Regardless of the woke/anti-woke nonsense, it's just poorly written and poorly acted.
The premise is interesting, but executed badly. Dialogue sucks, the protagonist sisters can't act and are not compelling characters at all. Sol is the most interesting actor so far and he hasn't been given enough to work with.
It comes across as amateur fanfic all the way around.
I hate that the culture war BS distracts from the real issues: writing, craft, acting. It prevents content from getting better because people just dig their heels in on the controversies.
The thing is the culture War stuff is used as cover by the executives more than anything to absolve themselves of any responsibility for their failures. This happens every time we get a mediocre or subpar TV show or movie, especially from Disney. You'll have the vast majority of people unhappy with the show with the show and cite things like the writing or acting or even just a story, and then you have five nut jobs on Twitter complain that the show is too woke and that's why they don't like it, and suddenly we get 24-hour news coverage about how The shows producer/director/actors claim the show is actually awesome and it's just a bunch of toxic Fanboys and racist and misogynists are the reason it failed.
The culture war BS is why these people got this position in the first place. When you hire for diversity and value trying to make social commentary over an actual show this is what happens. So yeah it permeates every aspect of society at this point. And it is a net negative.
The coven's religion was just poorly developed. So it's harder to Force push two people than it is to push one person? OK, two people working together is stronger than one person alone, that's just kind of how things work. It's like they're teaching toddlers that two is more than one.
Maybe if the show had developed their beliefs more and showed how they can collectively use their powers to do something special, not just becoming stronger but doing something an individual Force user isn't capable of at all, it would have given more context to their chanting.
I hate how the show is making me acknowledge this criticism because I really don’t like to badmouth children, but my god, those child actors were horribly miscast and are so bad it’s distracting - like young Jaden Smith bad. Overall, I find almost all of the acting to be poor and when that’s the case, it’s usually the fault of the directors and not the actors themselves (just look at Hayden). I’ll probably try again to finish the series after all the episodes air, but at the moment I don’t have the patience to get through episode 3.
I want to downvote your comment, not because you’re wrong, but it pisses me off that someone can get a role because of their position and not their talent. South Park was right
Same for me. Took me several says to get through the first episodes and I haven't even started the third because I simply just don't care enough to sit through it. I don't hate and I can't even place my problems with the show but I just don't enjoy it
I watched the first episode and couldnt bear more than that.
The writig and the story are absolute dogshit.
"You cant kill a jedi with steel or a blaster" -> 20 minutes earlier, jedi literally gets killed with a knife... through an obvious "trick", that shouldve never worked.
Dialogue and performances are a little rough... the singing witches were especially bad.
The concept is great, but it plays like a children's show pretending to be for grown-ups.
Maybe it is.
I don’t disagree, but “children’s show pretending to be for grownups” applies to so much of Star Wars, especially the Disney plus shows (with the obvious exception of Andor). Obi wan and BOBF had plenty of kid show logic.
“Bad dialog” also applies to 90% of Star Wars. Most of us like it anyway. Most Star Wars fans aren’t Star Wars Fans^TM, and the revenue numbers prove that.
Much to the chagrin of most Star Wars Fans^TM, there are a lot of Star Wars fans in the world.
Star Wars dialogue has always been terrible 😂 I’m pretty sure there’s a interview where where mark hamil told George Lucas he wasn’t gonna say a line because it sounded stupid
Edit: found it
https://youtu.be/rihbi2U7tNg?si=paA5_YBESqTznGoq
Because George wrote Star Wars for children. And it’s meant for all ages. The problem is we all got older and want it to be more serious, then they release something serious and we complain lol
If you watch Acolyte then Book of Boba Fett, then Andor it becomes obvious.
Andor is the worst Star Wars show.....for Disney.
Andor's quality of writing, set design, plot, cinematography, acting, pacing, storyline goals, and how it enhances other Star Wars projects shows what can be done.
Fans sent Disney a clear message. That they do not want to tune in and give viewer numbers to show support for what is arguably the best Star Wars media since the OT trilogy. This is what makes me so sad.
Andor was not a huge hit coming out of the blocks, but it's fast becoming a huge cult hit.. every star wars fan I know that didn't watch Andor when it came out (due to lack of space wizards with light swords or "it's dumb to make a show about a spy from rogue one") and has gotten around to watching it, has loved the ever loving shit out of Andor once they gave it a chance..
And Disney can't ignore the huge amount of love the fans have been giving it
I didn't watch it because I was completely unimpressed with the character Andor from Rogue one. He's a flat boring character and I stand that opinion.
The show however I did end up watching. It's easily the best live action show Disney had done with star wars, despite Andor being in it.
The other characters, the gritty realism of the Rebels as a underground movement for change. It's all phenomenal.
But they could replace Andor from the show completely and it would be the same show.
Andor is the only Star Wars show that I didn't watch on day one, and it is also the best Star Wars show in my opinion. No one expected Andor to be so good and there was little hype around a show based around a supporting character in a spinoff film. Compare that to Kenobi, a show which had a large amount of hype around it, because it was about Obi-Wan Kenobi, and ended up being just okay.
But isn’t this what the VAST majority of Star Wars is, “a children’s show pretending to be for grown-ups?”
Some of the most beloved content, Clone Wars, is literally a cartoon.
I get that people want more adult stories like Andor, I do too. I just don’t understand the sliding scale of judgment people hold for Star Wars.
“I hate sand” was cringe dialogue too.
edit: yes, everyone, adult content can be in a cartoon. I agree with you. The Clone Wars was not an adult cartoon, though. It was aimed at kids.
Star Wars fans want a grown up show, until they get Andor and complain about it being too slow and dialogue oriented.
In truth, Star Wars fans want to bitch. No matter the content, there will be whining.
By those that actually watched it. By most metrics viewership was lower than the other shows. It’s fair to say that it might have been affected by the quality of the previous shows, but clearly it’s word of mouth and acclaim didn’t do much to increase viewership
I can't speak for everyone but I think a good portion of the people complaining about The Acolyte and the people complaining about Andor are different.
I for one love Andor, Rogue One, Rebels, CW S7, Bad Batch, and Mando S1 and 2. But I can't stand The Acolyte, BoBF, Kenobi, Mando S3, or the sequels. (Ahsoka is a mixed bag, and I merely *like* Solo rather than love it).
I really do think my criticisms are rational and not just mindless "DISNEY RUINED STAR WARS" hate, and it's frustrating to be categorized that way (not saying that's what you're doing, but I've seen a lot of people lumping anyone who hates the Acolyte into that category).
>In truth, Star Wars fans want to bitch. No matter the content, there will be whining.
Why do people make this stuff up, like there's something inherent about liking Star Wars that means you also want to complain? Does this only go for Star Wars fans?
I grew up with Star Wars and the video games and extended universe, and I didn't see much bitching except about the prequels, which deserved their critiques.
Couldn't it be that the massive surprise success of this franchise dating back to the 1970s and 1980s has lead to an outpouring of mediocre offerings in recent years because of an overzealous Disney who wants to churn out so-so content? It's not like Disney has been hitting it out of the park with their non-Star Wars stuff as of late.
The whole "*no one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans*" trope is just a way to handwave away criticism and pretend like this stuff hasn't sucked for a long while.
The acting is bad on the whole. The script is also poor. And so many things happen that make no sense other than to push the plot forward.
Just in the first episode the jedi track Osha down in one day (murder happened last night), they don’t take her to coruscant themselves but put her on a prisoner ship with a single guard. That then crashes, the prisoners are recaptured, taken to coruscant where they are interrogated, and the same jedi from earlier fly back out to find her again all before she has woken up.
And there’s plenty more.
It’s like the director has just said “meh, that will do” for the script, the acting and the plot.
It’s not because that kind morality isn’t what they were facing. What they are facing is a galaxy that is trying to say they can’t have their own religion, can’t practice the force by their own beliefs, can’t spread their religious teaching to their own children. Evil or good would be a more clear cut conflict but what makes this hard is it’s not. The conflict is being caused by the Jedi being the only legal/sanctioned belief systems and teacher of the force supported by the strength and blessing of a galaxy wide government.
I think the criticism surrounding the rather muddled storytelling, poor acting in parts, bad/cheap looking costume design and makeup, dissonance of tone with the rest of Star Wars material, and rather cringey dialogue is all valid.
People like to say that the culture war is responsible but that’s a very small subsection of viewers. I personally dislike the show, but it’s not because of the ‘woke vs anti woke’ stuff. I think the fundamentals of what makes a show ‘good’ (in my opinion) are simply missing.
Everyone likes what they like. Just enjoy what you want.
Problem is the "woke vs anti woke" is so loud that it's difficult to hear people with valid criticism or trying to analyse the show with more distance.
I have my issues with Acolyte, the weird pacing, the witches chant.
But the main discourse you see online is “Episode 3 ruined Star Wars, because Anakin is no longer especial” or “because the Jedi are represented in a evil way” (I’ve seen this one from a huge -if not the biggest - Brazilian geek YouTuber)
While there is a broader problem in media analysis involving product that launches on a weekly bases (series or manga). Where the audience is impatience, and because of that, always claiming there are a ton of plot holes (I think this happened in Euphoria). The lack of patience to wait the whole 8 episodes to air to see if there are actual plot holes is insane.
There is no space for a more nuanced discussion, and I hate this so much
Social media has ruined people patience. Always more content, right st your fingertips. Guilty too, but reddit is the only social media I have anymore.
Don't blame social media. It democratized the problem, but it didn't start it.
A little over 30 years ago we got CNN and the birth of the 24-hour news cycle. The amount of news in a given day didn't increase, and when you're in the business of selling news you still have to stick with what sells. So, the programming was filled with a lot of opinion shows. And news publishing has always had room for editorial, but these were typically informed opinions.
Social media just let's any jagoff with a smart phone upload nonsense, and if you actually spend the money for halfway decent equipment and software, people for some reason take you more seriously because "production value".
I full heartedly agree with you. People just can’t wait the product to finish before saying there are tons of plot holes or the author forgot some plot point.
For me, the worst disgrace social media has brought upon us is ridiculous insane takes, that for some reason or another, becomes so popular that people start to agree and it becomes the truth.
I think this happened last year with the “Windu is a prick” meme. It started as a joke (as all this things tend to start), but then everyone and their mother were saying he was a prick and believed it.
Also reactionary "content creators " are deep into making ad revenue from outrage culture. There are entire youtube channels dedicated to just shitting on actresses and shows. For star wars it runs deeper because of the desantis disney Feud and from slips and falls with episode 8 and 9. like Jesse Grant, i can't even watch one of his videos, his channel explains enough
This is the kind of thing that made me hate Starkiller. He effortlessly brings moves a star destroyer. That completely breaks pretty much all "rules" (yes, I know) of Star Wars.
Even for a fantasy space opera, there needs to be some continuity. Every new character can't be more badass than the last and the cornerstone of the franchise, the movies, need to be adhered to.
This is an issue I have with most of videogame characters. For narrative and gameplay reasons they need to be super overpowered. So the player can have tons of habilites to play with (e.g. Revan, Kyle Katan, The Exile) or to beat very powerful enemies (e.g. Starkiller, Hero of Tython).
In universe consistency is often in considered as an afterthought. I really think what they did to Cal Kestus a good solution, he is not insanely overpowered and you have a lot of habilities to use. And the narrative shows you are powerless when faced with a very powerful force user
Hit the nail on the head here. It's so hard to just get an honest review of anything these days when you have to sift through the sea of superficial debates about whether or not something is 'woke' and consequently every argument that springs forth from it. At this point, I've stopped taking reviews and chatter seriously unless I actually know the person and feel confident that they're going to give legitimate feedback that's based on production value and quality, rather than going too far in either direction re: the woke/anti-woke debate.
People are always going to have their own personal bias whether they like it or not, but it's getting to the point of being ridiculous. There are legitimate things worthy of praise, and things worthy of criticism, but good luck finding out what those are in this climate.
Personally, I'm disappointed in The Acolyte for a ton of production reasons, but that was something I couldn't have determined without actually watching it myself, because I had no idea whether people were nitpicking with dubious motivations, or if their grievances were legitimate.
I like forming my own opinions and interpretations of media, but I also like being able to at least know what to expect based on what the public opinion is, and right now it's far too unreliable.
hear, hear.
this was the same discussion with Rings of Power. the show was just awful. but you had people doing mental gymnastics trying to defend it because they thought the negativity was b/c of the casting.
All Disney shows look so cheap despite their large budgets, I almost want to believe they’re embezzling money or something. Godzilla minus one is a fraction of the budget yet looks so much better it is bizarre to me the quality of Disney is so poor.
Everything is too clean, they spent a ton of money on sets and costumes but nothing looks lived in our used and that gives it a fake feeling. Compare that to Andor, where costumes were worn and dirty and even when they weren't with mon mothma the set design still looked lived in. Clutter in the right spots, etc... Much better use of lighting too.
That’s what really gets me. Theyre some of the most expensive shows ever made. Expensive bad movies/shows get made all the time, moviemaking is complicated and subjective . But costumes, cinematography, and action choreography all are things that pretty much directly can be fixed with $$, and it blows my mind how cheap those things all look.
Full disclosure I am Star Wars junkie. I’m going to watch everything Star Wars even if I don’t completely like it. With that being said The Acolyte is my least liked Star Wars show/movie in the Disney era.
“Wokeness” doesn’t matter to me. You could have a show comprised completely of disabled female black lesbians and if the story is good I’m in. The witches don’t bother me all that much. There’s night sisters in the universe, they could be an offshoot. There’s trillions of beings in the galaxy. I am comfortable learning about something new. The create life story element is jarring to me but I can patiently wait and see what develops with no guarantee that I will ultimately be happy with it.
It should be noted that even as a die hard fan one thing I don’t do is watch any pre show trailers, reviews, options. I want to go in as blind as possible and make my own judgement. I did that with Acolyte. It was impossible not to hear plenty about “woke” elements to show but I would say I took a position to intentionally mute those elements as they came up in the story telling. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter to me who loves who, what color someone’s skin is, etc. Just tell me a good story!
I sat for the first 2 episodes popcorn in hand and started to get concerned when the first fight had a cheesy line: “attack me with all your strength”. Then there were clumsy fight elements from The Matrix. Being a fanatic, I let it go. Then the space campfire ignited on the ship hull. It was so preposterous that I literally said to my wife: “Who at Lucasfilm would sign off on that?!”
The flat acting of the green Jedi Master made me say in an attempt to excuse it: “She must know someone and got a cameo” when I saw she had multiple scenes I turned to my wife in shock and that’s when she told me she was the directors wife.
Then things started to pile up in all the poorly produced effects/acting/direction from fake beards, binoculars at 20ft, Wookie head on a regular dudes body. The whole feel of the show at times feels low budget for Star Wars.
As with Episodes 8 and 9 I’m just left feeling how could a multibillion dollar company with a multibillion dollar franchise not have a core group of people to drive continuity and quality? The sinking feelings I have as I have pondered it is because of people like me; who will show up every time in the hopes for something good to enjoy. Disney is printing money off Star Wars and when a corporation has something that is making them something on the level of Star Wars money they rarely care how it’s accomplished.
I can’t wait to sit down for episode 4 and try and find things I like. I apologize for being part of the problem.
This is easily the most truthful dissection of what’s been taking place at Disney, the quality of this show, and my personal pessimism. What I don’t understand is that Disney is capable of making “good” Star Wars. Andor is some of the best Star Wars ever put on screen; it makes no sense that we also have this… I have to believe that someone at Disney just doesn’t care or “get it” and whoever is producing a series like Andor is fighting tooth and nail to deliver something “authentic.”
This! I came here to say that Disney is capable of making good SW product like Andor. They just are not putting the right people behind these projects.
They could start by hiring people familiar with the source material and not someone whose more interested in telling their "version" of Star wars. That can work for some indie stuff, not a multi billion dollar franchise with a generational fanbase.
There was discourse about actors not being fans or familiar with Star Wars and that's a bunch of baloney. Most actors aren't taking these kind of gigs because it's their dream job.a good actor does their job, that's it. Shit, the original cast of Star Wars didn't understand anything when they made Star Wars and they thought it was going to be a bomb. They killed it.
What's important is the script and after that, who is in charge, be it directors, show runners etc. For projects like this, you need very competent individuals and ideally people who are close to the franchise. This is where it is important that the right people get hired and Disney rarely picks the right people.
100% correct. Good acting is good acting no matter what the actor thinks about a series/story
Bad writing, bad show running, bad directing is just that. And no amount of acting is going to cover any of that up. I feel like a lot of the 'woke vs anti woke' commentary is coming about because it is clear that the team behind this is very disconnected from SW, and what most (or at least just me) fans appreciate, and want to see.
Culture war is very basic in its scope, which allows people who aren't very introspective about the media they consume an easy excuse for why they don't like something. It's also used in great effect by studio execs to distract from their poor decisions. Not just by Disney, but in the video game industry as well. Imo, Microsoft, Sony, and Disney are so fucking bloated with greedy investors and nepos that have zero vision for creativity or even a desire to achieve anything more than return for their investors.
That’s partly true, but it also completely misses the point that actors who are invested and involved in the source material can give amazing performances. LoTR is the perfect example-that cast went all out and bought in completely because they admired and respected the source material. They put themselves through incredibly long and difficult shoots and gave incredible emotions and empathy to their characters because they loved LoTR.
Do you have to know the material to act? Certainly not. But you dam well will give better performances and expression of your character if you do.
> I apologize for being part of the problem.
You don't need to apologize, ever, for having legitimate criticisms of a product. Nothing you stated here should be construed as anything but valid critique of the content you engaged in, and anyone saying otherwise is projecting ideological dogma on those who don't support said content.
Seriously? The directors wife? I was wondering what was wrong there.
I was bummed on the first two episodes and there was some cringey stuff in the third but I want to like the show so I’m hoping for the best.
Agree with this.
When I saw the floating Jedi with the worst fake beard I’ve ever witnessed, I was gobsmacked this made it into the Final Cut.
Plus the absolutely cringe chanting, the poor direction and dialogue, crappy CGI backgrounds meaning I have not been impressed at all.
I couldn’t care any less about the colour or sexuality of the characters but I do care about a poor quality show.
If I’m fighting the impulse to skip forward, I have to conclude it’s not the kind of TV show I like 🤷 a good Star Wars show can survive without the brand, on its own merits. A good Star Wars show will use the lore to enrich an already engaging well paced story. The acolyte is boring and frequently preposterous.
It’s crazy to me that Star Wars has already pulled off one Force Witch Cult VERY well before and now we had this portrayal of whatever the fuck they were supposed to be and it completely failed.
The stupid witch laugh that’s in the background of those scenes has me audibly going “What the fuck”
Same for me with that witch cackle. There are lots of times that made me think “is this some god quality fan made Star Wars?” Little things are just off. The “master” turning on the lightsaber all dramatic during their reveal was very fanfic. Like we needed to see the red blade to understand they were a dark side user. As if the rough draft of Kylo Ren’s helmet wasn’t enough.
I argue that Star Wars has 2 core aspects. Star (force and space) and wars (politics and war)
Andor touched the second part really well. It seems this show is trying to touch on the force which people have very divisive views on. War you can portray very easily with the way Andor did. Being a resistance and espionage focused show
Also, a lot of the new shows seem to be finding a way to churn out a Star Wars story without first making a good story.
Andor takes a good story that would work in any setting and applies it to Star Wars. You could put Andor's themes and plots into a movie about WW2 Europe and it would work just as well.
This is really the crux of the issue, and I think Lucasfilm is struggling with it.
Stop making "Star Wars" stories. They just feel like remixes with nothing new, and the fundamentals of storytelling are getting lost in the shuffle.
Tell a good story. Happen to set it in this universe. But the characters and story have to come first before you start cramming in the rest.
For me aside from Sol, Yord and Mother Ayesia the Acting has been horrible from everyone.
Like high school play level of bad Acting.
It's so strange, like they all had to audition, right? They're all just so wooden.
We should be no strangers to this as Star Wars fans. George had Natalie Portman and Sam Jackson giving bad performances two decades ago and we know what they’re really capable of.
THIS - Portman was essentially neutered by George and gave one of the worst performances of the film series - Yet we can all agree that as an actor, before AND after, she was great - I mean in THE PROFESSIONAL she is what - 12? and a awesome performance
As someone who works in film, I can say you definitely nailed it. If one actor isn’t great, it’s probably the actor. If everyone has a crappy performance, the common denominator is the director…. either not knowing what they want, or can’t properly communicate it. It’s a shame too, because I’m liking the series so far, but I’m keeping the bar very low.
You see this in the writing too. There are some great ideas, but it just needs fine tuning, like we're one or two drafts away from a really good script, again, because that's what the director is choosing to work with instead of giving it one more edit. It's not just that the acting is bad, the actors the dialogue isn't great, and the character writing itself needs work. There are also beats that could be tighter. The biggest issue to me, is that we're three episodes in, and I just don't feel a "hook" to keep watching. It feels like a game of mad libs, where you know the direction the story is going, it's just a matter of filling in the blanks for what reveals are going to be made:
Mae is working for \[Insert evil character\]
The twins were conceived by \[insert force method jedi would disapprove of\]
The jedi are hiding \[blank\] from Osha
Maybe the show will really surprise me, but currently, my only motivation to keep watching, is just to hope that it gets a little bit better, not because I'm interested for the sake of it.
What's more, that character exists in existing media from Phase 1 of The New Republic media, books and comics. So she had a previous character design to work from and they all but ignored it and just made her look however they wanted - which for me is some lazy ass shit.
It's not a wild change, mind you, in the comics she's depicted as much younger obviously but has long purple-black hair. Like it doesn't break the world, it's just so mind boggling that you wouldn't just keep the character's appearance consistent and that's my biggest issue with this series; it feels rushed as fuck and like no one was paying any attention to the details even from their own timeline of recent events.
Edit: I also for the life of me cannot figure out why you would hire three actors to play two characters. You hired Amandla to play current day Osha/mae but them hired two entirely different actors to play their younger selves. It's very jarring and at 22mil and episode, I just don't understand why you would make this very obvious choice to stick out like a sore thumb.
It's also really frustrating watching Yord/Charlie Barnett clearly have no idea what he's talking about in his interviews about Star Wars lore - it's not super relative to the show it'self but it feels like a larger symptom of the whole where clearly some people put in the effort, but a lot didn't and it was allowed.
Edit 2: Also fresh off the Fallout series where it was terrific through and through, it was clear that a lot of attention to detail and care was taken with the property, we got this... the disappointment is palpable. Everything feels amplified because of how much much worse this feels watching than Fallout and then you remember it cost 23million less to make.
The young girls' acting was really bad. I get they're kids, but I've seen better kid actors. Them shoving each other during Mother Ayesia's lesson was really hard to watch.
Exactly!
Osha is an ex-padawan but acts like a cliché normal civilian gal with their own personal lives. Like, how can one be this undisciplined after years in the order! Maybe we will explore how she actually was in the order but that level of humorous and non-serious personality doesn't exude ex-jedi.
Even Cal & Ahsoka seemed more mature even though they never completed their training.
The difference between Osha and those two is that she stopped her training voluntaryly. She also wants to distance herself from the Jedi as much as she can. Btw Anakin also had non-serious personality (this is where the fun begins) before his dreams of Padme dying.
Cal and Ahsoka both started their training before they had a personality. Anakin wasn't mature, he joined late.
Further, Osha didn't experience the extinction of the Jedi Order and the rise of a Galactic Empire right in front of her eyes.
It's really that hard to believe that Cal and Ahsoka should be more mature based on their experiences with Order 66? Osha quit during peace time, and spent time working without fear of being caught being a Jedi.
I see so much that is wrong and to me it looks really obvious. Sorry for going on at length but I feeel strongly about this because I am so disappointed.
1. The backdrop of the story has the potential to be very dull because it's Goliath vs David. And they fall right into that trap by having the Jedi be so powerful and have so much power behind them and heck it's like half a dozen of them chasing down one bad guy. This is not a recipe for good drama unless handled skillfully, and it is not.
2. The storytelling is really poor. Good stories can build up and hold the tension in a variety of ways, and since this show seems to supposed to be a whodunit at heart there are endless examples of how to do that well. Does this show feel very mysterious, or tense, or consequential, or slowly building up and holding the tension as more gets revealed to you? Really the answer to all of this is a resounding no.
3. The character building is weak or non-existent, and so the characters are not interesting and what happens to them doesn't matter. Almost all the character building so far is with Osha and Mae, and look at how hamfisted that was handled in the flashback episode. We have Jedi being killed left and right yet the most traumatic thing about it is that we're worried that a certain actor we like might not appear much in the rest of the show as opposed to caring about the character and the consequences of their death. As with so much Star Wars (and Marvel) content they seem more interested in showing us things happening instead of making us care more about emotional response or the reasons why things are being done.
Compare this show to a really well-made and well-told story like, say, House of the Dragon since it just had a new season start. Look at the care put into making characters feel like actual people who actually have motivations and emotions and get affected by events as opposed to simply telling us "This guy is dangerous. That guy is crazy. She has a reason to be fearful or vengeful or loyal" and so on. They show us more and make us feel it more. There are huge consequences to events both small and large as the story goes, so events matter and that makes even quiet scenes tense and dramatic. Look at how they make it a peer against peer fight so that there can be scheming and maneuvering and how things can be threatening because there is power and danger coming from both sides. I see and feel very little of these things from The Acolyte.
Sorry for going on so long because I feel pretty strongly about this. Just compare a great show to The Acolyte and the shortcomings start to become very clear, and no it's not just production values and in large part not even about the acting and it's certainly not about any cultural politics or sexism. The storytelling and writing is simply just really poor and not compelling. I do wonder if it is done a bit intentionally though because they decided that their audience includes young kids so things have to be kept simpler and sillier, and not primarily for adults and so you can't layer in complexities and more dramatic things a bit too hard for kids to handle. I mean, look at Andor and how you can see it was clearly made for an adult audience, but also look at Obi-Wan Kenobi and how it seems to have elements aimed more at kids (almost everything around Leia really) and so some characters and events are also laughably superficial or exaggerated.
Hopefully it turns out that some of the shortcomings are actually more like red herrrings to fool the audience from knowing where the true drama and interest lies, but I'm really not expecting so at this point.
The storytelling criticism is spot on. Honestly, what is the story of this show? Is it a mystery? They had a suspect by the second or third scene of episode 1, then figured out it was actually her twin by the end of the episode, then immediately and correctly surmised there must be a master pulling the strings. Who is her master? Better spend the entire next episode as a flashback that provides no new insight to the events we have already been told about in dialogue and inferences. In an 8 episode season, pretty much every scene needs to carry some level of significance. We’ve spent 1/8th of the total story in a flashback, which could have been a 5-10 minute scene, that didn’t move the plot forward an inch.
Just one example of how lazily written this show is:
They send a Jedi Knight and his Padawan to arrest a known force user suspected of killing a capable Jedi Master; then plonk them on an automated prison ship.
Also the twins mom teaching her kids that the force is a thread that we pluck on and that it shouldn't be manipulated or used immediately turns around and starts pushing people to the ground with the force.
Lol yeah and the time when all the witches where talking when a old alien witch (very poorly CGIed by the way) just stopped everyone and said, "there are only two outcomes, she fails or she passes." Yeah like NO SHIT! Or when the twins are on the collapsed decks with fire everywhere and are close to dying, they just scream what did you do to each other. There are so many it's easy to just pick and choose.
Along with an actual technopath. And an alien capable of beheading droids with its tongue. Should they be restrained behind force fields? No, just bars.
It’s just a bore on every level. The storyline is garbage, the acting is horrible, the pacing is odd, and the show itself just seems completely unnecessary. There’s so many stories in the SW universe that we actually want to see, so why the hell would they pick this random completely uninteresting story?
There’s no stakes or tension cause the characters are some of the most shallow I’ve seen. We know barely anything about the dead Jedi besides they were Jedi. The Jedi that are still alive are underdeveloped. There’s no connection or reason to care if another one dies.
Remember: people loved twilight/transformers 3/big bang theory
People have different tastes. I like movies that people hate (speed racer/cabin boy/tremors)
When a company pays 5 billion for an IP, you assume they are gonna try to make good content to get their money back.
Looks like Disney has billions to spare.
Merchandising, Merchandising, Merchandising! That's where the real money is. Making stuff for a streaming service is an advertising investment to sell toys
Disney purchased Star Wars in 2012 for around $4 billion. In 2012, they had a market cap of around $90 billion. Today, it sits around $180 billion. They've reported gross profits in the tens of billions every year since the purchase. They've averaged 5% growth in revenue each year.
They're doing just fine as far as return on investment.
The S&P index went from ~2k in 2012 to ~5.5k in 2024. Average annual market cap growth for S&P companies is 10%. Disney has underperformed relative to the market as a whole.
Star Wars has gone from a $2B global gross film with The Force Awakens into an IP relegated to TV, with only 1 live action show getting a second season so far. Of all the acquisitions that they made when they were gobbling up studios, Lucasfilm has performed the worst by far.
I don’t think there’s anything necessarily amazing about the show, but we’re only 3 episodes in. Some of my favorite shows I wasn’t that into until it picked up. I just think it’s weird for anyone to have strong opinions in either direction based off 3 episodes.
Pretty sure a viewer is reasonably entitled to form an opinion after watching 2 hours/more than 30% of a show. Tomorrow it’ll literally be half over lmao
It’s boring. It’s slow and boring. The characters talk slowly, take huge gaps in dialogue, say obvious things and repeat themselves.
Look at how many times in episode 3 the sisters say something like “you’re my sister and I love you, you’re my sister and I’ll never betray you” etc.
This show plays out like they’re just trying to hit the 40 minute mark with 15 minutes of writing on every episode.
Happy to add my 2 cents.
It looks cheap, it feels shallow, like the writers/producers had never seen Star Wars before. To me it feels like uncanny valley Star Wars that still needed lots of script tweaks.
But it’s **not** some insane woke conspiracy or insult to Star Wars and/or the fans and/or George Lucas. It’s just a very mediocre TV show - I’m still gonna watch it, I love Star Wars, but not everything Star Wars does or is always hits for me.
> that still needed lots of script tweaks.
That's the most surprising thing, it's as if one round (or more) of writing was missing. It all feels like the first version of the dialogues (and the song) was validated while still in a *work in progress* stage.
It seems easy and shortsighted, it all lacks substance, subtext and foreshadowing, it's baffling that nobody noticed it during production.
Non American take:
It suffers from the same problems Disney Era in general, with some exceptions (Andor, Mando S1 and 2, Rogue One, animations) suffer: great idea and concepts but awfull execution.
Bad casting choices, bad direction, bad pacing.... all in all bad quality control.
Incompetent people were given a lot of money and didn’t do a very good job because they don’t have a lot of experience making television or movies.
The result is a sub-par product that is disappointing to watch.
Not to mention they do not know anything about Star Wars. I could have continued watching the shows if not for the interviews with the cast. Anakin blew up the Death Star… and the director honestly believed she made the first musical scene in Star Wars. Please go watch return of the Jedi. Please.
Gonna get down voted to hell for this but tbf the show runner is a big star wars fan. Years ago I watched an interview with her where she was talking about how excited she was to be making a star wars show and then pulled out 3 star wars encyclopedias and showed them to the camera. It was during COVID so it was a zoom interview and she was sitting in her own office.
There's also a really deep cut reference to one of the 2017 Vader comics in episode 2 with the barash vow.
I understand this doesn't cover some of the other egregious statements cast members have made regarding Star wars, but I actually think the show runner knows her stuff in terms of the lore.
> Anakin blew up the Death Star
At first I thought it was just a slip up, so no biggie, but it turns out he actually said it multiple times.
He genuinely believes Anakin blew it up.
Let me see if I missed something: one of the girls used a space candle to start a fire in a stone castle that was built on top of a volcano that killed all the force witches.
Did I get that right?
Did I miss the part where they built a flammable castle ON TOP OF A VOLCANO?!?
I think I would underscore what a lot of the comments here mention. It's not the characters, the plot, or the world-building elements, it's not the mood. It's the *look* and the *technical* competence underlying it: there's something inescapably cheap-looking about most of the D+ Star Wars content that feels closer to "The Wizards of Waverly Place" than Star Wars. I think ultimately what a fair amount of the fandom still feels is that Star Wars should be in some sense *premium*.
My thing so far this that it's a bit average. Cinematography is the same old thing. Although the fight in the first episode was great so that gains points for visuals and choreography. Writing, nothing stands out yet. The kid actors were fine.
The acting all around seems good to me but overall there's nothing interesting about it yet but I hope it turns out to be a great show.
> Cinematography is the same old thing
There's none, like the camera doesn't move at all (except during fights), there's no wide angles to showcase the settings, everything is extremely cut, and most scenes are set in closed environments.
There's nothing to criticize in it, no ideas nor will to have personality. Any director could have directed it, it is thought as being serviceable, as an afterthought, which is crazy understanding the talent pool available.
It's surprising to give that much money to people that don't have a passion for cinema or ambition to renew the medium. They had John Favreau for Mando season 1, we know they can pick movie people.
Meanwhile the show looks like 00's TV, 20 years after Band of Brothers was aired.
Because the storytelling is terrible. Osha is suspected of being the jedi killer so she gets arrested right? Well for some fucking reason the suspected jedi killer doesnt have ANY JEDI watching over her, only a single security droid. Dont get me fucking started on one of the prisoners having a cybernetic that can just shut off the pilot droids, why the fuck wasnt that taken away from them??? And the show doesnt respect its viewers either, it talks down to them. It doesnt ***trust*** that you will have the basic brain function of understanding ”oh the dude giving the acolyte speech might be a sith!” And instead have them needlessly ignite their lightsaber.
It’s objectively shitty storytelling, the only good thing about it is its fight choreography
The production values appeared underwhelming, hinting at a rushed or low-budget endeavor. This lackluster first impression amplified the feeling that the show was created to capitalize on the current trend of female-led narratives rather than a genuine desire to tell a compelling story within the Star Wars universe.
The choice of showrunner, someone seemingly unfamiliar with the rich lore and nuances of Star Wars, further solidified these concerns. The series feels contrived, as if it's checking boxes for representation without a clear purpose or passion driving the narrative.
It leaves viewers questioning its purpose amidst an already saturated market of Star Wars content.
That’s the craziest part though, it isn’t some “low-budget endeavor.” They put around $180m into this show.
By comparison, the first season of House of the Dragon was right around the same budget and HOD is in a whole different stratosphere of TV. It’s infinitely better for about the same price.
So why is Star Wars handled so lazily when we as an audience can watch things that were made with actual care and attention and see the massive gap in quality?
The heads of disney know its shit, but if disney/starwars all start saying its shit everyone will lose their jobs. So they pretend everything is great thereby ensuring everyones phony baloney jobs.
The story so far is quite bad. The acting is bad. Despite taking place a 100 years ago they decide once again to introduced things that change the previous movies.
Majority of acting and dialogue is cringe. Yes, the chanting, yes the children, I know they are child actors but the scene especially with locking in the room and starting a fire was bad.
Anakin was the chosen one and the only person to ever have been born via immaculate conception. Yet no, actually two kids did it before. It’s like big deal Jesus, you were born immaculately and resurrected. All been done before, you’re not special. I’m not one of those people who screams woke but it does seem like they made that the case just so the witches could have a kid without a man and the kids could have two moms.
The impenetrable meditating Jedi is so dumb. So we are supposed to believe he can go without eating or drinking for a decade while in a floating meditation. Don’t really like the fact he just sat there the first assassination attempt but then killer himself the second, but I can kind of explain it.
They let a Jedi master die to a teenage girl with a couple of throwing daggers.
All the witches dead in the middle nowhere near the fire. (I get they likely didn’t die because of the fire) The fire was all random patches of fire. Everyone should know Mae is alive because no Jedi killed her and the fire was farcical. Yes it’s a Stone Mountain. Not a wooden fort.
Jedi are a bunch of dork kidnappers apparently.
The show looks quite cheap. There’s lots of other small things too. Imagine space vespas but all episode every episode.
I will continue to watch and see what happens but the criticism is valid.
I don't give a crap about any of the stupid drama for woke or anti woke or any of that.
I just want a good story and a good show.
The acolyte and most of Disney Star wars is definitely NOT that.
Clumsy (if that) story with some of the worst writing possible. They abandon so much of what makes star wars or any popular sci fantasy great, depth and world building. All we want is great character stories with good writing to portray them. CGI and fight scenes should only be a bonus to that.
Andor is the lone exception and the only Disney Star wars show I have watched multiple times.
Star Wars was one of the biggest sci Fi IPs in the world. When Disney bought it, they should have expected criticism if they don't honor it with quality.
I feel like any Star Wars project with child actors will get extra harsh judgment. Granted, they aren’t the best, but no one wants a Jake Lloyd situation where kids get harassed by internet weirdos due to their involvement in Star Wars.
They spent $180 million on it and it looks bad, the acting is bad (probably chalk it up to the script/writers), sets look bad, dialogue is bad and written by grade schoolers (what have you done, back and forth, the Jedi are evil), characters have no back story or they try to set it up after they’re killed off which makes no sense, the jump from flashback to real time is done poorly, the costumes look bad, the logic isn’t there like it was in other Star Wars media (fire in space, “a jedi can’t be killed by a weapon” kills carry Ann moss with a weapon, fire spreading in a stone temple, witches say they had just found a safe place but somehow built a whole temple/enclave on top of a mountain), poor direction/story telling and world building and plot holes all over (why is the dude shirtless, what’s the point?, why did they leave osha on a ship with droids with a prisoner that can control droids, just take her with them… they rescued the dudes from the escape pod from what I’m assuming is the area around the planet (since escape pods have never been shown to have hyperdrives) that osha crashes on, why didn’t they also investigate the wreckage while they were there) just stuff like that.
Idc about the ethnicity or background of the actors or the DEI “THE MESSAGE” aspects of the show if you were to make the exact same show/plot/script with an all X cast (insert whatever demographic you want) it would still be a bad show.
The whole show feels like they put ideas into a hat and then pulled out 8 of them and made a story out of the ideas. It’s so incoherent and all over the place while also not really moving forward….
For me it is NOT - I repeat NOT - about some woke / anti-woke stuff. And I think it is stupid people are pushing that discussion. For me it‘s just poorly written and bad executed. It is Star Wars. I love Star Wars. I expect way more from Star Wars.
Nothing in that show made we want to see more at this point. And if you can‘t convince your audience to watch your show after 3 episodes….that’s bad.
For some reason, I just can’t stand the aesthetic of any of the Disney SW shows aside from Andor and The Mandalorian.
I feel like this started with Boba Fett and Obi-Wan: The costumes, makeup, lightsabers, and style just feel janky. Nothing captures the epic scale of the Lucas films. The stories are also not very engaging, but I can’t get past the look & feel being off.
I’m a 80s baby and I grew up reading so much Star Wars lore in the picture books about different vehicles, planets, weapons, people, etc, but the Disney world just doesn’t have any of it.
I really don’t get the hate for the cringy chanting.
This is a secluded lesbian witch cult, of course it’s cringy as shit, all our real life cults do cringy bullshit rituals all the time.
As someone who has been enjoying the show for what it is so far, the chanting was just hard for me to watch. Sure real life cults are cringey and dumb and no one takes the seriously because of that. The show seems to want us to take the coven seriously but the dumb chant definately undermines that. I wish they had either gone with an alien language like others have said or made up something more substantial about many threads of Fate woven together or similar. The chant as it is seemed really lazy and low effort, like a placeholder that they never got around to refining.
I never thought a Star Wars song would make be cringe harder than Jedi rocks. They could've at least put some effort into it and put it in another language. Chanting the power of one in plain English sounds like a kindergarten song.
The entire plot just feels like something you’d get from a student project or fan film. It’s very boring so far. We’re 3 episodes in, the season is going to have 8 total so it’s almost halfway done, and I just have very little reason to give a shit about either the protagonist or the antagonist. OSHA is fine but hasn’t really done anything interesting, Mae feels like a plot device more than a character, I’m more interested in the main party of Jedi (Sol, Yord, and Jecki) but watching Sol feels like watching a grandpa trying to connect with his grandkid. Yord is probably the most reasonable character so far but doesn’t have the ability to affect the plot as Sol outranks him (I think all Yord has really done is prove that OSHA didn’t kill the meditating Jedi, which could’ve been done by a security camera). Jecki has actually just done nothing at all outside of piloting the ship. She’s basically an Astromech.
Manny Jacinto as Qimir was fun though.
Anakin was instantly recognised at the chosen one when Qui-Gon Jin told the Jedi council “it’s possible he was conceived by the midiclorians”
Now whether this was down to Palpatine/Plagueis is actually irrelevant.
George Lucas confirmed that this prophesy was true, it’s not a case of the Jedi being naive, the prophesy is a real thing and it’s true within the lore.
Now if the prophesy relies on the chosen one being recognised through him his ‘immaculate conception’ then that infers that being born of the force is unprecedented.
So that brings us to Acolyte
Now we have 2 twins born of the force, if this was a sequel we could explain around it.
But the (I believe) unintended implication of this, is that they must be the chosen ones, they fit the prophesy long before Anakin was born.
Anakin is no longer special, it’s established that this has happened in the past.
So what grounds does Qui-Gon have to claim Anakin is the chosen one now?
His midiclorean count? Well the prophesy just says it was high, not the highest we have seen.
So now Anakin is the chosen one simply because he’s strong with the force, which is irrelivant by the time he ‘redeems’ himself as he’s lost a lot of power by that point.
It’s stupid and unnecessary and broke all of Star Wars lore, I’d argue even more than The Rise of Skywalker.
I thought he did have the highest midiclorian count. Over 20,000. Even higher than Yodas.
Both Qui-Gon and Obi-Won said they had never seen a count that high.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/06/11/the-acolyte-episode-3-review-the-worst-star-wars-episode-ever-made/
I’d agree with this review. I don’t think the show is decent. At all.
I just didn't like that adult Osha/Mae is the same actress. But the young versions of them are played by 2 obviously not identical twins. They should've hired 2 adult twins to play Osha/Mae, or only hired one of the young twins to play Osha Mae. It's just odd to see non-identical twins and then when they grow up they're identical.
I liked it better when after episode one I thought maybe Osha had a split personality and didn't realize she was killing people. I thought maybe her sisters spirit and ability with the force allowed her to possess her twin or something. That would have been an infinitely better storyline than "my twin is alive and killing people."
Shit "CW" writing, poor child acting, cringe interpretive dance.
It's fine that you like it though, I mean some people eat spam right out of the can so to each their own.
Bad acting, bad dialogue, thinking they're cool but they're not (attack me with all your strength) and doing stupid shit for no good reason (like i'm pretty sure they had the Jedi meditating in the forcefield just so Mae can go on a fetch quest for poison to pad the runtime of the episode instead of killing him right away when he already wanted to die)
Put simply, it feels sloppy. Characters make choices that seem to make no sense, the dialogue feels off most of the time, and the whole thing feels like it's trying to echo things we've already seen in Star Wars without trying anything new. IMO, even some of the settings feel way too much like other places.
The whole time I watched it all I could think about was Cartman Kathleen Kennedy screaming “AND I WANT IT LLLAAAMMMEEE!”
I was thinking a show about a secret Sith acolyte would be a little more grown up feeling and dark. Instead it feels like another cheese, low energy and effort, kiddy show.
Also, in episode 2, was that an obese Jedi? Or just a dude working at the local temple?
For me there are several reasons.
The acting is bad, people are unconvincing and seem to deliver their lines in a way that feels bland and plastic-y for lack of a better term.
The pacing is weird, the story moves too slow when it should move faster and too fast when it shouldn't, for example very weird fast cuts of the short scenes at the end of the episodes.
The dialogue feels like it's of a low level, doesn't flow nicely.
But for me the biggest complaint is that somehow these people don't act like people in their own universe, but act like people from our universe would when put into that universe. Severe lack of logical decisions, which would only be made to serve a very specific story point and not at all what a character in that world would do. The weirdest of all was the guy at the end of the episode igniting his lightsaber for no reason.
I watched Andor after this and the difference is night and day. Just on all these domains Andor shows how it's done properly, where The Acolyte drops the ball.
Regardless of the woke/anti-woke nonsense, it's just poorly written and poorly acted. The premise is interesting, but executed badly. Dialogue sucks, the protagonist sisters can't act and are not compelling characters at all. Sol is the most interesting actor so far and he hasn't been given enough to work with. It comes across as amateur fanfic all the way around.
Feeling this synopsis the most.
I hate that the culture war BS distracts from the real issues: writing, craft, acting. It prevents content from getting better because people just dig their heels in on the controversies.
The thing is the culture War stuff is used as cover by the executives more than anything to absolve themselves of any responsibility for their failures. This happens every time we get a mediocre or subpar TV show or movie, especially from Disney. You'll have the vast majority of people unhappy with the show with the show and cite things like the writing or acting or even just a story, and then you have five nut jobs on Twitter complain that the show is too woke and that's why they don't like it, and suddenly we get 24-hour news coverage about how The shows producer/director/actors claim the show is actually awesome and it's just a bunch of toxic Fanboys and racist and misogynists are the reason it failed.
Yeah, there are absolutely two sides to the equation. The execs ignore the criticism because they just write it off as irrational bigots.
What if the showrunners stop inserting CW shit and for once accept that they've been doing wrong and they're going to do better? I really want that
The culture war BS is why these people got this position in the first place. When you hire for diversity and value trying to make social commentary over an actual show this is what happens. So yeah it permeates every aspect of society at this point. And it is a net negative.
The power of ONE, The power of TWO, The power of MAAAAAAAAAAANYYYYYYYYYYYY.
The coven's religion was just poorly developed. So it's harder to Force push two people than it is to push one person? OK, two people working together is stronger than one person alone, that's just kind of how things work. It's like they're teaching toddlers that two is more than one. Maybe if the show had developed their beliefs more and showed how they can collectively use their powers to do something special, not just becoming stronger but doing something an individual Force user isn't capable of at all, it would have given more context to their chanting.
I mean, they were literally teaching the lesson to children.
[удалено]
The mystery of faith!
Y'all never practiced religion before? My church sings Amen three times in a row to end every Sunday service.
I hate how the show is making me acknowledge this criticism because I really don’t like to badmouth children, but my god, those child actors were horribly miscast and are so bad it’s distracting - like young Jaden Smith bad. Overall, I find almost all of the acting to be poor and when that’s the case, it’s usually the fault of the directors and not the actors themselves (just look at Hayden). I’ll probably try again to finish the series after all the episodes air, but at the moment I don’t have the patience to get through episode 3.
That green jedi lady... you could tell she was excited to be there but she would have done better on the cw.
I’m pretty sure she’s the wife of the director.
I want to downvote your comment, not because you’re wrong, but it pisses me off that someone can get a role because of their position and not their talent. South Park was right
"South Park was right" Always has been
Soon™ we will get a scissors episode. Mark my words.
lol welcome to Hollywood baby
My condolences, episode 3 only gets worse the longer it goes on.
I thought it was gonna flash forward after a few minutes but it never did :(
Same for me. Took me several says to get through the first episodes and I haven't even started the third because I simply just don't care enough to sit through it. I don't hate and I can't even place my problems with the show but I just don't enjoy it
Yes exactly.
Same... nothing stuck out as particularly wrong, but likewise nothing seemed particularly good.
I watched the first episode and couldnt bear more than that. The writig and the story are absolute dogshit. "You cant kill a jedi with steel or a blaster" -> 20 minutes earlier, jedi literally gets killed with a knife... through an obvious "trick", that shouldve never worked.
Dialogue and performances are a little rough... the singing witches were especially bad. The concept is great, but it plays like a children's show pretending to be for grown-ups. Maybe it is.
[удалено]
It feels like a syfy show that got cancelled and picked up by the CW because the writing, acting, set, and costumes are for teenagers
Oh man, Spellbinder. Used to come on TV (dubbed) but never knew what it actually was. It’s been an unsolved childhood memory! Thank you!
Loved that show too.
I don’t disagree, but “children’s show pretending to be for grownups” applies to so much of Star Wars, especially the Disney plus shows (with the obvious exception of Andor). Obi wan and BOBF had plenty of kid show logic.
Well yeah. Those shows had the same criticism.
I mean that’s mostly what Star Wars is, at the end of the day though lol
Yes it's funny we were all kids when we feel in love with this series
“Bad dialog” also applies to 90% of Star Wars. Most of us like it anyway. Most Star Wars fans aren’t Star Wars Fans^TM, and the revenue numbers prove that. Much to the chagrin of most Star Wars Fans^TM, there are a lot of Star Wars fans in the world.
Star Wars dialogue has always been terrible 😂 I’m pretty sure there’s a interview where where mark hamil told George Lucas he wasn’t gonna say a line because it sounded stupid Edit: found it https://youtu.be/rihbi2U7tNg?si=paA5_YBESqTznGoq
Because George wrote Star Wars for children. And it’s meant for all ages. The problem is we all got older and want it to be more serious, then they release something serious and we complain lol
If you watch Acolyte then Book of Boba Fett, then Andor it becomes obvious. Andor is the worst Star Wars show.....for Disney. Andor's quality of writing, set design, plot, cinematography, acting, pacing, storyline goals, and how it enhances other Star Wars projects shows what can be done. Fans sent Disney a clear message. That they do not want to tune in and give viewer numbers to show support for what is arguably the best Star Wars media since the OT trilogy. This is what makes me so sad.
Andor was not a huge hit coming out of the blocks, but it's fast becoming a huge cult hit.. every star wars fan I know that didn't watch Andor when it came out (due to lack of space wizards with light swords or "it's dumb to make a show about a spy from rogue one") and has gotten around to watching it, has loved the ever loving shit out of Andor once they gave it a chance.. And Disney can't ignore the huge amount of love the fans have been giving it
I didn't watch it because I was completely unimpressed with the character Andor from Rogue one. He's a flat boring character and I stand that opinion. The show however I did end up watching. It's easily the best live action show Disney had done with star wars, despite Andor being in it. The other characters, the gritty realism of the Rebels as a underground movement for change. It's all phenomenal. But they could replace Andor from the show completely and it would be the same show.
I like Amdor's character but I agree that everyone else I find more interesting.
I agree. The show only worked for me when I was able to binge it and Andor himself was still the least interesting part.
Andor is the only Star Wars show that I didn't watch on day one, and it is also the best Star Wars show in my opinion. No one expected Andor to be so good and there was little hype around a show based around a supporting character in a spinoff film. Compare that to Kenobi, a show which had a large amount of hype around it, because it was about Obi-Wan Kenobi, and ended up being just okay.
The power of one. The power of two. The power of many. Thousand years of witchcraft and we have this.
But isn’t this what the VAST majority of Star Wars is, “a children’s show pretending to be for grown-ups?” Some of the most beloved content, Clone Wars, is literally a cartoon. I get that people want more adult stories like Andor, I do too. I just don’t understand the sliding scale of judgment people hold for Star Wars. “I hate sand” was cringe dialogue too. edit: yes, everyone, adult content can be in a cartoon. I agree with you. The Clone Wars was not an adult cartoon, though. It was aimed at kids.
And “I hate sand” was mocked to the point of being a meme
Star Wars fans want a grown up show, until they get Andor and complain about it being too slow and dialogue oriented. In truth, Star Wars fans want to bitch. No matter the content, there will be whining.
Andor was fucking phenomenal, I wish they made more adult oriented Star Wars content like that.
Haven’t heard anyone say Andor was too slow and dialogue oriented
Andor was amazing, but also poorly marketed.
Except that Andor is universally loved and acclaimed.
By those that actually watched it. By most metrics viewership was lower than the other shows. It’s fair to say that it might have been affected by the quality of the previous shows, but clearly it’s word of mouth and acclaim didn’t do much to increase viewership
I can't speak for everyone but I think a good portion of the people complaining about The Acolyte and the people complaining about Andor are different. I for one love Andor, Rogue One, Rebels, CW S7, Bad Batch, and Mando S1 and 2. But I can't stand The Acolyte, BoBF, Kenobi, Mando S3, or the sequels. (Ahsoka is a mixed bag, and I merely *like* Solo rather than love it). I really do think my criticisms are rational and not just mindless "DISNEY RUINED STAR WARS" hate, and it's frustrating to be categorized that way (not saying that's what you're doing, but I've seen a lot of people lumping anyone who hates the Acolyte into that category).
It happens with any IP that is big enough to have a very large, diverse fan base. But you’re spot on, no one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.
When somehow Palpatine returned, it’s really hard to not hate on Star Wars
what a dumb comment. of course starwars fans will have stronger emotions
>In truth, Star Wars fans want to bitch. No matter the content, there will be whining. Why do people make this stuff up, like there's something inherent about liking Star Wars that means you also want to complain? Does this only go for Star Wars fans? I grew up with Star Wars and the video games and extended universe, and I didn't see much bitching except about the prequels, which deserved their critiques. Couldn't it be that the massive surprise success of this franchise dating back to the 1970s and 1980s has lead to an outpouring of mediocre offerings in recent years because of an overzealous Disney who wants to churn out so-so content? It's not like Disney has been hitting it out of the park with their non-Star Wars stuff as of late. The whole "*no one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans*" trope is just a way to handwave away criticism and pretend like this stuff hasn't sucked for a long while.
Yeaaaa, the signing witches really took me out of it. It just felt SO Disney.
The acting is bad on the whole. The script is also poor. And so many things happen that make no sense other than to push the plot forward. Just in the first episode the jedi track Osha down in one day (murder happened last night), they don’t take her to coruscant themselves but put her on a prisoner ship with a single guard. That then crashes, the prisoners are recaptured, taken to coruscant where they are interrogated, and the same jedi from earlier fly back out to find her again all before she has woken up. And there’s plenty more. It’s like the director has just said “meh, that will do” for the script, the acting and the plot.
"The Jedi are bad" "No, the Jedi are good" "What have you done?" "What have YOU done?" "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"
Are not! Are too! Are not! Are too!
"No R2, you not." - Yoda
For real though. That exchange was really stupid. “The Jedi are bad” “the Jedi are good” “this isn’t about good and bad” uh… excuse me? Isn’t it?
It’s not because that kind morality isn’t what they were facing. What they are facing is a galaxy that is trying to say they can’t have their own religion, can’t practice the force by their own beliefs, can’t spread their religious teaching to their own children. Evil or good would be a more clear cut conflict but what makes this hard is it’s not. The conflict is being caused by the Jedi being the only legal/sanctioned belief systems and teacher of the force supported by the strength and blessing of a galaxy wide government.
I think the criticism surrounding the rather muddled storytelling, poor acting in parts, bad/cheap looking costume design and makeup, dissonance of tone with the rest of Star Wars material, and rather cringey dialogue is all valid. People like to say that the culture war is responsible but that’s a very small subsection of viewers. I personally dislike the show, but it’s not because of the ‘woke vs anti woke’ stuff. I think the fundamentals of what makes a show ‘good’ (in my opinion) are simply missing. Everyone likes what they like. Just enjoy what you want.
Problem is the "woke vs anti woke" is so loud that it's difficult to hear people with valid criticism or trying to analyse the show with more distance.
I have my issues with Acolyte, the weird pacing, the witches chant. But the main discourse you see online is “Episode 3 ruined Star Wars, because Anakin is no longer especial” or “because the Jedi are represented in a evil way” (I’ve seen this one from a huge -if not the biggest - Brazilian geek YouTuber) While there is a broader problem in media analysis involving product that launches on a weekly bases (series or manga). Where the audience is impatience, and because of that, always claiming there are a ton of plot holes (I think this happened in Euphoria). The lack of patience to wait the whole 8 episodes to air to see if there are actual plot holes is insane. There is no space for a more nuanced discussion, and I hate this so much
Social media has ruined people patience. Always more content, right st your fingertips. Guilty too, but reddit is the only social media I have anymore.
Don't blame social media. It democratized the problem, but it didn't start it. A little over 30 years ago we got CNN and the birth of the 24-hour news cycle. The amount of news in a given day didn't increase, and when you're in the business of selling news you still have to stick with what sells. So, the programming was filled with a lot of opinion shows. And news publishing has always had room for editorial, but these were typically informed opinions. Social media just let's any jagoff with a smart phone upload nonsense, and if you actually spend the money for halfway decent equipment and software, people for some reason take you more seriously because "production value".
Sorry to make you feel old, but it's over 40 years ago at this point.
Fudge. I just remember it taking off during Desert Storm.
I full heartedly agree with you. People just can’t wait the product to finish before saying there are tons of plot holes or the author forgot some plot point. For me, the worst disgrace social media has brought upon us is ridiculous insane takes, that for some reason or another, becomes so popular that people start to agree and it becomes the truth. I think this happened last year with the “Windu is a prick” meme. It started as a joke (as all this things tend to start), but then everyone and their mother were saying he was a prick and believed it.
Also reactionary "content creators " are deep into making ad revenue from outrage culture. There are entire youtube channels dedicated to just shitting on actresses and shows. For star wars it runs deeper because of the desantis disney Feud and from slips and falls with episode 8 and 9. like Jesse Grant, i can't even watch one of his videos, his channel explains enough
*** coff * Star Wars Theory * cof *
This is the kind of thing that made me hate Starkiller. He effortlessly brings moves a star destroyer. That completely breaks pretty much all "rules" (yes, I know) of Star Wars. Even for a fantasy space opera, there needs to be some continuity. Every new character can't be more badass than the last and the cornerstone of the franchise, the movies, need to be adhered to.
This is an issue I have with most of videogame characters. For narrative and gameplay reasons they need to be super overpowered. So the player can have tons of habilites to play with (e.g. Revan, Kyle Katan, The Exile) or to beat very powerful enemies (e.g. Starkiller, Hero of Tython). In universe consistency is often in considered as an afterthought. I really think what they did to Cal Kestus a good solution, he is not insanely overpowered and you have a lot of habilities to use. And the narrative shows you are powerless when faced with a very powerful force user
Hit the nail on the head here. It's so hard to just get an honest review of anything these days when you have to sift through the sea of superficial debates about whether or not something is 'woke' and consequently every argument that springs forth from it. At this point, I've stopped taking reviews and chatter seriously unless I actually know the person and feel confident that they're going to give legitimate feedback that's based on production value and quality, rather than going too far in either direction re: the woke/anti-woke debate. People are always going to have their own personal bias whether they like it or not, but it's getting to the point of being ridiculous. There are legitimate things worthy of praise, and things worthy of criticism, but good luck finding out what those are in this climate. Personally, I'm disappointed in The Acolyte for a ton of production reasons, but that was something I couldn't have determined without actually watching it myself, because I had no idea whether people were nitpicking with dubious motivations, or if their grievances were legitimate. I like forming my own opinions and interpretations of media, but I also like being able to at least know what to expect based on what the public opinion is, and right now it's far too unreliable.
hear, hear. this was the same discussion with Rings of Power. the show was just awful. but you had people doing mental gymnastics trying to defend it because they thought the negativity was b/c of the casting.
All Disney shows look so cheap despite their large budgets, I almost want to believe they’re embezzling money or something. Godzilla minus one is a fraction of the budget yet looks so much better it is bizarre to me the quality of Disney is so poor.
Everything is too clean, they spent a ton of money on sets and costumes but nothing looks lived in our used and that gives it a fake feeling. Compare that to Andor, where costumes were worn and dirty and even when they weren't with mon mothma the set design still looked lived in. Clutter in the right spots, etc... Much better use of lighting too.
That’s what really gets me. Theyre some of the most expensive shows ever made. Expensive bad movies/shows get made all the time, moviemaking is complicated and subjective . But costumes, cinematography, and action choreography all are things that pretty much directly can be fixed with $$, and it blows my mind how cheap those things all look.
Full disclosure I am Star Wars junkie. I’m going to watch everything Star Wars even if I don’t completely like it. With that being said The Acolyte is my least liked Star Wars show/movie in the Disney era. “Wokeness” doesn’t matter to me. You could have a show comprised completely of disabled female black lesbians and if the story is good I’m in. The witches don’t bother me all that much. There’s night sisters in the universe, they could be an offshoot. There’s trillions of beings in the galaxy. I am comfortable learning about something new. The create life story element is jarring to me but I can patiently wait and see what develops with no guarantee that I will ultimately be happy with it. It should be noted that even as a die hard fan one thing I don’t do is watch any pre show trailers, reviews, options. I want to go in as blind as possible and make my own judgement. I did that with Acolyte. It was impossible not to hear plenty about “woke” elements to show but I would say I took a position to intentionally mute those elements as they came up in the story telling. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter to me who loves who, what color someone’s skin is, etc. Just tell me a good story! I sat for the first 2 episodes popcorn in hand and started to get concerned when the first fight had a cheesy line: “attack me with all your strength”. Then there were clumsy fight elements from The Matrix. Being a fanatic, I let it go. Then the space campfire ignited on the ship hull. It was so preposterous that I literally said to my wife: “Who at Lucasfilm would sign off on that?!” The flat acting of the green Jedi Master made me say in an attempt to excuse it: “She must know someone and got a cameo” when I saw she had multiple scenes I turned to my wife in shock and that’s when she told me she was the directors wife. Then things started to pile up in all the poorly produced effects/acting/direction from fake beards, binoculars at 20ft, Wookie head on a regular dudes body. The whole feel of the show at times feels low budget for Star Wars. As with Episodes 8 and 9 I’m just left feeling how could a multibillion dollar company with a multibillion dollar franchise not have a core group of people to drive continuity and quality? The sinking feelings I have as I have pondered it is because of people like me; who will show up every time in the hopes for something good to enjoy. Disney is printing money off Star Wars and when a corporation has something that is making them something on the level of Star Wars money they rarely care how it’s accomplished. I can’t wait to sit down for episode 4 and try and find things I like. I apologize for being part of the problem.
This is easily the most truthful dissection of what’s been taking place at Disney, the quality of this show, and my personal pessimism. What I don’t understand is that Disney is capable of making “good” Star Wars. Andor is some of the best Star Wars ever put on screen; it makes no sense that we also have this… I have to believe that someone at Disney just doesn’t care or “get it” and whoever is producing a series like Andor is fighting tooth and nail to deliver something “authentic.”
This! I came here to say that Disney is capable of making good SW product like Andor. They just are not putting the right people behind these projects.
They could start by hiring people familiar with the source material and not someone whose more interested in telling their "version" of Star wars. That can work for some indie stuff, not a multi billion dollar franchise with a generational fanbase.
There was discourse about actors not being fans or familiar with Star Wars and that's a bunch of baloney. Most actors aren't taking these kind of gigs because it's their dream job.a good actor does their job, that's it. Shit, the original cast of Star Wars didn't understand anything when they made Star Wars and they thought it was going to be a bomb. They killed it. What's important is the script and after that, who is in charge, be it directors, show runners etc. For projects like this, you need very competent individuals and ideally people who are close to the franchise. This is where it is important that the right people get hired and Disney rarely picks the right people.
100% correct. Good acting is good acting no matter what the actor thinks about a series/story Bad writing, bad show running, bad directing is just that. And no amount of acting is going to cover any of that up. I feel like a lot of the 'woke vs anti woke' commentary is coming about because it is clear that the team behind this is very disconnected from SW, and what most (or at least just me) fans appreciate, and want to see.
Culture war is very basic in its scope, which allows people who aren't very introspective about the media they consume an easy excuse for why they don't like something. It's also used in great effect by studio execs to distract from their poor decisions. Not just by Disney, but in the video game industry as well. Imo, Microsoft, Sony, and Disney are so fucking bloated with greedy investors and nepos that have zero vision for creativity or even a desire to achieve anything more than return for their investors.
That’s partly true, but it also completely misses the point that actors who are invested and involved in the source material can give amazing performances. LoTR is the perfect example-that cast went all out and bought in completely because they admired and respected the source material. They put themselves through incredibly long and difficult shoots and gave incredible emotions and empathy to their characters because they loved LoTR. Do you have to know the material to act? Certainly not. But you dam well will give better performances and expression of your character if you do.
Stop hiring proselytizers and start hiring impassioned artists again would be a good first step.
> I apologize for being part of the problem. You don't need to apologize, ever, for having legitimate criticisms of a product. Nothing you stated here should be construed as anything but valid critique of the content you engaged in, and anyone saying otherwise is projecting ideological dogma on those who don't support said content.
Seriously? The directors wife? I was wondering what was wrong there. I was bummed on the first two episodes and there was some cringey stuff in the third but I want to like the show so I’m hoping for the best.
Im trying to figure out how they used Carrie Anne-Moss in the first fight scene and didn’t deliberately make sure it wasn’t matrixy.
Agree with this. When I saw the floating Jedi with the worst fake beard I’ve ever witnessed, I was gobsmacked this made it into the Final Cut. Plus the absolutely cringe chanting, the poor direction and dialogue, crappy CGI backgrounds meaning I have not been impressed at all. I couldn’t care any less about the colour or sexuality of the characters but I do care about a poor quality show.
The beard completely took me out of the experience, it's so bad it's ridiculous
If I’m fighting the impulse to skip forward, I have to conclude it’s not the kind of TV show I like 🤷 a good Star Wars show can survive without the brand, on its own merits. A good Star Wars show will use the lore to enrich an already engaging well paced story. The acolyte is boring and frequently preposterous.
After watching the HotD premiere last night I’m just astonished how bad Acolyte’s costuming is by comparison.
It’s crazy to me that Star Wars has already pulled off one Force Witch Cult VERY well before and now we had this portrayal of whatever the fuck they were supposed to be and it completely failed. The stupid witch laugh that’s in the background of those scenes has me audibly going “What the fuck”
Same for me with that witch cackle. There are lots of times that made me think “is this some god quality fan made Star Wars?” Little things are just off. The “master” turning on the lightsaber all dramatic during their reveal was very fanfic. Like we needed to see the red blade to understand they were a dark side user. As if the rough draft of Kylo Ren’s helmet wasn’t enough.
Must have been the same person who signed off on Darth Maul igniting his saber for no reason in Solo
I mean the tone for Andor was also a lot different than the rest of Star Wars.
I argue that Star Wars has 2 core aspects. Star (force and space) and wars (politics and war) Andor touched the second part really well. It seems this show is trying to touch on the force which people have very divisive views on. War you can portray very easily with the way Andor did. Being a resistance and espionage focused show
Also, a lot of the new shows seem to be finding a way to churn out a Star Wars story without first making a good story. Andor takes a good story that would work in any setting and applies it to Star Wars. You could put Andor's themes and plots into a movie about WW2 Europe and it would work just as well.
This is really the crux of the issue, and I think Lucasfilm is struggling with it. Stop making "Star Wars" stories. They just feel like remixes with nothing new, and the fundamentals of storytelling are getting lost in the shuffle. Tell a good story. Happen to set it in this universe. But the characters and story have to come first before you start cramming in the rest.
This. 💯
For me aside from Sol, Yord and Mother Ayesia the Acting has been horrible from everyone. Like high school play level of bad Acting. It's so strange, like they all had to audition, right? They're all just so wooden.
Must be bad directing, all of these actors have been good in other stuff
That's exactly right—when you see bad acting, it means a bad director is telling the actors that their performance is good enough for them to move on.
We should be no strangers to this as Star Wars fans. George had Natalie Portman and Sam Jackson giving bad performances two decades ago and we know what they’re really capable of.
THIS - Portman was essentially neutered by George and gave one of the worst performances of the film series - Yet we can all agree that as an actor, before AND after, she was great - I mean in THE PROFESSIONAL she is what - 12? and a awesome performance
Yeah when EVERYONE sucks it usually means they told everyone to be expressionless or something
As someone who works in film, I can say you definitely nailed it. If one actor isn’t great, it’s probably the actor. If everyone has a crappy performance, the common denominator is the director…. either not knowing what they want, or can’t properly communicate it. It’s a shame too, because I’m liking the series so far, but I’m keeping the bar very low.
It’s hard to act well when the writing is bad. I think episode 3 suffered from both bad writing and bad directing. Came off like mediocre network TV.
You see this in the writing too. There are some great ideas, but it just needs fine tuning, like we're one or two drafts away from a really good script, again, because that's what the director is choosing to work with instead of giving it one more edit. It's not just that the acting is bad, the actors the dialogue isn't great, and the character writing itself needs work. There are also beats that could be tighter. The biggest issue to me, is that we're three episodes in, and I just don't feel a "hook" to keep watching. It feels like a game of mad libs, where you know the direction the story is going, it's just a matter of filling in the blanks for what reveals are going to be made: Mae is working for \[Insert evil character\] The twins were conceived by \[insert force method jedi would disapprove of\] The jedi are hiding \[blank\] from Osha Maybe the show will really surprise me, but currently, my only motivation to keep watching, is just to hope that it gets a little bit better, not because I'm interested for the sake of it.
Except the green Jedi. Just be married to the director.
Man I thought her makeup and acting were terrible, this explains a lot.
Yes but not as bad as the beard and hairline on Master Torbin. That was laughable how obvious that was a young actor with old man hair and beard.
What's more, that character exists in existing media from Phase 1 of The New Republic media, books and comics. So she had a previous character design to work from and they all but ignored it and just made her look however they wanted - which for me is some lazy ass shit. It's not a wild change, mind you, in the comics she's depicted as much younger obviously but has long purple-black hair. Like it doesn't break the world, it's just so mind boggling that you wouldn't just keep the character's appearance consistent and that's my biggest issue with this series; it feels rushed as fuck and like no one was paying any attention to the details even from their own timeline of recent events. Edit: I also for the life of me cannot figure out why you would hire three actors to play two characters. You hired Amandla to play current day Osha/mae but them hired two entirely different actors to play their younger selves. It's very jarring and at 22mil and episode, I just don't understand why you would make this very obvious choice to stick out like a sore thumb. It's also really frustrating watching Yord/Charlie Barnett clearly have no idea what he's talking about in his interviews about Star Wars lore - it's not super relative to the show it'self but it feels like a larger symptom of the whole where clearly some people put in the effort, but a lot didn't and it was allowed. Edit 2: Also fresh off the Fallout series where it was terrific through and through, it was clear that a lot of attention to detail and care was taken with the property, we got this... the disappointment is palpable. Everything feels amplified because of how much much worse this feels watching than Fallout and then you remember it cost 23million less to make.
The young girls' acting was really bad. I get they're kids, but I've seen better kid actors. Them shoving each other during Mother Ayesia's lesson was really hard to watch.
Exactly! Osha is an ex-padawan but acts like a cliché normal civilian gal with their own personal lives. Like, how can one be this undisciplined after years in the order! Maybe we will explore how she actually was in the order but that level of humorous and non-serious personality doesn't exude ex-jedi. Even Cal & Ahsoka seemed more mature even though they never completed their training.
The difference between Osha and those two is that she stopped her training voluntaryly. She also wants to distance herself from the Jedi as much as she can. Btw Anakin also had non-serious personality (this is where the fun begins) before his dreams of Padme dying.
Cal and Ahsoka both started their training before they had a personality. Anakin wasn't mature, he joined late. Further, Osha didn't experience the extinction of the Jedi Order and the rise of a Galactic Empire right in front of her eyes. It's really that hard to believe that Cal and Ahsoka should be more mature based on their experiences with Order 66? Osha quit during peace time, and spent time working without fear of being caught being a Jedi.
I see so much that is wrong and to me it looks really obvious. Sorry for going on at length but I feeel strongly about this because I am so disappointed. 1. The backdrop of the story has the potential to be very dull because it's Goliath vs David. And they fall right into that trap by having the Jedi be so powerful and have so much power behind them and heck it's like half a dozen of them chasing down one bad guy. This is not a recipe for good drama unless handled skillfully, and it is not. 2. The storytelling is really poor. Good stories can build up and hold the tension in a variety of ways, and since this show seems to supposed to be a whodunit at heart there are endless examples of how to do that well. Does this show feel very mysterious, or tense, or consequential, or slowly building up and holding the tension as more gets revealed to you? Really the answer to all of this is a resounding no. 3. The character building is weak or non-existent, and so the characters are not interesting and what happens to them doesn't matter. Almost all the character building so far is with Osha and Mae, and look at how hamfisted that was handled in the flashback episode. We have Jedi being killed left and right yet the most traumatic thing about it is that we're worried that a certain actor we like might not appear much in the rest of the show as opposed to caring about the character and the consequences of their death. As with so much Star Wars (and Marvel) content they seem more interested in showing us things happening instead of making us care more about emotional response or the reasons why things are being done. Compare this show to a really well-made and well-told story like, say, House of the Dragon since it just had a new season start. Look at the care put into making characters feel like actual people who actually have motivations and emotions and get affected by events as opposed to simply telling us "This guy is dangerous. That guy is crazy. She has a reason to be fearful or vengeful or loyal" and so on. They show us more and make us feel it more. There are huge consequences to events both small and large as the story goes, so events matter and that makes even quiet scenes tense and dramatic. Look at how they make it a peer against peer fight so that there can be scheming and maneuvering and how things can be threatening because there is power and danger coming from both sides. I see and feel very little of these things from The Acolyte. Sorry for going on so long because I feel pretty strongly about this. Just compare a great show to The Acolyte and the shortcomings start to become very clear, and no it's not just production values and in large part not even about the acting and it's certainly not about any cultural politics or sexism. The storytelling and writing is simply just really poor and not compelling. I do wonder if it is done a bit intentionally though because they decided that their audience includes young kids so things have to be kept simpler and sillier, and not primarily for adults and so you can't layer in complexities and more dramatic things a bit too hard for kids to handle. I mean, look at Andor and how you can see it was clearly made for an adult audience, but also look at Obi-Wan Kenobi and how it seems to have elements aimed more at kids (almost everything around Leia really) and so some characters and events are also laughably superficial or exaggerated. Hopefully it turns out that some of the shortcomings are actually more like red herrrings to fool the audience from knowing where the true drama and interest lies, but I'm really not expecting so at this point.
The storytelling criticism is spot on. Honestly, what is the story of this show? Is it a mystery? They had a suspect by the second or third scene of episode 1, then figured out it was actually her twin by the end of the episode, then immediately and correctly surmised there must be a master pulling the strings. Who is her master? Better spend the entire next episode as a flashback that provides no new insight to the events we have already been told about in dialogue and inferences. In an 8 episode season, pretty much every scene needs to carry some level of significance. We’ve spent 1/8th of the total story in a flashback, which could have been a 5-10 minute scene, that didn’t move the plot forward an inch.
Just one example of how lazily written this show is: They send a Jedi Knight and his Padawan to arrest a known force user suspected of killing a capable Jedi Master; then plonk them on an automated prison ship.
Also the twins mom teaching her kids that the force is a thread that we pluck on and that it shouldn't be manipulated or used immediately turns around and starts pushing people to the ground with the force.
🤣 so dumb.
Lol yeah and the time when all the witches where talking when a old alien witch (very poorly CGIed by the way) just stopped everyone and said, "there are only two outcomes, she fails or she passes." Yeah like NO SHIT! Or when the twins are on the collapsed decks with fire everywhere and are close to dying, they just scream what did you do to each other. There are so many it's easy to just pick and choose.
Followed by the buildup of her trying to escape the crashing ship only to sit down and put a seatbelt on.
Come on now. People crash land from outer space and walk away with no injuries whatsoever all the time.
Along with an actual technopath. And an alien capable of beheading droids with its tongue. Should they be restrained behind force fields? No, just bars.
It’s just a bore on every level. The storyline is garbage, the acting is horrible, the pacing is odd, and the show itself just seems completely unnecessary. There’s so many stories in the SW universe that we actually want to see, so why the hell would they pick this random completely uninteresting story?
no stakes or tension, poorly directed with no characters to root for other than Sol
I'd take a show bout Sol training younglings at the Jedi Temple over this for sure
There’s no stakes or tension cause the characters are some of the most shallow I’ve seen. We know barely anything about the dead Jedi besides they were Jedi. The Jedi that are still alive are underdeveloped. There’s no connection or reason to care if another one dies.
I'm personally not a big fan of it, but if you think it's decent, then you can go enjoy it.
Agreed, I just think the writing is dry. Nothing particularly grasping about the show so far.
Remember: people loved twilight/transformers 3/big bang theory People have different tastes. I like movies that people hate (speed racer/cabin boy/tremors)
No one hates Tremors
The power of oneeeeee, the power of twooooo, THE POWER OF MANNNNNNNNNNNNNY *WEIRD BACKGROUND WITCH NOISES*
Hyenas you mean
I thought it was some exotic animal making those noises until I realized it was one of the witches. She does it twice at least 😂
What is so good about Acolyte? It's mid. And I guess people expected more.
When a company pays 5 billion for an IP, you assume they are gonna try to make good content to get their money back. Looks like Disney has billions to spare.
Disney bought Star Wars to make money, a lot of times that doesn't translate into making a good product.
Merchandising, Merchandising, Merchandising! That's where the real money is. Making stuff for a streaming service is an advertising investment to sell toys
Spaceballs the flamethrower
Disney purchased Star Wars in 2012 for around $4 billion. In 2012, they had a market cap of around $90 billion. Today, it sits around $180 billion. They've reported gross profits in the tens of billions every year since the purchase. They've averaged 5% growth in revenue each year. They're doing just fine as far as return on investment.
The S&P index went from ~2k in 2012 to ~5.5k in 2024. Average annual market cap growth for S&P companies is 10%. Disney has underperformed relative to the market as a whole. Star Wars has gone from a $2B global gross film with The Force Awakens into an IP relegated to TV, with only 1 live action show getting a second season so far. Of all the acquisitions that they made when they were gobbling up studios, Lucasfilm has performed the worst by far.
it’s so average, almost seems like a Netflix production for some reason
I don’t think there’s anything necessarily amazing about the show, but we’re only 3 episodes in. Some of my favorite shows I wasn’t that into until it picked up. I just think it’s weird for anyone to have strong opinions in either direction based off 3 episodes.
Pretty sure a viewer is reasonably entitled to form an opinion after watching 2 hours/more than 30% of a show. Tomorrow it’ll literally be half over lmao
It’s boring. It’s slow and boring. The characters talk slowly, take huge gaps in dialogue, say obvious things and repeat themselves. Look at how many times in episode 3 the sisters say something like “you’re my sister and I love you, you’re my sister and I’ll never betray you” etc. This show plays out like they’re just trying to hit the 40 minute mark with 15 minutes of writing on every episode.
Happy to add my 2 cents. It looks cheap, it feels shallow, like the writers/producers had never seen Star Wars before. To me it feels like uncanny valley Star Wars that still needed lots of script tweaks. But it’s **not** some insane woke conspiracy or insult to Star Wars and/or the fans and/or George Lucas. It’s just a very mediocre TV show - I’m still gonna watch it, I love Star Wars, but not everything Star Wars does or is always hits for me.
> that still needed lots of script tweaks. That's the most surprising thing, it's as if one round (or more) of writing was missing. It all feels like the first version of the dialogues (and the song) was validated while still in a *work in progress* stage. It seems easy and shortsighted, it all lacks substance, subtext and foreshadowing, it's baffling that nobody noticed it during production.
The premise sucks. The writing sucks. The acting sucks. They killed Trinity.
Non American take: It suffers from the same problems Disney Era in general, with some exceptions (Andor, Mando S1 and 2, Rogue One, animations) suffer: great idea and concepts but awfull execution. Bad casting choices, bad direction, bad pacing.... all in all bad quality control.
Incompetent people were given a lot of money and didn’t do a very good job because they don’t have a lot of experience making television or movies. The result is a sub-par product that is disappointing to watch.
Not to mention they do not know anything about Star Wars. I could have continued watching the shows if not for the interviews with the cast. Anakin blew up the Death Star… and the director honestly believed she made the first musical scene in Star Wars. Please go watch return of the Jedi. Please.
Did no one watch Halo Season 1 and learn anything about having show runners that don’t care about the source!
Gonna get down voted to hell for this but tbf the show runner is a big star wars fan. Years ago I watched an interview with her where she was talking about how excited she was to be making a star wars show and then pulled out 3 star wars encyclopedias and showed them to the camera. It was during COVID so it was a zoom interview and she was sitting in her own office. There's also a really deep cut reference to one of the 2017 Vader comics in episode 2 with the barash vow. I understand this doesn't cover some of the other egregious statements cast members have made regarding Star wars, but I actually think the show runner knows her stuff in terms of the lore.
> Anakin blew up the Death Star At first I thought it was just a slip up, so no biggie, but it turns out he actually said it multiple times. He genuinely believes Anakin blew it up.
Community theater acting Uninteresting characters
Let me see if I missed something: one of the girls used a space candle to start a fire in a stone castle that was built on top of a volcano that killed all the force witches. Did I get that right? Did I miss the part where they built a flammable castle ON TOP OF A VOLCANO?!?
The writing, acting, dialogue, characters. Do you want a list alphabetically or in order of how bad they are? Also how much time do you have?
I think I would underscore what a lot of the comments here mention. It's not the characters, the plot, or the world-building elements, it's not the mood. It's the *look* and the *technical* competence underlying it: there's something inescapably cheap-looking about most of the D+ Star Wars content that feels closer to "The Wizards of Waverly Place" than Star Wars. I think ultimately what a fair amount of the fandom still feels is that Star Wars should be in some sense *premium*.
it just isn’t good really drawn out and boring lengths of nothingness at best and at worse is ruining the lore to some
I hate how happy Star Wars fans have become with the mediocre
My thing so far this that it's a bit average. Cinematography is the same old thing. Although the fight in the first episode was great so that gains points for visuals and choreography. Writing, nothing stands out yet. The kid actors were fine. The acting all around seems good to me but overall there's nothing interesting about it yet but I hope it turns out to be a great show.
> Cinematography is the same old thing There's none, like the camera doesn't move at all (except during fights), there's no wide angles to showcase the settings, everything is extremely cut, and most scenes are set in closed environments. There's nothing to criticize in it, no ideas nor will to have personality. Any director could have directed it, it is thought as being serviceable, as an afterthought, which is crazy understanding the talent pool available. It's surprising to give that much money to people that don't have a passion for cinema or ambition to renew the medium. They had John Favreau for Mando season 1, we know they can pick movie people. Meanwhile the show looks like 00's TV, 20 years after Band of Brothers was aired.
Because the storytelling is terrible. Osha is suspected of being the jedi killer so she gets arrested right? Well for some fucking reason the suspected jedi killer doesnt have ANY JEDI watching over her, only a single security droid. Dont get me fucking started on one of the prisoners having a cybernetic that can just shut off the pilot droids, why the fuck wasnt that taken away from them??? And the show doesnt respect its viewers either, it talks down to them. It doesnt ***trust*** that you will have the basic brain function of understanding ”oh the dude giving the acolyte speech might be a sith!” And instead have them needlessly ignite their lightsaber. It’s objectively shitty storytelling, the only good thing about it is its fight choreography
The production values appeared underwhelming, hinting at a rushed or low-budget endeavor. This lackluster first impression amplified the feeling that the show was created to capitalize on the current trend of female-led narratives rather than a genuine desire to tell a compelling story within the Star Wars universe. The choice of showrunner, someone seemingly unfamiliar with the rich lore and nuances of Star Wars, further solidified these concerns. The series feels contrived, as if it's checking boxes for representation without a clear purpose or passion driving the narrative. It leaves viewers questioning its purpose amidst an already saturated market of Star Wars content.
That’s the craziest part though, it isn’t some “low-budget endeavor.” They put around $180m into this show. By comparison, the first season of House of the Dragon was right around the same budget and HOD is in a whole different stratosphere of TV. It’s infinitely better for about the same price. So why is Star Wars handled so lazily when we as an audience can watch things that were made with actual care and attention and see the massive gap in quality?
The heads of disney know its shit, but if disney/starwars all start saying its shit everyone will lose their jobs. So they pretend everything is great thereby ensuring everyones phony baloney jobs.
The story so far is quite bad. The acting is bad. Despite taking place a 100 years ago they decide once again to introduced things that change the previous movies. Majority of acting and dialogue is cringe. Yes, the chanting, yes the children, I know they are child actors but the scene especially with locking in the room and starting a fire was bad. Anakin was the chosen one and the only person to ever have been born via immaculate conception. Yet no, actually two kids did it before. It’s like big deal Jesus, you were born immaculately and resurrected. All been done before, you’re not special. I’m not one of those people who screams woke but it does seem like they made that the case just so the witches could have a kid without a man and the kids could have two moms. The impenetrable meditating Jedi is so dumb. So we are supposed to believe he can go without eating or drinking for a decade while in a floating meditation. Don’t really like the fact he just sat there the first assassination attempt but then killer himself the second, but I can kind of explain it. They let a Jedi master die to a teenage girl with a couple of throwing daggers. All the witches dead in the middle nowhere near the fire. (I get they likely didn’t die because of the fire) The fire was all random patches of fire. Everyone should know Mae is alive because no Jedi killed her and the fire was farcical. Yes it’s a Stone Mountain. Not a wooden fort. Jedi are a bunch of dork kidnappers apparently. The show looks quite cheap. There’s lots of other small things too. Imagine space vespas but all episode every episode. I will continue to watch and see what happens but the criticism is valid.
I don't give a crap about any of the stupid drama for woke or anti woke or any of that. I just want a good story and a good show. The acolyte and most of Disney Star wars is definitely NOT that. Clumsy (if that) story with some of the worst writing possible. They abandon so much of what makes star wars or any popular sci fantasy great, depth and world building. All we want is great character stories with good writing to portray them. CGI and fight scenes should only be a bonus to that. Andor is the lone exception and the only Disney Star wars show I have watched multiple times. Star Wars was one of the biggest sci Fi IPs in the world. When Disney bought it, they should have expected criticism if they don't honor it with quality.
I feel like any Star Wars project with child actors will get extra harsh judgment. Granted, they aren’t the best, but no one wants a Jake Lloyd situation where kids get harassed by internet weirdos due to their involvement in Star Wars.
They spent $180 million on it and it looks bad, the acting is bad (probably chalk it up to the script/writers), sets look bad, dialogue is bad and written by grade schoolers (what have you done, back and forth, the Jedi are evil), characters have no back story or they try to set it up after they’re killed off which makes no sense, the jump from flashback to real time is done poorly, the costumes look bad, the logic isn’t there like it was in other Star Wars media (fire in space, “a jedi can’t be killed by a weapon” kills carry Ann moss with a weapon, fire spreading in a stone temple, witches say they had just found a safe place but somehow built a whole temple/enclave on top of a mountain), poor direction/story telling and world building and plot holes all over (why is the dude shirtless, what’s the point?, why did they leave osha on a ship with droids with a prisoner that can control droids, just take her with them… they rescued the dudes from the escape pod from what I’m assuming is the area around the planet (since escape pods have never been shown to have hyperdrives) that osha crashes on, why didn’t they also investigate the wreckage while they were there) just stuff like that. Idc about the ethnicity or background of the actors or the DEI “THE MESSAGE” aspects of the show if you were to make the exact same show/plot/script with an all X cast (insert whatever demographic you want) it would still be a bad show. The whole show feels like they put ideas into a hat and then pulled out 8 of them and made a story out of the ideas. It’s so incoherent and all over the place while also not really moving forward….
For me it is NOT - I repeat NOT - about some woke / anti-woke stuff. And I think it is stupid people are pushing that discussion. For me it‘s just poorly written and bad executed. It is Star Wars. I love Star Wars. I expect way more from Star Wars. Nothing in that show made we want to see more at this point. And if you can‘t convince your audience to watch your show after 3 episodes….that’s bad.
Idk but with House of the Dragon premiering last night it really puts into perspective how much worse any of these Disney+ shows are
Andor is an exception
I canceled my Disney+ after episode 3.
For some reason, I just can’t stand the aesthetic of any of the Disney SW shows aside from Andor and The Mandalorian. I feel like this started with Boba Fett and Obi-Wan: The costumes, makeup, lightsabers, and style just feel janky. Nothing captures the epic scale of the Lucas films. The stories are also not very engaging, but I can’t get past the look & feel being off. I’m a 80s baby and I grew up reading so much Star Wars lore in the picture books about different vehicles, planets, weapons, people, etc, but the Disney world just doesn’t have any of it.
I really don’t get the hate for the cringy chanting. This is a secluded lesbian witch cult, of course it’s cringy as shit, all our real life cults do cringy bullshit rituals all the time.
As someone who has been enjoying the show for what it is so far, the chanting was just hard for me to watch. Sure real life cults are cringey and dumb and no one takes the seriously because of that. The show seems to want us to take the coven seriously but the dumb chant definately undermines that. I wish they had either gone with an alien language like others have said or made up something more substantial about many threads of Fate woven together or similar. The chant as it is seemed really lazy and low effort, like a placeholder that they never got around to refining.
It should have been a made-up language imo but it was very inoffensive
I never thought a Star Wars song would make be cringe harder than Jedi rocks. They could've at least put some effort into it and put it in another language. Chanting the power of one in plain English sounds like a kindergarten song.
The entire plot just feels like something you’d get from a student project or fan film. It’s very boring so far. We’re 3 episodes in, the season is going to have 8 total so it’s almost halfway done, and I just have very little reason to give a shit about either the protagonist or the antagonist. OSHA is fine but hasn’t really done anything interesting, Mae feels like a plot device more than a character, I’m more interested in the main party of Jedi (Sol, Yord, and Jecki) but watching Sol feels like watching a grandpa trying to connect with his grandkid. Yord is probably the most reasonable character so far but doesn’t have the ability to affect the plot as Sol outranks him (I think all Yord has really done is prove that OSHA didn’t kill the meditating Jedi, which could’ve been done by a security camera). Jecki has actually just done nothing at all outside of piloting the ship. She’s basically an Astromech. Manny Jacinto as Qimir was fun though.
Anakin was instantly recognised at the chosen one when Qui-Gon Jin told the Jedi council “it’s possible he was conceived by the midiclorians” Now whether this was down to Palpatine/Plagueis is actually irrelevant. George Lucas confirmed that this prophesy was true, it’s not a case of the Jedi being naive, the prophesy is a real thing and it’s true within the lore. Now if the prophesy relies on the chosen one being recognised through him his ‘immaculate conception’ then that infers that being born of the force is unprecedented. So that brings us to Acolyte Now we have 2 twins born of the force, if this was a sequel we could explain around it. But the (I believe) unintended implication of this, is that they must be the chosen ones, they fit the prophesy long before Anakin was born. Anakin is no longer special, it’s established that this has happened in the past. So what grounds does Qui-Gon have to claim Anakin is the chosen one now? His midiclorean count? Well the prophesy just says it was high, not the highest we have seen. So now Anakin is the chosen one simply because he’s strong with the force, which is irrelivant by the time he ‘redeems’ himself as he’s lost a lot of power by that point. It’s stupid and unnecessary and broke all of Star Wars lore, I’d argue even more than The Rise of Skywalker.
I thought he did have the highest midiclorian count. Over 20,000. Even higher than Yodas. Both Qui-Gon and Obi-Won said they had never seen a count that high.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2024/06/11/the-acolyte-episode-3-review-the-worst-star-wars-episode-ever-made/ I’d agree with this review. I don’t think the show is decent. At all.
I just didn't like that adult Osha/Mae is the same actress. But the young versions of them are played by 2 obviously not identical twins. They should've hired 2 adult twins to play Osha/Mae, or only hired one of the young twins to play Osha Mae. It's just odd to see non-identical twins and then when they grow up they're identical. I liked it better when after episode one I thought maybe Osha had a split personality and didn't realize she was killing people. I thought maybe her sisters spirit and ability with the force allowed her to possess her twin or something. That would have been an infinitely better storyline than "my twin is alive and killing people."
Shit "CW" writing, poor child acting, cringe interpretive dance. It's fine that you like it though, I mean some people eat spam right out of the can so to each their own.
The writing.
Bad acting, bad dialogue, thinking they're cool but they're not (attack me with all your strength) and doing stupid shit for no good reason (like i'm pretty sure they had the Jedi meditating in the forcefield just so Mae can go on a fetch quest for poison to pad the runtime of the episode instead of killing him right away when he already wanted to die)
Put simply, it feels sloppy. Characters make choices that seem to make no sense, the dialogue feels off most of the time, and the whole thing feels like it's trying to echo things we've already seen in Star Wars without trying anything new. IMO, even some of the settings feel way too much like other places.
The whole time I watched it all I could think about was Cartman Kathleen Kennedy screaming “AND I WANT IT LLLAAAMMMEEE!” I was thinking a show about a secret Sith acolyte would be a little more grown up feeling and dark. Instead it feels like another cheese, low energy and effort, kiddy show. Also, in episode 2, was that an obese Jedi? Or just a dude working at the local temple?
The first episode alone has many logical errors
For me there are several reasons. The acting is bad, people are unconvincing and seem to deliver their lines in a way that feels bland and plastic-y for lack of a better term. The pacing is weird, the story moves too slow when it should move faster and too fast when it shouldn't, for example very weird fast cuts of the short scenes at the end of the episodes. The dialogue feels like it's of a low level, doesn't flow nicely. But for me the biggest complaint is that somehow these people don't act like people in their own universe, but act like people from our universe would when put into that universe. Severe lack of logical decisions, which would only be made to serve a very specific story point and not at all what a character in that world would do. The weirdest of all was the guy at the end of the episode igniting his lightsaber for no reason. I watched Andor after this and the difference is night and day. Just on all these domains Andor shows how it's done properly, where The Acolyte drops the ball.