The Acolyte - Disney Plus Star Wars Series

[Mog]

A real Rebels pilot squadron show (with Paul Sun-Hyung Lee FINALLY saying, “Okay, see you!”).

A droid squad series (like I’ve jokingly mentioned way back on another Star Wars thread).

An actual underworld series where the main character is allowed to do “bad” things (though Andor kinda dances on the fringes of that idea).

A comedy show with some stormtroopers (think that silly bit with the two biker scouts that had to hold onto Grogu).

I think the main key for any new series is to step away from the Force for a LONG while.

I still want to see what happens with the characters from Ahsoka and that time period.  But that’s it.

Also, would it kill Disney and Hasbro to coordinate so we don’t have to wait so damn long to get figures in the 3.75” scale?

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Mog said:

A real Rebels pilot squadron show (with Paul Sun-Hyung Lee FINALLY saying, “Okay, see you!”).

I’d love it Mr Kim said that catchphrase every time he shoots an enemy fighter down

[Seto Kaiba]

So... I just got back from the 25th Anniversary re-release of The Phantom Menace and got to see the promo reel they had for The Acolyte after the film.

The promo reel was...

Spoiler

... a single fight scene between Amandla Stenberg's character Mae and Carrie Ann Moss's Jedi Master Indara set in one of the setting's ubiquitous seedy bars.

The action itself is very well choreographed and flows a lot like something from a wuxia or ninja movie, with lots of close quarters combat that's very heavy on minimalistic dodging and deflection and several moments of wire-fu like physics as characters use the Force to jump and push and freeze things in place.

Mae walks right up to the table, asks for Master Indara, then starts brutally beating the stupid out of everyone else at the table until she gets to the Jedi.  She makes several futile grabs for Indara's lightsaber, Indara calmly brushes off every single attack, and the two wire-fu their way to the building's second floor before Mae pulls a "ninja vanish".

All in all, pretty to look at but not very substantial.

It's not enough to give a real impression of the series proper but it doesn't give me much hope for the show's writing.

Spoiler

I've always found the Jedi and Sith to be the most boring part of Star Wars, as their laser swords and space magic come at the cost of making them unrelatable and/or their loss of agency as characters by dint of being puppets of Fate.  

The fight scene in the teaser definitely has the distinct flavor of two smug supers squaring up... each clearly considering their opponent and all bystanders beneath them.

Spoiler

Indara is perhaps the worse offender there... even when Mae finds her and then immediately starts assaulting everyone at the table with her, she seems almost bored with the whole affair.  She waits for Mae to finish brutalizing the other patrons before stepping in and effortlessly blocks, dodges, and redirects Mae's attacks with the same look of almost bored detachment she had before the fight finally reached her personally.  

Mae, for her part, takes her dear sweet time beating the stupid out of the other patrons in the showiest manner possible to demonstrate how far beneath her they are, and only really seems to take Indara seriously after failing to steal her lightsaber.

 

 

[Mog]

You would think

Spoiler

a Jedi would want to protect others, no? 🤦🏻‍♂️

All these franchises need a “Remover of Stupid” to go over these scripts and plots.

[azrael]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The promo reel was...

  Reveal hidden contents

... a single fight scene between Amandla Stenberg's character Mae and Carrie Ann Moss's Jedi Master Indara set in one of the setting's ubiquitous seedy bars.

The action itself is very well choreographed and flows a lot like something from a wuxia or ninja movie, with lots of close quarters combat that's very heavy on minimalistic dodging and deflection and several moments of wire-fu like physics as characters use the Force to jump and push and freeze things in place.

Mae walks right up to the table, asks for Master Indara, then starts brutally beating the stupid out of everyone else at the table until she gets to the Jedi.  She makes several futile grabs for Indara's lightsaber, Indara calmly brushes off every single attack, and the two wire-fu their way to the building's second floor before Mae pulls a "ninja vanish".

 

Those are the exact same scenes from this week's new trailer ☝️. 🥱

[Bolt]

Well choreographed fight scenes will be fun to watch. We'll see about the plot. "Keep it simple , stupid" might be a helpful mantra for some of the writers.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Those are the exact same scenes from this week's new trailer ☝️. 🥱

Yeah, the end of the promo reel was that trailer... So we got that full fight scene, and then we got the trailer that was using the footage piecemeal.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, Mog said:

All these franchises need a “Remover of Stupid” to go over these scripts and plots.

I get the feeling that they have one of those, but that person gets overruled by the “add stupid” person 

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Mog said:

All these franchises need a “Remover of Stupid” to go over these scripts and plots.

9 hours ago, Big s said:

I get the feeling that they have one of those, but that person gets overruled by the “add stupid” person 

The obvious problem with that idea being that "stupid" is a highly subjective value judgement.

A sufficiently skilled spin doctor can make even objectively unsound ideas sound brilliant... and with enough polish, ideas that started out sounding completely imbecilic when they were first proposed can be refined into something genius.  Star Wars itself started out as the latter case.  George Lucas's original concept for it was a complete trashfire, and with a truly gargantuan amount of patient refinement it was turned into one of the most iconic films ever made.

 

11 hours ago, Bolt said:

Well choreographed fight scenes will be fun to watch. We'll see about the plot. "Keep it simple , stupid" might be a helpful mantra for some of the writers.

Considering that the usual Star Wars story format is either a simplistic "Good vs. Evil" narrative about the eternal conflict between incorruptible pure pureness and baby-eating complete monster villainy or a side story that takes the form of a string of interstellar fetch quests, I'd reckon Star Wars could do with a bit of complexity in its life like what we got in Andor.

Not that I think we'll get that from The Acolyte, since the Jedi and Sith live in a world of moral absolutes and the Dark Side seems to run on motive decay and encourages jumping off the slippery slope.

FWIW, it'll be damn pretty to look at and the fight choreography is going to be very solid.

Edited May 6 by Seto Kaiba

[sh9000]

Conflict.

[Rhubarbarian]

I think if you write it down on paper, "Matrix-style Star Wars action series with Carrie-Anne Moss" sounds amazing, but this preview leaves me completely underwhelmed. 

I am very much off the Star Wars ride, though.

[Bolt]

I mean, I'm definitely going to watch it. But I'm not counting down the days. Or holding my breath for anything spectacular. 

[Raikkonen]

Easy pass. Zero originality. Reskinned concepts beaten to death. 

[sh9000]

Plan.

 

[jvmacross]

Currently paying for D+ so it'd be dumb not to at least watch the first episodes.....it does look "action-packed"...we'll see how it goes...

[kalvasflam]

On 5/14/2024 at 2:00 AM, Raikkonen said:

Easy pass. Zero originality. Reskinned concepts beaten to death. 

At least it's diverse, you have a variety of different types of force users, wookies, sullust (?), Twileks, near human, human, more human... uh yeah.

[Big s]

2 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

At least it's diverse, you have a variety of different types of force users, wookies, sullust (?), Twileks, near human, human, more human... uh yeah.

Wake me up when we finally get to see one of those A-Hole monkey lizard things using one

[Raikkonen]

6 hours ago, kalvasflam said:

diverse

This is my point. It's just cosmetics. 

[Thom]

Considering that this is pre-Empire, diversity was probably much more apparent. Once the Empire came along we see a far more human-centric society with non-humans pushed to the extremes, and mostly (all) male. I recall that when the Phantom Menace came out there was the noted instance of the first woman seen on a bridge, on the ill-fated Consular cruiser. Plus, there was the multi-species Jedi, so of course we're going so see more the further we pre or post-Empire.

[Seto Kaiba]

It doesn't matter how many different flavors of rubber forehead and mocap suit are represented among the main cast, it's another bloody ****ing story about sectarian violence in the glowstick enthusiast community.  🤣

There are something like 1.3 million worlds in the Old Republic* and Coruscant alone is home to approximately three trillion-with-a-T people.  Yet somehow, the writers seem to be all but incapable of conceiving a story that doesn't revolve around the two tiny cults of squabbling space wizards occupying the extreme ends of the moral spectrum and the same few planets.

 

* Or so Google tells me.

[sh9000]

Sol of the Jedi.

[Raikkonen]

On 5/20/2024 at 3:52 AM, Thom said:

Considering that this is pre-Empire, diversity was probably much more apparent. Once the Empire came along we see a far more human-centric society with non-humans pushed to the extremes, and mostly (all) male. I recall that when the Phantom Menace came out there was the noted instance of the first woman seen on a bridge, on the ill-fated Consular cruiser. Plus, there was the multi-species Jedi, so of course we're going so see more the further we pre or post-Empire.

Has nothing to do with that. 

Original Star Wars featured the Empire as human male dominated for one reason. Cheaper production costs by mimicking N@zis in space with minimal costume sizes and cuts. And was kept like that right into Jedi for continuity sakes as it worked well to represent 'bad guys'.

By the time TPM was scripted, George finally had endless money and new wonderful technology to shove all kinds of colourful aliens in every corner of the screen. 

 

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Raikkonen said:

Original Star Wars featured the Empire as human male dominated for one reason. Cheaper production costs by mimicking N@zis in space with minimal costume sizes and cuts. And was kept like that right into Jedi for continuity sakes as it worked well to represent 'bad guys'.

Well, two reasons.

Practical effects were the only real option when the first three movies were made, and that made alien characters very expensive as they either required prosthetic makeup or an uncomfortable and downright unsafe full-body costumes.  (Consider the hell Tony Daniels and Peter Mayhew had to go through playing C-3PO and Chewbacca.)

The other reason is that it's a bit of truth in television.  At the time the original three films were made, many combat roles in the armed forces of most nations were not open to women.  That didn't start to change in the real world until a few years after [i]Return of the Jedi[/i] came out, when Norway and Israel opened all combat roles to female troops.  Other nations like the US and UK only relaxed those restrictions in the 2010s.  There was similar thing going on in the original Star Trek, with the network rejecting the "The Cage" pilot in part because they felt having women in prominent positions of military(-esque) authority was not believable at the time it was made (1964).

Like any other work of fiction, Star Wars is very much reflects the era in which it was made.

Even though the prequels are set before the original trilogy, they were made after it and reflect the societal values of a later day.  The same will be true for The Acolyte, sure as sure.

Edited May 21 by Seto Kaiba

[TangledThorns]

I think STAR WARS is making this series for the non-fans. The SW casual fan type that loves baby Yoda and says "May The 4th Be With You" on Facebook but never played KOTOR or watched an episode of REBELS or Clone Wars.

[Dynaman]

2 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

I think STAR WARS is making this series for the non-fans. The SW casual fan type that loves baby Yoda and says "May The 4th Be With You" on Facebook but never played KOTOR or watched an episode of REBELS or Clone Wars.

Not nearly enough advertising in the right places for that.  Outside of this group and D+ I never hear of the show.

 

The problem with the Jedi is they went from being Wise, humble, kindly Obi Wan and somewhat cantankerous Yoda to a bunch of pompous jerks that thought they knew it all (and knew nothing) in the prequals.  This upcoming show looks like more of the same.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

I think STAR WARS is making this series for the non-fans. The SW casual fan type that loves baby Yoda and says "May The 4th Be With You" on Facebook but never played KOTOR or watched an episode of REBELS or Clone Wars.

Nah.

Speaking as a filthy casual in the Star Wars audience, my gut reaction to The Acolyte is that it reads like a product of the same Fanservice First development process that shat out the likes of Solo: a Star Wars Story, The Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Why?  Because The Acolyte is fundamentally a backstory dump.  Casual viewers don't care what the characters or factions were doing before the story started or after the end of the story.  If those details were important, they'd have been in the main story not some spinoff made decades later and only tenuously connected to the films.  What the Sith were doing a century before the Jedi realized they were still around isn't something that has any real bearing on the story of the film trilogies, so casual viewers won't really care.  This series is meant to appeal to the die-hard fans who are here for the continuity nods and the in-jokes.

 

40 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

The problem with the Jedi is they went from being Wise, humble, kindly Obi Wan and somewhat cantankerous Yoda to a bunch of pompous jerks that thought they knew it all (and knew nothing) in the prequals.  This upcoming show looks like more of the same.

That transition started waaaaay before the prequels, man.

That grew out of the original trilogy's biggest sequel-induced plot hole when Empire Strikes Back's big twist revealed that Obi-Wan had lied to Luke about his father's fate.  That got progressively worse when Yoda and Obi-Wan doubled down on it from "a certain point of view" in Return of the Jedi and Luke followed up on it by getting all smug and preachy with Vader on Endor and with the Emperor on the Death Star.

The prequels just took that existing development and ran with it full tilt.

[kalvasflam]

On the other hand, if Disney made a series about how HK-47 creatively killed Jedi, I'd pay to watch that film.  Everyone from snot nosed younglings and ever so wise jedi masters.

cause, let's face it, it usually is more entertaining to have space wizards.

[sh9000]

 

 

[electric indigo]

"I was very interested in pushing in the direction of martial arts films" sums up my issues with this series pretty well. I prefer the "cowboys vs. nazis with a hint of samurai IN SPACE" flavor.

At least the cinematography of the new clips doesn't look as bland as in the first trailer.

[Big s]

When I was a kid years before the prequels, I always thought of the space ships and the battle of Hoth or speeder chases through forests of alien planets or droids and giant walking machines and large battleships and fighters dog fightin. The whole space knight thing was kinda like a little cherry on top rather than the focus for me. 

[Thom]

Well, they are called Jedi Knights.😉

[Seto Kaiba]

If you think about it at all, The Acolyte "pushing in the direction of martial arts films" was the obvious right move.

Why?

For the same reason the prequel trilogy's villains used a droid army instead of flesh-and-blood soldiers: it lets the Jedi can show off without engaging in "unheroic" conduct.  They don't use blasters, so gunfights are largely off the table.  Attacking the Jedi with blasters makes for boring and repetitive action set pieces because it turns into a game of blaster tennis where the Jedi hardly break a sweat while their attackers die in droves to their own deflected shots.  Using a lightsaber offensively against normal people or even against a lightsaber-less enemy force user is villain behavior and violently dismembering your opponents is pretty unheroic on its own.  Martial arts is basically the only option they have to allow the Jedi to use their powers and show off without destroying the drama by making the fights hilariously one-sided.

[Big s]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Using a lightsaber offensively against normal people or even against a lightsaber-less enemy force user is villain behavior and violently dismembering your opponents is pretty unheroic on its own. 

Reminds me of the time Obi chopped off a dudes hand to end a bar fight. He was skilled enough to deflect blaster shots, yet instead of slicing the blaster, he went for the mutilation move to show who the real badass was

[jvmacross]

43 minutes ago, Big s said:

Reminds me of the time Obi chopped off a dudes hand to end a bar fight. He was skilled enough to deflect blaster shots, yet instead of slicing the blaster, he went for the mutilation move to show who the real badass was

Civilized my arse! LOL

[Dynaman]

2 hours ago, Big s said:

Reminds me of the time Obi chopped off a dudes hand to end a bar fight. He was skilled enough to deflect blaster shots, yet instead of slicing the blaster, he went for the mutilation move to show who the real badass was

 

Nah - the force is nothing compared to the power of CGI overdose.  (or to put it another way, the powers and abilities of the Jedi are directly proportional to FX ability - while their IQ appears to be directly the opposite)