I’m sure we all know about the low audience scores given to The Acolyte. Rotten Tomatoes was sitting down at 14% since around the third episode, and was that low up until at least the last episode. Now that it’s nearly a week out from the season finale, I figured I’d take another look.
The Rotten Tomatoes score has gone up to 17% and other review platforms have gone up a bit also.
So I decided to read through a few of the recent ones. Here are two examples:
The showrunners accuse fans of “review bombing” but are apparently just fine with artificial review boosting. I saw a bunch of these double reviews and nearly every single one talked about things like diversity, a “fresh take”, production values, etc, all in that typical bland corporate-speech type of language.
Whereas the negative reviews are detailed and specific without ever getting into racism, bigotry, sexism, or other things fans are often accused of. If you read through the negative reviews they are often well thought out criticisms of the story itself and the quality of acting.
I just wanted to bring this fake review boosting to the community’s attention. If you enjoyed the show, that’s awesome. But it’s dishonest to dilute honest and fair criticisms of a show.
Acolyte was way better than Book of Boba Fett and better than Ahsoka. It’s a 6/10 show or something like that. Pretty unremarkable. I feel like it was aimed at a younger demographic. Loved seeing lots of expanded universe stuff being brought into canon, like the witches and non-Jedi/non-Sith Force traditions. I liked the 60s/70s aesthetics. Always nice to see the other side of the Jedi, too. Willing to bet at least 50% of the reviewers online never watched it. Basing your opinions from online review scores is unfortunately now a total waste of time.
Boba Fett was pretty bad, and Ahsoka was decent. It definitely had major problems, but the aspects of Ahsoka herself were pretty spot on and for her character.
The Acolyte is hands down one of the worst shows I’ve seen. I feel bad for Manny Jacinto because he actually killed it. And Daphny Keen was awesome too. Her saber battle was well done.
But the story was just awful.
I read through a LOT of the reviews. I hadn’t seen a single one that was overly generic, and all of them had a genuine and valid point.
Only a few of the positive ones seemed genuine, the rest sounded like they went through a corporate marketing team.
I guess you and I have a different interpretation of the story, because I felt it was pretty fun. A bit predictable, but a refreshing change from the usual star wars fare. 1/10 reviews that say “the story makes no sense” are, imo, displaying either bad faith or a relatively low media literacy.
It’s not for everyone, and that’s fine. But it’s a culture war thing now, and not being judged on its own merits by most people. You are not immune to propaganda.
It doesn’t make sense because the motivations are all over the place. Mae and Osha switch sides at the drop of a hat (all while Amandala’s expression never changes, Amandala’s acting was abysmal). The whole “we must take the girls to protect them” plotline was just empty.
The depiction of the Jedi was incredibly forced also (no pun intended).
And that’s no one’s fault but Disney’s. No one cared about the gender or sexual preferences of the actors. However, the show runners decided to make that a large part of their marketing and talking points.
Avery Brooks said it best. Just replace what he says with “being queer” or “lesbian” (for the Acolyte).
There was this inclusion speech seminar everyone at my company had to go through, and mind you this was over a decade ago at this point. I originally thought it was incredibly stupid and there’s nothing I could learn from it as I always treat everyone with respect.
But the one thing that has always stuck with my was the way speech can impact your attitude or your perceived attitude. Instead of saying “that’s a blind person” you should say “that person has blindness”. It’s a subtle point but when you study other languages you learn that word order can change the emphasis to a degree that doesn’t exist in English.
What I’m saying with all of this is that good characters aren’t written by starting with a distinctive aspect, like Avery Brooks said. No one cared that Rogue One had a female lead, but Disney accused everyone of not liking the ST and Rey because she’s a female lead.
Not sure I’d call “learning that everything I have ever been told by the Jedi is a lie and that they’re responsible for all of my pain and grief which they ultimately used as a reason to reject me from the Jedi Order, the one thing I wanted more than anything, and blamed it all on my sister” is the drop of a hat, but go off I guess.
No idea what you’re talking about r.e. queer/lesbian. There wasn’t any girl-on-girl action in the version I watched, they must have cut that out for the version screened in the UK.
The Acolyte is competitive against Kenobi for worst series to date.
Kenobi wasn’t good, but it was nowhere near as bad
Kenobi ruined a lot of IV, and even some of III. Acolyte ruined Anakin in general, and also ruined the jedi order in general. Both have tons of cringe and nonsensical moments, both feature times where a single swing could end things but can’t because plot.
Absolutely
Yup, and that’s bad writing.
See, I disagree with this part. I think the issue is that some of the ideas weren’t introduced or handled properly. But I think the overall concept was there. But Disney is incredibly inconsistent with some things. Like Obi-wan, who was not all that strong in the force, could live a field of giant boulders and hurl them at Vader. But Sol couldn’t hold two small girls up? Nevermind the fact that he was holding the bridges instead of just the girls.
But the storyline with Reva was just trash. A center mass lightsaber stab from Vader isn’t fatal (twice) but a small knife from Mae is fatal.
Better than Ahsoka? Some fight and the season finale are better but overall? Ahsoka for me has more engaging episodes and likeable characters and better acting overall. Ahsoka is 6.5/10, Acolyte 5/10 for me.
Ahsoka would have been completely forgettable if it didn’t use characters we already cared about, imo. Personally I felt it wasn’t very good, but of course you’re entitled to your own opinion