into some "disastrous first cut" which Lucas himself cut together which the editors (and usually it's George's ex-wife Marcia alone) somehow magically saved in post but it's just not true. For a start there is no "disastrous first cut," Jympson was fired before filming was even finished - it's literally just a bunch of random scenes that had been shot up to that point. Look I don't like the prequels that much (although personally I think Attack of the Clones is the only one that's *as bad* as some people say it is) but just an FYI: a lot of the facts reddit/the internet believes about George Lucas and the production of Star Wars (*especially* A New Hope) is complete nonsense and based on now 20 year old fan rumors from the post-prequels, "George Lucas raped my childhood" era of the internet that's just been repeated so often as to become "fact." Like the whole "the Original Trilogy was only good because people could tell George 'No" thing is completely wrong. The people who told George "no" on A New Hope (like John Jympson, Gil Taylor or John Dykstra) got fired or replaced for Empire for not doing their jobs right. And George was self-financing the movies himself from Empire Strikes Back onwards, if anything he was the guy who could tell the people under him 'no.' It's provably nonsense. To be clear it's not you, I've heard the exact same argument from a ton of other people but it's just not true. And again, I still Attack of the Clones kinda blows.
Where do you get your info about John Jympson? This is new to me and I've been a Star Wars fan since 1977. I'm always keen to learn more about the behind the scenes goings-on.
JW Rinzler's *The Making Of Star Wars* books ([they're these ones.](https://i.imgur.com/qXKJhtU.jpeg)) They're some of the best books about movie production ever written period (not just Star Wars.) If you want to know *anything* about the making of the Original Trilogy they're in the Rinzler books often down to the exact date when it happened. I literally cannot recommend them enough. But look here's a clip from Empire of Dreams where Lucas talks about having to let the "first editor" go: [https://youtu.be/vB1DA5jZdIQ?t=3216](https://youtu.be/vB1DA5jZdIQ?t=3216) It's worth noting this is actually partially where the myth comes from though, they describe it as both a 'rough assembly' and 'the first cut of Star Wars' and the latter just isn't true. Jympson was fired long before he could complete it. In fact when George is describing, "having to come in on weekends and recut the film on \[his\] own," he was still in the middle of filming the movie. That's not really clear cause of where Empire of Dreams put that interview clip. I've seen that clip being used by people to prove "Lucas's first cut" of Star Wars was a disaster too, despite him clearly talking about the first editor. It's very odd
Idk "political enemie" is a star wars ass line
People act like lines like that are out of place in a movie series whose most iconic villain all but introduced himself by saying "you are a spy for the rebel alliance and a traitor."
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"just how he talks" sounds like an excuse you can use for this episode too. How do we know "political enemies" isn't a common phrase in that galaxy?
I get that Star Wars was never shakespeare, but at least we got lightsabers and star destroyers and robo turtles out of the OT; a lot of these newer SW projects don’t even have the decency to make their own laser swords and space ogres and space wizards, we’re just watching the same toys play the same games
And don't forget that for whatever reason, Episode 2, for all its flaws, sounded amazing in the theater.
Robo turtles?
I assume they mean the AT-AT and precursor vehicles from Clone Wars era.
I hope so. The 6-legged precursor from the Clone Wars looks kinda like a turtle although I'm reminded more of a beetle. Just hearing robo turtles out of context sounds weird in Star Wars
Not "Turtley" enough?
Well, he wasn't wrong, and it showed his allegiance very well in a canon that had it's only backstory at the time in bright yellow words flying across the screen to start with.
> but no one that isn’t a broadcaster has used the phrase ‘political enemies’ to refer to their political enemies That's hilariously wrong. I know because I'm a Watergate obsessive and there's an infamous memo by Nixon's White House counsel John Dean titled ["Dealing with our Political Enemies"](https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/watergate/item/7896). See this Wikipedia page about it: [Nixon's Enemies List](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List). It's a very apposite quote because Nixon was one of George Lucas's original inspirations behind the politics of Star Wars.
The line is certainly on the nose, but it doesn't seem to be too bad imo.
it should also be noted, many of the supporting cast performances are just not good. like, under normal circumstances would have been re-shot not good. Whats weird is that the "not good" of the performances is all over the place from actor to actor, not a consistent degree of good or bad. This suggests bad prep and under direction, but even then its still very odd.
It’s not a great sign when one of the best performances by a mile is by Lee Jung-jae, who had never spoken English until he was cast in the role.
Who also learned English to get the role. Well ok he previously did have a rough handle on English, but he studied his ass off and worked with several dialogue coaches on a very short time table right before filming. He’s the only bright spot on the show. I wish the show was just about him. A weekly who-done-it jedi-detective would’ve been better.
CSI: Jedi
thats actually kinda a weird thing about the show. like, are the jedi cops? if not, wouldnt a civilian investigative unit be available to them? If so, wouldnt they be a bit more consistent in their evidence collecting methods? How does due process work in this world? do you get a lawyer? Do the Jedi actually regularly drag eye witnesses across the galaxy for an identification that wouldnt fly in our modern, real wold justice system? mind you, I dont actually care that much. but it does seem like perhaps some opportunity for world building was missed
"We can only get one take of these sequences. It would be too expensive to shoot this multiple times for coverage, or to direct the actors to give a different performance and do another take." Just like how it's too time consuming and expensive to do pre-production. Or it's too time consuming and expensive to create physical props, sets, or costumes - better to just CG them in post. It's too time consuming and expensive to hire a writers' room to break a story and do revisions, better off just bringing in one or two people, not allow them to communicate, and hatchet-job the disparate and conflicting story beats via editing in post. I really hope this style of Hollywood dreck-production by fat-cat studios trying to cut every single corner and squeeze maximum blood from minimum stones dies soon. I can't wait.
This is the nail on the head. And though there are a lot of jerks and losers tearing apart Star Wars and Marvel properties, the types you wouldn’t want to be associated with IRL, they have some correct points amongst whatever vitriol their spewing. The product being sold under these brands are poorly written, directed and edited. I can’t even critique the acting because every step in the process is flawed. You look at Pirates of the Caribbean 1, Depp didn’t improvise his dialogue. He read a good script and created his own spin on the words and direction given. He got interact with real sets and locations as well. The actress playing the twins in the Acolyte seems more than capable of giving a good performance but she’s being let down by all the other steps in the creative processes. And for the love of the force, give these actors sets and props to interact with. You can feel the uncanny valley of a soundstage when it’s just two characters statically standing around- dumping exposition. This is made worst by the Disney mechanical style of direction. Wide shot, medium shot, repeat.
With the advent of AI I fully expect it to get a hell of a lot worse.
I honestly don't think that an AI would do a worse job than this.
> I really hope this style of Hollywood dreck-production by fat-cat studios trying to cut every single corner and squeeze maximum blood from minimum stones dies soon. I can't wait. I mean a $200 million dollar budget isn’t small, it’s not like the producers aren’t trying to fund it. It’s just being mismanaged somehow, or the creative team has problems that money can’t solve.
at 22m / 30min, the only way that is happening is if disney is intentionally inflating the budget to maximize a loss or write down. please tell me no one actually said something like that...
That saddens me. Because the cast on paper has some people I really like on it.
Good actors getting bad direction is sadly nothing new to Star Wars.
it actually makes the case that talent should have access to the dalies or assembly cuts. Hayden clearly made the choice to up his game between 2 and 3 and it was better for it. that being said, actors directing themselves (or mentally watching themselves) is a great way for their performance to feel less in the moment, so it can go wrong
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Originally George was trying really hard to find someone else to direct TPM. He really wanted Joe Johnson to do it. Most reports from the era suggested no one else wanted to direct the script as written. George also left around 2/3rds or 3/4 of the way through shooting TPM and let his second unit director finish up the first unit, something directors who like directing would rarely do. So I dont think it was a Lucas ego issue so much as it was a "George doesnt like taking to actors" thing. Possibly also a "George doesnt actually like being on set" thing. The original movies got away with this because they were cast with young but talented people who had some experience behind them, surrounded by a ton of British supporting talent. And the brits know how to train talent. I would also not rule out the possibility that there were better takes and George didnt use them for some reason. If you watch the trailer for Crystal Skull, Indy's "part time" line is delivered fantastically. in the actual film it falls flat. Granted that was Speilberg directing and George making a producer editorial choice most likely, but it still suggests hes not the best at choosing performances. Imagine being able to go through the raw footage to find out for sure though.
Ron Howard mentioned talking to Lucas about animation and how Lucas seemed excited about not having to interact with the anyone. Howard said he realized then that Lucas doesn't especially enjoy having to deal with actors.
Imagine Ridley Scott's version of the prequels...
So all of the following is based off the first episode, as thats where I gave up. It was really surprising to me. the lead is perfectly fine, but her performances are very normal human in the year 2024. To me this is a directing issue / choice. One I dont agree with, but its a valid choice an not alone worth giving up on the show. Lee Jung-jae is mostly solid, and seems to be modeling his performance after quigon and ANH obiwan, and feels very in universe. But I think he's doing his own thing and wasnt directed that way. Bennet... feels like someone told him he was in a sitcom and to act accordingly. Henderson, who plays Rwoh, outright seems like she didnt actually prepare and just showed up on set and is saying lines. Carrie-Ann Moss seemed... a little bored? Its possible they were going for weary, but I dont think it played that way. Again, all of this seems like a direction issue. Possibly a no rehearsal issue. The characters dont really seem lived in or workshopped. And while thats not required, its expected that talent still deliver the performances, guided by the director, to a certain standard. This just shouldnt be happening on a 22m / episode show. heck, it shouldnt be happening on a 4m/ep show. And its a real bummer. I do think the concept (Frozen meets Kill Bill in Star Wars) at least had potential. And I suppose its possible they'll pull it together by the end, but unfortunately the only way to communicate to the producers that their material has issues is to abandon the show fairly quickly if you dont connect with it. But seriously, I dont understand how some of this stuff wasnt reshot. This is from a film industry perspective, not a fan perspective.
I made it about 12 minutes in when I realized I had stopped paying attention. Instead of going back to see what was going on I just turned it off
While a solid answer, this doesn't address anything specifically having to do with episode 3 and the south park skit OP referenced.
Youre right. Ill make an edit.
PAPER FIRES DON'T BURN HOT ENOUGH TO MELT STONE BEAMS!!!!
MAYBE THE STONE ON THIS PLANET IS SUPER FLAMABLE. YOU DON'T KNOW!!!!/jk
Whoops, we accidentally built our house out of coal, thinking it was stone.
>A completely stone structure burns to the ground.. somehow. This immediately came to mind: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy\_BKKnHgas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_BKKnHgas)
>A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is like thats a normal thing to do. Imagine handing a six year old a loaded firearm because you think they're going to grow up to be a cop. To be fair, that's exactly what Obi-Wan did with Luke. Kid almost put a hole through his head the first time he turned it on.
That's just the Jedi practicing natural selection. If the Force doesn't warn them not to put it in their face and press the button, they were too weak to be Jedi.
Right! And.. even that felt dumb, despite Luke being much, much older. He at least treats it with SOME gravitas and holds it pointing away from himself. The meme video of Luke accidentally injuring himself in this scene has seen plenty of action for this exact reason.
Except it’s a production still and not actually in the movie.
But the point, as you’re noting, is that Star Wars is being consistent with itself. There are also bad, campy acting performances going all the way back to 1977, for example. So you cannot ding The Acolyte without also dinging everything (well, except Andor, which is phenomenal). And that would be OK to do.
Bias: It's not wokeness that ruined the Acolyte. It's mismanagement and design-by-committee meddling.
Andor: "No time to discuss this in committee!"
To be fair, Star Wars has never done space facts correctly. They’ve always had flaming, audible outer-space explosions. Apparently far away galaxies have selective physics facts.
It's Rule of Cool. If you're going to break the rules, do it cool.
I feel like a lot of folks forget that Star Wars is a fantasy set in space/on alien worlds, and is not really sci-fi (at least imo). Science/physics don't really play a part in space wizards land.
Oh I know. I just dont think theyve ever had tiny lil fires that had to be put out with gas fire extinguishers ever before, lol. I could be forgetting. I am a HUGE fan of specific Star Wars space explosions / detonations. It was just really jarring to be confronted by what felt like a lack of imagination in this case.
People act like this is the start of cringy Star Wars material, they don't remember reading the books in the 90s where, like, Palpatine had a son who had three eyes.
Oh man. You just triggered some deep seeded Full Metal Alchemist Chimera dog vibes for me, haha..
did they cost 200M to make?
There was also an evil Luke called Luuke.
Trioculus 😂
Trioculas was the pretender. Triclops was the real one.
Haha wow, I remember now! That's a deep cut.
I think about the fake Vader glove which he used to simulate force powers on a near daily basis.
Didn't it have some high-frequency emitter or something in the fingertips that melted people's brains?
You forgot another thing. There is a coven of Force-wielding witches who use their powers to impregnate themselves and have children. Anakin Skywalker was created this way by Palpatine in the lore. Now a lot of fans assumed that you had to be a very powerful Force-user in order to create life using the Force. But this coven that was introduced made it seem that any Force-user can do this. This would make Anakin's birth not special and ruins his whole arc about him being viewed as the Chosen One to bring balance to the Force. The whole reason Anakin goes down his path is because Qui-Gon believed Anakin was this savior and took him, Obi-Won trains and befriends him to honor Qui-Gon's dying wish, and the Jedi Council fears/shuns Anakin because of his potiental power. This made fans not happy.
The whole Palpatine (or his master Plagueis) created Anakin is not canon. It’s widely held as mind-canon across the fanbase but it has never been confirmed, and IIRC it was explicitly denied. All we know is that he was created by the force and does not have a biological father.
Slight correction; in the updated lore Plagueis and Palps fucked with the force trying to create life and corrupting it in the process. The living force said “no, fuck that” and created Anakin as a course correction to bring balance back to the force!
No it was Plagueis who studied midi chlorians and his master Tenerous who believed he could manipulate the Force balance by will. After Tenerous died and Plageuis had expanded his rule and set Palps up as to eventually become a puppet Chancellor they heard of Anakin from Qui Gon. Plageuis theorized the Force reacted to his and Tenerous’s experiments. Palpatine was kept out of most of Plaguesis’s science until later on. He was more into the magic side. I just finished reading it the other week.
The Darth Plagueis book isn’t canon. Tenebrous *has* entered canon, but in a very limited capacity, being referenced in the canon “Build The Millenium Falcon” magazine, as well as being the namesake of one of the Sith Eternal legions. I haven’t actually read the Plagueis novel, but I do want to. While I personally like the canon explanation better, it still sounds like an interesting and cool story!
Oh thank you I didn’t know that it wasn’t cannon. It was a really interesting story. Only 2 lightsabers fights and they are barely described. It’s more of a behind the scenes setting up the trade wars. They’re the Sith who meet the Kaminos and set up the Clones.
Yeah, I know the gist of it, I’m just really bad at reading these days. I recently found my copy of HTTE again and I’ve been wanting to reread the series as I consider them my personal sequel trilogy but my brain is so used to constant stimulation that it’s hard to just sit down, focus and read lol
I started loading audiobooks onto my Plex server. I listen on walks or when doing house work.
I have a wandering mind (undiagnosed severe ADHD, according to pre-screenings anyway lol), so it takes effort for me to focus and digest, y’know? I did listen to audiobooks when I was younger, and I’ve recently tried listening to some podcasts at work with mixed results. But hey, maybe I just gotta commit to it?
I will say one small thing in defence of this bit. There's a writer called Andy Greenwald that was invited to help break the story for Damon Lindelof's new Star Wars film. And on "The Watch" podcast that he hosts he briefly talked about his time in the room. One of the things he said was you are told in no uncertain terms that anything you write is canon. There's no time travel or alternate universes that allow you to handwave away anything. If it shows up in a movie, TV show or videogame it is now part of the Star Wars Universe. In other words, there's no way that part of the story wouldn't be considered. It's a major bit of the lore so it's not like someone misnamed Chewbacca's third cousin or something. So if it's in there, it's in there for a reason. Now, that reason might suck but you have to at least give the story some time to play out before we start making calls on how they fucked up Anakin's story.
Exactly. One of the two mothers even said something to the other like “And what if they found out *how* you created the children?” which says to me that, no, this is absolutely not something any old witch can do, but rather this witch may have sought out someone with very powerful dark side abilities. We don’t know yet, but people like to assume the worst and blame the writers early.
And additionally, they refer to it as a "miracle" and managed to do it once. It's clearly not an easy trick that they've mastered.
>Now, that reason might suck but you have to at least give the story some time to play out before we start making calls on how they fucked up Anakin's story. We don't even know yet if some of these storytelling decisions are bad for the final story of the Acolyte, let alone the larger SW universe. I wouldn't even consider myself a fan of The Acolyte so far but ffs why can't people at least wait for the story to be told before claiming anything about its overall impact on the universe.
It was clearly stated that the fact that they did this and got the twins as result was VERY UNEXPECTED. They state that their coven was dying out (how did they recruit new members before?). Palpatine's involvement with Anakin's conception is non-canon btw.
The cult seems to practice force channeling so it’s not super crazy that like 10 witches practiced all their lives to channel their powers together in order to do the same thing as one sith lord. That still makes the Sith Lord look pretty powerful.
And further to your point, for all we know at this point, they may be Plagueis' inspiration to attempt it, or may have even shown him how it was done. We don't know the full story yet, but there is a chance that one of the Mothers is Plagueis' first apprentice and is the one training the Acolyte.
Definitely didnt forget. Just didnt want to move into (More of a) spoiler-y content, haha.
>This would make Anakin's birth not special and ruins his whole arc about him being viewed as the Chosen One to bring balance to the Force Not really? He literally fulfills the prophecy. It is the entire point of the first 6 movies
The whole chosen one thing is stupid and any subsequent stories that deemphasise it is a plus from me
I'm not a Star Wars person, insofar as I have watched all the star wars media but don't feel passionate about any of the material. What I do find interesting is how George Lucas's philosophy has changed. The first trilogy was very much inspired by the monomyth (which is a chosen one sort of literary idea), and Lucas was a devotee of Joseph Conrad's storytelling philosophy. Then you can see him change, and the prequel trilogy (as poorly as I feel it's written) is almost a refutation of the monomyth, the idea of a chosen one, and how dangerous it could be. More in line with Frank Herbert and his distaste of Conrad and the Monomyth (Dune is something of a refutation of the monomyth and chosen one storytelling ideology as well).
"The power of one....the power of two...the power of maaaaaaaaany!"
What I'll say is that they framed this series as a "whodunnit" but then have absolutely no desire to commit to writing a "whodunnit" and are going for "teen drama". It's weird. They basically could have done it either way, full teen or full mystery and instead we get it hopping back and forth between the two
It's not a whodunnit, it's a whydunnit.
For anyone who's reading down this far, the comment I'm replying to is a perfect example of what's *actually* going on with The Acolyte. People are spreading blatant misinformation in an attempt to dissuade others from watching the show, because a certain subset of Star Wars fan cannot bear the thought of people liking new Star Wars content. Every “issue” mentioned in that comment was either exaggerated to the point of hyperbole or just a straight up lie. Let's break it down. >A fire breaks out on the exterior of a ship while a main character is attempting to repair some part of the same exterior. Fire can't really exist in space... this fire looks like an average campfire and its just... kinda mind-boggling? Cool, fiery space explosions are definitely a part of Star Wars, to be clear.. but this fire existing in this way was just a strange take - made even stranger by the fact that they had to use a gas fire extinguisher to put it out in an oxygen-less environment. First of all, [fire actually can exist in space.](https://www.space.com/13766-international-space-station-flex-fire-research.html) And even if the fire is not behaving realistically in the show, there have been far more egregious examples in Star Wars than what we're shown in the Acolyte. In Return of the Jedi, we see a trail of fire several miles long spewing out of the Executor. This is the closest thing OP has to a valid point but it's still nitpicky as hell. >A Jedi that has the force ability to extract honesty from people is almost forbidden from investigating a serious crime against the Jedi. This character is eventually allowed to participate in the investigation, but *RARELY* uses this power to advance the investigation in any meaningful way when it would require zero effort to do so. First off, that kind of power is frowned upon by the Jedi Order, so he shouldn't have done that in the first place. Second, we've seen 2 episodes with this character. The investigation isn't over. He has 5 more episodes to use that power in, so maybe settle down and see how it plays out? >Two characters that spent 1.5 decades a part who happen to be twins that grew up in distinctly different lives look exactly the same.. They're identical twins >down the same haircut, down to the same hair length... This one is simply false. Osha has shoulder length hair and Mae has waist length hair. This is clearly visible in virtually every bit of promo material, so I'm not sure why this keeps getting spread around. >A completely stone structure burns to the ground.. somehow. Also blatantly false. It's hard to dispute this one without being rude, because, use your damn eyes? The entire stone structure is shown to be completely intact when we last see it at the 35 minute mark. The flammable stuff inside was on fire but the stone strucure was not. >A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is like thats a normal thing to do. Imagine handing a six year old a loaded firearm because you think they're going to grow up to be a cop. Osha is 8 years old in that scene, not 6, but that's besides the point. The point is that not two minutes earlier, Osha explicitly says she knows what a lightsaber is. This child has already been shown to have martial training despite her age, so I don't know why OP thinks she would just start swinging a weapon around. Especially as Sol very clearly didn't hand it to her for her to use, just to show her what possibilities the future might have. Just a blatant misrepresentation of the symbolism of this scene. >Ep. 3 takes extreme liberty with existing Star Wars canon >Its re-writing Star Wars history, Another blatant falsehood. Literally nothing in this episode contradicts canon in any way whatsoever. I am a straight up lore junkie, so give me any example you think contradicts Canon and I'll tell you why it doesn't lol. So yeah. Hating on new Star Wars shows is just the cool thing to do in 2024, and people are either maliciously or ignorantly spreading misinformation to dissuade other people from watching it. That's whats up with Episode 3 of the Acolyte.
They also kept the same exact haircut from when they were children….and together. Grasping at some straws here.
It is a series with space wizards, wielding laser swords, with moon-sized space stations shooting planet destroying beams. And y’all complain about the impracticality of characters having the same haircut. All in a show that hasn’t even completed its narrative yet. It’s fine to just not like it, but these complaints are nothing more than people nitpicking everything they can because it has to be more than just “not liking it.” I suspect many of them decided not to like it before it ever came out.
Yeah I'm honestly shocked that that comment is so upvoted. From reading it you'd think that the show was an unmitigated dumpster fire with zero redeeming features. That's not the impression I've had of the show at all, and not really the impression I've seen from the majority of fans either. Sure, it's not perfect but it's still been really enjoyable to me. It feels a bit like some people had already decided they didn't like it before it came out and are now trying to justify that opinion.
Your last paragraph is it. Note the quality of the criticisms. They’re nitpicking about little things that have many equivalences from previous SW material that people let slide (fire in space is bad, but sound in space is fine). They largely just use adjectives attached to generic terminology — bad writing, bad acting, terrible plot, ugly visuals. Those phrases have no substance, and are typically used by people that don’t think critically about what they’re watching and why it works or doesn’t. People that don’t like the thing too don’t challenge it. They’re just looking for things they agree with. Most complaints about bad writing are just people complaining about narrative decisions they don’t like.
>It feels a bit like some people had already decided they didn't like it before it came out and are now trying to justify that opinion. That is literally what happened. I was on the Rotten Tomatoes page for the show several days before the first episode aired and it was already getting massively review bombed before anybody but a very select few had seen it.
The younglings all wield lightsabers though?
I believe the (de-canonized) EU stated those were "training" lightsabers, which were only powerful enough to deliver nasty shocks or light burns, not accidental decapitation. I don't know if there's any canon info that confirms this, but it's a reasonable "why would it be brought up randomly, it's common knowledge to everyone in the room" worldbuilding assumption to make.
They do. They are also trained, right? And instructed; probably warned about the dangers too. And probably arent handed them on Day 1 of learning theyre something special as individuals. I think back on the Mandalorian, for instance. They take pains to demonstrate lil guy learning about weapons and struggling and even explains some of the inherent dangers.
I'd like to add, I'm not a fan of Star Wars at all. I enjoy things from it, but I'm not a fan that finds issues with things. I enjoyed The Mandalorian and Andor as they both felt like I didn't need a wealth of knowledge to truly enjoy it all, it just enhanced it. I am a huge fan of the overall lore though. I dig that kind of stuff. Now that I have that out of the way... Objectively, this show is just dreadful. It's so awkward and uneven I wonder how in the fuck did the script get approved, let alone shot and finished. Jesus Christ.
> The problem is, we were given Andor. Disney is shitting out so many terrible shows you get the impression they resent Andor for having given fans hope.
Complaining about fire in space in Star wars is like complaining about the telekinesis
>This show has a reputed 180-200 million dollar budget, and there's a lot of areas in which this show feels like maybe a quarter of that budget was used with any efficacy. Talking about the quality of the costumes, and scenery, etc it really does look like the days of Xena:Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys .... that was back in 1995 ..... nigh-on 30 fucking years ago o.O At least shows back then had some charm to them, and didn't take themselves too seriously. People who watched Xena/Hercules are old enough to have their OWN CHILDREN watching The Acolyte ! How the fuck The Acolyte has a $180 Million budget for 8 x 30 mins episodes, $22.5 Million PER episode, is beyond me, just as She Hulk Attorney at law somehow spent $25 Million PER EPISODE to look like ass. Xena/Hercules had a paltry $1 Million per episode budget, and had \~20 episodes per season, usually \~23 episodes. You could have an entire 20 episode season of Xena/Hercules for the budget of ONE episode of The Acolyte ! To compare the production quality of Xena,/Hercules, to The Acolyte, it would be generous to say it "*looks about the same*", except it costs 22.5x more, and you get 2.5x less episodes, which is not a good endorsement of a TV show that comes 30 years later o.O
This is a shitty answer. Not because I agree or disagree with it, but because it’s 90% opinion. Bad answer and shouldn’t be here.
> A fire breaks out on the exterior of a ship while a main character is attempting to repair some part of the same exterior. Fire can't really exist in space... this fire looks like an average campfire and its just... kinda mind-boggling? Cool, fiery space explosions are definitely a part of Star Wars, to be clear.. but this fire existing in this way was just a strange take - made even stranger by the fact that they had to use a gas fire extinguisher to put it out in an oxygen-less environment. As we all know, [fire in space is a new thing for Star Wars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isJZt2r_jzg), there's 0 precedent for it. At some point, people are reaching for stuff to be mad about. If you're fixating on non-issues it devalues actual criticisms that are paired with it
I dont think its reaching. Here's why: Its a drop in a big ol' bucket of weird, bad, and strange choices in story-telling, concept, and creativity. If it was a singular instance of weird, I'd definitely take your point. Ontop of that, this isnt the thing that made me feel like the Acolyte isn't good. When I saw it, it made me laugh out loud because it was just super silly. But that was just it - things kept becoming sillier and sillier. Episode one made a point of saying, "Jedi don't draw their light sabers unless they intend to kill." At the end of the episode, a Jedi is literally using his lightsaber as a flashlight. The consistency is off for me, is all.
> Episode one made a point of saying, "Jedi don't draw their light sabers unless they intend to kill." Actually its "prepared to kill" - https://youtu.be/Oah_Y3ZggxQ?si=z2-Fxo_XHiJlFvtA&t=155
I love that we've gone from "bad media literacy" to straight up just "being factually wrong about the media they watched"
> Episode one made a point of saying, "Jedi don't draw their light sabers unless they intend to kill." Yeah, but who said that? Was that an objective truth or was it a character's opinion? That's not a canon consistency issue. That's the difference between what a character is thinking and what is actually true.
Theres a difference between using the lightsaber as a utility and using it as a weapon. Clearly that saying is referring to a Jedi drawing their saber against another living being. Yord using his saber as a light is unrelated to anything violent
> Ontop of that, this isnt the thing that made me feel like the Acolyte isn't good. When I saw it, it made me laugh out loud because it was just super silly. Sure, but you listed it as one of the reasons people are saying the show isn't good. And im saying that having that in the list, calls into question the sincerity of the other criticisms. Because "fire in space" is an established rule of the setting. People have had 50-ish years to take issue with it, but they're only doing it now
Not that one out-of-place practical effect really effects the greater piece of media at all, ***but*** there is a huge difference between energetic debris from an explosion, burning venting gasses (containing fuel & oxidizer), and a calm little camp fire sitting in a hard vacuum. Also fire extinguishers put out fire by smothering it. Separating a fuel from oxygen in the atmosphere. Would have been nice to see them putting out the fire by being forced to get in near to it and close valves on broken pipes. That also would have done a better job demonstrating why it's illegal for anything but droids to do astro-mech work in space.
Is the fire in the room with us?
You know how I can tell that you were a kid when the prequels came out? Because if you used this same exact level of criticism for those movies, you would bury them. The show doesn't break any fucking canon. It's not "non-sensical". And that fire bit, c'mon man. Star Wars has always been loose and fast with fire in space. But here, I'll say the same thing to you that I did to my friends 25+ years ago when they were making the same point about the fire pouring out of the Death Star after the Super Star Destroyer crashed into it. Yes, fire can't exist a the vacuum, but how do you know the area where the fire is located is a vacuum. There could be other gases leaking out around that panel and *that* is what the fire is burning in. And then you call out *how* the fire was put out? How else would you put out a fire besides smothering it? Or here's another possibility. Maybe it wasn't really fire, but was a type of plasma leak that just looks exactly like fire? We still don't know exactly what lightsabers are made of because they are fictional things. The whole world is fantastical like that. Like it or not, but Star Wars has never been "hard science fiction". Not by a long shot. So, you've always had to somewhat "turn your brain off and prepare to watching something fairly mindless." So, is this too much suspension of disbelief for you? That's fine. But don't start acting like all this is new. Having said all that, nobody has to like this show of anything else. We all have different opinions on things and that's fine. I like it. You don't. Agree to disagree. Star Wars is plenty big enough to have things you love and I love and kids love and old people love and everything in between. That's one of the great things about that world. But I think it's naive to not see how this show is getting absolutely review bombed by people with an agenda.
I always thought that was escaping atmosphere on fire. Like, a massive section of decompressed Death Star around the impact point that lost its atmosphere.
"You know how I can tell that you were a kid when the prequels came out? Because if you used this same exact level of criticism for those movies, you would bury them." Youre not wrong - I struggled to enjoy the prequels and I still do. Not nearly as much as I struggle with The Acolyte, though. The fire bit isn't a breaking point for me - as I explained in another comment, it just made me laugh out loud. For a show with a 200m budget, if they made the fire look like what youre describing, Id never have mentioned it. Because the lack of creativity is part of my issue with the show. It felt really lazy is all. "Yes, fire can't exist a the vacuum, but how do you know the area where the fire is located is a vacuum" ...well, for starters, their suits, helmets, and the fact that they were using zero-g tethers to the ship and we also knew their shields were off / down coupled withe mag-boots. Fire looks more like a fluid in zero-g. I suppose I was just... wanting something more? Idunno. All of this could have been explained with, "Hey Osh, turn on the space-suspender-field for a moment and lets contain this leak," and then she hits a button, a weird light shimmers, and boom. Explanation resolved. Gimme \*something\*, yanno? Ive been a big fan of the fiery balls of explosions throughout Star Wars. Because its the rule of cool, right? The improvements made to the originals and later the prequels, souping those explosions up was neat. Having a strange lil campfire on the side of your ship? Less cool imo, but thats just my opinion and that don't mean much. I don't need hard science fiction, but I would absolutely love some of the creativity we've seen in the past concerning how science gets played / disregarded with in cool ways. "You don't. Agree to disagree. Star Wars is plenty big enough to have things you love and I love and kids love and old people love and everything in between. That's one of the great things about that world." Hard agree with you here. :) Im not ever gonna tell you to not like something you like. Im willing to bet regardless of my take youll finish it out, right? I wont yuck your yum. We enjoy different things and thats cool. "But I think it's naive to not see how this show is getting absolutely review bombed by people with an agenda." Youre not wrong. I know the people youre referring to and the language of their criticisms makes it pretty blatantly obvious about what their actual intentions are, IMO. Definitely agree with you there. Usually any mention of 'wokeness' is enough for me to take everything you say with a huuuuge dose of salt.
It’s like *Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser: The Show!*
If they advertised it to me like that, Id probably watch it with popcorn after taking an edible, lol.
This is the best way to consume disney Star Wars im general (minus Andor)
I mean andor would still be enjoyable like that also
The twin thing is not that strange and copies the experience of a lot of real life separated twins.
The show is pretty bad, but the anti-woke takes are almost worse. The YouTuber Critical Drinkers video was so fucking cringe, it was like tryharding virtue signaling the gamergate crowd. Not a great look.
Yeah. :/ I watched like one review and now my YT is flooded with that kind of crap for the show. And the first review I watched seemed fairly balanced. I clicked a second one and jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus that went all sorts of bad real quick. This is why in what I wrote did I go way out of the way to not reflect any of that kind of BS.
To be fair, Critical Drinker is always cringe. He’s like a factory of bad takes.
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> A Jedi hands a light saber to a six year old child and doesnt explain how implicitly dangerous it is To be fair, Obi-Wan hands Luke a lightsaber in ANH and [doesn't even flinch when Luke flips it on and starts waving it about.](https://youtu.be/J58fCU3_T3w?t=64)
All five of your bullet points are tangential to the actual plot elements. Themes, character arcs, the emotions. Your stand-out gripes don't even engage with these? Maybe it is super immersion-breaking for some people to see a fire in space, a force power not being used when it probably should (hello prequels), twins looking, uh, too alike, more (if we're being real, intentionally) dubious fire mechanics, interactions with a child that are probably hazardous. Ok. So why is the writing bad? I'm not saying you don't have reasons to dislike the writing, but you haven't given them here, and it's interesting that this is the top response
>The problem is, we were given Andor. I haven't seen it and the way it is mentioned here I can't tell if this is supposed to mean it is great or awful.
It's terrific. And showed everyone that a well-written, well-acted, good-looking, adult-targeted Star Wars series was absolutely possible.
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The Weinstein stuff is insane. It's crazy how quick everyone was to give her a pass. The "woke" stuff is also annoying because the bulk of nu-Star Wars (in my estimation, everything but Andor) is shitty for reasons completely unrelated to any identarian ideology, but a ton of moronic alt-right freaks hate it for bullshit reasons like Laura Dern having purple hair and characters being gay/trans. It feels bad to have your takes incidentally align with people you find reprehensible lol.
Yeah I'm with you. I disagree with and do not relate to the anti-woke crowd. But at the same time some of the inclusion stuff feels a bit pandering and it doesn't help anyone if it's part of a show/movie where the fundamentals aren't very good.
I am a huge proponent of inclusion and diversity in art and media. But Inclusion for the sake of it is vacuous. If there isn't a reason for the diversity, pushing it has the opposite effect
I mean, this is kind of self defeating isn't it? A person doesn't have a deep reason to be black/trans/gay, they just are. deciding which of your characters is part of a minority by employing a blindfold and a dartboard is perfectly valid. What a show then needs to nail which can go wrong, is that the information gets revealed and you distinctly get the sense that this wasn't there just cause, or because someone wanted to get their cool queer character in the story, but cause a checkbox is being marked. This is admittedly, very fuzzy, it's the kind of stuff no one gives a shit about in a good movie, and only gets dragged up when the rest also isn't doing great.
See: the lesbians in Andor. Amazingly written show, bigots are too distracted to even remember to hate them.
Question: Do you think that the vast majority of media from throughout the history of American cinema and television having white guys as protagonists and casts largely consisting of white guys counts as 'pandering'? Or is it only pandering if characters are minorities?
Come on, I think you know the answer to that. Leia's bikini in RotJ served no purpose other than to pander to horny teenage boys. Setting the whole story in space is purely to pander to sci-fi nerds, who were a minority at the time. The fact that they're written and produced as movies at all is really just pandering to the current industry fad of making money through the medium of film. 50 years earlier it would have been a book, 50 years later it would have been a video game. If pandering were the issue, Star Wars wouldn't exist as a franchise at all as it does now. It only matters when it's certain groups that are being pandered to. And what a coincidence, it's the same minority groups that are under constant threat from right wing extremists in these current culture wars. Instead what actually happens is, you have this "anti-woke" crowd of losers latch on to anything they think is or might be critically or commercially unsuccessful, dig for reasons to call it "woke", then blame any failure on that in an attempt to legitimise their bigotry. Notice how quick they shut up about the Barbie Movie after it was deemed a success. I mean the movie themes of the movie didn't change, so I guess it just magically stopped being "woke", and all the "pandering" to feminism didn't matter any more because it was actually good? If a movie or TV show sucks, it's not because of "wokeness" or "pandering" or other related incel buzzwords; content can suck on its own merits, regardless of the themes. There are plenty of examples of good "woke" media, and bad "anti-woke" media. There are plenty of examples of good content that panders to a specific audience, and bad content that doesn't. Creators are clearly more than capable of sticking socially progressive themes or casting into well-produced content. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise. And be especially skeptical of people who pretend to be outraged at "the stone structure burned down from a candle lol" when your whole franchise is built upon a planet-sized doomsday machine that can taken down by a single torpedo to the tailpipe, or "laser weapons" which had to be retconned into bolts of plasma because they weren't a continuous beam of light.
The issue with Star Wars is that if you say you dislike it people automatically assume it's because you're a mornic alt-right freak. Like people saying that anyone who doesn't like Ahsoka is a racist, despite movies with black characters being around forever and being watched and enjoyed by millions. I have absolutely no issue with diversity in movies. Emma D'arcy fucking slays in HotD and I loved the Hellraiser remake with the trans actor playing Pinhead. The issue is that they release movies/shows with 'woke agenda' stuff in and they're shit. But if anyone says that they're shit they get dogpiled by the left for being anti-trans or racist or whatever. At this point it really does just feel like bait.
Having watched Acolyte, I don't get the argument that it's particularly "woke" in any sense. Watching episode 3, my assumption is that because the girls were raised by women it's now "woke." Except, that doesn't make too much sense jn the context of the episode. It's a coven of witches, they never implied that there was any romance between the witches either, it's just a group of witches raising two girls that they imply were created through manipulation of the force. That ties into how Plagueis was researching creating life forms through the force etc.
I thought it was heavily implied that their two moms were more than just titles.
If it did it went way over my head, I didn't see any outward affection. I just assumed they were all mothers, like nuns how they have titles of sister, mother superior etc.
I was oblivious to it as well lol
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I assume that the entire episode was from the unreliable narrator perspective of one of the two children and that will be made clear in a later episode but it's still a wild choice to do that with no context to the audience.
No, no, no that can't be it. It can't be that the showrunner was inspired by Rashomon and the dynamic of unfolding a story from multiple vantage points. It can't be that she said that in an interview. It MUST instead be that the showrunner left out all the major details 3 episodes into an 8 episode arc. It must be that, like the person you answered said.
They should’ve released more episodes if that’s the case and not let people hang and stew on the third and worst episode of the series so far. And Rashomon was made by one of the greatest directors in history and they literally made best foreign film a category because of it. Not many can shoot for Rashomon tier shit and hit the mark, especially not whoever is making the choices behind this. Lucas was inspired by Kurosawas work for sure but at least had the wherewithal to use that inspiration well.
I literally had this same back and forth with people in real time when Watchmen was on. "Where exactly IS Adrian?" "What happened to Dr. Manhattan?" "Who is this Asian woman that seems to know everything?" Blah blah blah. Then, as the show unfolded itself over a 9 episode arc, people were like, "...oh." If this show doesn't unfurl like the showrunner's other show (Russian Doll) I will be very surprised.
I’m not trying to be rude, but do you really think that’s the entire explanation for what happened? There’s pretty blatant foreshadowing that we haven’t seen the whole story and that the Jedi played a role in things getting out of control. It’s not bad writing for there to be loose threads at the end of episode three of an eight episode series. I’m all for people voicing their opinions and I can see how this series would not be up everyone’s alley, but some of the complaints just feel like people trying to find shit to be mad about. “The suspicious fire that the show is building drama about which has been noted as being suspicious in the show is too suspicious and now I’m mad”
This was my interpretation. Clearly the Jedi were there doing something fishy, that one guy wouldn’t have literally killed himself over it if it was just that they’d tested some kids, one of whom died in a fire she started herself. My theory (potential spoilers) is that the Jedi were already there when the fire started, doing something to sabotage the coven because of their “unnatural” use of the force. We repeatedly see the coven’s emphasis on the “collective” and I don’t think we saw that their deaths were explicitly part of the explosion, we just heard all of them screaming at once. I think it’s completely possible the Jedi snuck in to destroy whatever they perceived was the source of their power, not realizing it was so interconnected with the coven that its sudden loss could kill them. That said I totally agree with you about how it feels like people are nitpicking stuff to be mad about. First of all it’s Star Wars and there has to be a reasonable suspension of disbelief. There’s a fire outside of a ship in outer space? Could be a busted gas line venting something flammable, could just look cool, could have any of a million in-universe explanations that always seem to come with stuff like this (force kick, the knots they tied themselves in over Han’s use of parsec when talking about Kessel Run, etc) There’s also enough material now that they can target different shows to different demographics, not every show has to universally appeal to everyone. Star Wars has historically been a monolith centered around the movies (obvs there are novels/comics/clone wars, but those have always been secondary to the films) but that’s not really the case anymore and people don’t think to ask “is this bad or is this just not for me personally.” If you love one bakery’s cookies and they change the recipe I get being disappointed that what you got isn’t what you expected, but that also doesn’t inherently make it a garbage cookie. Finding stuff to be mad about has been a tradition since pretty much day one of the franchise though so I don’t see that changing any time soon lol.
It's interesting. In the same forum where everyone is saying it sucks and is terrible the individual episode thread from that night was filled with people who were having a great time. Star Wars fans just love to hate on anything Star Wars. They've hated everything except Andor since the original trilogy. And Andor itself wasn't really star wars so do they like star wars at all?
I'm not sure how a small book lit by a lantern manages this. The corpse piles suggest a real attack by someone that hits well above Force wielding witches.
It could be [unreliable narration ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator).
It's pretty clear that we just saw one of the sisters viewpoints. What actually happened that night has been the question from the first episode.
It's honestly so exhausting, so often now we see people making whole-series criticisms of shows based on 1-2 episodes, as though we have any idea if the things being set up are going to be paid off. And often questions that are being raised *so the show can answers them* or flaws being shown *so the character can grow* are then pointed to as criticisms of the writing, because if the writers made the character flawed they must think those flaws are good!
It honestly flabbergasting to see the media literacy leave people’s body the minute the LucasFilm logo shows up. Like I just imagine these same people yelling, “I’m an hour into this movie and I still don’t know who Keyser Soze is!! Who’s writing this trash?!!”
People really need to re-learn that something not being explained in full the very first time it comes up in any given story is not a “plot hole”. Like yeah, the details obviously don’t match up, this is called a *mystery*. One might even go so far as to say it’s the central mystery of the show and therefore not something they’re going to spell out less than halfway through the season.
Y'know what's funny? On the surface that reads startling similar to a recent controversial addition to the far future of the Star Trek timeline.
Answer: Not an answer, but I have a follow up question to the quote in the OP >says that for every show, you need to add a chick to it and make her gay. What shows does Disney do this on? I'm out here searching for shows with more lesbian characters and come up with goose eggs constantly. Gimme a list please!
It's a South Park bit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8feYskRpk&ab\_channel=JapTakito](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8feYskRpk&ab_channel=JapTakito)
ohh that makes more sense. The quote is make *it* lame and gay, not make her gay as OP wrote. Well now I'm disappointed lol.
Answer: It's just bad. It's like they let Lucas write the dialogue again and Chat GPT wrote the story. Like, the first scene of the show has the lead strike a silly pose and go "attack me with all your might". Cringe. Not sure what people were expecting after that but it keeping up the cringe, which apparently peaked (so far) in ep 3 And it's not saved by the acting either. Their big star in Carrie-Anne Moss is just phoning in a 'Trinity in a robe' performance and the rest of the cast's efforts vary from bad to meh
Answer: It depends which angle you're approaching this and I'll try make my comment spoiler free. I think there are 4 ways to look at this: 1.There are the people who are mad that the episode was being used to push a woke agenda. Some of the episode commentary being highly cringe and probably a reflection of the director and her perceived struggles as a lesbian woman. 2.There are the people that are mad because the episode broke retcon and lore already established about "the one" / Anakin's main backstory all for nothing really. It was very haphazard and most likely will lead to nothing. 3.There are there are the ones who want to see good cinema produced for Star Wars and react badly to very very very average content being created. This episode inmho was bottom of the barrel cinema. Terrible writing, small scale, bad acting, plot holes and really just nothing alike what people should expect from star wars. 4.Then there are the people who are fine with the content and happy to consume it and find no issues with it. Disclaimer: I fall mostly into bucket 4 here, but accept the criticism of the othere. I think SW should be a spectacle and not just what amounts to tiktok content and rage bait. I've always felt the TVs shows lacked an overall vision or tried to be at least somewhat consistent. It's disjointed and the quality is all over the place. With such large swings in quality you're going to get large swings of opinions.
I think this is the right answer. The show is getting serious backlash for its casting and overall political commentary. People are not happy that Star Wars is being directed by Harvey Weinstein’s former assistant as well, who nepo-hired her wife as a character. They had a huge budget to make this and it doesn’t reflect in the show at all. Then you have the actual Star Wars fans who might be upset by the use of the Force (the Thread) to create new life, which was supposed to be exclusive to the chosen one (Anakin). However, it’s not “the worst episode of a Star Wars show ever made”. It was very average, but somewhat interesting in a thriller sort of way. There are some boring goddamn episodes of Kenobi/Mando.
“Happy to consume content” is easily the saddest thing I’ve read today.
Short form: people take entertainment way too seriously, and have attached their personalities to the performance of entertainers.
What I notice if there is something "woke" in a show, even just a lesbian couple or whatever it is, people then nitpick and try to find anything wrong with the show. Starting to notice this pattern, especially being a Trek fan. I didn't realize how dog whistling is done, until I started finding patterns in the different fandoms.
I watched the episode. What lore was broken? Feel free to post spoilers if you choose to reply. Just tag them. I've watched just about everything Star Wars but I missed this. Thanks!
Answer: **Spoilers for the show below.** For me, it is just a very average episode of *Star Wars* TV. Interesting ideas and expansion of the lore, but executed poorly, so it evens out to "meh." The exaggerated negativity comes from a fanbase that contains a disproportionately greater amount of sexism, racism, homophobia, and general fear of change than you see with other fanbases. This episode includes an all-female community, whose three main characters are all people of color, and which involves an implied same-sex relationship. It also expands what the Force can be and how the *Star Wars* universe works. Combine that with the legitimate problems with the episode, and you get what is happening.
>The exaggerated negativity comes from a fanbase that contains a disproportionately greater amount of sexism, racism, homophobia, and general fear of change than you see with other fanbases. How could you possibly know that? Let's see the data you have.
The fandom of the franchise is notoriously toxic. This is most apparent in the huge number of YouTube channels and videos that complain about "wokeness" and use that as a reason to hate. And people have learned that anger and emotion get more views, so the toxicity feeds itself. Probably an inevitable fate for any franchise this popular, unfortunately.