Star Wars: The Acolyte - Disney+ - (***Spoilers***)

EltonJohn69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122361588#Comment_122361588

he full on panicked and just killed her

EltonJohn69

the show is bucket of old dirty piss….it been getting worse… I’d doubt there will season 2 but then again maybe there is a lot of hate watchers

Penn

Yeah I have to agree, the show has been a bit of a dud. Could have been an interesting show with Qimir turning a Jedi Padawan into his apprentice and showing the failures of the Jedi (in a different way to how Palpatine turned Anakin), but there's been so much superfluous fluff in the show between the Nightsisters or whatever they are, the fact the girls are twins rather than just having one character teeter between the Light and Dark side, them being born through the Force like Anakin was (which a lot of SW fans are giving out about because it makes Anakin less special since he was born the same way. I don't have any issue with that, I just think it feels pointless and redundant for Mae and Osha). The whole show has been a convoluted mess.

Can't see it getting a second season.

EltonJohn69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122366448#Comment_122366448

I don’t really have a problem with the story, it’s just the execution is terrible. It looks really cheap, the acting is awkward, pacing is all over the place, poor music (is there even music ?)… it’s very sterile ….it feels like an episode of Xena warrior princess not a 100 million dollar show….

ejmaztec

I think Episode 7 was more of a repeat of a previous episode than anything else. I didn't even care when any new snippets of what we didn't see in the other episode were shown. Still, it only lasted about 37 minutes. I expect episode 8 might be a lot longer.

It's still getting crucified on IMDB, and some of the high-raters are really getting angry with the low-raters who think that it's complete crap. 😛

AbusesToilets

Saw a comment on Reddit, There's a decent show in here with a better editor. Can't imagine this is how the show/ movie was originally envisaged. I don't understand how Disney keeps fumbling these shows. Like who is looking at this product and thinking they've nailed it, do they not do test audiences anymore?

expectationlost

if jedis are not allowed to have feelings or wants when they do they are very easily manipulated…

silverharp

from thumbnails it doesnt look like it will be renewed? seems like little interest in this expensive "fan fiction"

Sonics2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122369511#Comment_122369511

Why do you think Jedi aren't allowed to have feelings?

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122371069#Comment_122371069

'cos that's their brand? The Jedi as shown in the films & TV are supposed to be these warrior-monks who intentionally surpress any and all emotion or personal connection. Passion and even romantic affection is considered the path to the Dark Side; kinda hobbles the ability to write good characters when the good guys aren't allowed by horny for other people.

Sonics2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122371080#Comment_122371080

Absolutely not true, the Jedi do and of course have feelings and encourage them. They're encouraged to be caring, empathetic and loving. What they're specifically taught is to be careful with their emotions, and to not form attachments.

Obi-Wan himself has romantic affection with Satine and is honest about it. He actively gets annoyed and even angry with Anakin, he gets frustrated with Qui Gon and Luke forms strong friendships with Han and more.

They're not Vulcans, they do have and express feelings, just told to be very careful about them.

The path to darkside isn't love itself, it's not being able to let go of potential loss and hurt.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122371180#Comment_122371180

"not form attachments" is kinda what I'm talking about though, cos you're kinda neutering a gigantic chunk of the human experience & dramatic fiction. And I think that's an over expansion on what has been displayed or insinuated on-screen throughout the Franchise: it's certainly not how actors have chosen to translate all that into their performances playing Jedi, including here & or Ahsoka (aka the show with Rosario Dawson standing around with her arms folded). They are, by and large, emotionally neutered at best and sanctimonious at worst, wearing a pompous self-serious air that has made each successive Jedi very hard to invest in as characters.

There might be space for nuance, but this has been rarely or adequately translated.

Sonics2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122371222#Comment_122371222

Oh I'm not contesting that they're pompous and all that, they often are. I'm just saying the idea that they're emotionless and don't or not allowed to have feelings is simply wrong.

The Jedi, like a lot of other fantasy/sci-fi type heroes are really more considered to be stoic, in that they they do feel strong and normal emotions, but choose to act rationally and logically over letting their emotions control them.

expectationlost

they were on that planet for 7 weeks before they told the padawan why?

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122372063#Comment_122372063

"Emotionless" is overselling it on my part, yes they're not without emotion so "stoic" is definitely the more apt phrasing for the Jedis' baseline of personalities - but that still amounts to the same problem for me if we're gonna hang stories off these archetypes.

That utter lack of broad emotional register isn't so impactful if they're part of an ensemble and there's emotionality or magnetic characters surrounding them; we saw that clear enough with the original trilogy. The heart and soul of those films were Leia & Han, not Luke IMO. Gandalf was a main character but he wasn't the main character & worked 'cos he bounced off the rest of the Fellowship - and so on. To frame an entire narrative around the Jedi collapses under the weight of that pomposity and deliberate lack of passion, for want of a better word.

fitz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122372304#Comment_122372304

One of the reasons I actually liked The Last Jedi, despite it having problems, was the idea that for Rey, the Force was just a tool to be used.

If they're going to continue with stories set after the sequel trilogy, I'd like to see them have "Jedi" just be Force users who use their power for good, and they ditch this chaste, monk concept - go for more of a samurai concept. Let them have families, ffs. You're 100% right, having these celibate, repressed characters is extremely restraining, and the idea that acting out of strong emotions is inherently a path to evil is just reductive and boring.

Star Wars is at its best when there's a bit of grey area to the characters, as seen most recently in Andor. Tbh, I'm kinda rooting for Qimir in The Acolyte, and if anything, the more Star Wars I watch, the more the Jedi order seems like a misguided religion of noble intentions, but ultimately one capable of particularly arrogant and harmful actions. Ditch it, and start over, imo.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122374109#Comment_122374109

That's one of the things I think The Last Jedi got absolutely right and was the best path forward for Star Wars; the Jedi are human (well, humanoid aliens…). They're fallible, they're prone to mistakes, and it was their own hubris and hero complex that keeps allowing evil to rise. They don't own or control the Force, the Force is there regardless. They can wield it, but it can also wield them. The Force doesn't belong to powerful families or lineages, it belongs to everyone. It's why it chose Rey and was giving her the power to defeat the Dark Side even though her parents were nobody.

Then because of the backlash to the film because Luke wasn't completely heroic throughout the entire film, they brought JJ Abrams back in, Rey is a Palpatine and somehow Palpatine returned, Rey decides to be a Skywalker, and Finn thinks he's Force-sensitive but doesn't say anything because obviously the Force only belongs to powerful families.

Not saying The Last Jedi didn't have problems. But if they properly followed up on it they could have explained how Luke was manipulated into seeing Ben as a threat, who Snoke was (easily could have made him Darth Plaigus) etc. Even for those who didn't like it it could have became a strong second part of a three-part story. But they overcorrected and undid everything done in The Last Jedi (Oh yeah, your parents were nobodies. But your grandfather was one of the most powerful men to ever have existed. Forgot to mention that. Now where's the helmet I destroyed in the last film that I suddenly need again for no good reason.)

This show could have tapped into more of that. How Qimir and Sol are both two sides of the same coin and showing how easily one could be swayed from the light to the dark rather than how massive Anakin's shift was.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122374109#Comment_122374109

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122374342#Comment_122374342

I have a funny feeling in a few years there's gonna be a big, collective realisation that Star Wars completely fúcked itself over in jettisoning the whole democratisation of the Jedi in favour of Nostalgia Wànk. If people are suddenly assessing the prequels in a positive light, I'd be shocked if the Last Jedi doesn't undergo the same reassessment; there was clearly a desire to decouple the franchise from legacy hierarchies and insistence the Force was for lineages only. Its final shot promised so much.

It's odd how in a dogmatic pursuit of "lore", the Force has become this elitist quantity only the blessed few are allowed wield. And if you're not an emotionally constipated monk you're dangerous. If I had more time on my hands there's probably a very unhealthy message for kids here; orthodoxies or some such.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122374636#Comment_122374636

Even when it comes to Luke himself, there's such a hero fantasy about him because most people who saw the films did so when they were children. Whereas the truth is Luke was always flawed, impulsive, and teetered on the edge of the Dark Side himself. In Empire he left Yoda's training because he sensed Leia and Han were in trouble even though Yoda explicitly told him not to go. He lost badly against Vader. In Jedi, he fell right into Jabba's trap. When he was with the Emperor and Vader, the Emperor goaded him into trying to attack him and give in to his hatred. When Vader taunted him about going after Leia, he again gave in to his anger and took Vader down, only pulling back at the last minute. And then it was Vader who took down the Emperor, not Luke.

So for Luke to become victim to his own hubris of being the hero credited with taking down the Emperor, of being the one to rebuild the Jedi Order, leading him to see Ben as a threat for whatever reason (again, could have been further expanded on in Episode 9), it makes perfect sense.

A lot of fans just couldn't see Luke as not being completely heroic, even though by the end he beats the First Order, helps the others escape, renews hope in the rebellion and beats Kylo Ren. He was a far more interesting character in TLJ and Mark Hamill gave his best on-screen performance than any of the original trilogy.

But I think once he threw the lightsaber over his shoulder, some fans were just never going to accept anything after that. Star Wars needs to evolve past Jedi V Sith, Light V Dark, Blue/Green V Red lightsabers go vhissh.

Relikk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122371037#Comment_122371037

I doubt that Disney/Lucasfilm care that the show isn't being viewed in the same light as they want it to be. They'll greenlight a second series whether we like it, or not, and will continue to blame everything but their own shabby standards when it fails, again, and it will fail because Headland wants to tie into the beloved Darth Plagueis novel. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

Andor season 2 is really the last indicator of anything worthwhile in Star Wars for a very long time to come.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122374799#Comment_122374799

Could be, companies like Disney have made the process of finding out what is profitable/loss making so opaque that financials barely register in decisions of what to back? but it will catch up with them at some stage

pixelburp

I'd say any continuation of this kinda depends on the hidden figures that tell Disney+ if this has been a success anymore. Filtering out the reflexive malcontents who'd boo their own shadow cos it was black, how successful has this show been? And indeed: what are the metrics for success at that? Social media? Retaining or gaining Disney+ subscribers?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122374707#Comment_122374707

Absolutely, when you sit down and chartt Luke as a character and person, his journey was one of being flawed and deeply human. The tossing of the light saber was perhaps way too glib and poisoned the well before the arc even got started, but the bones of the story and its attempts to claw back some emotionality in the Jedi, was there.

Mind you, this isn't a flaw with Start Wars: we've seen of late a weird fixation and misjudged reverence for "lore" as something untouchable.

expectationlost

saw someone on reddit say that the 7 weeks of waiting to be told what they doing is a message from the show runner to us, no coincidence that the padawan said 7 weeks in the 7th episode...

Relikk

Ugh. Thank feck this is over. It was absolutely terrible.

Penn

I actually didn't mind it. Still a weak show overall with too much focus on the wrong things, and Amandla Stenberg just wasn't great, but it had enough throughout to keep some interest, decent performances from others, and I enjoyed the dispelling the myth of "Jedi = Always the good guys". David Harewood's short scene with the Jedi was exactly what I was looking for and was the kind of thing a lot of us discussed further up this page.

Assuming the figure in the cave was Darth Plagueus who may have been pulling the strings the whole time, which would be interesting to start following up in if they got a Season 2.

silverharp

There were some Mary Poppins-esque clips floating around this morning, didnt look great

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122391707#Comment_122391707

There were one or two moments during a lightsaber battle where they looked a bit floaty and obviously on wires, but they were using the Force to land from a fall so it made a reasonable amount of sense for why it looked like that. The lightsaber fight as a whole was pretty good.

0ph0rce0

I stopped after 3 episodes.

Then said go on sure get through it and just finished it there.

I thought it was shite.

If there is a second season there's no way I see Disney handing over another $180 Million that's for sure.

EltonJohn69

didn’t think the finale was too bad. But I don’t know where that $180,000,000 went, the show looked cheap. Overall a poor show but had some interesting dark narrative choices. I would watch a second season purely for darth plagueis, but they will probably waste the character. Also I have had enough Yoda, all he does is talk shite.
Anyway looks like the show is neither well liked or viewed by many so will be canceled.

pixelburp

I think I said it here, but my speculation about the budget is that based on the couple of episodes I endured, there was a tonne of expensive looking detail in otherwise throwaway moments or setups; like, in episode 1 alone there were at least 2 complex, animatronic alien characters who had one scene - then were gone. The bartender and one of the escapee aliens; and there were others too in the background of nearly every scene, the aforementioned were just the ones I remembered cos they had lines.

For comparison, Star Trek Discovery had one major alien FX (Saru) and he was a main character through 5 seasons of the show. Saru cost money to rig and Paramount were gonna get value. That shít is expensive to design, build and operate and for a fleeting character who could have otherwise been played by a human in a wig? Don't multiple times across the season without repetition ?That's where I'd say the money bled.

odyssey06

So when I misheard 'vergence' as 'virgin' turns out it was virgin birth after all.

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122393673#Comment_122393673

I thought it was virgin they were saying - oops

steve_r

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122391681#Comment_122391681

I think that scene with David Harewood really stood out to me and made me wonder why it wasn't earlier in the season as it would have given the whole plot a greater context and significance. It's a shame because I thought the finale was one of the better episodes a really uneven season that went from poor to ok a few times.

There's an interesting article here that makes the argument it would have been better as film, and highlights some of the criticisms raised above in the thread.

https://www.avclub.com/the-acolyte-season-1-finale-star-wars-franchise-tv-1851593018

I would disagree with the idea that it "needed" to be a film - I think that's what the idea originally started out as and the padding/editing issues came from that. Whereas the likes of Andor was probably a lot better thought out as a story and worked a lot better.

I think the idea of exploring the idea that the Jedi approach as flawed and overly ideologically driven is interesting and I think it could have been explored better, unfortunately a combination of poor writing and poor performances let this down.

One comment that caught my eye was the scale of the influence of the Original trilogy on the franchise as a whole, and whether this prohibits these type of stories that challenge the "good/bad" archetypes established originally. They contrasted this with the likes of Star Trek (not a series I'm hugely familiar with).

Lastly, bringing in Darth Plagues confuses me as a novice Star Wars fan. My understanding was that they made the "lore" of these characters non-cannon, so does this mean they are starting with basically a blank slate for this character?

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122394826#Comment_122394826

Lastly, bringing in Darth Plagues confuses me as a novice Star Wars fan. My understanding was that they made the "lore" of these characters non-cannon, so does this mean they are starting with basically a blank slate for this character?

Darth Plagueus was mentioned by Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith, so he is canon.

My understanding is that outside of the films, there was a huge expanded lore told through novels etc. They're now considered non-canon. But, that doesn't mean the writers of new SW stuff can't pull from it, change it a bit etc. Examples being Kiadi Mundi (the conehead-type Jedi Master from the prequels) showing up in a previous episode in this show. According to the Expanded Universe stuff he shouldn't have been alive when The Acolyte takes place because his age and lifespan were mentioned in the EU novels. Likewise I saw some complaints that Darth Plagueus would have only been 15-30 at the time of The Acolyte, but again, the stuff where his age was mentioned is now non-canon, and even then you would have to take a very particular reading of it to say he'd only be 15-30. I think in a novel he tells Palpatine he's "well over a hundred years old in human years" or something, which some people are taking as 101 years old because they need something to complain about.

So yeah, the EU stuff isn't canon, but a lot of it could form the foundation of new SW stuff we get, being changed as needed. Which has already happened because even the sequel trilogy (Episode 7-9) changed the EU stuff regarding everything that happened after Return of the Jedi.

silverharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122391856#Comment_122391856

Im not an expert on StarWars "physics" but I think the complaint was that the garments werent reacting to the wind, even if they can slow themselves down the clothes should be a bit more "blowy" looking.

notahappycamper

The Acoshite would be a more appropriate name for this pile of garbage.

Homelander

Not gonna go into a big deep dive on this as I've made my thoughts clear earlier on how crap I thought the first few episodes were.

But it improved massively in the second half, became way more consistent, had some very well done lightsaber duels, the Sith guy is actually fairly decently designed and it took on a very nice and unexpected bit of grey-area morality.

Still wouldn't go so far as to recommend it but credit where credit is due, if you can get through the extremely weak first half, the second half gets much better and actually makes you start to care somewhat about a potential Season 2.

pixelburp

Red Letter Media did a scrub through all the episodes and discovered once you removed the credits, recaps etc. the total runtime of the actual show only came to about 4.5 hours - kinda suggesting that this truly was just a movie script elongated into a series.

Patrick Mahomes

So if the rumoured $180m budget is right then that works out at $666k a minute screen time.

Regards,

P.

Relikk

Almost double the entire budget of Godzilla Minus One, per episode.

Glebee

Stuck with it only because I hate leaving shows unfinished, that was absolutely crap.

notahappycamper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122438609#Comment_122438609

Same here and I am a Star Wars fan.

Glebee

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122439834#Comment_122439834

Same as that, love anything Star Wars but that was a poor effort.

Weepsie

I gave up on it after 4 episodes. I'm not expecting brilliant, masterpiece sci fi out of the star wars universe, but it should be better than that.

It's the same tropes constantly, and then they invent stuff so they can reference it in ankthet series at some point.

It's not the actors, or acting..all star wars has that same style of ham acting and really, really forced think going for it, but the script is absolutely dreadful. You can't work with shite

Sonics2k

It seems that Disney have run into a somewhat consistent fault in their Star Wars shows. The opening episodes are just not great and are turning people away. Combined with this 8 episode nonsense it's extremely hard to engage people in the story.

Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and even Andor all start off extremely slowly, the acting feels wooden.

Each show tries really hard to do "shocking" moments that could lead to a suspenseful surprise or twist, but they're all painfully obvious and only serve to cause negative trolling.

This really had some of the best lightsaber combat I've seen, virtually on par with the Old Republic cinematics which has the benefit of being pure CGI, but it's massively let down by the drag of 4 slow paced and excruciatingly obvious plots. This could have served well as a straight to Disney+ movie with a massive budget like it had.

Penn

I was kind of thinking about how a hell of a lot of the criticisms the SW movies/shows get these days equally apply to the original trilogy.

Some SW fans are complaining about how the likes of The Acolyte and The Last Jedi portray the Jedi to be flawed, manipulative, corruptible. In A New Hope (literally the first SW film), Obi-Wan lies by omission to Luke to manipulate him by telling him his father was a great Jedi and was killed by Darth Vader. In Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan explains this by "Well, he was corrupted by the Dark Side and became Darth Vader, so what I said is kinda true…"

Some SW fans are complaining that things in early episodes of the show aren't explained or given full context until the end of the season, or include things which "break canon". The Empire Strikes Back literally had Darth Vader tell Luke he was his father (breaking the canon that Obi-Wan set up). Luke then escapes and the movie ends. It's considered one of the most iconic moments not just in SW but in movie history, but fans got no explanation for that for three f*cking years (and as per the previous paragraph, that explanation was fairly wishy-washy). Nowadays, people can't wait to rush to Tiktok and the likes to complain about things not being fully explained in episode three of a six-part weekly TV show.

Then in Return of the Jedi, it's also revealed Leia is Luke's sister. Again, not explained at all and nothing is done with this information other than being used to manipulate Luke into attacking Vader (and nearly killing him and giving in to the Dark Side).

Also while I'm on an OT SW tear, Boba Fett was never cool in the movies, he only gained popularity because his toy was cool. He did nothing in TESB other than tracking the Millenium Falcon, and he got taken out like a chump in ROTJ.

I think a big part of why the Original Trilogy gets away with it is because when people first watched them, they're kids. Now it's adults judging modern SW stuff and complaining that it doesn't make them feel like they did when they were kids while now judging it through an adult lens. It's why moments like CGI-Luke's return in The Mandalorian was highly praised, because it made those people feel like kids again. But everything else is super-criticised, especially for people who dove into the Expanded Universe lore and everything which isn't even canon any more. If somehow SW was still as popular but it was the original trilogy that was released now, it'd be absolutely slated in many respects.

Not saying The Acolyte was a good show (it was alright by the end and made up for most of its shortcomings/issues) or defending some of the other Disney SW stuff, but just that there is a contingent of SW fans for who most new SW stuff will never reach the bar they have in their minds because they consider SW to be so sacrosanct and formative to their youth that anything that challenges their idea of the world or its characters is something they can't accept.

I think it's also part of why Andor was such a success. Not just great writing and directing etc, but it had no Jedi, no lightsabers, no Sith, no Force (that I can remember), no Skywalkers etc. It stayed so much on the outskirts of the SW universe that even hardcore SW fans couldn't judge it against their own preconceived notions of how Jedi should act, or why that character is there even though in the now non-canon book he would have been on Kilivanavinate-IV with Master Whosurdaddy searching for Binglebongers.

mewso

I thought the general criticism would be that the modern (as in post original trilogy) portrayal of jedi is as po-faced boring idiots. "A sith you say? Here?".

Relikk

I find this recent trend of going back to the original trilogy to find similar reasons as to why modern shows and films are being criticised to be a bit silly. It has been 47 years since Star Wars released. It's not unrealistic to expect better from a multi billion dollar company that has been constantly pissing out mediocre content that isn't up to snuff. Andor showed them how to do it right.

seanin4711

Thank God Disney haven't realized how good Andor was.

"one swallow doesn't make a summer"

Beta Ray Bill

I get what they were trying to do with this series but it just didn't work.

The best bits were the fights between Sol and Qimir were fantastic, it was a nice evolution of sabre fights. I loved the intro of the Cortosis lid and gauntlet. The rest of the series however was very poor.

The characters Osha and Mae-ho were very unlikeable. There were plot holes everywhere. The Jedi were portrayed as more of a political entity as opposed to "The Jedi". A lot of the acting and script was not great. The end of the series was very poor and made absolutely no sense at all.

Finally, this series breaks the Lore, Qimir is portrayed as one of the first Sith, but the Sith themselves were well in existence prior to the events of the series. I don't mean to sound like a Lore Junky, but the story is the story… There are literally 1000's of star wars stories that they could choose to make into a live action series.

I really didn't like it, Disney will need to go back to the drawing board on this.

I ready somewhere up the thread that someone said user reviews don't matter. Top Critics get to watch movies/TV shows for free. Users are the ones paying for Movies and TV Shows. It matters… a lot.