Online Series: Star Wars: The Acolyte on Disney+

[Supermassive]

I'm still crushed that I won't be able to watch more of Dafne Keen as Jecki Lon. The rest of the cast is good, I'm not review-bombing the series...but I'd happily watch a Jecki Lon series over this.

 

[MadDevil]

Darth Twinkus The Lame is about as menacing as Dark Helmet, with his stupid ass David Healy for Roseanne haircut.


Except unlike then, nobody gives a shit since this show has historically pathetic ratings.

"Nobody gives a shit about this show, it sucks and has historically bad ratings."

Yet you're here to f***ing bitch about it every week.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

"Nobody gives a shit about this show, it sucks and has historically bad ratings."

Yet you're here to f***ing bitch about it every week.

Imagine insulting someone as Darth Twinkus when this is the baddest dude in your universe...

 

[johnjm22]

My two favorite things about this show are:

1) The depiction of the Jedi as corrupt, sclerotic, and oppressive

I see fans of the newer SW stuff say things like this.

I don't get it. What's the appeal of Jedi being depicted this way?

 

[Commander Clueless]

Imagine insulting someone as Darth Twinkus when this is the baddest dude in your universe...View attachment 892659

You mean the narcissistic, fascist psychopath with the power to kill all the other Jedi?

Sounds pretty dangerous to me.

 

[Osprey]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this show is well written - on the other hand, I would not go to the prequels as an example of good writing as I think they were probably worse. All I'm saying is that there's still a lot of room to explain why she could go bad, and that the spectator doesn't have to understand the every detail of character motivation, and that's especially true of "evil" ones. I agree that after he murdered everyone it makes him a little harder to listen to when he blablas, but then again, he only murdered people she's known for 20 minutes. ;-)

I didn't suggest that the prequels are good writing, just that they contain a good example of a character arc.

I agree that we don't need to understand every detail of character motivation, especially of evil characters (who are often evil without explanation), but I think that we do when we're talking about a character arc, especially from good to bad or vice versa. From Wikipedia:

A character arc is the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. If a story has a character arc, the character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different sort of person in response to changing developments in the story.

If Anakin just put on the helmet and decided to be bad without us seeing what gradually pushed him towards and over the edge, the trilogy would be pointless. If Scrooge simply went to bed and decided in the morning to be a good person, without any of the spirits' help, that story would be pointless. The transformation needs to be gradual and something that we see develop so that we can understand how the character got from A to B.

BTW, Osha knew Yord from when they were both padawans. Remember that she was happy to see him again in Episode 1 and called herself his "old friend." Jecki was a newer acquaintance, but Osha went out of her way to say goodbye to her and suggested that they hang out sometime. Both seemed to be people who meant something to Osha, so, yeah, putting on the helmet of the man who killed them the day before doesn't make sense to me.

 

[The Great Mighty Poo]

"Nobody gives a shit about this show, it sucks and has historically bad ratings."

Yet you're here to f***ing bitch about it every week.

Numbers don't lie, it's Disney +'s all time least viewed show, the least viewed show on any stream service aside from paid shills and Disney marks, nobody I've met said anything good about this show.

 

[Osprey]

I agree we certainly do not have all the information yet. I assume more is coming ... they're hinting pretty strongly that we don't have the full story of what happened with the Jedi when she was a kid.

Setting that aside ... Qimir gives her a big speech about how she didn't leave the Jedi, she was thrown away. She then sees his scars and sees that he was thrown away too. She's clearly starting to have a realization that he may be right.

It's almost as if she's now seeing something ... from a certain point of view.

This is not that hard to understand.

Not sure your Anakin parallel holds since we go into the prequels knowing he will become bad. Those movies exist solely to explain that. You know how it is going to play out at all times. This is a new character who we know nothing about. We don't know where this story is going. Maybe it works in the end. Maybe it won't.

And frankly, I can't help but feel like if they did lay more breadcrumbs for this twin switch the complaint would be ... OMG THIS IS STUPID I SEE THE TWIST FROM A MILE AWAY.

We're three quarters of the way through the story and only just now getting the first hint that Osha might be on a path to the dark side. There are only two half-hour episodes left, one of which is another flashback. It seems unlikely that anything left to come is going to make a transformation to the dark side believable. She might become disillusioned and upset with the Jedi, but history suggests that she'll just distance herself from them again, since she's the type who runs from her past and those who wronged her (like Mae), instead of blaming and seeking revenge.

Osha said to Yord that she left the Order, said to Sol that she wasn't a very good student and is on good terms with Sol. We don't know the details of her leaving the Jedi, but she seems to take responsibility for it and not blame Sol, so I find it hard to believe that she would suddenly start to question all of that because of a speech by someone who just killed two of her friends and several other Jedi and whom she just wanted to kill. It's not that it's hard to understand what the writers intended. It's that it's hard to believe.

I don't think that it makes a difference whether we know of the transformation ahead of time or not. Even if we didn't know that Anakin would turn bad or knew that Osha would, it would still need to be believable. I don't think that people would really mind it being predictable if it were at least believable.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

You mean the narcissistic, fascist psychopath with the power to kill all the other Jedi?

Sounds pretty dangerous to me.

It's almost like I am nitpicking one thing and ignoring the bigger picture.

 

[Commander Clueless]

It's almost like I am nitpicking one thing and ignoring the bigger picture.

But that would just be crazy!

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I didn't suggest that the prequels are good writing, just that they contain a good example of a character arc.

I agree that we don't need to understand every detail of character motivation, especially of evil characters (who are often evil without explanation), but I think that we do when we're talking about a character arc, especially from good to bad or vice versa. From Wikipedia:

If Anakin just put on the helmet and decided to be bad without us seeing what gradually pushed him towards and over the edge, the trilogy would be pointless. If Scrooge simply went to bed and decided in the morning to be a good person, without any of the spirits' help, that story would be pointless. The transformation needs to be gradual and something that we see develop so that we can understand how the character got from A to B.

BTW, Osha knew Yord from when they were both padawans. Remember that she was happy to see him again in Episode 1 and called herself his "old friend." Jecki was a newer acquaintance, but Osha went out of her way to say goodbye to her and suggested that they hang out sometime. Both seemed to be people who meant something to Osha, so, yeah, putting on the helmet of the man who killed them the day before doesn't make sense to me.

Still sounds to me like you'd want it as bland and formulaic as possible (it already does a pretty good job at that IMO). But hey, I understand it wasn't believable to you. I had no problem with her putting on the helmet and didn't think that putting it on was in any way submitting to the dark side.

And frankly, I can't help but feel like if they did lay more breadcrumbs for this twin switch the complaint would be ... OMG THIS IS STUPID I SEE THE TWIST FROM A MILE AWAY.

It's pretty funny that, in the end, we're enjoying these shows a lot more than those they were intended for.

 

[The Great Mighty Poo]

Imagine insulting someone as Darth Twinkus when this is the baddest dude in your universe...View attachment 892659

Imagine thinking this is well written TV and not terrible high school theater kids interpretative dancing while an entire audience is laughing at them for how bad they suck:

 

[#37]

Imagine thinking this is well written TV and not terrible high school theater kids interpretative dancing while an entire audience is laughing at them for how bad they suck:

Perhaps you should try to be more understanding and... .Read the room.

This thread is, obviously, a group therapy session for grown men who quite clearly suffer from 'The Fear of Missing Out'. They know it is bad TV, they just can't stop watching it... And they need help, not ridicule.

 

[The Great Mighty Poo]

Perhaps you should try to be more understanding and... .Read the room.

This thread is, obviously, a group therapy session for grown men who quite clearly suffer from 'The Fear of Missing Out'. They know it is bad TV, they just can't stop watching it... And they need help, not ridicule.

...nah.

 

[MadDevil]

Some people really should just stop watching things they clearly hate instead of being miserable f***s that annoy people who actually find some enjoyment (while admitting the show has flaws) in it. But I guess that wouldn't get them the attention they feel they need.

 

[Osprey]

Still sounds to me like you'd want it as bland and formulaic as possible (it already does a pretty good job at that IMO). But hey, I understand it wasn't believable to you. I had no problem with her putting on the helmet and didn't think that putting it on was in any way submitting to the dark side.

I don't think so, either. I'm sure that she's going to take off the helmet, perhaps in horror, and continue being a good girl. Everything that we've seen so far suggests as much. That's why it seems lame to me to make that a cliffhanger.

It's pretty funny that, in the end, we're enjoying these shows a lot more than those they were intended for.

I don't think that they were really intended for the folks who aren't enjoying them. Disney seems to be making Star Wars for themselves and new audiences rather than for the original fans who made the IP valuable in the first place.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I don't think so, either. I'm sure that she's going to take off the helmet, perhaps in horror, and continue being a good girl. Everything that we've seen so far suggests as much. That's why it seems lame to me to make that a cliffhanger.

But then why all the fuss about the missing descent to darkness? Not sure I followed (but I'm dead tired).

I don't think that they were really intended for the folks who aren't enjoying them. Disney seems to be making Star Wars for themselves and new audiences rather than for the original fans who made the IP worth buying.

Pretty sure they tried their best. But yeah, at this point it's comically obvious that a very vocal bunch of nerds will not be happy with whatever comes from Disney Star Wars. I still don't think those light saber scenes were intended for my enjoyment.

 

[Osprey]

But then why all the fuss about the missing descent to darkness? Not sure I followed (but I'm dead tired).

Because you asked me what it would take to believe that she's corruptible.

Pretty sure they tried their best. But yeah, at this point it's comically obvious that a very vocal bunch of nerds will not be happy with whatever comes from Disney Star Wars. I still don't think those light saber scenes were intended for my enjoyment.

Those "nerds" were largely happy with The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Mandalorian Seasons 1 & 2 and Andor Season 1. The narrative that Star Wars fans will never be happy isn't true and is just used to attack them for not liking everything. It's not even normal to like everything in a large franchise. We all tend to like some franchise entries and dislike others. When it comes to Star Wars, though, fans are seemingly expected to like everything or else get labeled (often worse than just "nerds").

 

[Sombastate]

Some people really should just stop watching things they clearly hate instead of being miserable f***s that annoy people who actually find some enjoyment (while admitting the show has flaws) in it. But I guess that wouldn't get them the attention they feel they need.

Normally I'd agree with this, but as a person who just doesn't have the time right now to watch, I come in here every week for the fantastic commentary

 

[Il Stugotz]

I see fans of the newer SW stuff say things like this.

I don't get it. What's the appeal of Jedi being depicted this way?

I just think it opens up storytelling possibilities and feels true to what I understand about how power works

 

[Osprey]

Here we're debating Osha giving in to the dark side when it's even worse than that.
Collider - Leslye Headland Says It's "So Clear" What's Going On Between Osha and Qimir in 'The Acolyte'

Spoiler

The Acolyte has finished what Rian Johnson started with The Last Jedi seven years ago by delivering some long-overdue enemies-to-lovers vibes via the tantalizing dynamic between Osha (Amandla Stenberg) and Qimir (Manny Jacinto). Following last night's ship-brewing episode, I caught up with the series' creator Leslye Headland this morning to unpack the ins and outs of everything that went down between Osha and Qimir, and where that dynamic might be headed.

COLLIDER: One year ago, I looked you in the eyes at Star Wars Celebration, and I asked you if we were getting enemies-to-lovers in The Acolyte, and look at us now. Who would have thought?

LESLYE HEADLAND: We made it. [Laughs] Somehow, we made it. I was terrified when you asked me that question because I'm not a great actor. I was like, “Just tell her no and move on.”

But it's so great that we do get to see this dynamic. There is a little bit of a debate right now in the fandom about what name we're going to go with for the ship. There are two right now: it's Oshmir and then Oshamir. What's your take on that?

HEADLAND: I like Oshamir, personally. I like her full name.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Here we're debating Osha giving in to the dark side and it's even worse than that.
Collider - Leslye Headland Says It's "So Clear" What's Going On Between Osha and Qimir in 'The Acolyte'

If that's real, it should have been in a spoiler tag!

And well... the pretty girl going for the bad boy wouldn't be anything really out of the ordinary.

 

[Osprey]

If that's real, it should have been in a spoiler tag!

I figured that it wasn't necessary because it's from the mouth of the showrunner in a publicity interview and people would stop reading if they didn't want to know... but I'll put the quotes in a tag to be safe. You may want to edit your post, as well.

 

[MadDevil]

Interesting theory I read today...Sol ends up getting blamed for killing all the Jedi and gets excommunicated from the Order. Kind of similar to "The Wrong Jedi" arc in TCW with Ahsoka. Which might also help explain why the Order has their head in the sand when it comes to the Sith returning a century later.

 

[Mr Jiggyfly]

Because you asked me what it would take to believe that she's corruptible.

Those "nerds" were largely happy with The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Mandalorian Seasons 1 & 2 and Andor Season 1. The narrative that Star Wars fans will never be happy isn't true and is just used to attack them for not liking everything. It's not even normal to like everything in a large franchise. We all tend to like some franchise entries and dislike others. When it comes to Star Wars, though, fans are seemingly expected to like everything or else get labeled (often worse than just "nerds").

I don’t care if the hardcore Star Wars fans get mad that a show blows because of the writing, plot, etc.

However, we would definitely be naive not to understand that the bulk of the hate for The Acolyte is due to misogyny/racism from the “nerds” in question here.

Ultimately the original Star Wars is really about how Leia is the most powerful Jedi to ever live, but her political career got in the way and all.