Star Wars: The Acolyte (Disney+)

The latest SW series on Disney+, The Acolyte, is due out this summer (barring any postponements) and reportedly takes place 50 years before Episode I.

It's got somewhat of a horror tone to it so I'll definitely be checking it out.

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For those who haven't heard, there will be an extended look at the show with the theatrical reissue of Episode 1 in May

Why is Disney trying to emasculate men?

First look at the wookie Jedi

OK...where to start...

I told myself I wasn't going to pass judgment on this thing until i actually watched the first couple of episodes and then gave myself a little time to reflect on it.

Just to quickly catch up on my takes on the previous SW shows: Loved Andor, thought Ahsoka was underwhelming, liked the first season of The Mandalorian, but lost interest as the seasons progressed, Boba Fett was pretty bad, and I never finished Kenobi.


SOME SPOILERS AHEAD for the first two episode of The Acolyte. For those not wanting to read further: I was not impressed.

Right from minute one, The Acolyte was pretty much in a nose dive. The first thing that struck me was the bizarre tone of the initial scenes. Perhaps Carrie Ann Moss being in the scene had something to do with it, but damned if this didn't look, sound and feel like some weird Matrix simulation that used a Star Wars scenario as its environment. The fighting, the wooden delivery of the dialogue, the editing, and even the music all just screamed The Matrix to me.

The episodes were chock full of discrepancies and logical fallacy. After the opening fight scene, in which an assassin kills a Jedi Master with what amount to a couple of pocket knives (!!!), this same assassin is shown being told that "No Jedi can be killed with a weapon of metal ..." I am paraphrasing that quote but I found it odd to specifically site some sort of rule of the show's universe when it had just been contradicted 15 minutes earlier. Anyway, this is once again the minimizing of the Jedi, as some youngster takes out a top master with a toy knife. Dumb.

Another example is that the shows sets itself up as sort of a procedural mystery of sorts, but reveals the killer almost immediately, then continuing on with scenes of people trying to figure out who the killer is. SPOILER ALERT: It's an evil twin! Again, this is revealed almost immediately, so not that big of a spoiler, really. It's also a totally sophomoric and contrived plot device that reeks of fan fiction. This had me scratching my head as to who thought this would be a good idea for the initial episode of the show. Another questionable chain of events has the Jedi, who are acting like local police a lot of the time, warping in to intercept a ship where the good twin, who will of course be blamed for the murder, is working. They claim they are "investigating" a murder, and that the good twin matches the description of the killer, but they don't bother to ask even one member of the crew a simple question like "Hey, with this chick missing for a week recently or has she been working here the whole time?" You know, the first thing anyone investigating a crime would ask - where were you at the time of the crime? Nope, into the cuffs you go and we are out of here, you crook! How did they know she was on that ship? How did they know where the ship was? Do they have some giant air traffic control map for the entire galaxy? Really, really dumb.

There were other issues along these lines too, but I don't want to make a 19 paragraph post nitpicking every detail. The above examples should give folks an idea of the caliber of writing here.

Also: false marketing with Carrie Ann Moss as a main character of the show. Lame!

The first episode jumps all over the place as far as locations are concerned, but manages to somehow not do any world building in the process. I think this complaint can be leveled at most of the new SW content, as I have heard this complaint leveled at the far superior Rogue One, so perhaps as the episodes move along they will flesh out these locations, but as of yet, it all seems really random.

This is a real shame, as the writing was one of the best aspects of Andor, so I was hoping they had taken the hint that people are craving solid writing in these shows. Hey, maybe the show needs time to find its legs, but with the short ass seasons we get of this stuff, it won't have much time to do it. I think I will give it one more episode to get things going in a well way, or I will have to DNF this show, as well.

So far

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