There was a good show in there somewhere, but what we got wasn’t it.
I’m not sure walking away from the season what I was supposed to have learned. It’s ok to kill people sometimes as long as you’re pretty sure they messed up your life?
Mando is about found families and learning to trust.
Andor is about how war/strife changes people.
Obi-wan is about relearning to believe (in yourself/the force) and what’s worth fighting for.
Ahsoka is about students and teachers, how they each can learn from one another.
Even if you disagree with my interpretation, you can at least agree it’s a possible interpretation.
But Acolyte… I just don’t know what I’m supposed to get out of it. The dark side ain’t so bad? Jedi don’t like others using the force?
My takeaway was indeed that the Jedi of old weren’t the good guys, although they still believed they were.
The jedi not being strictly all that “good” isn’t all that new and I definitely would’ve liked to see that explored more, as well as more “neutral” force users, or even something from the perspective of the dark side too. I also don’t think this show was as bad as the review bombing made it out to be and on YT you kept just seeing the same rage baiting bigots too but it definitely missed the mark in many areas, despite having some good moments too. Still, a lot of the hate definitely came from the fact that we had a black female main character and some lesbian force witches. That’s pretty hard to ignore with how loud those people are.
I still want more something like Andor though. That was still the best Star Wars I’ve ever seen.
Actually ignoring the ragebait is easy. It exists for everything. The problem is when a TV show/film is weak. It makes the ragebait easy because now they are “right”. The issue with the show has nothing to do with it having a black female lead. The story just wasn’t that good. The story is still not that good if she were a white dude. It’s not end of the world terrible, just mediocre.
Anyway, back to my point. Shitty people have shitty opinions, it’s not worth listening to. OMG did you hear what the bigot said? No, was it shitty? It was? I’m not surprised. Stop giving them attention.
I just couldn’t believe that after all those years living completely different and separate lives, neither of them changed their hair at all. And since the adult twins were played by the same actor, I couldn’t tell them apart aside from clothing.
I do agree they were hard to tell apart. Twins is a cool idea, and their similar appearance could be explained as the force guiding them. However I think fraternal twins might have been better in this situation.
But they weren’t even twins…
Lol, ok technically you’re right they were the same person, but unless they intended to force merge them at some point I think different actors would have been fine.
They weren’t just twins, they were more or less the same person.
If I ever do one of those “watch everything in order” things, I might just watch episode 5. The fight scene was sick. Given how inconsequential the story was, it would probably just feel like an episode of Visions.
It’s ok to kill people sometimes as long as you’re pretty sure they messed up your life?
You could say the OG had the message that it’s okay to become a terrorist if the government kills your aunt and uncle.
Sure, but it had other messages too. I’m not sure Acolyte had the one.
I would say the message of the acolyte was:
Evil can be committed by good people with honorable intentions.
Just because it looks spooky doesn’t make it evil.
Also, I think it also tried to flesh out two unpopular ideas from the prequels and sequels with the virgin birth of the chosen one and the force dyad.
I just didn’t like acolyte because it was repetitive and redundant. The story is very similar to star wars and bring very little be too the table
Huh… I thought it was pretty interesting. Kinda bummed.
Also, kung fu + force powers is fantastic for fight scenes, so I hope they use that stuff more in other shows/movies.
Edit: the anti-woke review bombing crap that people apparently got up to seems to have played a role in the decision (reading between the lines), which is pretty shitty.
E2: instead of just downvoting, I’m interested to hear what people so strongly disliked about it.
The ‘anti-woke’ stuff is so frustrating. As soon as some youtube grifter labels something as ‘woke’ and their followers start review bombing, it frames all subsequent criticism of a thing: Mainstream outlets are wary of the association, so are kinder to a show that it deserves (which then brings their credibility into question for some people); Star Wars nerds who like anything in the universe start dismissing valid criticism because they assume it’s been made in bad faith (because ‘anti-woke’ sorts don’t always make themselves so obvious and do highjack legitimate concerns); and anyone trying to genuinely point out faults has to preface everything with where they’re coming from (which can get tedious if nothing else).
Anyway: I don’t have particularly strong opinions about the show but what I disliked about it was that it reminded me of ‘Secret Invasion’ and what I saw of ‘Echo’: it suggests that Disney don’t want to do the traditional ‘Andor’ style of making television, and instead keep with the process of: write + shoot + re-write + reshoot … This rarely works, and ends up with a show that has inconsistent characters (‘Yord’ changes personality about 5 times), inconsistent quality (since sets used for reshoots are typically smaller and less dressed), and inconsistent tone (people liked episode 5, but I’d argue that neck-snaps are too violent compared to the vibe of other episodes, which often seemed aimed at young children).
Also, there needs to be a moratorium of any characters saying they have a ‘bad feeling about this’ (if anyone says anything like this is S2 of Andor I’ll be devasted)
I hope you didn’t just jinx Andor S2.
They’ll be something terrible in it I’m sure. Some awful reddit theory (a character we’ve already met is Cass’s sister, B2 becomes K2) or some cringey bit of fan-service. Disney have had too long to find a way to meddle with it (I don’t even think the post-credits scene in S1 was the writers idea, and suspect it was thrown together when the show was airing to pacify the people who need everything explained and want everything in SW to be reference to itself (even when such things call the timeline into question))
I didn’t mind the last scene. Showing the slave labor behind the building of the empire’s mega weapons is kinda interesting and makes their struggle in the prison factory even more futile feeling.
That said, I’m also worried that the writers and directors of the first season are gonna have a harder time working without D+ meddling.
Crossing my fingers in the mean time.
In terms of dislike Ryan George does a good job, https://youtu.be/PqwEE6G6zaU
But in more detail there are a lot of decisions made by characters that are fun in the moment, but don’t really make sense.
The twins are angry at Sol because he killed their mother, but Sol doesn’t clarify that she was turning into a shadow monster?
Osha was a bad Jedi, fell out of the order, but then switches to dark side real quick and kills Sol.
We have to leave your sister behind and mind wipe her because there is no room in the ship? Also the mind wipe is clearly just a “we need a reason to stretch the story” move and if they had made a season 2 would have been undone quickly.
Why did the beaver man mess with the ship? He stopped Sol, but was also an ally?
I’m sure there are more but in general this show just didn’t really tell a story I’m interested in.
Don’t get me wrong it has some great things I want to know more about. The era of Star Wars is fun to explore and new. Space witches and how they compare (or are?) to the night sisters and their magic/force use. Possessing a Jedi. New Dark side users and origins.
The interesting story to me was/is Qimir, so I hope we can pick that character up again.
Sol doesn’t clarify that she was turning into a shadow monster?
He realized that was wrong as soon as he killed her. Maybe he could’ve explained why he thought that, but it would’ve come across as making excuses. The rest I don’t disagree with.
He could have explained it still and it would have been fine if Osha just doesn’t accept it, but you should at least get the truth out there & make sure your communication is clear.
In fact having her deny it may have been more interesting. Have it clearly show how revenge or hate were clouding her mind from logic and understanding.
I mean he knew she wasn’t turning into a shadow monster. He reacted because he thought she was killing Mae, and he could’ve said that, but it wouldn’t make it any better because he was arrogant and fearful of any use of the force outside of the Jedi way. That’s not any kind of exoneration even if he had explained it.
Why was he wrong though? She’s either mind controlling or killing someone by going all evil shadow like that. Her doing that is totally a justifiable reason to react the way he did. Especially since she already mentally assaulted the padawan in their first meeting.
It’s been a minute since I’ve watched it, but as I recall she was just teleporting or something. The dark shadows were just a visual to get there. They telegraphed this a short while earlier. I guess I have to rewatch it since it’s in question, but at the time of watching it I felt it was clear that’s exactly what was going on.
The only other person we see go all shadows is the horn lady, and then wookie jedi starts attacking.
I agree. I frankly think the show was quite bad in terms of tone, cinematography, and unfortunately acting. It all felt kinda cheap and poorly planned to me. I say this as someone has genuinely enjoyed all of the other Star Wars shows (yep, even Obi-Wan). But I also found it interesting and really enjoyed the fight scenes and the new yet familiar setting. Regardless of my opinion of the technical side of the production, I absolutely would have watched another season to see where the story was headed.
Agreed. Just like so many other franchise series right now, that includes, Star Wars (case in point, Acolyte), Star Trek (Picard series, except the last season maaaybe) and the Marvel universe (Secret Wars anyone?), it started strong in the first few episodes. Then after we get to the half time in the season it drops off hard and we see weird resolutions to plot points or parts of the plot do not get any meaningful explanation or ending.
I am sad to see Acolyte might have been cancelled for “woke agenda reviews” when it should have been cancelled for bad writing.
I watched all of it and as some others have said I think there was a great story in there somewhere but it was just buried under a mountain of bad writing, crappy gimmicks, and terrible continuity.
I enjoyed elements of the story enough that I was willing to give a second season a chance, but I’m honestly not surprised it was cancelled.
The anti-woke stuff was shitty and definitely didn’t help but I don’t think that alone would have caused Disney to cancel a series if they really believed it could be successful
My opinions on it are the storytelling was terrible, Sol (and a lot of the other characters but especially Sol) was uninteresting with not great acting, the two flashback episodes were unnecessary, one of the reasons for the massacre on Brendok being a Jedi was homesick was awful, Yoda’s appearance in the finale seemed liked a cynical move to try to get a second season, I thought the final episode made The Stranger look weak and undermined him a bit, I would have preferred Osha killed Mae when she was passed the lightsabre, and it was just dull overall. Episode 5, however, was absolutely fantastic and there were glimpses of other great things. The potential for season 2 to be really good was there but the potential for season 1 to be good was also there but wasn’t delivered so I had no faith the 2nd season would either.
I am a huge Star Wars fan, I really enjoyed Boba Fett, Obi Wan, and the other series but Acolyte was more of a burden to watch. I watched it all because because I’m a huge Star Wars fan and I wanted it to be good, it just wasn’t. I would have loved to see more of The Stranger and Darth Plagueis though.
Blaming the anti-woke crowd is just cover for how crap the series was. It was a terribly written series where character’s motivation was whatever the plot demanded at the time. The story clearly had a goal it wanted to achieve and showed something completely different to their narrative several times. Throughout the series, but particularly episode 5, characters teleport as necessary for plot/action scenes. It’s now cannon that you can seduce people to the Dark side with that dick…
To echo @gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works again, the downvotes came on so fast for what was just two random people’s earnest opinions. Tell everyone what you think about the show, let’s talk! I know I shouldn’t take the votes personally, but it doesn’t feel great when it’s just my honest opinion about a tv show.
with certain corners of the internet going after Headland, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community
That’s some odd phrasing. Are they not allowed to say that someone is gay?
It feels like they are trying to dog whistle something, but I’m not sure what. Or was all the criticism completely unrelated and they are trying to stretch a point?
[Update]
I have been educated that this is not an uncommon phrasing to use by someone who is gay.
Presumably following the motto of a rising tide raises all the ships and they have expressed a preference for their success to be viewed as a success for everyone?
TIL.
The producers once alluded that they were being review bombed by conservatives for the acolyte being too woke. Now, that might be true, but, the show also sucked in more than one way, which means there was no one to push back the reviews.
Reminds me of the George Carlin bit on soft-language.
going after Headland, who happens to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community
That’s basically how I read it initially.
Apparently that is how she refers to herself and its perfectly normal for folks to not refer to themselves as “gay” but as being part of the community.
Kinda weird to blame the bad reviews on “anti-woke bigots”, then cancel the show to appease the bigots.
I did like the show, which looks like an unpopular opinion. Guess the tragedy of Darth Plagueis really isn’t a story the Jedi would tell you.
The one good thing about streaming services like Disney+ is that they have the platform metrics, and they can push shows against audiences and get watch metrics, retention metrics, etc from a large group of viewers. i.e. any online media storms can be weathered by good data of how the show is really performing.
The focus on anti-woke messaging from the show creatives seems like a rhetorical tool, if its the strongest message they have about the property that is what they are going to do to bring attention to it. If you have positive reviews, you talk about the reviews. If you have strong view numbers you talk about the viewer numbers. Since silence is the worst thing for a media property, if you have nothing else you talk about controversy real or imagined. Is there real anti-woke messaging for this show, sure, but like the standard background level you get on anything; is it the most interesting and important aspect of this show? Apparently - otherwise why would the creatives be talking about it?
The rhetoric escalation tree reveals uncomfortable truths. Woke/AntiWoke doesn’t matter, only if it makes money, if it makes money, it gets another season.
Yup. It’s easier to blame anti-woke than to admit to poor business decisions. Disney only cares about burning $180 mil + marketing and getting brand damage in exchange. Bloated budgets are the killer of movies, and movies actually make money whereas streaming shows don’t. A movie needs to make 2-2.5x the budget to break even, and when you’re blowing that kind of money without collecting ticket prices…
$180mil is more than the budget of Top Gun: Maverick which made $1.5bil. Inside Out 2 had a slightly larger budget of $200mil and has made over $1.6bil so far. The Acolyte made nothing and didn’t drive sales, so it was a poor investment.
People who really liked the show could try a gofundme for Disney, request merch to buy, or if they’re extremely wealthy give them $200mil to make another season. Looping Acolyte while asleep to pump viewership would’ve helped too, as you basically noted— Velma received a lot more hate but with high viewership and lower budget, it got a second season. In capitalistic America it’s difficult to convince a company to make less profit, much less discard hundreds of millions. Money is all that matters.
Really well said
I can live without this one. I want Andor season 2. The beauty of Andor is we know how it ends.
Pretty sure andor season 2 is under production.
Well, no surprise there.
After the first two episodes I was willing to give it a chance, especially since they dispensed with the whole “Is she or isn’t she the killer?” nonsense almost immediately.
Then everything went to shit in episode 3 and I just stopped watching. Mae’s damage vs. the Jedi is that she set a fire that killed everyone? Seriously? How is that the fault of anyone except Mae? To the point where she wants to kill everyone else?
If you had kept watching, then you would have learned that episode didn’t show the full picture and that Osha’s memory of the events had been altered by the Jedi.
Honestly it’s kind of infuriating how many people were drawing conclusions after barely watching the show, or the many people that clearly never bothered to watch at all and based their entire opinions exclusively on social media ragebait. And this no doubt also contributed a lot to poor viewer stats.
The show wasn’t excellent by any means, it could’ve been so much better, but I didn’t feel like it was that bad as a lot of people made it seem like. And it definitely needs one to watch the entirety of it before drawing any conclusions considering the story and character developments.
Good example was people complaining about the fact that Carrie-Anne Moss’s character being killed off within 5 minutes in the first episode, yet they didn’t even bother to think about or wait for the fact that she could appear in more episodes through flashbacks. Clearly the show was made around misguiding viewers and infamous “subverting expectations”.
It’s a shame the show has to end this way, but at least the main story about the twins feels semi-complete. But unfortunately also a lot of open endings still, which are maybe better left like this, or perhaps wrapped up in novels or something.
barely watching the show
It’s my understanding it was released episodically like broadcast television. It doesn’t matter how bad a show is I’ll probably binge the whole damn thing if the entire season drops at once, but give me an exit point and one bad episode could be the end.
They want a series to keep viewers around for more than a month, and I think they are trying to replicate the water cooler conversation piece that Game of Thrones was. I remember spending a few minutes each week discussing GoT with coworkers, driving everyone’s interest.
That being said, I just really don’t like shows where you feel you never know what’s going on until they put the pieces together for you in the last episode. I get it’s supposed to keep you intrigued and speculating, but mostly I just get angry that show runners substitute mystery for caring about the characters.
The GoT strategy only works if the writing is good. Dialogue and plot quality are vital, specially when you’re watching an episode to episode release model. Often times I felt like I was watching a bunch of middle schoolers cosplaying and making up the dialogue and story as they went along on the playground. Nothing of interest was happening, no deep topics were explored, what was said had no literary or poetical interest, it lacked any complex structure and it sometimes didn’t have any structure at all, there was nothing to discuss on the hypothetical water cooler talk. Its cancelation is probably going to drive more conversation than any of its episodes ever did.
The problem is that people then base their entire opinion of the show on an incomplete story.
It’s fine if people don’t like a show and don’t want to continue watching it. But people judging an entire show based on only one or a few episodes, or just on social media ragebait, shouldn’t be taken seriously. And I feel like exactly the latter has been happening with this one a lot.
Sadly a lot of people are easily convinced by communities circlejerking and dogpiling on this kind of stuff these days.
And the amount of people downvoting and not engaging in the conversation pretty much confirms that 🙄
“Not a book to be lightly thrown aside. Should be thrown with great force.” - Bill Miller.
If the narrative is so poorly constructed that it turns away viewers instead of engaging them, that’s a problem.
Episode 3 made me feel like I wasted my time watching 1 and 2.
If the show cannot keep their audience engadged and interested. That’s the fault of the show, not the audience. You see many stoped watching after just a few episodes. Cause the show had so many flaws that enough is enough.
That’s about right. It was mediocre. Which is to say, I had fun watching it with my kid. They introduced a solid villain. I hate to see that story dropped.
They introduced a solid villain only at the end.
It would be like Star Wars where you don’t see Vader until the trench run.
I’m talking about Manny Jacinto’s character, who was there through the whole season.
I think this is broadly giving them too much credit. Right-wingers wanted to make a big culture war battle about it, so they pissed and moaned so hard about nothing that it influenced more centrist or liberal people into overthinking the show or just bandwagoning and saying its shit. I just assume that anyone complaining about the plot either didn’t really watch it with an open mind, or had quite poor media literacy - it was very obvious to me watching it that we had an incomplete picture, I even said as much on Lemmy and got a bunch of downvotes for it lol
I didn’t hear any political commentary about it, and watched it with an open mind that was invested in another Star Wars story, especially after Andor. And I watched it episodically. But, holy fuck. It broke all the force rules built up until this point, and the story didn’t make any sense. The Pitch guy did a great recap of it.
Honestly, I just don’t believe you. Or maybe you just didn’t realise the criticism/commentary you consumed was ideologically motivated.
It didn’t break any “rules” of the force whatsoever, even as far as there are rules. Not that it would even matter if it did, imo. The story made perfect sense. It might not be a story that you liked, and that’s okay - you’re allowed to dislike things. I don’t like cabbage. But it doesn’t mean that it’s bad, or that cabbage is a sign that farmers don’t know what vegetable fans want.
The full picture is worse though. Mae really did set the fire that destroyed the place. Mae also locked everyone inside before that. She didn’t directly kill everyone, but they did that themselves by mind controlling one of the Jedi.
No it’s not? The fire is literally almost completely irrelevant. The important thing is that Mae, as a child, witnessed the Jedi break in to their home, murder her mother, and that the Jedi basically are ultimately responsible for all of the trauma she experienced.
That’s what Acolyte is about, not trivial bullshit like fire in space. The only people who give a fuck about that are absolute losers.
It was nowhere near as bad as the reviews suggest. Manny Jacinto was honestly great. The Stranger’s helmet design with the metal cables looking like a deranged smile was cool, as was his ability to temporarily disable lightsabers. The new king fu element to the fight scenes was interesting.
His ability to short out lightsabers was another Thrawnism, cortosis weave. Like Thrawn, largely wasted and apparently thrown in for no real reason.
The fight choreography drew me in and then that all went out the window in Ep. 3.
Episode 3 was just to make us ask questions that would be answered in episode (I think) 7. They didn’t set this up very well though. It was presented too genuinely, and people didn’t realize we were seeing through the flawed eyes of a child narrator.
That happens when you show scenes the child narrator is not present for. :)
Good, I don’t know how something like this could’ve been created in the first place. It makes it seem like anyone can be in charge of big budget shows regardless of if they have talent.
Only if you commit to ignoring the source material.
I don’t even feel like it was that ‘woke’. But it was that bad. Bad wiring, bad acting, worse storyline. The only good thing was the choreography of a couple of the fight scenes except that they mostly made no sense. Not even Darth Vader cut through so many Jedi like butter but this random guy that ‘i believe you would refer to me as sith’ does with ease. I really think she was determined to ruin the originals. Basically she took everything that was cool and good and did it worse.
It’s like the scene in Talladega nights where Cal is telling Gerrard the things that America created.
All woman witches with a connection to the dark side - Dathomir.
Children created by a vergence in the force - Anakin.
Force choke - Vader (this one made me sad).
Purple light saber - Windu.
Multi piece red light saber - Maul.
PIP - fallout.
Then there’s just totally random things that are dumb: Regular Jedi having yellow lightsabers. The stones used in yellow lightsabers were used for the guardians of the temple. Kyber crystals make blue or green and that’s why they are that color in the originals.
It was loosely implied that there was another Sith, maybe plagiues, implying that Qimir was his apprenrice making him be actively searching for his own apprentice ignoring the rule of 2.
Mace Windu says there hadn’t been Sith in a millennium and the generally accepted context is that they’ve always existed they just hide from the Jedi. Now you a clear story of sith killing Jedi only 100 years prior.
Anissya tells the Jedi to make a perimeter but then they just all ignore that order and all go to the same place?
The only way you could execute a show this poorly is on purpose. Which I think is true, I think she wanted people to reference her show for the fun cool stuff because it’s more fresh on their minds.
Luke’s lightsaber was green because it wouldn’t have looked good against the blue sky in Return of the Jedi. That’s it. That’s the reason.
Not even the filmmakers get their panties in a twist over “the lore” like that.
Lol - yes you’re right but you’re wrong, oh so wrong
There’s countless amount of lore around light saber colors. Why Sith sabers are red, why Ahsoka’s are white, why Rey’s is yellow, why Mace’s is purple. Then there’s many instances where they intentionally used a wrong color as symbolism like in Luke’s final projection scene.
I liked it. Struggled at the beginning with lots of walking and talking to fill out time, but it tried to do something interesting with the rashomon story structure at the end.
I thought the seductive elements of the Darkside that they played up worked extremely well.
The squid games actor was great.
The fight scene in episode five was tons of fun. When Jason from the Good Place killed X2 by stabbing her 3 or 4 times with the short lightsaber I rewound to watch it a few times.
Probably would’ve been a better movie.
This is the first I’ve even heard of this show. It must have dropped during one of my “pissed off that Disney can’t be arsed to keep their Android app working.” phases.
Oh well.
I was excited for it but stopped halfway through episode 3. They should have started with episode 3, left things unclear then start off with episode 1.
I honestly didn’t feel any sort of connection with any of the characters. I felt bad for Sol. He got peer pressured by a bunch of Jedi buttheads.
I’d rather have more episodes of Boba Fett than The Acolyte.
I’d rather have more episodes of Boba Fett than The Acolyte.
Hell no. Boba Fett was way worse. Worse than Obi-Wan even. Just give me more mature & dark shit like Andor.
All the “woke,” incel bullshit aside, it wasn’t very good.
I’ve been a Star Wars fan since '77 and wanted to like it, couldn’t make it past Ep. 3.
It was… fine I guess. I liked a lot of the actors, but the plot was completely squandered. I finished it, but it’s completely skippable.
They had a chance to tell an interesting story at at least one point in the show but settled for the most boring and pointless story beats instead.
My larger worry about this cancellation is the potential graveyard they may have kicked off. Netflix has a lot of cancelled shows that no one will ever watch, it just dilutes their overall library. If even Star Wars isn’t immune to this, then I really do hope Disney wasn’t lying and we start seeing fewer streaming shows coming out. I think we’d all prefer quality over quantity.
I don’t think this cancelation kicks off the problem of dilution of Star Wars brand identity. I think that problem has been happening for a while with the scattershot releases of movies and shows without the promised cohesion. There doesn’t seem to be a vision from high up of what Star Wars should look like, or where it should be going with the setting.
I highly doubt there will ever be a unified vision. Weren’t Favreau and Filoni supposed to be the vision for Disney+, and then Kathleen Kennedy kept stepping in?
Marvel got lucky with Feige, no one else has yet to achieve it. We shall see if James Gunn can succeed with DC
The one that hurts the most is Grendel. Netflix killed it without even airing it. :(
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/grendel-netflix-series-details-cancellation-crushing-matt-wagner/
WHAT?! Man, that sucks. Big fan of the Grendel comics. It would’ve been cool to see Argent.
I liked the ending but overall the show was terrible. Not much is lost with the cancellation.
I didn’t even bother. I checked out after Ahsoka. I really don’t give af about “woke”, the writing has been terrible. These series have so much embedded lore you have to watch YouTube vids to figure out context. I don’t have time for all that.
I thought Ashoka was good, I just didn’t like that I had to watch a 5 seasons of an animated tv show to understand what tf was going on.
Same. I really liked the Jedi trainer droid. I thought that was cool. And the jedi played by the actor that passed away. But the zombie storm-troopers at the end were just too much, but I’m a middle aged man, the kids probably loved that part.
