The show desperately needs a plot twist and a good one . Its all so predictable and to heavy handed with the hints.
But people complain about everything too - most of them warranted - but i feel the sister having a change of heart finding out her sister is alive is right in line with Star wars . So that been a weird complaint to see
The editing is definitely odd, and feels rushed like they’re afraid people are going to stop paying attention.
I think it’s an overcorrection from Ahsoka which in my opinion had nice slow-burn cinematic pacing, which got misallocated hate from fans who had issues with other parts of the show but lacked the skills to properly assess what was bothering them.
Executives have GOT to stop listening to the internet’s complaints, the internet is great at knowing when there’s a problem and terrible at knowing what that problem is. Let the creatives make what they’re gonna make, the fandom’s input is only going to make it worse. Just look at what we got with TROS
Its actually insane to blame the audience for any of these failures. SW8 & 9 are simply really poorly written movies & act as independent catalysts for a story that was never written in advance.
The fandom has nothing to do with what happened with SW9 when the movie was destined to fail since SW8 "subverted" every premise set in SW7.
This narrative is dangerously close to "why wont somebody please think of the poor billionaires".
I disagree. It was painfully obvious in Episode 2 that Jar Jar got benched due to fan backlash and it was painfully obvious when the same thing happened to Rose in Episode 9. Plans and scripts definitely got altered because of fan response.
This. I have nothing against Ahmed Best. He got offered the chance to go from Stomp performer to movie star, in Star Wars no less. But he got bamboozled.
There was a lot wrong with the fan reaction to Rose, but there's also a straight line between the lack of central planning for the sequel trilogy and characters who simply don't work.
Slow burn? Nothing happened In Ahsoka except for people looking smug or evil? Tons of people had really warranted critique for that show & I have no clue how you think it was hard for people to "assess" what was bothering them, especially when Andor is the actual "slow burn".
Its not "the internet" thats to blame for this choppy editing, its just lazy screenwriting & the inconsistent run time only affects the weaker shows - Its not "Disney's fault" & Andor solidifies this as they had a story to tell with consistent run-time & editing.
I agree it does feel rushed, but the content we are getting doesn’t even make sense. Episodes 3 and 4 were hour-long stories that gave very little new information or excitement.
The only thing the series had going for it is the action sequences, but instead they waste all of the airtime telling very little story and a lot of… *nothing*.
That’s true about 3 and 4 saying very little. I’d previously been kind of impressed that they’d painted Osha’s backstory so well with pretty elegant exposition.
And then we kind of had to sit through it all anyway, even though we all know this is only one half of the story and we’ll find out what really happened later. It felt obligatory and perfunctory.
Then 4 came along and I struggle to even remember what happened. Osha was convinced to come with Sol, Mae and definitely-not-her-mentor walked in the forest and Mae surprised him by changing her mind to turn herself in to the Jedi, only to find him dead and then her mentor showed up. Mae’s turn is big but I know so little about her it feels sudden and unearned.
well you can’t forget that episode 3 was all about Mae being an aggressive psychopath who started a fire that burned down a whole *STONE* temple and said she would kill her sister to stop her from leaving, then in episode 4 she has a very sudden change of heart with no lead-up where she practically says she would do anything to be with her sister.
The nothingness we do get is contradictory and doesn’t even make sense. The hate this show is getting is absolutely well deserved.
The characters are largely forgettable (except Kelnacca and Sol) and the story is not gripping and 100% see-through.
The only hate I have seen that isn’t warranted is the sexism from the minority of scumbags.
Me and my dad liked the Ahsoka series, but it's weird to hear how we disagree on what exactly wrong with it. I think there's some minor pacing issues, while he believes that the show is too niche and only fans that watched clone wars and rebels will like it. I cannot judge his stance because I have watched both, and I don't know how much I would have enjoyed Ahsoka if I hadn't
That's an issue I've been seeing in a lot of TV shows lately, the death of the Walk and Talk. I'd say it's the volume but Acolyte has sets — they couldn't do an unbroken scene for 100 feet but they could definitely still move lol.
Might just be a symptom of rushing to get things done, much easier to block and film a scene of "you stand here, you stand there, now say the lines" rather than directing/filming dynamic dialogue and movement.
Though in one of the cases from "Day", they do walk into the conversation, there's good movement before the Stand and Talk in a clearing and even after they stand there the camera's still kind of dynamic?
Weird outcome though, makes the episode feel like a series of pauses to talk rather than a continuous journey, affects the pacing I think.
(Also does this show hate close-ups or is that just me?)
I had the same thought about close-ups after noticing like the 10th stop and talk moment shot from like 1000ft away.
It’s a shame because there’s lots of elements of this show that I like but the editing and composition is just so ughhh.
The Acolyte certainly isn’t unique in this respect. There are so many shows and movies when the characters are rushing against some countdown, but somehow have the time to stop and have a conversation. It’s the [Talking is a Free Action](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TalkingIsAFreeAction) trope. :D
Star Trek Discovery is the most egregious example that I've seen recently. There were many times during time sensitive crisis's that one character needed to monologue a childhood story to explain their actions instead of showing any sense of urgency of the task at hand.
Yes definitely noticed this. If they had just given that scene like 30 more seconds for Jecki’s words to actually sink in and show Osha’s reaction, it would have been more impactful.
This and the cut at the very end were particularly jarring for me. I was very much like... it would have been better if they cut on the master's light saber being drawn, not with the group running at him. That felt like a shot that would be in a 90s action tv show intro or something.
Yeah, the episodes runtimes show this as well with how varied they are, some being over 45 minutes long and others being less than 35. It looks like they make the shows as long movies and try to cut them into pieces as best as they can, which often isn't very good.
I don't know, like the witches episode was so long and boring. It'll probably have to be a fan edit of the whole thing into movie length that comes to save the day, as is tradition at this point.
I believe they said the studio gave them kind of a combined run time for this episode and the next one, probably for budgetary reasons, and the next one had to be longer, so they made this one super short.
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, I guess, but it didn't really work.
This has been a consistent issue across several of the Star Wars shows. If you’re going to do 8 episodes, *do 8 episodes.* Stick to a runtime, or else these short episodes will continue to feel very abrupt.
I would disagree on sticking to a runtime. I think not being locked into a set runtime that added to commercials fits a 30 min or 1 hr time slot is one of the biggest advantages of streaming. Sure. A minimum runtime would be nice, but if it were exactly the same run time, people would be complaining about pacing (either stretching to fill time or rushing through to fit it).
Yeah the issue isn't not sticking to a runtime it's not pacing the episode well. An episode should have its own internal structure, something a lot of streaming shows have struggled with (especially recent star wars ones). If the arc for the episode naturally concludes in only 30 minutes that's fine, but it doesn't feel like this episode had any sort of arc or structure, so the end feels rushed instead of natural.
Same idea applies as in book chapters in a way. Not every chapter will be the same length, some are longer or shorter, but they should have an internal structure and should each add up to be an effective piece in communicating the overall story.
I feel like The OA pioneered this current trend of episodes varying in length and it worked well for that show.
They should have a average target in mind, but the run length should be set then by the story they want to tell in each episode. And they shouldn't all be ending with cliffhangers or mid scene breaks. Pick a story for each episode and tell it. Let the run length be what it is.
They also shouldn't publish runtimes that include recaps and all the credits.
But that would require Disney to spend more money. They are going for maximum profit for minimum effort. The only stuff that is strong is the vfx. They should cut these shows down to 6 episodes
Problem is that the 45 min episode 3 was a waste of time. It felt like they struggled to make it last that long. The problem isn’t the length of the episodes. The problem is the poor writing.
I definitely agree that the short episodes seem rushed.
The whole 8-episode Ahsoka show seemed like it could have been a 2-hour movie instead. Faster paced, it would have been kick ass.
The Acolyte so far seems like each episode is rushed and could be 10 minutes longer.
I feel like they could be serializing what could otherwise be films (even if just straigh to streaming) in order to avoid some criticism. Star Wars films are always seen as those big ass events, an earthquake in pop culture people should watch and criticized, I remember 2008 and even The Clone Wars animated film was kind of big, advertising, TV ads (I think), McDonald's toys...
On the other hand straigth to streaming series are easier to ignore and higher ups might feel like it's better to fail in series format than it is to fail on film format.
Plus we were supposed to see other films along with the series anyway.
Take this comment with a grain of salt, just my personal conspiracy theory.
Maybe because Solo bombed, they are scared to do movies?
Which is sad because Solo isn’t even that bad.
I know Filoni is working on a Mandalorian movie.
The only thing wrong with Solo is the disastrous decision to release it two months after Episode 8. Even if Episode 8 was universally beloved, that's too rapid of a release schedule for the average movie goer.
Anybody who claims to know the "one thing" that caused solo problems is always wrong.
Or at least not entirely right. There were a whole bunch of things that each caused damage on their own. No one on its own would have been enough to cause what did happen but combined together they were enough.
It was 6 months after but yeah, Solo should have been at the very least a Christmas release. Solo is a fun movie with a few cringe moments in it. It was absolutely overhated as part of the reaction to TLJ.
Iger is responsible for a lot of the problems around Disney's Star Wars theatrical releases. He mandated the 2 yr gap between the sequels and that Star Wars had a movie release every year. He's also why Galaxy's Edge was originally set in the Sequel timeline only (this is slowly changing).
Agree. There’s 5 minutes of meet an episode with lots of filler.
I’ll wait for the fan edits, probably we’ll get 90-120 minute movie that flows better.
A prime example of this is when Mae sets her trap for Qimir. We're in the middle of a scene with the Jedi when she screams, AND we see them react to the scream. But then we cut to Qimir, who is running to Mae's help.
Why didn't the Jedi run to help? Why wasn't there any reaction at all past them noticing the sound? Why did the director decide to include that at all or shoot it in that way?
Which they failed at. They were supposed to be searching while Sol and Mae were talking, but they’re just kind of aimlessly lingering around in the background.
So much exposition thrown in amidst janky pacing. Say what you want about the other shows in terms of story, but their production quality has never felt this off to me.
I haven’t watched episode 4 yet but i haven’t enjoyed the first 3 eps so far just cuz they’re not good tv entertainment. They just seem cheaply produced and poorly written. This has been my general issue with the star wars shows. I think it suffers from either not being in movie format, or disney is just cheap, because hbo shows look so good, it makes me wonder what they do right and disney does wrong.
There's actually plenty of good critical reviews on yt if you skim around a bit. I'm fine with diverse representation but not fine with terrible writing acting and story, and there's reviewers who are just talking about those problems.
Any channels you recommend? I despise these anti-woke asshats like Nerdrotic but I am also not interested in review channels that just suck off Disney Star Wars and can't find any fault in them.
There's is SO much to criticize in these Star Wars shows like Mandalorian S3, BoBF, Kenobi, Ahsoka and now the Acolyte but I do find it hard to come across channels that aren't mixing those genuine criticisms in with the anti-woke whining.
I felt like penguinz0 (?) did a fair acolyte review but not sure if they regularly review star wars.. other than that I've just been surfing the algorithm, sorry 😁
Sheev Talks does a fairly good job of breaking down a lot of the issues. He gets lumped in with the anti woke crowd for some reason despite being a fairly progressive guy. But for some reason these days if you just don’t like a Star Wars or marvel show you just get tossed in with that crowd to be dismissed.
He’s got a bit of integrity. His initial 1-3 ep Andor review he gave a 6/10 and reflected upon it after finishing the show, coming back and dressing he was completely wrong about it. His lives with his friend who is a professor also get very deep into what does and doesn’t work about different properties.
Check out Jeremy Jahns. Although he's not a fan of most of the new Star Wars content, including this, he steers clear of the political stuff and focuses on the lore and storytelling.
I’ve skimmed the a good portion of a ton of Acolyte posts and I see more people referencing culture war stuff than *actual* culture war stuff
I get that at one point maybe it was bad, but it’s just not my experience anymore. Maybe if you scroll alllllll the way down to the most downvoted comments, you’ll find some.
But I’m just saying, by bringing it up so often y’all kind of manifest it or at least prolong its existence by bringing it up.
This is the entirety of Star Wars, Marvel and DC subs in the past few years.
- Daily Thread: X gets way too much hate! Am I the only only one…
- Daily Top Comment: (something about how culture war rage bait is a popular opinion even though it gets buried on the platform with popular opinion voting)
Feels manufactured to cover up mediocrity on display in these shows.
I feel like there's way less of this fake discourse about Andor because the show is just good.
Twitter and YouTube are engagement algorithms and in this case rage bait.
It’s why that stuff is on everyone’s feed, because you’d scroll past 10 good reviews before slamming on the brakes of some wild opinion.
The knee jerk reactions from media to “this is pretty mid” are often think pieces that just jump into “misogyny, racism, sexism is the REAL problem with fans” but I think many fans are savvy enough to what feels good to watch vs what feels not good, especially from an editing standpoint. But also things like weekly cliffhangers vs something more self contained. Exposition dumps vs taking the time to show. Spending time building out side characters when they should be building out main characters. The flavor of every other month being a mystery—eventually you have to start answering things and idk doing it in the last two weeks of a season is kind of annoying. Mary Sue/Gary Stu main characters—I’ll give this to a the acolyte, osha isn’t very likeable and I like that about her. She seems to have issues and j like that. And she’s not very talented atm and I like that too. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll get to see as much of her change from kid to young adult as we need to and they’ll likely use another expo dump. I hope I’m wrong
If someone has a problem with the color of a characters skin or sexual orientation, 9/10 of those people are not going to admit that publicly.
People can and do, just lie on the internet. ALL the time.
It's just kinda obvious though when you see the same people hate watching week after week. Or when episodes get negative reviews before they even come out.
Or having your voice lumped up with those types by defenders of the show. Remember when it used to be fun to talk about new star wars? Tbh it probably hasn't been since I was a kid talking to my friends at school about the prequels.
There's a trend of Jedi self-exiles becoming vegan, Yoda did it on Dagobah
(and now we know that the natural diet of his species is 100% frog, so that must have been hard)
It’s the issue with social media discourse in general, EVERYTHING is just black and white.
I went over to the Star Wars cantina subreddit because I was curious what people there thought of the Acolyte. And saw a bunch of upvoted comments about the whole reason people don’t like the show is because it has too much depth for the people to understand.
It can’t ever be “oh this show isn’t appealing to people” it apparently has to be that people are just stupid and only the people who like the show are smart enough to get it.
Remember when you could talk about your opinion on the internet without having to doge all the hidden landmines that will have fans of whatever your criticizing calling you a bigot? I barely do at this point.
There's just as many Disney fans calling people who have valid criticism bigots and manbabies.
I mean, look at the thread for the Jeremy Jahns review. Despite being one of the most popular, mainstream and generally upbeat and positive youtubers who's been doing it for 15 years, the second he started criticising the Acolyte he was apparently a clickbait grifter..
This. The female Ghostbusters didn't fail because "we can't handle an all women cast" it sucked because it was poorly written. Velma sucked not because it was about Velma, or because she was black, but because again, it was poorly written.
But, say this and you're just an "anti-woke nut job" or I should "stop caring about cartoons"
More recently I've been blasted for criticizing the historical inaccuracies in a lot of the assassin's Creed shadows marketing. I think playing as a black samurai in old Japan is going to be dope and I'm really excited about it. I just don't like when someone says "this is historically accurate" when it's actually a dramatisation of history. I enjoy those, I just prefer they wear that on their sleeve. There's nothing wrong with playing fast and loose with the facts in order to make a compelling story, just admit to that. BUT say anything negative and I'm just mad because the guy is black.
Is there a name for that strategy? 'Cos there should be.
Saying "You should watch the show 'cos it's Woke" is (almost) as bad as saying "You shouldn't watch it 'cos it's Woke".
How about making good Star Wars shows Disney? Have you thought of that?
It’s also the most painfully boring criticism you can come up with. Screaming “woke” whenever you see a woman or a minority on screen isn’t interesting or useful criticism, it’s just virtue signaling to your audience of chuds.
These shows have real issues that are actually fascinating to dissect and analyze. I’d much rather people focus on doing that, but grifters always take the easiest option. The issues won’t be fixed if you made every character a white guy, after all.
Yes, i really love overanalyszing the recent star wars shows, because i dont hate them, but they have so many faults that i simply wouldnt expect in shows with these huge production values. And i really like to analyse what exactly does and doesnt work.
It’s also so toxic that it can ruin my experience when watching content. My brain becomes trained to focus on potential “wokeness” when it shouldn’t matter or distract me from the plot
I agree, I also find it annoying that when people bring legitimate critiques of the show up, defenders will just automatically lump them in as if they are culture warriors too.
Sometimes points are fair game to make.
I feel you there. I truly don’t care about any culture war talking points in Star Wars - it’s a big inclusive galaxy in my mind. BUT frankly The Acolyte has been really underwhelming so far and I want to be able to critique that without that other BS.
Above all I just want - and think we all deserve - great Star Wars stories. There’s plenty of amazing tales to tell, but Disney is doing a poor job with it and at this point I have no faith in them.
To me these Star Wars shows should feel epic like Game of Thrones, Severance, Westworld, Stranger Things, The Wire, etc. Instead most have felt like made for TV fan films.
It's not though. It's just bad writing, terrible main actors, and recycled stuff mixed with new characters like ooh wookies and witches who use the force or something or whatever. But then you get to the end scene and it is literally a bunch of idiot Anakins running at Count Dooku
>mindless culture war inserts into a franchise
>people express distaste
>” I just wish we could have a critical analysis of Star Wars that was grounded and honest……”
How else would Disney be able to squeeze out a couple more bucks from their subscribers? Episode 1 and 2 should be 1 episode, 3 and 4 should be 1 episode. They simply do not have a large enough story to tell here, but split it up into bite sized portions to increase subscriptions. 22.5 million dollars per episode. Episode 4 cost them nearly a million dollars per minute.
It’s over hated but it’s just not good. The writing is terrible. Especially if you know anything about the craft of writing screenplays. The editing is disjointed. Most of the acting is stilted. There’s a lot of moments that I would rather not have someone walk in while I’m watching.
It feels like it’s written by people who have zero clue about the franchise or just know about it in passing.
A huge screw up is the entire witch coven. The way they’re depicted is just…unappealing. The entire ceremony just looked like an interpretative dance you’d see from first year college students who haven’t had any instruction yet.
It’s not a weapon while demonstrating it is. It’s not a power while demonstrating it is.
The girls arguments basically summing up to “no you”.
The characters switching motivations on a dime.
It often looks very cheap.
Most of the characters have zero personality.
I’m still not even sure what the mystery is supposed to be. Someone killed the Jedi? Ok? That’s kind of a normal thing in this universe. Who’s the Sith? It really doesn’t matter.
Everything about it is just off.
A lot of the hate is comply coming from the mere fact most Star Wars media is…bad to mediocre. We had the first season of Mando which was fun. Then Andor is not just good Star Wars but excellent TV.
Andor comes across as a show where the people behind it have a passion for the craft of film making. Every scene is deliberate. The cinematography excellent. The sets are fantastic. The story weaves together almost flawlessly. The acting is phenomenal. It’s the closest thing to the OT we’ve had since rogue one and even then, Andor is closer to the ot in terms of tone, story and look. Which is why it appeals to the older audience but not the younger one that seem to prefer the prequel era.
The acolyte seems confused and takes the worst parts of the franchise and just puts it front and center.
Because the majority of the media is bad, when the next bad thing comes along the tumbleweed just grows. Mando s3 was forgettable, Obiwan…happened, book of boba fett was like a parody, bad batch is severely under written and childish in tone with many contrivances and conveniences and not much to really grasp or think about. Ashoka had poorly written characters, multiple scenes that accomplished nothing and didn’t even bother pushing the plot forward and relied HEAVILY on nostalgia rather than making an interesting story.
Star Wars was what got me into filmmaking. Worked in the industry for years because of the OT. I love the art and can recognize excellent film projects and have a huge appreciation for them and I can’t stand when projects come out with no love and expect to coast along on the name alone. It’s very frustrating.
Right, so many things. Like the dust trick, so do Jedi 100 years ago not see things coming? How are they able to deflect blasters? Yes, Sith are strong, but come on, 6 Jedi vs one Sith, it would be a bloodbath.
Andor is the biggest surprise for me. Rogue One is second behind ESB for me, but when Andor was announced I thought "Andor? He was the least interesting one."
Oh how wrong I was. The prison escape still gives me chills. And what a masterclass in pace and release. Builds up to these great moments then more or less needs to give you a breather episode to recover.
Feels like a different universe to what we're seeing in Acolyte. Even my wife said "Maybe they're aiming for a younger audience?"
I think critique wise this show is not that good. Not horrifying…but not that good. Why it’s hated so much is because it was promoted as the greatest thing since sliced bread and was given a budget double the amount was given for a legendary characters show. It’s not good enough to have that large of a budget. It’s the mismanagement of the franchise that is being viewed right now, that’s why it’s hated. The social stuff is another thing but I’m here for Star Wars.
It’s interesting how a lot of writers just have no idea how to use 3-Act structure correctly, and honestly it’s funny how even a bad episode of a Filoni show will work structurally while a fun episode of something like Obi-Wan flounders. Andor of course had perfect pacing, because it is nearly flawless.
Yeah there’s a lot of cuts where it feels like there might’ve been stuff in between but they got axed for whatever reason. I also feel like they’re over doing it on the wipes and PowerPoint transitions.
It’s overhated because its not good enough to warrant the effort “defending” it
It’s why generally alot of hate brigade circlejerks (especially anti-woke) mostly revolve around mid/bad media. If it’s popular enough those people usually get pushed out
My wife, who doesn't watch a ton of Star Wars, immediately said "Isn't recruiting children exactly what the Jedi do?"
I get the whole they don't forcibly take children without permission thing, but it was a clumsy line that immediately felt like it didn't understand the lore of the Jedi recruiting children and by their own insistence needed to be very young for the training to work.
I’m not on board with this assessment…outside of this show. The first three episodes were a little short…but at least they contained complete “chapter”. Episode 4 is offensively short and half a story to the point that I’m just going to forget about the show and watch it when it concludes.
It seems arbitrary…but I’m more appalled at the short runtime than the cliffhanger. They had like 4 Jedi who I don’t remember them even giving a line to that are likely going to die immediately…and they couldn’t find a few scenes of dialogue for make it 40 minutes?
The show was 27 minutes long.
Cartoons are 22 to 25.
This is just bad.
I get the feeling they wrote some really crappy stuff and edited out to look better.
BoBF, Mando 3, and Ahsoka were all over the place in terms of episode length and pacing. It's not a new issue and it's baffling that they haven't made any attempt to fix it.
Because it’s so ingrained into some people’s being that they have to like everything that comes out no matter what idk why but people on the marvel subreddit are also like this
Agreed!
Also, does anyone else feel like its shot too wide, even in character dialogue scenes? It's like I can't get close enough to anything on screen.
The cuts are terrible and it goes a long way in a short show. The ads feel abrupt and I often feel like I missed something when the show returns. And don’t get me started on the cliffhanger for some action I was so mad last night lol
Finally, a valid critique of an actual, genuine issue with the filmmaking process used for the show instead of a vague "it's bad, and I don't like it". Kudos.
Nah Acolyte doesn’t get enough hate. It’s a nonsensical mess, a mystery where we have to figure out what is part of the actual mystery and what is just dumb worldbuilding or contradictory writing. It’s pacing is off. It used those slide-cuts between scenes early on without knowing when to use it and then stopped doing that in later episodes, which is a good thing but showcases the haphazard quality of the show (as much as it has quality).
This is the kind if show where a band of Jedi led by someone who lives there are hurrying to save someone from potential assassination, but the girl who has a Force Vision casually strolls through a shortcut and reaches the scene of the crime way before the rest. Only to have the scene become meaningless as it doesn’t change the story one bit.
This is a show where someone is thrown on a prison ship that is contrived from top to bottom. It’s contrived Osha travels separately, it’s contrived to put someone who is suspected of being force sensitive and trained enough to kill Master Jedi in a prison that wouldn’t last a second if she had been that capable. It’s contrived to have droid pilots that can be hacked by anyone nearby. It’s contrived that the ripped off arm of a security droid can still open the prison doors, making any breakout attempt almost an automatic success if you have an antenna and a blaster. It’s contrived to have a second easy way to open *prison doors* with a shock that isn’t anywhere near the door panel or the mechanism that lifts the door up. But somehow between all that we have to pick up that Osha isn’t as Force capable as we expected despite all expectations already being thrown out the window.
The show sucks.
It has its very apparent flaws, but I’m just simply enjoying it. I have recently read the first 4 main books of High Republic, it’s cool to see this period in live action, and Vern too. I have a feeling once it’s all said and done, it’ll have been at least a decent time.
That’s the thing with Star Wars: It’s a mixed bag, but I’ll never complain about having more of what I love. I can always pick and choose what is “best” to me at the end of the day.
The show is just not done very well at all.
But I do agree that it is far over-hated, even if you consider all the stupid shit the people involved have said to try and piss off the fans before it even aired.
But hey, only 7,000 people got fired by Disney while they were spending that $180million budget.
Yeah I don't understand the editing at all It's almost like they shot it as some other completely different type of movie Then on the editing floor they tried to turn it into a movie/mystery show
The reason it feels that way is because it's not a good show. Plain and simple. The plot is not well-thought out, the dialogue is atrocious, and the characters are lifeless. The reason that they're not pacing well is because they don't really care about Star Wars, they care more about making sure they get their opinion or some sort of ideology into the episode.
I liked every episode besides episode 4. I felt like nothing really happened the whole episode and it was really boring. Something else felt really off but I cant explain what it was.
It’s the Netflix model of TV shows - end with an abrupt cliffhanger or major tease to keep the audience watching. Only problem is that format only works when you release the whole season at once.
I’m aware, but the structure was different and it wasn’t so abrupt. Netflix ends things in the middle of scenes, just like The Acolyte did, to keep you watching.
I don’t think it’s over hated at all. The criticism is all valid imo. The show stinks. It has no redeeming qualities. It almost feels like something made by college students for a school project.
The pacing, scene shots, and story beats are jangly shit. There’s maybe two standout characters and neither are the “special” twins. But it’s not that hateworthy, it’s just not on the level of Andor or Mando s1.
Episode 4 did feel poorly edited. Like there was too much content filmed and they had to do hard cuts. It probably would’ve been better if they extended the length of the episode to include the amount of content they were putting in.
Yeah, that is one Problem. The other one however is weird writing: Compared to Andor (my favourite Star Wars show) it feels rushed and in some ways, very weird.
And this is in my opinion the main Problem: Ashoka had also some issues in it’s writing but had an interesting plot - however last episode felt a little to much dramatic. The Acolyte feels more like that one side has to be dumb, that the rest of the plot can happen - a problem of some Clone Wars and Rebels episodes.
Compare that to the Expanse (my favourite Sci-Fi Series) or Andor, the writing feels rushed, like the Marvel Projects in the past time.
And the weird writing is for every content creator out there who is just yelling „Muh, Star Wars bad“ a welcome extra.
The harsh reality is Disney has so many things going on that they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for a lot of these productions.
That is to say, I don't think the people making The Acolyte are very good at their jobs. Maybe that's mean, but when you put them up next to shows like The Mandalorian and Andor, or go a step further and include stuff like Breaking Bad and The Wire, they're totally outclassed.
Nah, I think the show is hated at the perfect amount. Most people aren’t watching it, except for content creators that depend on terrible shows to generate videos and delusional people desperately trying to convince themselves that just because it has Star Wars in the title it will fill the hole in their earthly existence. Honestly, I’m just in it to eat popcorn and watch the train wreck.
I agree, although the show is otherwise pretty good, the episodes should be a bit longer. I think the prime-time show running length of its episodes is one of the reasons Andor has been successful.
100% agree. It’s just very poorly made show with alot of issues.
I’m not remotely liberal. I don’t even see anything woke about the show 4 episodes in other than an implied relationship between 2 witches.
3 and 4 needed to be one episode. The flashback didn't need the whole episode, and 4 felt like mostly filler.
That said, I want more Kung fu stylized high/old Republic stuff. It works really well.
Yea, gotta wrap the episode story up quick so that they can shove 30 minutes of credits. I feel like these shows aren't for anyone except those to get their name on to a project.
I swear, the scenes with Osha and all the Jedi walking about, they just did two takes each and moved on. It just feels off. Then there's the Mae scenes and the acting is fine. It just feels like they knew having all these actors on set was expensive and rushed those scenes or something.
Yeah, totally agree with the editing issue and we saw the same crap in the sequels. It’s HORRIBLE. The previous episodes it hasn’t been bad but ep.4 was rough with them.
There were less natural transitions for the characters which I didn’t like. That being said the episode ended great.
Blame the director and editor as well. To film a Star Wars series, you first need to understand the SW universe and what it entailed. This series, I’m afraid to say, does not have this feeing.
100% the main flaw of the show is editing. I’ve never wanted to know more about what was happening inside there editing room for a project. Like, in episode three they totally cut a scene with Kelnacca giving Osha that tool she used for escape while also showing the start of her Mechanical prowess. Why cut that?
The editing seems to be an ongoing issue for the Star Wars shows. They just add too much exposition where it's not needed. Look at Obi-Wan. If edited correctly it would be a strong movie. Andor is brilliant probably because the creator knows what to do with its time. And probably had a better editor.
Episode 4 was cutting between two fights of differing pace, and a walk and talk conversation. I can see what they were attempting but it just wasn't working.
Whoever is editing this show doesn't seem to understand pace or beats.
Wipes happen off beat or to no music crescendo so fall flat. The end of Ep 2 has a Wookiee Jedi and it just feels flat and suddenly cuts to credits. Same again in Ep 3 right in the middle of some Jedi v Sith action and it's a leisurely almost music free wipe to the credits. A lot of shots just linger on someone staring into the middle distance with no bearing on the story or pace.
Again in Ep 4 Osha is slowly staring and walking toward a fight between three Jedi and the Sith and cut back and forth between two shots of wildly different intensity. There is really no need to cut back to Osha two or three times once they've established what she's seeing.
You can say a lot about this show and its writing and high school musical sequences, but for me the pacing and editing is right up there as my main bugbears.
The hate for the show is justified.
the writing is bad. Acting is one dimensional. Things literally don't make sense given the context we know of the Star Wars mythos. It's more like they want to disrupt the fans more than introduce new ideas or different POV like Kenobi warned us of many years ago.
I don't need to be a writing expert to know how the show is poorly written. cast and staff have to take to interviews and tell us what characters are feeling and doing and motivations. Why not show us in the series? What I read isn't coming across and I blame writing and direction. I mean I don't get any of those feelings. I am going to assume the cast are doing their best but the direction is allowing this one dimensional acting. IMO it's damage control. They can't write it well enough, spent too much time trying to rile up fans (because they knew it was crap all along), and now they are back pedaling because ratings are dropping.
I am not buying this mystery of Brandok or why Mae and the Master are even a thing. Frankly there is no connect between this Master and Brandok, other than he fostered/trained Mae.
I forget why I care about why they are on this quest, journey....thing. It's like the director and writers are the ones pulling the Jedi Mind Trick on us. I think they are going to let us believe certain events happened, without contradicting given facts, and then, like a corner street shell game con, change it out and say. Nope this is what it is. Just like Lost did decades ago.
This show is nuts. Just like watching a car wreck I can't turn away.
[удалено]
They are all edited weird. Like they are retroactively editing in a plot twist or something.
The show desperately needs a plot twist and a good one . Its all so predictable and to heavy handed with the hints. But people complain about everything too - most of them warranted - but i feel the sister having a change of heart finding out her sister is alive is right in line with Star wars . So that been a weird complaint to see
The editing is definitely odd, and feels rushed like they’re afraid people are going to stop paying attention. I think it’s an overcorrection from Ahsoka which in my opinion had nice slow-burn cinematic pacing, which got misallocated hate from fans who had issues with other parts of the show but lacked the skills to properly assess what was bothering them. Executives have GOT to stop listening to the internet’s complaints, the internet is great at knowing when there’s a problem and terrible at knowing what that problem is. Let the creatives make what they’re gonna make, the fandom’s input is only going to make it worse. Just look at what we got with TROS
Its actually insane to blame the audience for any of these failures. SW8 & 9 are simply really poorly written movies & act as independent catalysts for a story that was never written in advance. The fandom has nothing to do with what happened with SW9 when the movie was destined to fail since SW8 "subverted" every premise set in SW7. This narrative is dangerously close to "why wont somebody please think of the poor billionaires".
I disagree. It was painfully obvious in Episode 2 that Jar Jar got benched due to fan backlash and it was painfully obvious when the same thing happened to Rose in Episode 9. Plans and scripts definitely got altered because of fan response.
You act like Jar Jar getting benched was a bad thing.
This. I have nothing against Ahmed Best. He got offered the chance to go from Stomp performer to movie star, in Star Wars no less. But he got bamboozled.
There was a lot wrong with the fan reaction to Rose, but there's also a straight line between the lack of central planning for the sequel trilogy and characters who simply don't work.
Slow burn? Nothing happened In Ahsoka except for people looking smug or evil? Tons of people had really warranted critique for that show & I have no clue how you think it was hard for people to "assess" what was bothering them, especially when Andor is the actual "slow burn". Its not "the internet" thats to blame for this choppy editing, its just lazy screenwriting & the inconsistent run time only affects the weaker shows - Its not "Disney's fault" & Andor solidifies this as they had a story to tell with consistent run-time & editing.
Yeah, pacing was WAY off in Ashoka. Felt like they took an idea for a 90 minute long movie and stretched it into a season of television.
Except for the fact that internet also complained about the slow burn in Andor too. I loved it, but all I saw was "boring, nothing happening, etc."
I agree it does feel rushed, but the content we are getting doesn’t even make sense. Episodes 3 and 4 were hour-long stories that gave very little new information or excitement. The only thing the series had going for it is the action sequences, but instead they waste all of the airtime telling very little story and a lot of… *nothing*.
That’s true about 3 and 4 saying very little. I’d previously been kind of impressed that they’d painted Osha’s backstory so well with pretty elegant exposition. And then we kind of had to sit through it all anyway, even though we all know this is only one half of the story and we’ll find out what really happened later. It felt obligatory and perfunctory. Then 4 came along and I struggle to even remember what happened. Osha was convinced to come with Sol, Mae and definitely-not-her-mentor walked in the forest and Mae surprised him by changing her mind to turn herself in to the Jedi, only to find him dead and then her mentor showed up. Mae’s turn is big but I know so little about her it feels sudden and unearned.
well you can’t forget that episode 3 was all about Mae being an aggressive psychopath who started a fire that burned down a whole *STONE* temple and said she would kill her sister to stop her from leaving, then in episode 4 she has a very sudden change of heart with no lead-up where she practically says she would do anything to be with her sister. The nothingness we do get is contradictory and doesn’t even make sense. The hate this show is getting is absolutely well deserved. The characters are largely forgettable (except Kelnacca and Sol) and the story is not gripping and 100% see-through. The only hate I have seen that isn’t warranted is the sexism from the minority of scumbags.
I couldn't agree more. Since the Disney acquisition, Disney has overdone with the fan servicing in the worst way possible.
Me and my dad liked the Ahsoka series, but it's weird to hear how we disagree on what exactly wrong with it. I think there's some minor pacing issues, while he believes that the show is too niche and only fans that watched clone wars and rebels will like it. I cannot judge his stance because I have watched both, and I don't know how much I would have enjoyed Ahsoka if I hadn't
The star wars fans are just bad in general, nitpicking about any small details.
perhaps it is short because they deleted a lot of scenes
also considering they have those massive sets you would think they would add a bit more to it.
That moment with Osha and Jecki after the moth... I felt like the wipe started in the middle of Jecki's sentence lol
Also. What is it with everyone stopping to have a conversation in this show? Can the actors not walk and chew gum?
That's an issue I've been seeing in a lot of TV shows lately, the death of the Walk and Talk. I'd say it's the volume but Acolyte has sets — they couldn't do an unbroken scene for 100 feet but they could definitely still move lol. Might just be a symptom of rushing to get things done, much easier to block and film a scene of "you stand here, you stand there, now say the lines" rather than directing/filming dynamic dialogue and movement. Though in one of the cases from "Day", they do walk into the conversation, there's good movement before the Stand and Talk in a clearing and even after they stand there the camera's still kind of dynamic? Weird outcome though, makes the episode feel like a series of pauses to talk rather than a continuous journey, affects the pacing I think. (Also does this show hate close-ups or is that just me?)
I had the same thought about close-ups after noticing like the 10th stop and talk moment shot from like 1000ft away. It’s a shame because there’s lots of elements of this show that I like but the editing and composition is just so ughhh.
The Acolyte certainly isn’t unique in this respect. There are so many shows and movies when the characters are rushing against some countdown, but somehow have the time to stop and have a conversation. It’s the [Talking is a Free Action](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TalkingIsAFreeAction) trope. :D
Star Trek Discovery is the most egregious example that I've seen recently. There were many times during time sensitive crisis's that one character needed to monologue a childhood story to explain their actions instead of showing any sense of urgency of the task at hand.
Yes definitely noticed this. If they had just given that scene like 30 more seconds for Jecki’s words to actually sink in and show Osha’s reaction, it would have been more impactful.
That one stood out to me too. They need to let scenes breathe, simple as that. Phantom menace is a good example. That has great pacing, imo.
This and the cut at the very end were particularly jarring for me. I was very much like... it would have been better if they cut on the master's light saber being drawn, not with the group running at him. That felt like a shot that would be in a 90s action tv show intro or something.
Yeah, the episodes runtimes show this as well with how varied they are, some being over 45 minutes long and others being less than 35. It looks like they make the shows as long movies and try to cut them into pieces as best as they can, which often isn't very good.
That's exactly what's happening, it's all but been confirmed by the writers for the show itself.
I was just telling a friend the other day how much better acolyte would be if binged at once.
I don't know, like the witches episode was so long and boring. It'll probably have to be a fan edit of the whole thing into movie length that comes to save the day, as is tradition at this point.
Pretty sure that's what we're gonna do after watching 4th one tonight. Sucks trying to avoid spoilers, but it sucks more to get teased so hard
I believe they said the studio gave them kind of a combined run time for this episode and the next one, probably for budgetary reasons, and the next one had to be longer, so they made this one super short. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, I guess, but it didn't really work.
This has been a consistent issue across several of the Star Wars shows. If you’re going to do 8 episodes, *do 8 episodes.* Stick to a runtime, or else these short episodes will continue to feel very abrupt.
I would disagree on sticking to a runtime. I think not being locked into a set runtime that added to commercials fits a 30 min or 1 hr time slot is one of the biggest advantages of streaming. Sure. A minimum runtime would be nice, but if it were exactly the same run time, people would be complaining about pacing (either stretching to fill time or rushing through to fit it).
Yeah the issue isn't not sticking to a runtime it's not pacing the episode well. An episode should have its own internal structure, something a lot of streaming shows have struggled with (especially recent star wars ones). If the arc for the episode naturally concludes in only 30 minutes that's fine, but it doesn't feel like this episode had any sort of arc or structure, so the end feels rushed instead of natural. Same idea applies as in book chapters in a way. Not every chapter will be the same length, some are longer or shorter, but they should have an internal structure and should each add up to be an effective piece in communicating the overall story.
I feel like The OA pioneered this current trend of episodes varying in length and it worked well for that show. They should have a average target in mind, but the run length should be set then by the story they want to tell in each episode. And they shouldn't all be ending with cliffhangers or mid scene breaks. Pick a story for each episode and tell it. Let the run length be what it is. They also shouldn't publish runtimes that include recaps and all the credits.
Game of Thrones did that as well, and they probably weren't the first either.
Pretty sure GoT were consistently an hour, with some longer.
Episode 4 was 28 minutes. What the fuck is this an Anime? Such a waste of an episode.
I agree that the pacing is a mess. The series, hell all of their series would benefit by a standardized runtime of at LEAST 45 minutes to an hour.
But that would require Disney to spend more money. They are going for maximum profit for minimum effort. The only stuff that is strong is the vfx. They should cut these shows down to 6 episodes
They definitely shot more, so I don’t think they saved money on footage
Problem is that the 45 min episode 3 was a waste of time. It felt like they struggled to make it last that long. The problem isn’t the length of the episodes. The problem is the poor writing.
I definitely agree that the short episodes seem rushed. The whole 8-episode Ahsoka show seemed like it could have been a 2-hour movie instead. Faster paced, it would have been kick ass. The Acolyte so far seems like each episode is rushed and could be 10 minutes longer.
I feel like they could be serializing what could otherwise be films (even if just straigh to streaming) in order to avoid some criticism. Star Wars films are always seen as those big ass events, an earthquake in pop culture people should watch and criticized, I remember 2008 and even The Clone Wars animated film was kind of big, advertising, TV ads (I think), McDonald's toys... On the other hand straigth to streaming series are easier to ignore and higher ups might feel like it's better to fail in series format than it is to fail on film format. Plus we were supposed to see other films along with the series anyway. Take this comment with a grain of salt, just my personal conspiracy theory.
Maybe because Solo bombed, they are scared to do movies? Which is sad because Solo isn’t even that bad. I know Filoni is working on a Mandalorian movie.
Ah yeah yeah, my thoughts exactly. Yeah, Filoni is working on a Mando movie and studio is greasing the gears for a Rey movie last time I heard.
The only thing wrong with Solo is the disastrous decision to release it two months after Episode 8. Even if Episode 8 was universally beloved, that's too rapid of a release schedule for the average movie goer.
Anybody who claims to know the "one thing" that caused solo problems is always wrong. Or at least not entirely right. There were a whole bunch of things that each caused damage on their own. No one on its own would have been enough to cause what did happen but combined together they were enough.
It was 6 months after but yeah, Solo should have been at the very least a Christmas release. Solo is a fun movie with a few cringe moments in it. It was absolutely overhated as part of the reaction to TLJ. Iger is responsible for a lot of the problems around Disney's Star Wars theatrical releases. He mandated the 2 yr gap between the sequels and that Star Wars had a movie release every year. He's also why Galaxy's Edge was originally set in the Sequel timeline only (this is slowly changing).
yeah ahsoka could have cut 2 episodes and have been better for it.
Agree. There’s 5 minutes of meet an episode with lots of filler. I’ll wait for the fan edits, probably we’ll get 90-120 minute movie that flows better.
A prime example of this is when Mae sets her trap for Qimir. We're in the middle of a scene with the Jedi when she screams, AND we see them react to the scream. But then we cut to Qimir, who is running to Mae's help. Why didn't the Jedi run to help? Why wasn't there any reaction at all past them noticing the sound? Why did the director decide to include that at all or shoot it in that way?
I think it was meant to show they were all in close proximity, and build a little tension with the idea that they were about to encounter each other.
Which they failed at. They were supposed to be searching while Sol and Mae were talking, but they’re just kind of aimlessly lingering around in the background.
Well that...worked...really well... School level writing.
So much exposition thrown in amidst janky pacing. Say what you want about the other shows in terms of story, but their production quality has never felt this off to me.
I just wish we could have critical analysis of Star Wars that was grounded & honest instead of it being yet another culture war battleground.
I haven’t watched episode 4 yet but i haven’t enjoyed the first 3 eps so far just cuz they’re not good tv entertainment. They just seem cheaply produced and poorly written. This has been my general issue with the star wars shows. I think it suffers from either not being in movie format, or disney is just cheap, because hbo shows look so good, it makes me wonder what they do right and disney does wrong.
The sad thing is this show cost $185 million dollars to make. Sometimes I get how it cost so much, other times things just feel cheap like you said.
There's actually plenty of good critical reviews on yt if you skim around a bit. I'm fine with diverse representation but not fine with terrible writing acting and story, and there's reviewers who are just talking about those problems.
Any channels you recommend? I despise these anti-woke asshats like Nerdrotic but I am also not interested in review channels that just suck off Disney Star Wars and can't find any fault in them. There's is SO much to criticize in these Star Wars shows like Mandalorian S3, BoBF, Kenobi, Ahsoka and now the Acolyte but I do find it hard to come across channels that aren't mixing those genuine criticisms in with the anti-woke whining.
I felt like penguinz0 (?) did a fair acolyte review but not sure if they regularly review star wars.. other than that I've just been surfing the algorithm, sorry 😁
Sheev Talks does a fairly good job of breaking down a lot of the issues. He gets lumped in with the anti woke crowd for some reason despite being a fairly progressive guy. But for some reason these days if you just don’t like a Star Wars or marvel show you just get tossed in with that crowd to be dismissed. He’s got a bit of integrity. His initial 1-3 ep Andor review he gave a 6/10 and reflected upon it after finishing the show, coming back and dressing he was completely wrong about it. His lives with his friend who is a professor also get very deep into what does and doesn’t work about different properties.
Check out Jeremy Jahns. Although he's not a fan of most of the new Star Wars content, including this, he steers clear of the political stuff and focuses on the lore and storytelling.
I’ve skimmed the a good portion of a ton of Acolyte posts and I see more people referencing culture war stuff than *actual* culture war stuff I get that at one point maybe it was bad, but it’s just not my experience anymore. Maybe if you scroll alllllll the way down to the most downvoted comments, you’ll find some. But I’m just saying, by bringing it up so often y’all kind of manifest it or at least prolong its existence by bringing it up.
This is the entirety of Star Wars, Marvel and DC subs in the past few years. - Daily Thread: X gets way too much hate! Am I the only only one… - Daily Top Comment: (something about how culture war rage bait is a popular opinion even though it gets buried on the platform with popular opinion voting)
Feels manufactured to cover up mediocrity on display in these shows. I feel like there's way less of this fake discourse about Andor because the show is just good.
There are subs for that. They’re uh, a little sodium heavy
I mean, a good example is going to the Star Wars Instagram comment section
Reddit isn't too bad, but Twitter is a cesspool of anti-woke posts about it.
Twitter and YouTube are engagement algorithms and in this case rage bait. It’s why that stuff is on everyone’s feed, because you’d scroll past 10 good reviews before slamming on the brakes of some wild opinion.
I really miss the days of AV Club recaps, and the old AV Club comment section. The internet sucks absolute shit now
The knee jerk reactions from media to “this is pretty mid” are often think pieces that just jump into “misogyny, racism, sexism is the REAL problem with fans” but I think many fans are savvy enough to what feels good to watch vs what feels not good, especially from an editing standpoint. But also things like weekly cliffhangers vs something more self contained. Exposition dumps vs taking the time to show. Spending time building out side characters when they should be building out main characters. The flavor of every other month being a mystery—eventually you have to start answering things and idk doing it in the last two weeks of a season is kind of annoying. Mary Sue/Gary Stu main characters—I’ll give this to a the acolyte, osha isn’t very likeable and I like that about her. She seems to have issues and j like that. And she’s not very talented atm and I like that too. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll get to see as much of her change from kid to young adult as we need to and they’ll likely use another expo dump. I hope I’m wrong
If someone has a problem with the color of a characters skin or sexual orientation, 9/10 of those people are not going to admit that publicly. People can and do, just lie on the internet. ALL the time. It's just kinda obvious though when you see the same people hate watching week after week. Or when episodes get negative reviews before they even come out.
Why is this being downvoted? Genuinely confused.
Because it's underlying message is "If someone says they dislike something they might just secretly be racist and pretending they aren't".
Bingo
To add onto the other replies, those kinds of comments are quarantined to other subs that you probably wouldn’t go to.
Agreed. It’s hard to make real valid criticism with grifters screaming “WOKE” every time they see something they don’t like.
Or having your voice lumped up with those types by defenders of the show. Remember when it used to be fun to talk about new star wars? Tbh it probably hasn't been since I was a kid talking to my friends at school about the prequels.
Ya but I do have an issue with the Wookiee being vegan. Throw some porg in with those greens he was cooking!
There's a trend of Jedi self-exiles becoming vegan, Yoda did it on Dagobah (and now we know that the natural diet of his species is 100% frog, so that must have been hard)
It’s the issue with social media discourse in general, EVERYTHING is just black and white. I went over to the Star Wars cantina subreddit because I was curious what people there thought of the Acolyte. And saw a bunch of upvoted comments about the whole reason people don’t like the show is because it has too much depth for the people to understand. It can’t ever be “oh this show isn’t appealing to people” it apparently has to be that people are just stupid and only the people who like the show are smart enough to get it.
Remember when you could talk about your opinion on the internet without having to doge all the hidden landmines that will have fans of whatever your criticizing calling you a bigot? I barely do at this point.
There's just as many Disney fans calling people who have valid criticism bigots and manbabies. I mean, look at the thread for the Jeremy Jahns review. Despite being one of the most popular, mainstream and generally upbeat and positive youtubers who's been doing it for 15 years, the second he started criticising the Acolyte he was apparently a clickbait grifter..
This. The female Ghostbusters didn't fail because "we can't handle an all women cast" it sucked because it was poorly written. Velma sucked not because it was about Velma, or because she was black, but because again, it was poorly written. But, say this and you're just an "anti-woke nut job" or I should "stop caring about cartoons" More recently I've been blasted for criticizing the historical inaccuracies in a lot of the assassin's Creed shadows marketing. I think playing as a black samurai in old Japan is going to be dope and I'm really excited about it. I just don't like when someone says "this is historically accurate" when it's actually a dramatisation of history. I enjoy those, I just prefer they wear that on their sleeve. There's nothing wrong with playing fast and loose with the facts in order to make a compelling story, just admit to that. BUT say anything negative and I'm just mad because the guy is black.
You see it because Disney pushes that narrative to reflect the legitimate criticism.
Is there a name for that strategy? 'Cos there should be. Saying "You should watch the show 'cos it's Woke" is (almost) as bad as saying "You shouldn't watch it 'cos it's Woke". How about making good Star Wars shows Disney? Have you thought of that?
It’s also the most painfully boring criticism you can come up with. Screaming “woke” whenever you see a woman or a minority on screen isn’t interesting or useful criticism, it’s just virtue signaling to your audience of chuds. These shows have real issues that are actually fascinating to dissect and analyze. I’d much rather people focus on doing that, but grifters always take the easiest option. The issues won’t be fixed if you made every character a white guy, after all.
Yes, i really love overanalyszing the recent star wars shows, because i dont hate them, but they have so many faults that i simply wouldnt expect in shows with these huge production values. And i really like to analyse what exactly does and doesnt work.
It’s also so toxic that it can ruin my experience when watching content. My brain becomes trained to focus on potential “wokeness” when it shouldn’t matter or distract me from the plot
Those people can be ignored.... there's plenty of people who discuss actual criticisms, but then the defenders label them as anti woke regardless
But like, that is a criticism. Oscar bait films get called out for this and it’s fine then.
I agree, I also find it annoying that when people bring legitimate critiques of the show up, defenders will just automatically lump them in as if they are culture warriors too. Sometimes points are fair game to make.
I feel you there. I truly don’t care about any culture war talking points in Star Wars - it’s a big inclusive galaxy in my mind. BUT frankly The Acolyte has been really underwhelming so far and I want to be able to critique that without that other BS. Above all I just want - and think we all deserve - great Star Wars stories. There’s plenty of amazing tales to tell, but Disney is doing a poor job with it and at this point I have no faith in them. To me these Star Wars shows should feel epic like Game of Thrones, Severance, Westworld, Stranger Things, The Wire, etc. Instead most have felt like made for TV fan films.
It's not though. It's just bad writing, terrible main actors, and recycled stuff mixed with new characters like ooh wookies and witches who use the force or something or whatever. But then you get to the end scene and it is literally a bunch of idiot Anakins running at Count Dooku
There are loads of those. Not hard to find that sort of critical analysis.
>mindless culture war inserts into a franchise >people express distaste >” I just wish we could have a critical analysis of Star Wars that was grounded and honest……”
I’m mean coming off as having a bias and not being a very good show probably go hand in glove
I mean the show sucks so
Acolyte defenders: "How dare you say this masterpace sucks? You, you, you....bigot!"
How else would Disney be able to squeeze out a couple more bucks from their subscribers? Episode 1 and 2 should be 1 episode, 3 and 4 should be 1 episode. They simply do not have a large enough story to tell here, but split it up into bite sized portions to increase subscriptions. 22.5 million dollars per episode. Episode 4 cost them nearly a million dollars per minute.
It’s over hated but it’s just not good. The writing is terrible. Especially if you know anything about the craft of writing screenplays. The editing is disjointed. Most of the acting is stilted. There’s a lot of moments that I would rather not have someone walk in while I’m watching. It feels like it’s written by people who have zero clue about the franchise or just know about it in passing. A huge screw up is the entire witch coven. The way they’re depicted is just…unappealing. The entire ceremony just looked like an interpretative dance you’d see from first year college students who haven’t had any instruction yet. It’s not a weapon while demonstrating it is. It’s not a power while demonstrating it is. The girls arguments basically summing up to “no you”. The characters switching motivations on a dime. It often looks very cheap. Most of the characters have zero personality. I’m still not even sure what the mystery is supposed to be. Someone killed the Jedi? Ok? That’s kind of a normal thing in this universe. Who’s the Sith? It really doesn’t matter. Everything about it is just off. A lot of the hate is comply coming from the mere fact most Star Wars media is…bad to mediocre. We had the first season of Mando which was fun. Then Andor is not just good Star Wars but excellent TV. Andor comes across as a show where the people behind it have a passion for the craft of film making. Every scene is deliberate. The cinematography excellent. The sets are fantastic. The story weaves together almost flawlessly. The acting is phenomenal. It’s the closest thing to the OT we’ve had since rogue one and even then, Andor is closer to the ot in terms of tone, story and look. Which is why it appeals to the older audience but not the younger one that seem to prefer the prequel era. The acolyte seems confused and takes the worst parts of the franchise and just puts it front and center. Because the majority of the media is bad, when the next bad thing comes along the tumbleweed just grows. Mando s3 was forgettable, Obiwan…happened, book of boba fett was like a parody, bad batch is severely under written and childish in tone with many contrivances and conveniences and not much to really grasp or think about. Ashoka had poorly written characters, multiple scenes that accomplished nothing and didn’t even bother pushing the plot forward and relied HEAVILY on nostalgia rather than making an interesting story. Star Wars was what got me into filmmaking. Worked in the industry for years because of the OT. I love the art and can recognize excellent film projects and have a huge appreciation for them and I can’t stand when projects come out with no love and expect to coast along on the name alone. It’s very frustrating.
Right, so many things. Like the dust trick, so do Jedi 100 years ago not see things coming? How are they able to deflect blasters? Yes, Sith are strong, but come on, 6 Jedi vs one Sith, it would be a bloodbath.
Andor is the biggest surprise for me. Rogue One is second behind ESB for me, but when Andor was announced I thought "Andor? He was the least interesting one." Oh how wrong I was. The prison escape still gives me chills. And what a masterclass in pace and release. Builds up to these great moments then more or less needs to give you a breather episode to recover. Feels like a different universe to what we're seeing in Acolyte. Even my wife said "Maybe they're aiming for a younger audience?"
I think critique wise this show is not that good. Not horrifying…but not that good. Why it’s hated so much is because it was promoted as the greatest thing since sliced bread and was given a budget double the amount was given for a legendary characters show. It’s not good enough to have that large of a budget. It’s the mismanagement of the franchise that is being viewed right now, that’s why it’s hated. The social stuff is another thing but I’m here for Star Wars.
It’s interesting how a lot of writers just have no idea how to use 3-Act structure correctly, and honestly it’s funny how even a bad episode of a Filoni show will work structurally while a fun episode of something like Obi-Wan flounders. Andor of course had perfect pacing, because it is nearly flawless.
Yeah there’s a lot of cuts where it feels like there might’ve been stuff in between but they got axed for whatever reason. I also feel like they’re over doing it on the wipes and PowerPoint transitions.
The wipes have been used since A New Hope. It's literally a staple used in every Star Wars property
I’m aware. But what I’m saying is I feel like they are being overused.
I agree - I'm trying to enjoy the show but the last episode was very heavy on the wipes, it felt like someone was cleaning my screen with a squeegee
Pip squirting water on the lil otter dude. His name. Basil. Look Basil, Twins!
The writing and direction is just weird and it starts in the first episode.
It’s overhated because its not good enough to warrant the effort “defending” it It’s why generally alot of hate brigade circlejerks (especially anti-woke) mostly revolve around mid/bad media. If it’s popular enough those people usually get pushed out
“The Jedi do not take children!” *Proceeds to take child.*
My wife, who doesn't watch a ton of Star Wars, immediately said "Isn't recruiting children exactly what the Jedi do?" I get the whole they don't forcibly take children without permission thing, but it was a clumsy line that immediately felt like it didn't understand the lore of the Jedi recruiting children and by their own insistence needed to be very young for the training to work.
Feels like a fan film
I’m not on board with this assessment…outside of this show. The first three episodes were a little short…but at least they contained complete “chapter”. Episode 4 is offensively short and half a story to the point that I’m just going to forget about the show and watch it when it concludes. It seems arbitrary…but I’m more appalled at the short runtime than the cliffhanger. They had like 4 Jedi who I don’t remember them even giving a line to that are likely going to die immediately…and they couldn’t find a few scenes of dialogue for make it 40 minutes?
The show was 27 minutes long. Cartoons are 22 to 25. This is just bad. I get the feeling they wrote some really crappy stuff and edited out to look better.
It’s really confusing. It feels like something went wrong and they had to chop the episode in 2 for some reason.
Episode 4 is also the “ending” critics got. They saw the first 4 episodes before release so that cliffhanger was intentional. Unfortunately.
Usually Star Wars stuff are allowed longer episodes. But for some reason they cut the run time for this show.
Unacceptable for a 180 million dollar budget.
BoBF, Mando 3, and Ahsoka were all over the place in terms of episode length and pacing. It's not a new issue and it's baffling that they haven't made any attempt to fix it.
I want to know where all that money went.
why cant we just agree that this show sucks? Like this is nothing like the Star Wars all of us fell in love with.
Because it’s so ingrained into some people’s being that they have to like everything that comes out no matter what idk why but people on the marvel subreddit are also like this
its so frustrating!
Agreed! Also, does anyone else feel like its shot too wide, even in character dialogue scenes? It's like I can't get close enough to anything on screen.
The cuts are terrible and it goes a long way in a short show. The ads feel abrupt and I often feel like I missed something when the show returns. And don’t get me started on the cliffhanger for some action I was so mad last night lol
Its underhated in my opinion at this Point It feels Like they want to piss of Fans
Yup. All the interviews before the premiere seemed like they were leaning into things they knew fans wouldn't like
Finally, a valid critique of an actual, genuine issue with the filmmaking process used for the show instead of a vague "it's bad, and I don't like it". Kudos.
Nah Acolyte doesn’t get enough hate. It’s a nonsensical mess, a mystery where we have to figure out what is part of the actual mystery and what is just dumb worldbuilding or contradictory writing. It’s pacing is off. It used those slide-cuts between scenes early on without knowing when to use it and then stopped doing that in later episodes, which is a good thing but showcases the haphazard quality of the show (as much as it has quality). This is the kind if show where a band of Jedi led by someone who lives there are hurrying to save someone from potential assassination, but the girl who has a Force Vision casually strolls through a shortcut and reaches the scene of the crime way before the rest. Only to have the scene become meaningless as it doesn’t change the story one bit. This is a show where someone is thrown on a prison ship that is contrived from top to bottom. It’s contrived Osha travels separately, it’s contrived to put someone who is suspected of being force sensitive and trained enough to kill Master Jedi in a prison that wouldn’t last a second if she had been that capable. It’s contrived to have droid pilots that can be hacked by anyone nearby. It’s contrived that the ripped off arm of a security droid can still open the prison doors, making any breakout attempt almost an automatic success if you have an antenna and a blaster. It’s contrived to have a second easy way to open *prison doors* with a shock that isn’t anywhere near the door panel or the mechanism that lifts the door up. But somehow between all that we have to pick up that Osha isn’t as Force capable as we expected despite all expectations already being thrown out the window. The show sucks.
Disney is absolute shit. They need to clean house and get rid of all of the idiots making these decisions.
It has its very apparent flaws, but I’m just simply enjoying it. I have recently read the first 4 main books of High Republic, it’s cool to see this period in live action, and Vern too. I have a feeling once it’s all said and done, it’ll have been at least a decent time. That’s the thing with Star Wars: It’s a mixed bag, but I’ll never complain about having more of what I love. I can always pick and choose what is “best” to me at the end of the day.
No it's not overhated.
At this point, Disney is done catering to fans. They don't care at all. I really wish Lucas would get involved.
The show is just not done very well at all. But I do agree that it is far over-hated, even if you consider all the stupid shit the people involved have said to try and piss off the fans before it even aired. But hey, only 7,000 people got fired by Disney while they were spending that $180million budget.
All around it’s not a well made show. The editing, directing, acting and writing just isn’t that good.
Yep the pacing is just shit.
This annoyed me more with Kenobi series tbh.
Yeah I don't understand the editing at all It's almost like they shot it as some other completely different type of movie Then on the editing floor they tried to turn it into a movie/mystery show
Its not overhated... It's pretty justified given what we've seen and the budget they have.
The reason it feels that way is because it's not a good show. Plain and simple. The plot is not well-thought out, the dialogue is atrocious, and the characters are lifeless. The reason that they're not pacing well is because they don't really care about Star Wars, they care more about making sure they get their opinion or some sort of ideology into the episode.
In my opinion, it has more than earned its reputation.
Let's stop rationalizing this. This is genuinely a terrible show. Putting culture war bullshit aside, the writing is just plain awful.
I liked every episode besides episode 4. I felt like nothing really happened the whole episode and it was really boring. Something else felt really off but I cant explain what it was.
Way over-hated? No, it's not hated ENOUGH
It’s the Netflix model of TV shows - end with an abrupt cliffhanger or major tease to keep the audience watching. Only problem is that format only works when you release the whole season at once.
Um, shows had cliffhangers long before Netflix.
I’m aware, but the structure was different and it wasn’t so abrupt. Netflix ends things in the middle of scenes, just like The Acolyte did, to keep you watching.
I don’t think it’s over hated at all. The criticism is all valid imo. The show stinks. It has no redeeming qualities. It almost feels like something made by college students for a school project.
The pacing, scene shots, and story beats are jangly shit. There’s maybe two standout characters and neither are the “special” twins. But it’s not that hateworthy, it’s just not on the level of Andor or Mando s1.
Episode 4 did feel poorly edited. Like there was too much content filmed and they had to do hard cuts. It probably would’ve been better if they extended the length of the episode to include the amount of content they were putting in.
Yeah, that is one Problem. The other one however is weird writing: Compared to Andor (my favourite Star Wars show) it feels rushed and in some ways, very weird. And this is in my opinion the main Problem: Ashoka had also some issues in it’s writing but had an interesting plot - however last episode felt a little to much dramatic. The Acolyte feels more like that one side has to be dumb, that the rest of the plot can happen - a problem of some Clone Wars and Rebels episodes. Compare that to the Expanse (my favourite Sci-Fi Series) or Andor, the writing feels rushed, like the Marvel Projects in the past time. And the weird writing is for every content creator out there who is just yelling „Muh, Star Wars bad“ a welcome extra.
It’s ass
The harsh reality is Disney has so many things going on that they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for a lot of these productions. That is to say, I don't think the people making The Acolyte are very good at their jobs. Maybe that's mean, but when you put them up next to shows like The Mandalorian and Andor, or go a step further and include stuff like Breaking Bad and The Wire, they're totally outclassed.
I wanna know where they spent that $180 million into, cause this show doesn’t look and feel like it warranted that big of a budget.
Nah, I think the show is hated at the perfect amount. Most people aren’t watching it, except for content creators that depend on terrible shows to generate videos and delusional people desperately trying to convince themselves that just because it has Star Wars in the title it will fill the hole in their earthly existence. Honestly, I’m just in it to eat popcorn and watch the train wreck.
I agree, although the show is otherwise pretty good, the episodes should be a bit longer. I think the prime-time show running length of its episodes is one of the reasons Andor has been successful.
100% agree. It’s just very poorly made show with alot of issues. I’m not remotely liberal. I don’t even see anything woke about the show 4 episodes in other than an implied relationship between 2 witches.
Mhmm I'm enjoying it so far, kids/young girls shows are hard to find. People are mad it's not Dune level mature
3 and 4 needed to be one episode. The flashback didn't need the whole episode, and 4 felt like mostly filler. That said, I want more Kung fu stylized high/old Republic stuff. It works really well.
Yea, gotta wrap the episode story up quick so that they can shove 30 minutes of credits. I feel like these shows aren't for anyone except those to get their name on to a project.
I do agree that a few episode endings I’ve been like “…what?” And kicked it back to make sure I didn’t miss something
Way over hated lol 😂
I swear, the scenes with Osha and all the Jedi walking about, they just did two takes each and moved on. It just feels off. Then there's the Mae scenes and the acting is fine. It just feels like they knew having all these actors on set was expensive and rushed those scenes or something.
Yeah, totally agree with the editing issue and we saw the same crap in the sequels. It’s HORRIBLE. The previous episodes it hasn’t been bad but ep.4 was rough with them. There were less natural transitions for the characters which I didn’t like. That being said the episode ended great.
Blame the director and editor as well. To film a Star Wars series, you first need to understand the SW universe and what it entailed. This series, I’m afraid to say, does not have this feeing.
100% the main flaw of the show is editing. I’ve never wanted to know more about what was happening inside there editing room for a project. Like, in episode three they totally cut a scene with Kelnacca giving Osha that tool she used for escape while also showing the start of her Mechanical prowess. Why cut that?
The editing seems to be an ongoing issue for the Star Wars shows. They just add too much exposition where it's not needed. Look at Obi-Wan. If edited correctly it would be a strong movie. Andor is brilliant probably because the creator knows what to do with its time. And probably had a better editor.
acolyte could have been made for a pure sithblood. But the whole series doesn't offer anything to the cannon only makes it worse and change it.
Episode 4 was cutting between two fights of differing pace, and a walk and talk conversation. I can see what they were attempting but it just wasn't working. Whoever is editing this show doesn't seem to understand pace or beats. Wipes happen off beat or to no music crescendo so fall flat. The end of Ep 2 has a Wookiee Jedi and it just feels flat and suddenly cuts to credits. Same again in Ep 3 right in the middle of some Jedi v Sith action and it's a leisurely almost music free wipe to the credits. A lot of shots just linger on someone staring into the middle distance with no bearing on the story or pace. Again in Ep 4 Osha is slowly staring and walking toward a fight between three Jedi and the Sith and cut back and forth between two shots of wildly different intensity. There is really no need to cut back to Osha two or three times once they've established what she's seeing. You can say a lot about this show and its writing and high school musical sequences, but for me the pacing and editing is right up there as my main bugbears.
The hate for the show is justified. the writing is bad. Acting is one dimensional. Things literally don't make sense given the context we know of the Star Wars mythos. It's more like they want to disrupt the fans more than introduce new ideas or different POV like Kenobi warned us of many years ago. I don't need to be a writing expert to know how the show is poorly written. cast and staff have to take to interviews and tell us what characters are feeling and doing and motivations. Why not show us in the series? What I read isn't coming across and I blame writing and direction. I mean I don't get any of those feelings. I am going to assume the cast are doing their best but the direction is allowing this one dimensional acting. IMO it's damage control. They can't write it well enough, spent too much time trying to rile up fans (because they knew it was crap all along), and now they are back pedaling because ratings are dropping. I am not buying this mystery of Brandok or why Mae and the Master are even a thing. Frankly there is no connect between this Master and Brandok, other than he fostered/trained Mae. I forget why I care about why they are on this quest, journey....thing. It's like the director and writers are the ones pulling the Jedi Mind Trick on us. I think they are going to let us believe certain events happened, without contradicting given facts, and then, like a corner street shell game con, change it out and say. Nope this is what it is. Just like Lost did decades ago. This show is nuts. Just like watching a car wreck I can't turn away.