The Acolyte

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Han Burgundy

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Yeah, I'm not sure where the hate is coming from on this one to be honest. The fight choreography was well done and looked pretty cool. They used just enough crouching-Tiger Hidden-Jedi stuff to make an unarmed fight between force users interesting. Twins is a theme within Star Wars, always has been. So that's fine and an interesting opportunity to see a little bit more of that Grey force in the middle as they inevitably try to influence one another. The dialog of the Jedi is flavored the way it is to signify that it is both a different time and that they were highly procedural/indoctrinated. Graphics were good, planets looked cool and interesting. Plenty of alien races and new ship designs. I fail to see the "Ideological nonsense" that folks are referring to. I honestly can't spot it. Is it that the guy Jedi had his shirt off and gave a little eye candy for the other team for about two-point-five seconds? The brief and tiny mention that she lost her "moms"? Is that it? Are people just mad to be reminded that those folks exist or what? I stand 100% confused as of the first two episodes on why the hate. I think it was a pretty solid show so far...Now Disney has every chance to fumble it from this point on, but I honestly haven't seen it yet.
 

Shadow Reaper

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I fail to see the "Ideological nonsense" that folks are referring to. I honestly can't spot it. . . Are people just mad to be reminded that those folks exist or what? I stand 100% confused as of the first two episodes on why the hate.
Well as you said, you didn’t read the objections top of this thread so of course you’re confused. I don’t think there is a cure for ignorance and confusion apart from understanding. If you don’t want to understand, surely you will not.

All of my observations obtain. They’re valid, and accurate, and true. They have nothing to do with hate save for evil itself. They have absolutely nothing to do with LGBTQIA+. I was most explicit. The main point of this series is popularizing EVIL. I object to that and won’t be watching. I discourage all decent human beings from watching swill like this.

Popular rating from Rotten Tomatoes is 31%, so it must not be very good. Less than 1/3 think it’s worth the time, which is crazy low given a budget many times that of any other Star Wars live action series.

Gotta suck to be Kennedy or Headlund
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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Rotten Tomatoes has the critic score at 93% and the audience score at 27%.

Generally shows aren't that far apart in scoring...so there's definitely some shenanigans going on.

Looks like the show is being heavily review bombed.

I wonder why....hmm.
Hmmm, it's almost like these scores are redundant as reviewers can be bought and viewers scores can be organised and bombed by people who may not have even watched it...

...I guess if you watch and like, you like.
If you watch and don't like, you don't like.
If you watch and meh, you meh.
If you don't watch and meh, you meh.
If you don't watch and like, you fanboi.
If you don't watch and don't like, you Reeee.

Seems to be about the measure of things to me at this time.
 

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Metacritic tells a similar story: The Acolyte - Metacritic, Critics: 67/100. Users: 3.5/10 as of this post - likely to change as more of the series airs. Not sure why the different scales - probably to help user and critic scores be more easily distinguished.

We stopped our Disney+ sub because they hiked the price earlier this year, and most of the other streaming TV providers have too, and we didn't feel like just accepting the price hikes. I'll probably dip back in to a shorter-term sub from time to time. So I haven't seen The Acolyte.

I'm curious though, @Shadow Reaper, Andor was hands-down one of the very best TV series I've watched, not just among Sci-Fi series but overall. It has a fairly morally troubled protagonist - justifying doing bad things to survive bad in situations he didn't choose, reluctant to do them for ideological reasons he doesn't easily believe in. And yet it's so well made, so visceral, it's left a long lasting impression for me. It's about resisting oppression and it's amazing. I don't remember your take on it.

Is your objection to The Acolyte (and some other recent Disney offerings) based more on their moral position - which is what it reads like, or does a weak moral position just make expensive, mediocre TV worse, in your opinion?
 

Han Burgundy

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Well as you said, you didn’t read the objections top of this thread so of course you’re confused. I don’t think there is a cure for ignorance and confusion apart from understanding. If you don’t want to understand, surely you will not.

All of my observations obtain. They’re valid, and accurate, and true. They have nothing to do with hate save for evil itself. They have absolutely nothing to do with LGBTQIA+. I was most explicit. The main point of this series is popularizing EVIL. I object to that and won’t be watching. I discourage all decent human beings from watching swill like this.

Popular rating from Rotten Tomatoes is 31%, so it must not be very good. Less than 1/3 think it’s worth the time, which is crazy low given a budget many times that of any other Star Wars live action series.

Gotta suck to be Kennedy or Headlund
Oh, I'm not interested in your take on the matter. We all know how you felt about the show about a year and a half before the first trailer release. But man...popularizing evil? You...You don't watch much TV from after 1986, do you? What a dorky reason to be mad at a show. If you don't enjoy it, nobody it making you watch it. Vote with your eyeballs. And as for rotten tomatoes; Who even pays attention or gives a shit about those numbers? It was proven long ago that those ratings are nothing but a controversy meter and it is almost like individual viewers can have individual feelings on things. Was it the best show under the sun? Far from it, but I don't see it as a disaster. Yall need to stop needing ART to fit your personally held beliefs. Its a show about space wizards, for god's sake.
 

Shadow Reaper

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Raven, my position is in the first post atop this thread. The main point behind this series is to “break” George Lucas’ vision of SW and replace it with something else. My objections are:

1) All source material deserves respect. Following creators do not have a right to destroy or otherwise deconstruct an IP in order to leave their mark on it. Lucas’ world is Buddhist and deserves to remain Buddhist. Occult practitioners like Headlund have no right to break the IP in order to queer it or otherwise mark it as their own. This disrespects both the original creator and his audience. The audience has been loudly objecting for years now, and the SW franchise is dying. I don’t want to see it die.

2) Gnosticism is pure evil. It dehumanizes its victims. Deliberately shutting off your moral monitor is not something anyone in a civilized society should support. It is the essence of anti-social behavior, to disable your conscience.

And I would add what I did not mention explicitly earlier—this particular lie, that “there is no right and wrong; there is only power and those who get to wield it” is the essence of DEI. The whole point of replacing equality with equity is you no longer have moral restrictions. Equity is about power. It is the essence of why we had tens of thousands of kids, setting over 700 towns and cities on fire in 2020. They injured and killed more than 500 cops and destroyed billions of dollars of private property and public assets like cop cars, federal buildings and post offices. That had nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with power.

So yeah, when I see the feeble-minded here set the ideological aspects of this aside and embrace a 5,000 year old civilization killing meme, I know all I need to know about that person. They are deceived in the most horrific kind of way. There is a world of difference between portraying evil, and selling it to your audience as something acceptable.

Ask yourself, how did Headlund—the personal assistant to the notorious sex offender Harry Weinstein, end up directing anything inside what is essentially a children’s entertainment group? Why would ANYONE place someone complicit with Weinstein’s evil in charge of Star Wars?

Weinstein practiced sexual predation for over 40 years and was finally incarcerated when over 80 women stepped forward and leveled charges of rape and sexual assault. Are we supposed to pretend his personal assistant didn’t know what was going on for almost half century, or is it more likely she was chosen in order to enable the evil?
 
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Shadow Reaper

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Intriguing what's the critics rating?
I haven’t checked today but I have never really concerned myself with this. Most critics are ideologically possessed. Tomatoes routinely savages or worships works based upon political leaning. What matters is the public, and when the public and critics disagree, seems history tells us the public is always right.

The critics originally hated SW, if you’ll recall. Siskel and Ebert, the most successful critics of the time; said it was a children’s story with no depth, unfit for adults. Yeah. . .right.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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I haven’t checked today but I have never really concerned myself with this. Most critics are ideologically possessed. Tomatoes routinely savages or worships works based upon political leaning. What matters is the public, and when the public and critics disagree, seems history tells us the public is always right.

The critics originally hated SW, if you’ll recall. Siskel and Ebert, the most successful critics of the time; said it was a children’s story with no depth, unfit for adults. Yeah. . .right.
I recall, critics also hated the The Big Labowski but it has become one of if not the most loved films ever to suffer at the hands of critical savaging... what's your take on that movie?
 
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Shadow Reaper

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Yall need to stop needing ART to fit your personally held beliefs. Its a show about space wizards, for god's sake.
. . .but I suspect you know I’m not Buddhist. SW most certainly does not fit my personally held beliefs. My contention is, it should continue to fit George Lucas’ personal beliefs.

How is it some moral obligation to watch Headlund and Kennedy deconstruct Lucas’ beloved work? Where did that come from? Sounds like you’re recommending cowardice. How is it somehow more morally praiseworthy to accept the deconstruction of a beloved work than not? Do you think the world owes its children that kind of unfettered power?
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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I confess I cannot say. I fell asleep during it and also in Fargo. Don’t remember a thing. Was it good?
I enjoy it and watch again every so often. You always think of yourself as a Walter but you secretly know you relate most to Donny.

But I know when things become regarded as classics they are not always to everyones taste as with initial reactions to things too, it wasn't just the critics who were lukewarm - the cinema run of Labowski wasn't hugely well received either, it's a text which has matured over time... The wisdom of crowds, eh?
 
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Shadow Reaper

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Sometimes too, a brilliant work is ahead of its time, or otherwise over the heads of its audience. The 13th Floor was like that, as was the music vid for it by The Cardigans.

That’s a very different situation than what we have here. SW is established. People have an idea what they’re in for so when they get ratioed, something is really wrong.

I saw one funny vid where the guy is mocking the fight scene at the beginning of episode 1.While he makes lots of great and funny observations and surely the scene could stand improvement, I think most SW fans would agree the scene is fun. So why have audiences ratioed it? Well because they hate what Disney is doing to the franchise. They hate it. Less than a third of the audience likes what they were presented with. Excuses like those in this thread don’t fly, and people continue to leave the streaming service and vacation anywhere other than the parks. If you puke up on your audience, you should expect them to go somewhere else, and they have.
View: https://youtu.be/6WOYnv59Bi8?si=NvUnER0noDNqZvlL
 
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Han Burgundy

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. . .but I suspect you know I’m not Buddhist. SW most certainly does not fit my personally held beliefs. My contention is, it should continue to fit George Lucas’ personal beliefs.

How is it some moral obligation to watch Headlund and Kennedy deconstruct Lucas’ beloved work? Where did that come from? Sounds like you’re recommending cowardice. How is it somehow more morally praiseworthy to accept the deconstruction of a beloved work than not? Do you think the world owes its children that kind of unfettered power?
I still don't understand your point. How has the Acolyte strayed from what you, a non-GeorgeLucas individual insists is George's personally held belief? You do realize that pretty much the whole of Star Wars was ripped off from old Samurai films, right? Also: Bhudist? Who said Jedi are Bhudist? Because they wear robes and meditate? I still think this is allllll about how the world is changing around you and you don't like it. You have serious "Back in my day, the gays weren't so showy about it" energy. You should be hating TV and Movies based on whether the story you experienced was enjoyable or not, not whether it passes some puritanical checklist you've got stashed in your back pocket. But you know what? This is the western world and you are free to dislike whatever you want. The reason I find your positions on the subject so exhausting is that you seem to think you are stating some divine truth instead of the regurgitated incel bandwagon opinion it actually is. Just because we don't take your opinion as gospel and fail to properly provide you an echo chamber to rant into doesn't make us bullies. It makes us people with opinions other than yours. To take terminology from your camp; Quit being such a snowflake.
 

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So I turned on Star Wars Theory to get their take on Acolyte, just in time to watch thirty seconds of Lesley Headlund telling the main protagonist actress seated with her, that C3P0 is gay, and R2D2 is lesbian. She said it twice. Then the Star Wars Theory host said “no. . .no. . .no. . .” for about a full minute in disbelief. He gasped a bit, struggled and said he thought the droids were both guys.
Interesting. Did Disney say that or is that just random third-party commentary? Sounds like the latter? If so, so what?
 
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Aramsolari

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I mean…
Interesting. Did Disney say that or is that just random third-party commentary? Sounds like the latter? If so, so what?
Probably third party Star Wars theoryshitting. Our friend is obsessed with that Mike Zeroh hack.

I just find it somewhat amusing that one can take a fictional piece of pop culture and gradually make a connection to the Holocaust. Like….wat?

It’s Spaceships and Space Wizards for crying out loud. The whole thing is escapist fantasy, cheap popular entertainment. Some people take it WAY too seriously.

Star Wars ‘fans’ are the absolute worst.
 
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NomadicHavoc

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Yeah, I'm not sure where the hate is coming from on this one to be honest. The fight choreography was well done and looked pretty cool. They used just enough crouching-Tiger Hidden-Jedi stuff to make an unarmed fight between force users interesting. Twins is a theme within Star Wars, always has been. So that's fine and an interesting opportunity to see a little bit more of that Grey force in the middle as they inevitably try to influence one another. The dialog of the Jedi is flavored the way it is to signify that it is both a different time and that they were highly procedural/indoctrinated. Graphics were good, planets looked cool and interesting. Plenty of alien races and new ship designs. I fail to see the "Ideological nonsense" that folks are referring to. I honestly can't spot it. Is it that the guy Jedi had his shirt off and gave a little eye candy for the other team for about two-point-five seconds? The brief and tiny mention that she lost her "moms"? Is that it? Are people just mad to be reminded that those folks exist or what? I stand 100% confused as of the first two episodes on why the hate. I think it was a pretty solid show so far...Now Disney has every chance to fumble it from this point on, but I honestly haven't seen it yet.
I 100% understand where you're coming from Han. To me, however, The Acolyte has a bit too much of a very special Star Wars after school special on a higher end budget. That's just me. I hope that the show evolves and proves me wrong. Maybe...just maybe I just had too high expectations. I wanted the show to be a more mature experience like Andor. So maybe the problems not entirely with the show, but within me and how I connect with the show?
 
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