Star Wars The Acolyte

[SM]

Solid ep, will be interesting as more context is revealed about what really happened.

 

[SM]

Spoiler

I think the point of the show is to explore other ideas outside of the view of the Jedi. That being said, it felt very much like it was inferring that what they did with the sisters is what lays the foundation for now Anakin is born.

Spoiler

My tip is that the Jedi didn't 100% know Mae was alive or not and essentially left her for dead.

Either way I'm not a big fan as it's echoing one of the least fleshed out and worst plot points of the entire franchise with Luke "feeling" like he should have killed Kylo.

Spoiler

They've said they're not the Nightsisters although they did inspire the idea for them. Which I don't agree with. Then to have one of the mothers look similar to the male species of Dathomir was odd as well.

Overall feels like this is going the way of Ashoka. Really promising concepts and ideas to play with. A couple of ok episodes to start, then nosediving to some poor writing and excessive padding.

I don't think the acting is bad, I think they're doing their best with some progressively worse dialogue.

All these multi show/film universe franchises like DCEU and current MCU all seem to be facing the same problems that they're being pushed out quicker that they should with no-one properly overseeing everything so there is some level of cohesion of what came before it.

To be fair this show has taken ages to come out so was certainly not rushed.

 

[manureid]

Well that was just ordinary. The chanting/singing part was just terrible. It really fails to be interesting at the moment. Maybe we just got spoilt with the quality of Andor?

 

[Exe Gesis]

Seems obvious the four Jedi killed everyone and destroyed their coven etc. No way a child Mae could do all that damage, let alone two minutes after starting a little fire in front of Osha. Literally a few minutes elapsed between Mae lighting that little fire, Osha escaping, and emerging above seeing everyone dead and the city ablaze.

For sure the Jedi wrecked it, and thats why adult Torbin admitted guilt and willfully drank poison. Osha will learn the truth, so it'll be interesting to see what she does when she learns that. Will she team up with Mae?

 

[SM]

Seems obvious the four Jedi killed everyone and destroyed their coven etc. No way a child Mae could do all that damage, let alone two minutes after starting a little fire in front of Osha. Literally a few minutes elapsed between Mae lighting that little fire, Osha escaping, and emerging above seeing everyone dead and the city ablaze.

For sure the Jedi wrecked it, and thats why adult Torbin admitted guilt and willfully drank poison. Osha will learn the truth, so it'll be interesting to see what she does when she learns that. Will she team up with Mae?

I think it's more obvious that the sith was involved or one of the witches possessed one of the Jedi - likely Torbyn - again.

 

[FlowersByIrene]

Yeah it's almost like there's no pleasing some people, something I expressed above.

I dont agree with this SM. This is just the narcissistic mindset of the people at Star Wars now.. "it couldn't possibly be that i'm making bad storied that no one wants, there's no pleasing people". The stuff they are making currently is bad because the people in control of the studio are talentless and they're hiring people who are talentless.

I mean look at Lesly Headland's stunning successes in the industry...



She's "known for" this schlock. Again... this show cost as much as Dune. Find talented people, with interesting stories to tell and let them do it.

 

[SM]

I dont agree with this SM. This is just the narcissistic mindset of the people at Star Wars now.. "it couldn't possibly be that i'm making bad storied that no one wants, there's no pleasing people". The stuff they are making currently is bad because the people in control of the studio are talentless and they're hiring people who are talentless.

I mean look at Lesly Headland's stunning successes in the industry...

View attachment 2019199

She's "known for" this schlock. Again... this show cost as much as Dune. Find talented people, with interesting stories to tell and let them do it.

Russian Doll was supposedly very well received, not that I've watched it personally.

Do you ever wonder though that these supposedly 'talented' people who are out there don't want to waste their time writing essentially Star Wars fanfiction that will get them piles of online hate when they could flex their creative limbs in their own productions?

You call it narcissism from these creators, I call it entitlement from the audiences of these mega franchises, where the people who have grown up obsessed with the material is convinced that their expectation/perception of the franchise is correct and all other views are incorrect, so that when they watch or read something that doesn't align with their world view, they dismiss it as garbage/rubbish/woke/whatever to explain why it doesn't match up with their expectations. We see it time and again in Doctor Who, Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on so forth. The proliferation of media these days makes everyone an expert critic who likes to pick apart what they're watching because there's just such a sheer volume of material out there for them to watch. Then when you see a franchise come out with a vanilla, safe product it gets ripped apart for not taking any risks or offering anything new, as TFA has been. A lot of Star Wars fans have enjoyed the material put out, but because the negative voices scream louder, the groupthink becomes 'this material is crap'. I stopped responding to negative messages in here for a few days and it's amazing to see how quickly the momentum grows for people going from 'yeah this is middle of the road, let's see how it goes' to 'this is a steaming pile of garbage' because people talk themselves into one extreme or the other. It's remarkably destructive.

I'm not for one minute saying this show is perfect or high cinema or anything extreme of that sort, but it's a fresh, interesting story (some will snort at this but a murder mystery-esque thriller story is quite a new slant for a SW show) set in an era we know virtually nothing about with characters that (at least I) find quite interesting from what we know of them. For how many years have people said "Omg how cool would it be to see a Wookiee Jedi??" and now we finally have one and he's barely merited a mention from people? He hasn't had a whole lot of screen time so far but we're only three episodes in. It's why I asked Jatz the question (which he's been unable to answer) of what he actually expected out of this show, because I think people didn't actually know what they wanted, and because it's not some out of the box, KOTOR remake or whatever, people are feeling let down, but don't know how to express it.

 

[Royces Hart]

The proliferation of media these days makes everyone an expert critic who likes to pick apart what they're watching because there's just such a sheer volume of material out there for them to watch.

Do you include yourself in this?

 

[SM]

Do you include yourself in this?

I try not to pick apart shows with a fine tooth comb and fixate on silly little inaccuracies, but if I'm guilty of that then yes I would. What makes you ask?

 

[Royces Hart]

I try not to pick apart shows with a fine tooth comb and fixate on silly little inaccuracies, but if I'm guilty of that then yes I would. What makes you ask?

Feels like you like to elevate yourself above most fans but when you don’t like a show/movie, you’re happy to stick the boots in.

I don’t care that you do because everyone is entitled to their views but seems a bit disingenuous to only allow criticism when it aligns with your opinion.

I don’t necessarily agree with all the knocks on this show or others and BF is the only place I read other’s reviews. At the end of the day, if I enjoy it, great. If I don’t, whatever. I don’t really care what other’s think, only the bean counters at Disney need to worry about that.

 

[SM]

Feels like you like to elevate yourself above most fans but when you don’t like a show/movie, you’re happy to stick the boots in.

I don’t care that you do because everyone is entitled to their views but seems a bit disingenuous to only allow criticism when it aligns with your opinion.

I don’t necessarily agree with all the knocks on this show or others and BF is the only place I read other’s reviews. At the end of the day, if I enjoy it, great. If I don’t, whatever. I don’t really care what other’s think, only the bean counters at Disney need to worry about that.

As I said, if I've 'stuck the boots in' over minutiae that in the scheme of things don't matter, I'm happy to be called out and hold my hands up over it. I've also never suggested genuine and well intentioned criticism has no place, it's the bad faith critiques that get so tiresome. It seems between yourself and Frank Bunn you have all corners covered with me though - either I'm an 'attack dog' who goes after any negativity about ALL Star Wars shows, or I'm a critique of plenty of the shows and am a hypocrite for criticising nitpicking on others.

You've also picked out a single line from a much broader point which was, yes, directed at the entirety of media watchers, particularly of these mega-franchises. Which last I checked, I was indeed one of them. No elevating going on here other than attempts to rise above nitpicking and point out we're three episodes into a season of a show which has very clearly set a tone for unreliable narrators and unclear motivations.

 

[FlowersByIrene]

Russian Doll was supposedly very well received, not that I've watched it personally.

Do you ever wonder though that these supposedly 'talented' people who are out there don't want to waste their time writing essentially Star Wars fanfiction that will get them piles of online hate when they could flex their creative limbs in their own productions?

You call it narcissism from these creators, I call it entitlement from the audiences of these mega franchises, where the people who have grown up obsessed with the material is convinced that their expectation/perception of the franchise is correct and all other views are incorrect, so that when they watch or read something that doesn't align with their world view, they dismiss it as garbage/rubbish/woke/whatever to explain why it doesn't match up with their expectations. We see it time and again in Doctor Who, Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on so forth. The proliferation of media these days makes everyone an expert critic who likes to pick apart what they're watching because there's just such a sheer volume of material out there for them to watch. Then when you see a franchise come out with a vanilla, safe product it gets ripped apart for not taking any risks or offering anything new, as TFA has been. A lot of Star Wars fans have enjoyed the material put out, but because the negative voices scream louder, the groupthink becomes 'this material is crap'. I stopped responding to negative messages in here for a few days and it's amazing to see how quickly the momentum grows for people going from 'yeah this is middle of the road, let's see how it goes' to 'this is a steaming pile of garbage' because people talk themselves into one extreme or the other. It's remarkably destructive.

I'm not for one minute saying this show is perfect or high cinema or anything extreme of that sort, but it's a fresh, interesting story (some will snort at this but a murder mystery-esque thriller story is quite a new slant for a SW show) set in an era we know virtually nothing about with characters that (at least I) find quite interesting from what we know of them. For how many years have people said "Omg how cool would it be to see a Wookiee Jedi??" and now we finally have one and he's barely merited a mention from people? He hasn't had a whole lot of screen time so far but we're only three episodes in. It's why I asked Jatz the question (which he's been unable to answer) of what he actually expected out of this show, because I think people didn't actually know what they wanted, and because it's not some out of the box, KOTOR remake or whatever, people are feeling let down, but don't know how to express it.

Maybe you're right that there's no one out there, but I find it hard to believe. If someone like Denis Villenuve is a big a fan of Dune as he is, and is willing to take that Project on that had always been thought of as being highly difficult to adapt, surely there are similar people in the Star Wars space. I think the issue is, and without straying into the line of discussion that The Old Dark Navy's considers too political for this thread, I suspect those creators with a passion for Star Wars are likely white males, and it's pretty clear the current Star Wars brass is not interested in giving that demographic the reigns at this point in time.

The other point is, Star Wars currenlty has an aversion to the EU. They've made it clear they only want to draw from the EU in sprinkled influences, character references, etc and not take full form stories. The EU has many beloved stories which, with the budget of 200 odd million, could be adapated accurately and with passion if they wanted to. And yet they choose not too because they think they can do better. Unfortunately they clearly cannot.

 

[SM]

Maybe you're right that there's no one out there, but I find it hard to believe. If someone like Denis Villenuve is a big a fan of Dune as he is, and is willing to take that Project on that had always been thought of as being highly difficult to adapt, surely there are similar people in the Star Wars space. I think the issue is, and without straying into the line of discussion that The Old Dark Navy's considers too political for this thread, I suspect those creators with a passion for Star Wars are likely white males, and it's pretty clear the current Star Wars brass is not interested in giving that demographic the reigns at this point in time.

The other point is, Star Wars currenlty has an aversion to the EU. They've made it clear they only want to draw from the EU in sprinkled influences, character references, etc and not take full form stories. The EU has many beloved stories which, with the budget of 200 odd million, could be adapated accurately and with passion if they wanted to. And yet they choose not too because they think they can do better. Unfortunately they clearly cannot.

On your first point, Filoni, a white male mega SW nerd, is the creative controller of SW TV and his shows have drawn perhaps the biggest criticisms of all of them. Meanwhile Andor, written by Tony Gilroy, another white male, is seen as one of the best shows produced in SW TV. James Mangold, another white male, is producing a movie set at the dawn of the Jedi. I think this whole 'Feminist/woke agenda' conspiracy theory is just that, but that when we see ANY sort of diversity, it's fixated on above and beyond what it actually is.

On your second point I couldn't disagree more. They are drawing extensively from the EU and the Filoni-verse is as close to a pure adaptation of The Thrawn Trilogy as we're likely to get. We've seen numerous elements plucked from the EU, but putting that aside, a lot of the EU stories just simply weren't as good as we think they were. A lot of the Bantam era was pretty terrible and then the Del Rey era descended into the same rough plot regurgitated a number of times and burrowing deeper into self-referential, bloated messes (looking at you Fate of the Jedi). There's some pure gold in there, and I'd love to see an X-Wing series style TV show (although Alphabet Squadron has filled that gap rather poorly IMO). I also think the broad strokes they put in place with the lore for TFA has ruined a lot of storytelling potential (the Republic being at peace since the Empire surrendered at Jakku for instance) which I've said a number of times before. But to say they've got an aversion to the EU is over the top. I'm also not convinced a pure 1:1 remake of an EU story would be particularly interesting, but perhaps they need to bite the bullet and try one to see just how well/poorly it's received. I suppose they're somewhat doing this with Filoni-verse Thrawn.

 

[FlowersByIrene]

On your first point, Filoni, a white male mega SW nerd, is the creative controller of SW TV and his shows have drawn perhaps the biggest criticisms of all of them. Meanwhile Andor, written by Tony Gilroy, another white male, is seen as one of the best shows produced in SW TV. James Mangold, another white male, is producing a movie set at the dawn of the Jedi. I think this whole 'Feminist/woke agenda' conspiracy theory is just that, but that when we see ANY sort of diversity, it's fixated on above and beyond what it actually is.

On your second point I couldn't disagree more. They are drawing extensively from the EU and the Filoni-verse is as close to a pure adaptation of The Thrawn Trilogy as we're likely to get. We've seen numerous elements plucked from the EU, but putting that aside, a lot of the EU stories just simply weren't as good as we think they were. A lot of the Bantam era was pretty terrible and then the Del Rey era descended into the same rough plot regurgitated a number of times and burrowing deeper into self-referential, bloated messes (looking at you Fate of the Jedi). There's some pure gold in there, and I'd love to see an X-Wing series style TV show (although Alphabet Squadron has filled that gap rather poorly IMO). I also think the broad strokes they put in place with the lore for TFA has ruined a lot of storytelling potential (the Republic being at peace since the Empire surrendered at Jakku for instance) which I've said a number of times before. But to say they've got an aversion to the EU is over the top. I'm also not convinced a pure 1:1 remake of an EU story would be particularly interesting, but perhaps they need to bite the bullet and try one to see just how well/poorly it's received. I suppose they're somewhat doing this with Filoni-verse Thrawn.

Give me the Han Solo origin trilogy or give me death



Unfortunately this is likely impossible given the Solo prequel, but I loved this shit as a kid.

 

[SM]

Give me the Han Solo origin trilogy or give me death

View attachment 2019269

Unfortunately this is likely impossible given the Solo prequel, but I loved this shit as a kid.

Yeah that got somewhat adapted into Solo - isn't there a Q'ira-esque character in those books? If Solo had been a success I'm sure we would have seen Han joining Jabba etc. which was somewhat the plot of those.

This is somewhat the risk though, people loved stuff as kids so the nostalgia for how they felt reading/watching material as a kid makes it hard for them to enjoy new material as an adult for the simple reason that we have a whole new layer of context and insight we apply when watching material. Even if they were to do a pure adaptation I have no doubt there'd be a series of criticisms around 'that's not how I pictured that character/scene/event!' which makes it such a no-win situation.

 

[Frank Bunn]

Seems obvious the four Jedi killed everyone and destroyed their coven etc. No way a child Mae could do all that damage, let alone two minutes after starting a little fire in front of Osha. Literally a few minutes elapsed between Mae lighting that little fire, Osha escaping, and emerging above seeing everyone dead and the city ablaze.

For sure the Jedi wrecked it, and thats why adult Torbin admitted guilt and willfully drank poison. Osha will learn the truth, so it'll be interesting to see what she does when she learns that. Will she team up with Mae?

Flashbacks are often presented as a particular character's memories - which can be unreliable, and the plot can draw on that. But they didn't do that here. It seems the writers have opted to mislead the audience by omitting the details of the fire and how all the witches died. There will either need to be more flashbacks to explain it or have some more dialog exposition.

It's a bit of a mess structurally. There's no emotional impact from seeing Mae fall off the platform because we already know she survives. Same as we didn't care for Indara and the levitating monk dying - because we knew nothing about them (apart from Indara being heavily borrowed from Trinity in The Matrix).

 

[SM]

Flashbacks are often presented as a particular character's memories - which can be unreliable, and the plot can draw on that. But they didn't do that here. It seems the writers have opted to mislead the audience by omitting the details of the fire and how all the witches died. There will either need to be more flashbacks to explain it or have some more dialog exposition.

It's a bit of a mess structurally. There's no emotional impact from seeing Mae fall off the platform because we already know she survives. Same as we didn't care for Indara and the levitating monk dying - because we knew nothing about them (apart from Indara being heavily borrowed from Trinity in The Matrix).

The entire episode was very clearly Osha's perspective. What made you think it wasn't? What scenes take place with her absent?

 

[Frank Bunn]

I'm not a Star Wars nerd so I'm not going to get upset if a show allegedly 'breaks canon'. But I'll watch, hoping that it will be a good quality and fun addition to the franchise.

There seems to be an expectation and excuses for poor standards in Star Wars shows - because it's always been like that. I don't buy it. It's a $200 million show. It should be judged against the very best TV shows. And it fails miserably.

 

[skam85]

Give me the Han Solo origin trilogy or give me death

View attachment 2019269

Unfortunately this is likely impossible given the Solo prequel, but I loved this shit as a kid.

This was such a good book series. All time favourite SW.

The Hutt mafia wars adapted to a series or movie would be elite.

Rogue One pulled some of the threads of these books too - Jyn's story wasn't far from Bria's.

 

[SM]

This was such a good book series. All time favourite SW.

The Hutt mafia wars adapted to a series or movie would be elite.

Rogue One pulled some of the threads of these books too - Jyn's story wasn't far from Bria's.

Yeah was going to say that about R1 but couldn't remember quite how much overlapped. R1 also pulled from Dark Forces I think.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Flashbacks are often presented as a particular character's memories - which can be unreliable, and the plot can draw on that. But they didn't do that here. It seems the writers have opted to mislead the audience by omitting the details of the fire and how all the witches died. There will either need to be more flashbacks to explain it or have some more dialog exposition.

It's a bit of a mess structurally. There's no emotional impact from seeing Mae fall off the platform because we already know she survives. Same as we didn't care for Indara and the levitating monk dying - because we knew nothing about them (apart from Indara being heavily borrowed from Trinity in The Matrix).

Ep3 wasnt even a flashback, like some brief view. It was a whole linear story from start to finish of that period in time. Ep3 shoildve actually been ep1, and then ep1 and 2 would follow and it would provide more of that connection/interest with the characters, suspense, and emotionality

 

[skam85]

Ep3 wasnt even a flashback, like some brief view. It was a whole linear story from start to finish of that period in time. Ep3 shoildve actually been ep1, and then ep1 and 2 would follow and it would provide more of that connection/interest with the characters, suspense, and emotionality

Yeah, hard to have a huge care factor about someone that literally dies in the first scene.

 

[SM]

I think the fear would be having a first ep all about two kids would switch people off. Plus would instantly drop the mystery around the twins.

 

[glenferry23]

Ep3 wasnt even a flashback, like some brief view. It was a whole linear story from start to finish of that period in time. Ep3 shoildve actually been ep1, and then ep1 and 2 would follow and it would provide more of that connection/interest with the characters, suspense, and emotionality

I believe this episode also would’ve benefitted from having episode 4 dropped along with it too. Which hopefully would contain the other perspectives and the truth what actually happened in those closing minutes. ie, that loud scream/thudding noises right above Osha when she was escaping, how the witches actually died, why was Sol and the Jedi there etc etc.

 

[Brick Loosener]

Russian Doll was supposedly very well received, not that I've watched it personally.

Do you ever wonder though that these supposedly 'talented' people who are out there don't want to waste their time writing essentially Star Wars fanfiction that will get them piles of online hate when they could flex their creative limbs in their own productions?

You call it narcissism from these creators, I call it entitlement from the audiences of these mega franchises, where the people who have grown up obsessed with the material is convinced that their expectation/perception of the franchise is correct and all other views are incorrect, so that when they watch or read something that doesn't align with their world view, they dismiss it as garbage/rubbish/woke/whatever to explain why it doesn't match up with their expectations. We see it time and again in Doctor Who, Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on so forth. The proliferation of media these days makes everyone an expert critic who likes to pick apart what they're watching because there's just such a sheer volume of material out there for them to watch. Then when you see a franchise come out with a vanilla, safe product it gets ripped apart for not taking any risks or offering anything new, as TFA has been. A lot of Star Wars fans have enjoyed the material put out, but because the negative voices scream louder, the groupthink becomes 'this material is crap'. I stopped responding to negative messages in here for a few days and it's amazing to see how quickly the momentum grows for people going from 'yeah this is middle of the road, let's see how it goes' to 'this is a steaming pile of garbage' because people talk themselves into one extreme or the other. It's remarkably destructive.

I'm not for one minute saying this show is perfect or high cinema or anything extreme of that sort, but it's a fresh, interesting story (some will snort at this but a murder mystery-esque thriller story is quite a new slant for a SW show) set in an era we know virtually nothing about with characters that (at least I) find quite interesting from what we know of them. For how many years have people said "Omg how cool would it be to see a Wookiee Jedi??" and now we finally have one and he's barely merited a mention from people? He hasn't had a whole lot of screen time so far but we're only three episodes in. It's why I asked Jatz the question (which he's been unable to answer) of what he actually expected out of this show, because I think people didn't actually know what they wanted, and because it's not some out of the box, KOTOR remake or whatever, people are feeling let down, but don't know how to express it.