Television Star Wars: The Acolyte (Disney+), update (08/19): RIP in Peace

[Kal-El814]

The perception of low stakes or the maintenance of the status quo is the nigh inevitable consequence of any franchise / medium / narrative in which storytelling is perpetual or has the potential to be so. It can happen almost immediately; there have been plenty of takes over the years about how Speaker for the Dead is not what people wanted from "Ender's Game 2" and that happened after one book. Peter Parker is always going to regress to a mean close to how he came on the scene in the 60's. Any story that takes place within earshot of the OT by design is going to have Jedi fumbling the bag to help sell their imminent fall. The canon states that if someone gets too fucking dope with the Light Side, the Force is going to correct that imbalance and make someone rad with the Dark Side, it's the classic DnD true neutral herpaderp.

 

And as I've said before, in a hypothetical world in which Star Wars came out in 2017 and not 1977 and RotJ came out in 2023 and not 1983, people would be fucking apoplectic about Palpatine shooting lightning out of his hands, how there's no absolutely no precedent or foreshadowing of that this could be possible, wondering why Vader never used it, about how Yoda and Obi-Wan never dropped hints about how that could happen, etc. I mean the fact that there's theory crafting at all about a spreading fire is kinda bananas; online fandom has straight up broken people's brains when it comes to some of this stuff.

 

Yes, per the Polygon article and as people here have said, there's more water carried for those things when people feel that what they're watching is good. But for the umpteenth time this is the same franchise that started with Obi-Wan saying only Imperial Stormies are accurate enough to fuck up the sandcrawler in that specific way and then having them fail to hit targets at near point blank range for the rest of the movie for absolutely no reason beyond plot armor, to say nothing of the fact that they're framing Tusken raiders for the attack when the people who would investigate said attack would be the Empire itself? Again the theory crafting for why Stormtroopers are so bad at everything would be unhinged if this franchise started today and the since retconned EU attempts are explaining this away were so much dumber than plot armor could ever be.

 

At some point you just gotta turn your brain off for this stuff. Lightsabers and blaster bolts are fatal or provide glancing blows / injuries solely based on plot needs, Moff Gideon thinks that cool beskar armor, the Darksaber, and droids are the key to the Empire's resurgence despite the Empire handing Mandalore its ass and the droid army having taken a fat L in the Clone Wars.

 

Tween us wouldn't give a shit about this stuff. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

Quote

Of course, this would be a little easier to stomach if The Acolyte were taking itself a little less seriously, and if the fire in question didn’t leave so many of the people involved paralyzed with guilt, full of regret, dead-set on vengeance, or simply dead altogether. Silly problems are great to meet with silly answers, but tragedies deserve something a little more thought-out

 

When the episode started and they were in a forest I immediately thought, "Okay. Forest fire incoming." But no, she lit some paper on fire and threw it down a hallway made of steel and stone. Two seconds later the entire interior of this steel and stone compound is burning and collapsing like it's Chicago circa 1871. Every rock face is inexplicably engulfed in flames. Every metal support structure is melting and collapsing with no visible source of what is fueling this inferno. The Jar-Jar Binks-esque series of events wouldn't be so stark and weird if it involved, well, some form of a Jar-Jar.

 

Quote

An even more exciting version of this theory, however, is that all this destruction was caused by the Jedi all along. Mae, despite her horrific proclamation that she was going to murder the only other child she’d ever known, was mostly blameless and was instead set up and then left to die by a band of Jedi desperate to get their hands on a promising new recruit. This would be genuinely shocking. Not out of line entirely with the dark edges lurking around the Jedi in Star Wars canon (after all, how do they get all those youngling recruits?), but still more gutsy and interesting than almost anything we’ve seen of them on screen.

 

This is hinting at what I enjoyed most about this episode. I still think they're treating it with kid gloves at this point, but the Jedi separating children from their families permanently has always been pretty fucked up ever since it was made known. It's a lot less depressing when removing a child from a slave labor situation*. But when you see this girl being separated from her family for wanting to be a Jedi that's where it forces you to see the fucked-up-ness.

 

* Speaking of Jake Lloyd his acting prowess would fit well in this show.

 

Quote

The Acolyte is simply a deeply unserious show, *[un]interested in saying something new about the Jedi, the Force, or the Star Wars universe more broadly

 

See this I don't know about. In this episode specifically they're showing a different group's take on the Force. And actually, the mother was like the first legit good acting we've seen in this show. I enjoyed her performance.

 

* I can only assume they forgot the 'un' there otherwise the entire point doesn't make sense.

[johnny]

5 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

The perception of low stakes or the maintenance of the status quo is the nigh inevitable consequence of any franchise / medium / narrative in which storytelling is perpetual or has the potential to be so. It can happen almost immediately; there have been plenty of takes over the years about how Speaker for the Dead is not what people wanted from "Ender's Game 2" and that happened after one book. Peter Parker is always going to regress to a mean close to how he came on the scene in the 60's. Any story that takes place within earshot of the OT by design is going to have Jedi fumbling the bag to help sell their imminent fall. The canon states that if someone gets too fucking dope with the Light Side, the Force is going to correct that imbalance and make someone rad with the Dark Side, it's the classic DnD true neutral herpaderp.

 

And as I've said before, in a hypothetical world in which Star Wars came out in 2017 and not 1977 and RotJ came out in 2023 and not 1983, people would be fucking apoplectic about Palpatine shooting lightning out of his hands, how there's no absolutely no precedent or foreshadowing of that this could be possible, wondering why Vader never used it, about how Yoda and Obi-Wan never dropped hints about how that could happen, etc. I mean the fact that there's theory crafting at all about a spreading fire is kinda bananas; online fandom has straight up broken people's brains when it comes to some of this stuff.

 

Yes, per the Polygon article and as people here have said, there's more water carried for those things when people feel that what they're watching is good. But for the umpteenth time this is the same franchise that started with Obi-Wan saying only Imperial Stormies are accurate enough to fuck up the sandcrawler in that specific way and then having them fail to hit targets at near point blank range for the rest of the movie for absolutely no reason beyond plot armor, to say nothing of the fact that they're framing Tusken raiders for the attack when the people who would investigate said attack would be the Empire itself? Again the theory crafting for why Stormtroopers are so bad at everything would be unhinged if this franchise started today and the since retconned EU attempts are explaining this away were so much dumber than plot armor could ever be.

 

At some point you just gotta turn your brain off for this stuff. Lightsabers and blaster bolts are fatal or provide glancing blows / injuries solely based on plot needs, Moff Gideon thinks that cool beskar armor, the Darksaber, and droids are the key to the Empire's resurgence despite the Empire handing Mandalore its ass and the droid army having taken a fat L in the Clone Wars.

 

Tween us wouldn't give a shit about this stuff. 

you nailed it. i pretty much expect complaining after every live action star wars episode. 

[johnny]

2 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

I actually thought this episode was at least a solid step up from the first two - Kogonada's direction was a significant improvement and the show didn't feel nearly as shoddy and cheap as it did before, falling more in line with Ahsoka (not sure why the show decided on adding a weird light film grain aesthetic over top of everything but oh well). I think the show would have actually worked better overall if this was the first episode and then it jumped forward in time, leaving the incident of what happened specifically to the adult witches as the primary mystery. Either way this was a solid if meandering episode, but I'm glad to see improvement.

i think at least they should have released this episode with the other two. who really wants to wait a week for a whole flashback episode 

[Kal-El814]

4 hours ago, johnny said:

i think at least they should have released this episode with the other two. who really wants to wait a week for a whole flashback episode 

 

I've thought a lot about what the "prestige" format does for expectations and have come up with... nothing conclusive really.  Shit like Acolyte, Ahsoka, Mando, etc., are apparently very expensive to produce. While I wager that your average viewer has absolutely no clue about that or cares even if they do, there's still *something* about a streaming drama that amps up people's expectations. I have no idea if this is good, bad, or neutral? But it's definitely a thing.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

This episode was definitely a step above the previous two, but I'm not sure that it was entirely necessary to devote an entire episode to what amounts to an elongated flashback sequence.  The pivotal events of this episode could probably have been interspliced into the present-day episodes and nothing really would've been lost at all.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

7 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

This is hinting at what I enjoyed most about this episode. I still think they're treating it with kid gloves at this point, but the Jedi separating children from their families permanently has always been pretty fucked up ever since it was made known. It's a lot less depressing when removing a child from a slave labor situation*. But when you see this girl being separated from her family for wanting to be a Jedi that's where it forces you to see the fucked-up-ness.

 

The Mother who referred to the Jedi as "deranged monks" is pretty spot-on, I'd say!

[SoberChef]

14 hours ago, GoldenTongue said:

It's awesome being a white male. 

 

And a hearty LOL at the "old school liberals" note, as if that point is limited in any regard to political leaning. You realize that for every example of a liberal that you might offer on that point, one could easily cite an example of a conservative, right?  RIght?

Appreciate your racist retort whilst completely missing my point, but good on ya bud! 

[GoldenTongue]

10 hours ago, SoberChef said:

Appreciate your racist retort whilst completely missing my point, but good on ya bud! 

I'm more than aware of the point you were trying to make.

 

And the fact that you benightedly labeled my response as racist illustrates how profoundly you missed mine. That you could actually write out the last paragraph in your previous post in a sincere way, completely oblivious to the irony dripping from every misinformed word, is astounding.

 

[TheLeon]

On 6/8/2024 at 7:25 PM, TheLeon said:

I was thinking I need to watch this just so I can have an opinion. Then I realized I haven’t had D+ for like 7 months.  Oh well. 

I’ve changed my mind. I never want to discuss anything Star Wars with anyone ever again. 

[Greatoneshere]

11 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The Mother who referred to the Jedi as "deranged monks" is pretty spot-on, I'd say!

 

Polygon wants to take it a step further and addresses an aspect of Star Wars that we all do just kind of ignore (we kind of have to). I don't put this blame on The Acolyte, but on Lucas and The Phantom Menace

 

The Jedi really do seem like cultist kidnappers, and The Acolyte backs that up

WWW.POLYGON.COM

---

"From a certain point of view," my ass

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

If humans really had superpowers that were inate in a small group of individuals, and not for most people, we could use our morals to judge them.

We don't, so our societal norms are irrelevant.

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

If humans really had superpowers that were inate in a small group of individuals, and not for most people, we could use our morals to judge them. We don't, so our societal norms are irrelevant.

 

Pretty sure it's not a good look no matter how you slice it, societal norms or no. Even if you feel you must "kidnap" the kids because letting Force users run rampant is dangerous, the way they go about it (in the Acolyte, which is what the article suggests) is not great if you're saying your organization is about peace and freedom, etc. but then you act suspicious and spy on people etc. The article even gets at that if you look at it from the Jedi perspective, a generous reading could justify their procedures here but from any other perspective, not so much. To just throw up your hands and go: "they can do whatever they want because our morals don't apply" makes no sense when there are similarly presented societal norms and morals similar to our own within their own universe.

[TwinIon]

21 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

The perception of low stakes or the maintenance of the status quo is the nigh inevitable consequence of any franchise / medium / narrative in which storytelling is perpetual or has the potential to be so. It can happen almost immediately; there have been plenty of takes over the years about how Speaker for the Dead is not what people wanted from "Ender's Game 2" and that happened after one book. Peter Parker is always going to regress to a mean close to how he came on the scene in the 60's. Any story that takes place within earshot of the OT by design is going to have Jedi fumbling the bag to help sell their imminent fall. The canon states that if someone gets too fucking dope with the Light Side, the Force is going to correct that imbalance and make someone rad with the Dark Side, it's the classic DnD true neutral herpaderp.

 

And as I've said before, in a hypothetical world in which Star Wars came out in 2017 and not 1977 and RotJ came out in 2023 and not 1983, people would be fucking apoplectic about Palpatine shooting lightning out of his hands, how there's no absolutely no precedent or foreshadowing of that this could be possible, wondering why Vader never used it, about how Yoda and Obi-Wan never dropped hints about how that could happen, etc. I mean the fact that there's theory crafting at all about a spreading fire is kinda bananas; online fandom has straight up broken people's brains when it comes to some of this stuff.

 

Yes, per the Polygon article and as people here have said, there's more water carried for those things when people feel that what they're watching is good. But for the umpteenth time this is the same franchise that started with Obi-Wan saying only Imperial Stormies are accurate enough to fuck up the sandcrawler in that specific way and then having them fail to hit targets at near point blank range for the rest of the movie for absolutely no reason beyond plot armor, to say nothing of the fact that they're framing Tusken raiders for the attack when the people who would investigate said attack would be the Empire itself? Again the theory crafting for why Stormtroopers are so bad at everything would be unhinged if this franchise started today and the since retconned EU attempts are explaining this away were so much dumber than plot armor could ever be.

 

At some point you just gotta turn your brain off for this stuff. Lightsabers and blaster bolts are fatal or provide glancing blows / injuries solely based on plot needs, Moff Gideon thinks that cool beskar armor, the Darksaber, and droids are the key to the Empire's resurgence despite the Empire handing Mandalore its ass and the droid army having taken a fat L in the Clone Wars.

 

Tween us wouldn't give a shit about this stuff. 

I don't entirely disagree, but I will say that much of the potential of non-Skywalker Star Wars is that it can escape the reversion to the status quo that endless storytelling inevitably carries with it. The story and characters in Acolyte don't need to continue on forever because there isn't some destiny set in stone for them. We got a taste of that with the opening fight in this exact series. You can kill off these characters or make them horrible or do anything else with them because they don't need to tie directly into anything else we've already gotten.

 

I certainly agree with your point about not taking Star Wars any more seriously than it takes itself. This isn't a water tight narrative universe, and if you're going to enjoy anything Star Wars, you need to accept that. Still, they could tell any story they wanted in this universe and they made this flashback the inciting incident of everything going forward. If they fail to do any more explaining of that incident, it's a real missed opportunity.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

As someone on ResetERA pointed out, the primary issue with the flashback episode was that it didn't really impart any information that we the audience didn't already know or couldn't have readily inferred.  It just wasn't necessary to spend that degree of screen time on the twins' backstory.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

At the risk of being annoying, another ResetERA post pointed out that the flashback episode was nearly entirely from Osha's point-of-view which means that it's entirely possible that we get another flashback episode that's from Mae's perspective.

 

God - I hope not!

[johnny]

3 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

At the risk of being annoying, another ResetERA post pointed out that the flashback episode was nearly entirely from Osha's point-of-view which means that it's entirely possible that we get another flashback episode that's from Mae's perspective.

 

God - I hope not!

why would they do that lmao 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

17 minutes ago, johnny said:

why would they do that lmao 

 

Why did they have an entire flashback episode in the first place when that information could easily have been dispensed with during the course of the present day narrative?

[johnny]

4 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Why did they have an entire flashback episode in the first place when that information could easily have been dispensed with during the course of the present day narrative?

it’s not uncommon to have a flashback episode. it just doesn’t make any sense to have another entire flashback episode going through the same exact thing from a different perspective. i wouldn’t be surprised if we see a flashback of the fire from Mae’s perspective, but the whole episode sounds ridiculous. and i expect we will see exactly what happens with the jedi and those witches. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

6 minutes ago, johnny said:

it’s not uncommon to have a flashback episode. it just doesn’t make any sense to have another entire flashback episode going through the same exact thing from a different perspective. i wouldn’t be surprised if we see a flashback of the fire from Mae’s perspective, but the whole episode sounds ridiculous. and i expect we will see exactly what happens with the jedi and those witches. 

 

While flashback episodes certainly aren't uncommon, they're most effective when they're used to provide greater context to the events of the present-day narrative or to up-end our understanding of them.  This particular flashback episode really did neither of those things and only served to reinforce what we already knew or could readily infer.

 

If anything, this flashback episode should've been entirely from Mae's perspective as that's the one for which we really have no information.

[TwinIon]

4 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

At the risk of being annoying, another ResetERA post pointed out that the flashback episode was nearly entirely from Osha's point-of-view which means that it's entirely possible that we get another flashback episode that's from Mae's perspective.

 

God - I hope not!

That was my expectation as soon as this one ended. When I realized it was a flashback, I thought, "excellent, they'll settle what happened in the past and the real mystery can be what the deal is with the Sith or whoever is training Mae."

 

As soon as the episode ended and the cause of all those deaths was so uncertain, I felt pretty confident that we'll be revisiting these events from other perspectives for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if we get more than one flashback from more than one perspective.

 

If that ends up being the case, they're really going to have to try to make it worthwhile.

[GeneticBlueprint]

Movies that revisit the same event from different perspectives are usually good. I absolutely want that in a TV show.

[TwinIon]

As far as the kidnapping goes, there was a line in there that both my wife and I felt was confusing, but I'm assuming it was just poorly written. Indara says: "you cannot deny that Jedi have the right to test potential padawans, with your permission of course." So which is it? Do Jedi need permission or not? Then the old CG witch implies that if the girls pass, then they have to leave.

 

It also seems notable that the Jedi are aware that these are a group of force users that are not Jedi. So there is clearly some precedent or understanding that not all force users become Jedi.

 

I don't know if the show is expecting us to know the rules, was making some commentary on how the Jedi deal with other force users or recruit children, or if they're still getting around to it. That leaves me wondering if this lack of clarity is on purpose or accidental.

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, TwinIon said:

As far as the kidnapping goes, there was a line in there that both my wife and I felt was confusing, but I'm assuming it was just poorly written. Indara says: "you cannot deny that Jedi have the right to test potential padawans, with your permission of course." So which is it? Do Jedi need permission or not? Then the old CG witch implies that if the girls pass, then they have to leave.

 

It also seems notable that the Jedi are aware that these are a group of force users that are not Jedi. So there is clearly some precedent or understanding that not all force users become Jedi.

 

I don't know if the show is expecting us to know the rules, was making some commentary on how the Jedi deal with other force users or recruit children, or if they're still getting around to it. That leaves me wondering if this lack of clarity is on purpose or accidental.

 

I think the biggest issue with that scene is the show is clearly on the witches' side. We're meant to relate to and side with them against the Jedi. And the Jedi don't come off looking good. So for the show to try and thread some needle about these Jedi and their intentions but try to still say: "Jedi are good warrior monks and peacekeepers of the galaxy" isn't really going to work if you're gonna make it look like Jedi are abducting children and ripping them from their families and homes.

[stepee]

lol you fucking NERDDDDDSSSS

[Best]

I was tempted to watch this last night while checking out Disney + but the consensus here is that it's just ok so I'm not going to bother. I have tons to watch anyway. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

7 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

Movies that revisit the same event from different perspectives are usually good. I absolutely want that in a TV show.

 

Rashomon-like storytelling is absolutely a compelling narrative device when executed properly, but it's a delicate balancing act to make the narrative payoff worth the effort.  I'm just uncertain whether the team behind this series can pull it off.

[GeneticBlueprint]

3 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Rashomon-like storytelling is absolutely a compelling narrative device when executed properly, but it's a delicate balancing act to make the narrative payoff worth the effort.  I'm just uncertain whether the team behind this series can pull it off.

My post was sarcasm. Maybe it didn’t come through because in all actuality the vast majority of those movies can’t pull off that balancing act. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Finally watched this week's episode with the kids.

It's definitely the worst of the season so far.  The writing continues to be awful -- however, this week the dialog was particularly bad, and the actresses they selected for the kids were particularly bad.  And the motivations behind the decisions Osha and Mae make are dubious at best.

 

I really didn't have any issue with them bringing in witches, Magick is something that is already part of cannon, originally coming from the Nightsisters of Dathomir.  It should be noted, and it was only mentioned as an aside in this episode, is that Magick connects to the dark side of the Force.  And the common theme throughout this franchise, is the dark side of the Force corrupts.

 

I've always thought that good writers bring their flashbacks in over time, so they can reveal mysteries as you go on, rather than doing it in one shot.  And, given that there are still many mysteries of what happened on Brendok, I suspect there has to be a lot of flash backs yet to come.

 

In the end, the problem with this show is there are still no memorable characters, no memorable action scenes and no stand out moments.  It's "meh" rather than bad.

 

16 hours ago, Best said:

I was tempted to watch this last night while checking out Disney + but the consensus here is that it's just ok so I'm not going to bother. I have tons to watch anyway. 

"OK" is a generous description.

 There is much better Star Wars TV content -- Andor and the first two seasons of The Mandalorian come to mind.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

The lore has often made it seem questionable that Jedi took young children away from their families. They often convince the parents that their child is destined for a higher calling. At least by the time of Clone Wars prospective Jedi are known about, detected by the Jedi and their names stores on holocrons near ir around the time of their birth. The parents are approached and if they agree the children are collected, inducted around the age of 4, like Sol said. 
 

The Jedi here seemed almost needy, almost hungry to take the children. They came and spoke like they were entitled to take any children that are force sensitive. I could see the Jedi claiming a “right” to test prospectives IF there was a law in the Republic that granted them that right and IF they were on a planet under Republic rule of law. But the show just established it wasn’t. So the Jedi had no right to anything, arguably unless there was an imminent threat posed to the Republic. 
 

odd choice and tone to be sure. And yeah, I agree with the sentiment that the episode didn’t give us anything we didn’t already have or know. I didn’t hate the episode outright. On the contrary if this was part of the first episode or just was the first episode it might have flowed better as the show keeps ramping up.
 

really though my biggest issue with the show is the final scene in episode 1. It had such, college fan-film, emo, edge lord energy to it. An evil monolog only for us and a lightsaber ignition just so we go “omg it’s a sith!!!!!”  Say what we will about George Lucas as a director and the quality of the prequels, but the quiet scene between Maul and Sidious in Episode 1 was a far better type of scene to this one. I would have actually had more respect for the scene if as soon as the lightsaber ignited there was an on screen link to the “Star Wars Acolyte Sith Master” action figure to buy. 
 

I watched episode 4 last night right after seeing episode 3 and I feel disappointed.

I really wanted Mae to be evil. I hate that Disney seems to have a hard time committing to this kind of thing. Also, I think we all have known that the scrawny friend is really the Master. And if it is true I just hate the mask even more. I swear Disney era of star wars is obsessed with them. If they did the Prequels count Dooku and Maul would have been in masks. When they do the reveal I doubt it will even be all that interesting and thrilling. If it isn’t him then ok. Maybe it could be interesting and be one of the Jedi we’ve already seen or even better one of the sisters fr the coven. Who staged the massacre to make Mae think it was the Jedi and resulted in the Jedi thinking it was Mae. THEN the episode 3 has more reason for being.

 

 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

On 6/12/2024 at 2:04 PM, Kal-El814 said:

The perception of low stakes or the maintenance of the status quo is the nigh inevitable consequence of any franchise / medium / narrative in which storytelling is perpetual or has the potential to be so. It can happen almost immediately; there have been plenty of takes over the years about how Speaker for the Dead is not what people wanted from "Ender's Game 2" and that happened after one book. Peter Parker is always going to regress to a mean close to how he came on the scene in the 60's. Any story that takes place within earshot of the OT by design is going to have Jedi fumbling the bag to help sell their imminent fall. The canon states that if someone gets too fucking dope with the Light Side, the Force is going to correct that imbalance and make someone rad with the Dark Side, it's the classic DnD true neutral herpaderp.

 

And as I've said before, in a hypothetical world in which Star Wars came out in 2017 and not 1977 and RotJ came out in 2023 and not 1983, people would be fucking apoplectic about Palpatine shooting lightning out of his hands, how there's no absolutely no precedent or foreshadowing of that this could be possible, wondering why Vader never used it, about how Yoda and Obi-Wan never dropped hints about how that could happen, etc. I mean the fact that there's theory crafting at all about a spreading fire is kinda bananas; online fandom has straight up broken people's brains when it comes to some of this stuff.

 

Yes, per the Polygon article and as people here have said, there's more water carried for those things when people feel that what they're watching is good. But for the umpteenth time this is the same franchise that started with Obi-Wan saying only Imperial Stormies are accurate enough to fuck up the sandcrawler in that specific way and then having them fail to hit targets at near point blank range for the rest of the movie for absolutely no reason beyond plot armor, to say nothing of the fact that they're framing Tusken raiders for the attack when the people who would investigate said attack would be the Empire itself? Again the theory crafting for why Stormtroopers are so bad at everything would be unhinged if this franchise started today and the since retconned EU attempts are explaining this away were so much dumber than plot armor could ever be.

 

At some point you just gotta turn your brain off for this stuff. Lightsabers and blaster bolts are fatal or provide glancing blows / injuries solely based on plot needs, Moff Gideon thinks that cool beskar armor, the Darksaber, and droids are the key to the Empire's resurgence despite the Empire handing Mandalore its ass and the droid army having taken a fat L in the Clone Wars.

 

Tween us wouldn't give a shit about this stuff. 

another issue I have been talking about for a while now is that many in fandoms get into a franchise and then close off their mind. They become fans with little to no preconceived notions on what Star Wars “should be” and they become enthralled by it. But something clicks in their brain too, where now the franchise or more specifically newer entries in the franchise need to conform to how they believe the franchise, lore, and characters should go. It’s not about compelling story telling, it’s demanding characters become static and never change from what they saw before. It’s wanting fan service all the time.
 

They can’t just casually enjoy star wars any more. It also cannot be ok if they dislike something. It becomes an affront to them. Like it was a personal attack on them and who they are. 
 

They pretty much forgot why they became a fan the first place and have no ability or willingness to get back to that point. Star Wars almost takes on a more religious level of importance to them rather than mere entertainment. 

[Greatoneshere]

So this was another meandering episode of The Acolyte with some strange choices and random scenes thrown in. I continue to like that the filmmaking continues to improve as does the show's look which feels less shoddy and cheap than it did in the past. But there's no urgency to anything, scenes come and go and everyone's very stoic line deliveries (I get they are Jedi, but c'mon) gets a little stale over time. Also, robbing us of seeing a Wookie Jedi go all out feels like a missed opportunity by killing them offscreen instead (like heavily advertising Carrie Ann-Moss is in this show and then immediately killing her off unceremoniously). 

 

And it may not end up being the case but it's pretty clear that Manny Jacinto (Qimir, the sidekick with Mae) is the Master dark-side force user (I won't say Sith specifically) basically doing what Youtuber Jeremy Jahns called pulling an undercover boss on Mae. If that ends up being the case they made it super obvious this episode. I also don't buy Mae's sudden change of heart because it would be completely unearned, I think she was trying to do something that involved Kelnacca getting killed with a lightsaber but not by her or something. Two stupid scenes stood out: 1) Osha randomly touching an alien creature, which then immediately wakes up and tries to attack but is instantly killed by Master Sol so someone else could say: "did you see that? it went straight for the lightsaber, they're attracted to light" and then nothing else ever happens with this. I feel confident this will come back for some useful purpose later, but this felt shoehorned in, and very inelegantly at that. 2) a mixture of 8 Jedi masters, knights and padawans see a red light saber, dark side wielding force user, Mae's master, and all 8 Jedi's first instinct is to all charge this person at the same time in a straight line? What kind of strategy is this? They also lose their tracker, which seems inefficient in a stupid way and this is apparently not the first time this has happened with this "tracker". The tracker doesn't even find Kelnacca (but gets close) but accidentally finds Mae, which is also kind of silly but that's nitpicking.

 

I also think the show's runtimes aren't helping it. The first and third episodes were 37 minutes and the second episode was 31 minutes. This episode was a meager 27 minutes once you take out the opening recap, the long Star Wars logo intro and the end credits. I know we've had short episodes from other Star Wars shows like The Mandalorian but this show keeps killing its own momentum with an entire third episode dedicated to a flashback and then this episode being so short it feels like the first in a two-parter. The whole season is only 8 episodes and we're already halfway done and I feel like the show has barely gotten going. All that being said it's not a bad show or anything, just mediocre for me so far.

[johnny]

good episode!! 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

2 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

1) Osha randomly touching an alien creature, which then immediately wakes up and tries to attack but is instantly killed by Master Sol so someone else could say: "did you see that? it went straight for the lightsaber, they're attracted to light" and then nothing else ever happens with this. I feel confident this will come back for some useful purpose later, but this felt shoehorned in, and very inelegantly at that

welcome to what will likely be Osha’s distraction/escape plan in probably the next episode. Run in touch all bugs while Master charges in and has to defend against multiple bugs. If something like this doesn’t happen and this isn’t a textbook case of chekhov’s gun then I really worry about the people making these shows. 

[Greatoneshere]

32 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

welcome to what will likely be Osha’s distraction/escape plan in probably the next episode. Run in touch all bugs while Master charges in and has to defend against multiple bugs. If something like this doesn’t happen and this isn’t a textbook case of chekhov’s gun then I really worry about the people making these shows. 

 

Something like this is probably what's going to happen. At this stage either outcome is bad: 1) this or something like it is what happens and it's so glaringly obvious that it'd be considered bad writing or 2) it was just some random scene, which is also bad writing. I remember the epitome of this kind of scene was in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (a fun movie but nothing close to T1 and T2) where John Connors (Nick Stahl) and Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), near the end of the film, have to escape and they get to a hangar and as they are running to the plane in the hanger, Claire Danes' character says something like: "oh a plane, my dad taught me to fly one of these" and at no point ever beforehand in the film (as far as I remember) is it established that her father (a character in the film, he's the main military guy in charge of SkyNet before it goes rogue) taught her about flying planes, that either of them cares about planes, etc. It was just a line thrown in so they could explain why she's able to fly this plane now to save them . . . said the second before she has to do it. It's hilarious. Movie is still solid though not necessarily good, but it nails the ending at least.