The Acolyte (Star Wars, Disney+) TV Show • Page 6

I didn't think this episode was great ( the really bad child acting was hard to look past ), but it wasn't as bad as the weirdos made it out to be. It certainly wasn't "franchise breaking" like they said.

 

Yeah, the vagueness of this makes me think we’re going to get another flashback ep at some point

 

Kinda meh episode for me. I also thought more was going to be explained than what we got.

 

Anybody who thought this broke anything doesn’t know Star Wars.

It is suspicious that Sol happened to be there as it all went down. But when Osha was in the underground tunnel, it sounded like there was some sort of explosion and all the witches cried out at once. I can’t imagine what the Jedi could have done to cause that.

But seeing as we saw nothing that Torbin would feel so guilty about that he would unalive himself, there is clearly more to it.

 

It was the makeup/wig/fake beard. in this episode it's easier to tell it's him.

 

oof, lots of thoughts.

pros: Jodie Turner-Smith eats up every scene she's in.
visuals look really good here.
love the concept of the Force being called "the Thread" and the implications surrounding its use via a different, seemingly not-malevolent religious ideology vs. the more strict, domineering beliefs/proselytizing of the Jedi.
this show canonized little treat culture. and sapphic co-parenting. hell yeah.

meh: i have little familiarity with other depictions of witchcraft in SW beyond the Night sisters, but some of these elements (and others concerning chosen paths) felt too tropey, and potentially done better in other media. my partner in particular said these events felt poorly executed and redundant, like slapping a Star Wars skin on a depiction of a coven. i guess i'm not too hung up on how similar or dissimilar it is to other media because its depiction doesn't feel too consequential in the grand scheme of things.
this probably would've worked better spread out over multiple episodes in smaller flashbacks rather than one whole episode. and maybe we'll still get that later on (i doubt we'll get an entire other flashback episode). that being said, if they're going with the Rashomon approach, i'm not sure what's the best way to initially seed that narrative without the context provided here.
i know it's child acting, but it felt a tiny bit wooden. they weren't terrible, and did a fair job with what they were given, but something was slightly off with the delivery of their lines.

cons: the English singing of the witches' chant felt out of place, and reminded me of Jenny Nicholson's critique in her Starcruiser video of how it feels weird to situate a predominantly-English pop song with mainstream references in a sci-fi fantasy setting.

all in all, i didn't hate it. there were elements i REALLY liked, but some elements could've been handled a bit better. one final note is that a good chunk of this felt disconnected from the thematic and visual language of Star Wars in a more explicit way than before, and i think it might simultaneously work for and against the show to want to distance yourself from what's come before, but to a point where it might just feel redundant to other franchises.

 

yeah I thought this one was just okay, def would've preferred it as flashbacks inside other episodes so we could keep the momentum of the main plot going. the Ascension scene was borderline goofy, hard not to laugh at the way they were saying "power of manyyyyyyy"

still enjoy the show on the whole, it's a fresh voice compared to the normal Star Wars voices and I like that, and especially that it makes all the chud "fans" super mad. always about that action. Sol is slowly becoming one of my favourite SW characters in a minute, I love that guy. also loved the Lothcat cameo this week

 

Oh yeah the chanting scene was so incredibly corny

 

I like so many of the ideas they played with in this episode and really really did not like the execution of it all. Still in on the show overall but yeah very rough writing and directing.

 

The competing ideologies of how the Force should or shouldn't be used was the most interesting thing about this ep, and we got very little of it.

It's disappointing because Kogonada did Columbus and After Yang, both of which are great, so I was hoping for more here.

 

The way the Jedi just come and manipulate kids made me uncomfortable but I guess that’s the point

 

Watching now, and it’s so silly that D+ flashes up the “skip intro” button for this when the intro is five seconds long.

 

This point in particular blows my mind, because those two movies are gorgeous. There’s seriously something wrong with D+ productions because they quality drop is so deep between what he’s capable of and what we got. He clearly tried but the kids were rough, and pacing was bad, etc.

 

i have more thoughts on the religious elements to this that i wanna share/discuss (elements that might have ramifications for future SW projects), but i gotta take care of some stuff quickly.

 

Yes please love that shit haha

 

As of right now this episode is the worst Star Wars Disney+ content to be released. No hyperbole. Can’t believe the writing for the episode was approved.

 

No way this was worse than the Jack Black/Lizzo Mando episode

 

Also the entirety of Boba and Obi Wan

 

i still vouch for Mando episode 5 being one of the worst, if not the worst. not terrible, but a little pointless to the narrative, and Jake Cannavale is incredibly wooden (i love Ming-Na Wen and Amy Sedaris though and will never shit-talk them).

 

Finished episode 2 and it was more engaging than episode 1. Bummed to hear episode 3 might be a dud but at least I'll go in with lower expectations. I don't feel they've done a really good job at making me care about either Osha or Mae at this point.

 

this show is made worse by the child actors

 

I honestly blocked season 3 of mando out of my mind and forgot that episode even exists until now

 

i have several large bones to pick with the Obi-Wan Kenobi show (although i liked it at the end of the day, it ranks right above TPM and AOTC, respectively, at the bottom of my live action list for me, but that's a conversation for another time), but one of the things it did well was not only balance the playfulness and seriousness factors of its child star, but make them pertinent to Leia's character development (that and Vivien Lyra Blair has a lot of Carrie Fisher's mannerisms/demeanor spot on). with this episode of The Acolyte, the effectiveness of the characters' playfulness felt like it outweighed their seriousness, making their performances in those scenes slightly wooden. i'm all for the portrayal of Osha and Mae as naive (again, it's very fitting for Mae's to challenge the Jedi with dialogue like "attack me with all your strength"), but if you're gonna write serious dialogue for children, at least make it sound more believable since the actors have a handle on the playful side.

 

So the jedi go to a random planet of witches to train kids who (I'm guessing based on the child actors are the age of Anakin in ep 1), but in Ep 1 the counsel clearly says Anakin is too old at that point to be trained, and was only trained because that was Qui-Gon's dying wish to Obi-Wan. This doesn't add up.

 

Doesn't this take place before Episode 1? Maybe this is the story of why that rule exists?