WARNING: Spoilers for The Acolyte below…
Someone asked for my take on the new Star Wars show The Acolyte, since it’s so controversial right now. I originally wasn’t even gonna touch this topic, but since someone asked me directly for a blog post on it, I figured I might as well jump into all the chaos…
So what do I think of the show? Like most of Star Wars… It’s fine. As of this writing, there have only been three out of eight episodes, so there’s still a chance for this to end up as my favorite of the live-action SW shows thus far, or my least-favorite. But really, all these shows have just been blending together for me. None have been great. None have been too unwatchable. They’re all fine. Gun to my head, if I had to “pick a side,” I’d say that I still lean “mostly positive” when it comes to literally all of Star Wars, except the special editions of Return of the Jedi (that new music at Jabba’s Palace is still unwatchable). The universe itself is unique and interesting enough that, for me at least, it’s pretty hard to mess up…
That said, there’s a difference between liking something and loving something. I like all of Star Wars, but I only love a small handful of it. Four entries, to be exact:
STAR WARS (aka A NEW HOPE)
Everything is established here. Sure, some of it is silly, especially by today’s standards, but all of that silliness feels innocent/ sincere.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
I don’t love it as much as everyone else, as I feel some of the problems the franchise still experiences to this day started as far back as here. That said, the opposite argument that Star Wars would’ve become boring had it just stuck to the same status quo over and over is equally true. As a peer of mine once said, “It’s true that Star Wars started as just the adventures of Luke Skywalker and then ballooned into the Skywalker family soap opera, but it’s also true that Middle-Earth started as just a children’s book with The Hobbit and then ballooned into a war drama epic with The Lord of the Rings.” I don’t want to live in a world without The Lord of the Rings, so by extension, I don’t want to live in a world without The Empire Strikes Back.
THE LAST JEDI (SCORE-ONLY VERSION)
I specify the score-only version because, as much as I like the story of this movie, I think most of the dialogue is too pretentious/ heavy-handed. I think every film should have a music-only option, but if only one of them can, I’m glad it’s this one, cause it certainly benefits the most from it. In hindsight, after The Force Awakens relied so heavily on nostalgia and mystery boxes, something needed to come along to “shake things up.” The Finn subplot took time to grow on me, but looking back, I like that the film gave him his own corner of the story, rather than just having him mimic Poe and/or Rey. The Poe subplot with Holdo is still iffy, I admit. Apparently Poe was originally supposed to follow Finn to Canto Bight, and the characters of Rose and Holdo didn’t exist yet. For a while, I preferred this idea. That said, Rose grew on me over time too. It’s nice to see that even someone as simple as a mechanic can make a difference. Having Poe accompany both Finn AND Rose probably woulda been too many characters all in one “spot.” Furthermore, having three stories all at once instead of two helps to differentiate the film a bit more from The Empire Strikes Back.
SOLO
The only movie outside of the original that fully embraces the “fun, pulpy” roots of the franchise itself.
So outside of the only two movies that everyone universally loves, the only other two I feel the same about are (technically) the one everyone hates and the one that didn’t make any money. Go figure! And again, the rest of it is fine. The theatrical version of Return of the Jedi comes pretty close, but a few things hold it back (I have mixed feelings these days about Leia being Luke’s sibling). The Force Awakens is also close, as the whole “nostalgia and mystery boxes” thing becomes less of a problem as more people continue to grow up with the sequel trilogy as one big story. That said, some things still hold Awakens back for me too (mainly the fact that the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with Finn, which put him in a tough spot for the rest of the trilogy). I don’t think I need to explain why Rogue One, The Rise of Skywalker, and the prequel trilogy are all just fine, at best. The shows (live action and animation) all have good episodes and bad episodes…
Ultimately, Star Wars is at least still in a slightly better spot for me than Disney’s other big franchise, Marvel. Most Marvel movies have been watchable for me, but most of the shows have been plagued with terrible finales. I would imagine that Disney themselves also consider Star Wars to be in a slightly better position now than Marvel, considering that right now Star Wars only has one financial flop (that being Solo). We’ll see what happens when the movies finally return from hiatus, though…
Back on topic: I enjoyed the first two episodes of The Acolyte a fair bit. Some of the character actions/ choices felt random and out-of character, but that was pretty much the only negative aspect that stood out to me. The third episode is a whole other can of worms, though. Do I agree with the majority that it’s not as good as the first two episodes? Yes. Do I dislike it for the same reasons that they all seem to? No, but to an extent, I understand their concerns…
Regarding my own grievances, my main issue with the third episode is the child actors. Nothing against kids, but I generally just don’t like them. If I didn’t grow up with The Phantom Menace, I probably wouldn’t like that movie as much either. Another issue I had is that the witch culture fell kinda flat for me. That chant was really cringe. Maybe it was off-key on purpose, to make it sound more sinister, but even if that was the intention, I still couldn’t get into it. Lastly, some aspects of the mystery plot went over my head, but I’m more forgiving of that because this whole show is, well, a mystery. Most things won’t make sense until the season (series?) finale, most likely. With that in mind, maybe all eight of these episodes should’ve been released at once, but I can’t see Disney ever doing that with a “flagship” show like this, sadly…
So what was everyone else pissed about? Two things, it seems: The fact that the main witches, or maybe even all of them, are lesbians (“this show is too woke”), and the fact that they used the Force to somehow create the main twins of the series (“this show breaks canon”). A quick note on the second point: Canon doesn’t matter because canon changes all the time. Darth Vader wasn’t a Force-born “chosen one” until The Phantom Menace was made. He wasn’t even Luke’s father until The Empire Strikes Back was made (no matter what George Lucas wants to tell you).
Now, regarding the first point: The whole “woke” thing never bothered me. I know this makes me sound pretentious, but seeing a bunch of main characters with different skin color, genitals, or sexual orientation doesn’t make me feel insecure. Besides, I’m old enough to remember when everyone complained that Star Wars (and blockbusters in general) didn’t have enough representation (“there’s only one woman in each trilogy and they both get sidelined!”). So now when I see people now complaining about too much of that stuff, my immediate thought is “What? You wanna go back to everyone complaining about the opposite? How is that any better?” People might read that and go “there should be more of both.” I don’t necessarily disagree. Maybe we’ll get there someday…
That said, while I’m not personally bothered by “wokeisms,” or whatever you wanna call it, I will admit that Disney most likely had to know that a cult of lesbian witches who use the Force to make babies was gonna piss off a VERY loud portion of the fandom, for more reasons than one. It’s almost as if they’re embracing outrage culture, at this point, and to an extent, I think they kinda are…
Allow me to explain: The Acolyte is the first live-action Star Wars project to take place at least a decade removed from the Skywalker Saga (about 90-100 years before, actually). Unlike all the other shows and spin-off films we’ve gotten so far, this series was unable to rely on humans and/or plot points established in the mainline films (I specify humans because aliens like Yoda and Chewbacca are actually hundreds of years old, but there’s only so much you can do with non-human characters). Even Ahsoka had the benefit of saying “the title character was Anakin’s apprentice between a couple of movies.” Disney knows that, if Star Wars is to survive beyond the Skywalker era, projects like The Acolyte absolutely need to pull in good viewership numbers. While I’m no conspiracy theorist, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re banking on a bunch of people “hate-watching” the show. As of this writing, The Acolyte has a mere 15% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but that’s based on ten thousand reviews, more than double of most other entries in the entire franchise. Of course, a good chunk of those are people who haven’t even seen the series (the score was already down to a 45% before the show had even started), but I’m willing to bet that a good chunk of those are also people who wanted to jump on the hate-train and decided to watch the show so that they knew exactly what they were supposed to be hating…
Either the above conspiracy theory is true, or Disney just simply wants to push the diversity boundaries in their stories as far as they can to make it clear where they stand. Either that, or creator Leslie Headland simply felt that a cult of lesbian witches who use the Force to make babies was the best way to explain the origins of Darth Plagueis, and the powers-that-be just simply let her run with it. Maybe it’s two of those three things. Maybe it’s all three. I don’t know and, either way, I don’t care…
For what it’s worth, I do think we will eventually get non-Skywalker-era content that appeals to the “edgier” part of the fandom too. Those people liked Rogue One and Andor, after all, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up enjoying that “very first Jedi ever” film that James Mangold is planning to direct, or the inevitable Knights of the Old Republic adaptation (I’m surprised we haven’t gotten that yet, actually, but I guess it’s better in the long run if they take their time to get it right). That said, The Acolyte clearly wanted to appeal to other groups of people, including potential first-time viewers of the franchise who may lean towards the younger side of things. Whether or not you see that as a good or bad thing is up to you, I guess. While I personally prefer Star Wars when it skews “all ages,” there’s an argument to be made now that the franchise would be better off prioritizing adults over children going forward. Nobody wants to admit it, but the main reason for appealing to kids in the first place was to sell toys, but these days, kids would rather watch TikToks on their iPads than play with toys…
For better or worse, the main measures of a franchise’s success now are box office, streaming numbers (which includes subscription upticks), and positive word-of-mouth online. Right now, Star Wars has a massive problem with the last one of those things. As much as I hate to admit it, for that reason alone, the franchise might be better off with more stuff like Rogue One, and less stuff like the sequel trilogy…
In that regard, things now are worse than ever. In fact, the other day I had to purge my YouTube history for the first time, because the amount of videos I was getting saying “The Acolyte has ruined Star Wars forever” or something along those lines was just becoming too much to bare. Thankfully, we might finally be reaching the lowest point of this sort of discourse. All of the Star Wars shows which Disney announced back at their big investors presentation in 2020 have now been released, with the exception of Lando, but only because they’ve decided to develop that project as a movie now instead. After Ahsoka season 2 comes out in 2026, there may be no other big Star Wars shows for the foreseeable future. That same year, the franchise is expected to finally pivot back towards movies. The reason this is important is because, in late 2019, Rotten Tomatoes implemented a new system that forces users to provide ticket serial numbers to prove that they see a movie before they can review it. Unfortunately, the website is unable to prevent the same kind of review-bombing for shows. But at least if Star Wars pivots back towards movies, people can stop using fake numbers as an excuse for outrage. And for those of you who say “the critic scores are always so high because all those critics are paid off,” explain the 51% critic score that The Rise of Skywalker currently has…
Either way, I think an emphasis on movies, with little-to-know shows, is better for the franchise. Disney+ was a mistake. Having an entire streaming service rely on nothing but Star Wars and Marvel was never gonna work longterm. When Disney bought Fox in early 2019, and acquired Hulu as a result, they shoulda cut their losses with the development of D+ and just thrown everything they had into the Hulu basket. It doesn’t matter how “big” these universes are. Fatigue happens no matter what. Imagine if they turned Mad Max into a cinematic universe, with at least one film a year and one show a year, if not more? Imagine if they tried that with Back to the Future, Terminator, etc.? In this regard, Disney harbors all the blame…
Furthermore, in regards to the sequel trilogy specifically (and the Disney era in general), I still think another “generational shift” like the one we experienced with the prequels might be possible. Look at it this way: I was five-years-old when The Phantom Menace came out, and then I was 21 (and entering the workforce) when The Force Awakens came out. Kids who were five when Awakens came out will only be “workforce age” in 2030 or so. On top of that, all the boomers who spent the entire 2000s ranting on message boards about Jar Jar Binks ruining their lives are now spending less time online and more time watching Wheel of Fortune re-runs (or whatever it is old people do). I already feel myself leaving the Reddit mindset, and entering the Wheel of Fortune mindset. Wouldn’t surprise me if others my age or older are starting to go through the same…
Peace!
PS: “Fire in space” has been a thing since that Super Star Destroyer went down in Return of the Jedi…
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