‘The Acolyte' | Star Wars Disney+ series about the rise of the Sith

Piff Perkins

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they feed right into this shyt and basically have everyone on the show come out before the show even airs like, "yeah, it's this, deal with it bytches!" just stfu and ignore the "trolls." ... but if they did that, they wouldn't have the built in excuse for the dogshyt they're making. "we're proud of what we made and know it's only racist trolls who didn't like it!" i guess that's over, thankfully. your show failed. it wasn't good.

Agreed, they bait these responses and it's clearly apart of the marketing. I just don't understand the point in constantly elevating actors who resent the series or seem dead set on trolling certain fans. Like....what's the point of this? "Haha white guys are mad" may appeal to a few online black people but it's not a real strategy to get black people to watch your shyt. And instead of creating compelling black/women/gay/etc characters they'd rather just throw out these carbon copy, generic characters nobody likes beyond the blue checks on twitter who are invested in pimping this nonsense. Remember when we were kids and would see some random Star Wars character toy we never heard of at the store? Brolo Mustapha, smuggler from the planet Antonio 74. That's the quality of character creation for these shows. We need a woman smuggler who is cool and says men are worthless and she's the greatest pilot in the universe. Or we need a black jedi who is the best jedi at everything and taught all the jedis how to use a lightsaber properly. Like seriously....what are we doing here.

You cannot create compelling characters when your goal is solely to create someone that inspires some kid, or makes a black woman with a septum ring write a 50 tweet thread about how [inset generic black woman character with dreadlocks] changed her life. That's not storytelling, it's pandering. It's insulting to black/women/gay/hispanic/etc people and it's not sustainable.
 
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The first SW thing ever that I didn't even bother starting with, once I found out more and especially once I saw its creator "disagreeing with George Lucas on Jedi/Sith philosophy" :skip:

And I fukks with the High Republic EU :manny:

Yeah, I never got around to watching this either. I was turned off after seeing interviews with the cast.



Bro couldn’t tell Anakin from Luke.
Bro really tried to paint Luke as a morally gray character for blowing up the Death Star like the Empire didn’t just blow up a planet full of innocents.

Even worse, bro tried to argue that good and evil are just points of view. You shouldn’t be allowed to be on a Star Wars project with that kind of world view considering that there’s only one Star Wars character who ever believed that philosophy…
main-qimg-5ecd44782b8283821d7ba208d6c8a110

The show in general tried to paint the Sith as pretty, sympathetic, and misunderstood while the Jedi were portrayed as dogmatic weirdoes, which flies in the face of the whole “good versus evil” theme Star Wars was always about.



You could tell just by the the interviews that they were taking all the morality out of Star Wars with this show.

You can do a story about turning to the dark side, but the story shouldn’t treat that dark turn like it’s a good thing.



For all the faults of the Prequels, at least George Lucas had a moral center and a clear vision regarding the overall storyline. Lucas would study history, philosophy, religion, etc to get ideas for stories.

GEORGE LUCAS: Mm-hmm. Well, there’s a — again, a mixture of all kinds of — of mythology and religious beliefs that have been amalgamated into the movie, and I’ve tried to take the ideas that seem to cut across the most cultures, because I’m fascinated by that and I think that’s one of the things that I really got from Joe Campbell, was that — what he was trying to do is find the common threads through the various mythology, through the — the religions.

^This new generation of writers won’t understand that because their god is Tumblr. They aren’t digging though the crates or studying up on history like that.

It really speaks to the moral disconnect in Hollywood, and how they can’t even put themselves in the frame of mind to write virtuous characters anymore. So instead they either neuter all the heroes or kill them off.

Edit: I’m well aware that there is a contingent of alt-right racists and a sexists who will always hate, complain, and call everything “woke” no matter what. (:mjpls: ) I don’t claim those weirdos. They’re trash for bullying the actors and actresses in real life.

…but not everybody criticizing Disney Star Wars is coming from that place.
 
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MikelArteta

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Should’ve done this years ago. Easiest money they’d ever make. But….Kennedy clearly hates the legacy characters, so instead of making this money on a sure thing….lesbian witches and Rey it is!

yup they messing up

A young Palpatine, a young mace windu, a young yoda so many stories that would just piss money but they want to do some garbage azz ish
 

Jaguar93

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:yeshrug:It’s sad that a lot of real criticisms and critiques about bad media. Has to be in the middle of culture wars bs. Granted we all have different opinions on what we consider bad. But I wouldn’t say that people who have legitimate criticisms about any form of media. Are just complaining or having fake outrage. What’s the better alternative? Blindly liking bad products?
 

Soymuscle Mike

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Yeah, I never got around to watching this either. I was turned off after seeing interviews with the cast.



Bro couldn’t tell Anakin from Luke.
Bro really tried to paint Luke as a morally gray character for blowing up the Death Star like the Empire didn’t just blow up a planet full of innocents.

Even worse, bro tried to argue that good and evil are just points of view. You shouldn’t be allowed to be on a Star Wars project with that kind of world view considering that there’s only one Star Wars character who ever believed that philosophy…
main-qimg-5ecd44782b8283821d7ba208d6c8a110

The show in general tried to paint the Sith as pretty, sympathetic, and misunderstood while the Jedi were portrayed as dogmatic weirdoes, which flies in the face of the whole “good versus evil” theme Star Wars was always about.



You could tell just by the the interviews that they were taking all the morality out of Star Wars with this show.

You can do a story about turning to the dark side, but the story shouldn’t treat that dark turn like it’s a good thing.



For all the faults of the Prequels, at least George Lucas had a moral center and a clear vision regarding the overall storyline. Lucas would study history, philosophy, religion, etc to get ideas for stories.



^This new generation of writers won’t understand that because their god is Tumblr. They aren’t digging though the crates or studying up on history like that.

It really speaks to the moral disconnect in Hollywood, and how they can’t even put themselves in the frame of mind to write virtuous characters anymore. So instead they either neuter all the heroes or kill them off.

Edit: I’m well aware that there is a contingent of alt-right racists and a sexists who will always hate no matter what. They’re trash for bullying the actors and actresses in real life.

…but not everybody criticizing Disney Star Wars is coming from that place.

I thought I might have been the only person on this board who could pull GL the Gawd quotes out of my ass, dap+rep.

What you're saying is a 1000% right, GL has spent his life trying to figure out this philosophy, only for these weirdo yuppies to come in and "disagree" with him on his own goddamn universe. They think he was trying to villainize the Jedi in the prequels, when that was never his intention (of course, neither was them being perfect or blameless).

I see Yoda's counsel towards Anakin used all the time to paint Anakin as a victim, whereas if you hear George talk about it:
GEORGE LUCAS: The core issue, ultimately, is greed, possessiveness - the inability to let go. Not only to hold on to material things, which is greed, but to hold on to life, to the people you love - to not accept the reality of life’s passages and changes, which is to say things come, things go. Everything changes. Anakin becomes emotionally attached to things, his mother, his wife. That’s why he falls - because he does not have the ability to let go.

No human can let go. It’s very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it’s inevitable; you do die, and you do lose your loved ones. But while you’re alive, you can’t be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says
in this one, [The scene in which Anakin seeks Yoda’s counsel] You must learn to let go of everything you’re afraid to let go of.’ Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that’s what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more. The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth, they’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So, what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.

Except for sometimes Filoni, I've never seen any of these new Star Wars creators talk about SW the way George does.
 

Marc Spector

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Objectively the Acolyte was a mess.

1. The acting.: Everyone outside of Lee Jung Jae and Manny Jacinto were middling with Rebecca Henderson ("Venestra") being downright terrible.

Amandla Stenberg was unforgivably awful. Her delivery was wooden. She used one expression for every scene ("mouth slightly agape, eyes bucked, conveying concern"). She gave Mae and Osha little personality.

IN her defense, modern Star Wars is already challenging because actors are on sterile green screened sets, in make up and costume all day and sometimes talking to thin air. In her case though, all of the above AND the script/direction gave her no help. And then they ask even more of her and make her play a dual role, which was a cheesy mistake. She was clearly outside of her element and its shocking that the execs at Disney havent realized that actors need stronger scripts and direction to make Star Wars work.

Like I dont think its a coincidence that "Andor" with its superb direction, script, and practical sets and on location filming has so far and away been the BEST acted piece of Star Wars thats come from disney. Shame that the execs havent put two and two together on this one.

2. The Activism: I dont wanna go all "Critical Drinker" but this project, from jump, seemed centered around making a point of challenging conventions of Star Wars as a allegory to real world issues. Its central premise of even the most well intended institutions becoming corrupt and oppressive, the inclusion of the lesbian space witches, the choice to have a gay director, the gay subtext between certain characters, all of this seemed to be the primary goals FIRST with understanding how it fit into Star Wars coming LATER and it just didnt work.

To contrast this to "Andor", Tony Gilroy infamously isnt a fan of Star Wars. BUT, he saw the potential in telling the story of mundane evil and how the small, incremental slide to authoritarianism is what simultaneously allows the individuals in the system to justify their actions AND inspires revolution from those who grow sick of it. It was genius and it fit right in with the existing Star Wars universe as we never got the "man on the street" perspective of the Empires reign.

It seems that someone had the idea of "what if the Jedi were like the church with Faqs IRL stopping our free love and expression? :mjcry: ?" and then sunk 180 million dollars into that pretty flimsy idea.

3. The boxed themselves in with their setting!: The Acolyte did a really good job of limiting story prior to the shows airing. All anyone really knew it was a story that took place in the HIgh Republic centering around a female who is seduced down a dark Force road. And this was exciting because this took place well before the movies meaning the story wouldnt be constrained by having to line up with the movies. :blessed:

Oh wait, no, they actually fukked this up by having the stakes of the story be so massive :picard:.

Given that the Phantom Menace is about conflict interrupting a thousand years of peace, what the fukk was season 2 going to be about? Have Yoda and Venestra either be so corrupt that they bury a case of 10! Jedi being murdered to save face with the Senate OR have them be so inept/lazy that they just "ehh fukk it :manny: " to the idea that a Dark Force User and his force abomination apprentice are running around? ("lol but see they werent SITH so TPM isnt retconned" :troll: )

How could that realistically have been reconciled without tarnishing the Jedi? I think Headland and crew underestimated the fact that the Jedi are one of the traditional models of heroism and altruism in the West, even moreso than Superman.

It was never going to be acceptable to retcon them as "just another cowardly and corrupt institution" and i cant help but think Headland and her LGBT/"ARRGGH SMASH THE PATRIARCHY AND HIEARCHAL SOCIETY" hive mind was running point with that decision and Disney wasnt gonna be the company to tell a LGBT fem creative "no".

Overall Im sad that the show failed because i was genuinely excited about a Jedi/Sith tale that featured non Skywalkers and Jedi/Sith related to them.
 
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Jmare007

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It really boggles the mind how they can continue to fukk up a simple, home run premise of "cool light saber fights and cool spaceship fights" with the most lazy, unimaginative and sometimes downright horrible writing.

Makes sense this wasn't renewed, the focus of the story was completely wrong and the things it did best were never the most prominent/heavily featured things in the show.

It's too bad Tony Gillroy wanted nothing to do with Force mumbo jumbo and light sabers because he could've done an epic story of Jedi/Sith tackling the same deep themes he's tackling in Andor's political/guerrilla/resistance type of show :mjcry:
 
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The Fukin Prophecy

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Not enough to cancel this dumpster fire abomination...

It needs to get the Ghostbusters 2016 treatment, it never happened...

There also needs to be an audit, there is no way 180 million dollars was spent creating this mess...

It looked like a high school nerd LARP with PS2 cutscene graphics...
 
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