The Acolyte - Disney Plus Star Wars Series

[Seto Kaiba]

All right... wading into this one while the fine folks from animal control de-bat my attic.  (No, that isn't a euphemism for anything.)🤣

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

A hundred years before the rise of the Empire, it is a time of peace.

The Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic have

prospered for centuries without war.

Then, in what sense is this Star Wars?  Star Wars without wars is just stars... and that's either astronomy or zombie bait.

Spoiler

But in the dark corners of the galaxy, a powerful few

learn to use the Force in secret.

So... the Jedi?  As noted, they make up one ten-trillionth of the galactic population at most.

Spoiler

One of them, a lone assassin,

risks discovery to seek revenge....

*loud snoring noises*

You guys didn't even get the text fade right!  It fades out twice as fast as the transition to the planetary atmosphere.

... we're in Japan?  Did someone tell the Star Wars guys Ueda's a real place in Nagano?  It doesn't look like the Urban Economic Development Association... too rural.

And we open with the titular character staring dramatically into the middle distance while dressed like they robbed a renaissance fair while in ninja cosplay.  She's wearing a cloth mask, some kind of chest plate that looks like a single gargantuan lamellar scale, and ring mail... with what appears to be a purple bath towel on her head that's really the hood of an unwise purple knit robe.  What the hell is the ring mail in aid of?  She's fighting people with laser guns and laser swords that melt metal on contact.

Wow... we're right into it.  1:30 into the first episode and we're already at the fight scene that was featured in the teaser at The Phantom Menace's re-release.  She walks right up to Carrie-Anne Moss's character in this dingy space pub, announces she has unfinished business with her, does a dramatic kung-fu pose, and says "Attack me with all your strength".

Well, the first casualty of this roaring rampage of revenge is my immersion.  RIP, you were with us for only two minutes and just three lines of (intelligible) spoken dialog, but forever in our hearts.💀 

Who wrote this crap?  Oh... Leslye Headland, the executive producer, wrote this.  Delightful.  That bodes SO WELL for this show.

Spoiler

The only thing saving this scene is that literally everyone else present seems to think this is incredibly stupid and bust out laughing.

This leads directly to the fight from the teaser.

Seeing it now in full, the trailer's cut was far more exciting than the genuine article.  One of the main things bringing it down is Carrie-Anne Moss's performance.  She's totally phoning it in, in a very obvious way.  There's pulling your punches, and there's making it painfully obvious you're pulling your punches.  It's like watching a solo martial arts demonstration by Amandla Stenberg that just happens to be taking place in the same space as Carrie-Anne Moss unenthusiastically doing a warmup before a jog.  Moss comes across not as tranquil or calm and collected, but as bored until she's blindsided by being killed by a single throwing knife that appears to have no edge and to have only penetrated about a quarter of an inch.  That has to be poison, otherwise this is in barely in "does it need stitches?" territory.

After all that fuss and being so prominent in the advertising, Carrie-Anne Moss...

Spoiler

... is only in this series for six minutes and fifty-two seconds.

She doesn't even make it to the title card!

That first scene on the ship after the title card?  The droid in the hallway looks like a prop nicked from an episode of Red Dwarf or a fan film!  Actually, the same could be said for the whole scene.

Shield generator repairs on the outside of the ship... don't they have droids for this?  They had droids for this in the prequel trilogy.  I do appreciate the attempt to tone down the incredibly racist asian caricature the Trade Federation was in the prequels though.

Oh no, a small fire provokes a dramatic flashback that causes our lead character to stare vacantly into the abyss for a while while remembered sound effects happen.  

Can we briefly stop to appreciate that we have a character who is a repair technician on a ship whose owners don't care about workplace safety who is named Osha?

As in, Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Naming wise, this is up there with the likes of Cad Bane, Moralo Eval, or Darth Sideous.

Spoiler

The ship is boarded by Jedi... who look goofy.  Maybe it's the mustard colored tabard over the cream robe with the white cape, but the two of them honestly look like they wandered onto the wrong set from either a Lord of the Rings fan film or a revival of The Chronicles of Narnia.  

Hey...that pointed I mentioned before gets raised.  Only droids are supposed to be doing repairs on the outside of the hull in space.  Apparently "Osha" is defying OSHA. 

The Jedi starts to do a thing with his hand, and the crew immediately tell where her quarters are.  Osha returns to her room to find the Jedi awkwardly squatting on her bunk it's clearly not a space he can vertically fit into to sit normally.  I feel like this scene should've been rethought a bit so it doesn't look like this guy was waiting not more than 5 seconds between retakes to stand up?

Nobody's delivery here is believable.  The whole interrogation scene is really stilted... and there's a throwaway line that's clearly meant to get the politically-motivated crowd involved.

We're doing the old "the suspect matches your description, even though it's literaly impossible for it to have been you" schtick.  They even brought the bar owner, and arrest her even though they can't actually link her to the crime.  (It's only possible for one person in a galaxy of 100 quintillion to look like her?)

Good lord, that droid looks like a Red Dwarf prop too... honestly, it's like a low-rent version of Kryten with an immobile face.

Wait... the ship that's leaving isn't the one that pulled up!  What the hell.

So we get to see Master Sol at the Jedi temple... I can't help but feel that using the Force to open the door is a bit extra considering it's an automatic door AND there's a manual button.

Apparently the Jedi consider a single person's identification of the perpetrator by face alone to be "strong" evidence.  It seems they don't actually care about justice, just about making an example of someone.  How... heroic.

So apparently droid pilots are just built into the chairs... and can be turned off by talking to them?  Nothing about this sequence of events makes sense... and this has to be the least secure prison ship imaginable.  One has to wonder why the droid pilots haven't turned back on with the ship clearly out of control and crashing.

... so the Jedi went and picked up the escape pods from the prison ship, but didn't look into the actual crashed ship itself? 

This seems to be an authentic idiot plot so far.

The story is only able to proceed because everyone involved (most of them Jedi) behaves in the stupidest manner possible.

Spoiler

So we've got Osha wandering around in the desert chasing herself... but she's hallucinating, and it's all very dramatic in a forced and uninteresting way.

We're even doing The Shining-style creepy twin rhyming.

The Republic had the time go go all the way to Carlac and pick up the escape pods and go all the way back to Coruscant with the prisoners and imprison them... why is this second trip necessary?  

Blech, the wardrobe choices here... Master Sol is wearing a brown undershirt, a sage green shirt over that, then his mustard tabard, and a brown robe.  The Padawan in the awful makeup is wearing salmon pink, cream, and mustard.  It's like the wardrobe department's marching orders for Jedi were "dress this man like a mid-90's ad for a Taco Bell."  The interior decoration is no better.  We've got seafoam green walls, with white and red trim to match the white and red floors.  Who picked these colors?  I want to know who looked at this and said "Yes, that's exactly the look I am going for."  This is like a spot for Ugliest Homes in America.

It really is remarkable how remarkably unlikeable all of these characters are.

Spoiler

I'm calling it now, Osha is going to die.  We're gonna see a Dahj and Soji Asha type situation.

"The Jedi live in a dream."

With the reverb on that voice, it sounds like the speaker lives in a plastic bucket.

It's somewhat satisfying to learn that speaker is, in fact, wearing a big plastic bucket... er... a helmet... on his head and THAT'S why he sounds like someone doing a bad Duke Nukem impression from the inside of a bucket.  I'd call him Lord Buckethead, but that name is already taken by someone much saner.

Also... he talks about how the Acolyte kills without a weapon.  Does... does he not count all the throwing knives as weapons?  Who is he narrating this for?  I know the Sith are edgelords supreme, but is he just standing on this cliff talking to himself or what?  Does he have fourth wall awareness?  Is he talking to the audience?

 

All in all... ugh.  One episode down and I am already ready to call this one the worst of the Disney Star Wars shows so far.

It's not a slow start.  There's a LOT going on here and a lot to unpack.  It's just that all of it is nonsensical and it's packaged with some of the worst acting and writing I've seen since the prequel trilogy.

[azrael]

8 hours ago, Graham said:

Unpopular opinion, but I found Andor extremely boring and struggled to get thought it. I actually fell asleep several times during episode 5 or 6 and eventually gave up. altogether and never finished it.

I won't argue this. Andor was slow burner. It took a long time for it to get going. Way too long. For most of S1, I was more interested in Mon Mothma and Luthren's interactions than Andor. Will The Acolyte do the same or just be mid all season long? No idea. But so far, it's just. "meh".

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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The obvious answer is "poison".

If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. 😝

8 hours ago, Big s said:

I grew up with Star Wars having very little saber fights. The flippy goofiness of the prequels was a bit over the top.

The one thing post-Disney Jedi fighting is missing is finesse and more importantly, PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE.  Hayden, Ewan, and Ray practiced their fights for months ahead filming. And it showed. It also helped that Nick Gillard put in a lot of effort into making those fights look good. Even Sam Jackson's limited fight scenes looked good enough. Post-Disney...it's at best, meh. Watching Jedi-Trinity and Sith-wannbe doing wushu...it's been done on-screen already. It would be nice to see other martial arts forms on screen.

[Duke Togo]

Two episodes into The Acolyte and I'm digging it so far. Doesn't knock my socks off, but it's a step above what we've seen out of the Filoni live action stuff.

[Mog]

Would be kinda amusing to see an a-hole Jedi that always tries to poke at the opponent’s hands, turns off the saber mid-fight (instead of trying to block or parry), and then activates it for an impaling shot.

[Hikuro]

Maybe it's just me but does anyone kind of feel like the sets are tight.....There's something about these streaming shows on their virtual backgrounds that just starts to feel off or something. To me, the movies had a lot of wide shots that showed off so much of the background and designs, but these shows are tight shot and you see so very little of everything.
As for this show, I'm not feeling much of anything about the story or even in wonder of the high republic era. It's rather blah. 

[Roy Focker]

Other than the wooden acting, cheap looking production values, and juvenile script I'm okay with this show. 

[Duke Togo]

37 minutes ago, Hikuro said:

Maybe it's just me but does anyone kind of feel like the sets are tight.....There's something about these streaming shows on their virtual backgrounds that just starts to feel off or something. To me, the movies had a lot of wide shots that showed off so much of the background and designs, but these shows are tight shot and you see so very little of everything.
As for this show, I'm not feeling much of anything about the story or even in wonder of the high republic era. It's rather blah. 

The Acolyte does not use the Volume. They built sets and shot on location. 

[Seto Kaiba]

Goin' in for number two...

Spoiler

So, this time we're starting out on a planet that unfortunately shares its name with a scam-tier depilatory product.

There's a Jedi temple here in... what appears to be a fairly rundown neighborhood even by the standards of the galaxy that's 90% Wretched Hives™️ by volume.  The local street urchins apparently have nothing better to do than bully the unintelligible door droid at the behest of strange women in chainmail.  Predictably, there's no security in Jedi-land despite the temple seemingly being in a slum so Mae is able to walk right in without incident and without anyone remarking on her presence.

For all Disney+'s usual polish, I really cannot get past how there's this weird imbalance of production values where set design, wardrobe design, and the writing make this feel a lot lower budget than it is.

Even though I didn't care for Obi-Wan Kenobi or The Book of Boba Fett, both were still very polished-looking, professional-feeling undertakings that felt like their main flaw was just an unnecessary or underdeveloped premise.  The Acolyte weirdly feels like it lacks that polish and professional tone... like it's a high-budget fan film.

Spoiler

Apparently nobody had the heart to tell Ms. Headland that Mae's thing where the dramatically poses and challenges someone to "Attack me with all your strength" both looks and sounds incredibly stupid.  Mae seems to be such an edgelord-y fanfic character that I'm waiting for her to teleport behind someone and say "Nothing personal, kid...".

In a minor change from her previous reception where she was laughed at for this intensely cringeworthy public behavior, this new Jedi master just ignores her.  Then when she loses her patience and attacks him, he just no-sells all of her attacks through the Force.  Kind of feels like Carrie-Anne Moss's character's fight should've gone that way too.  If you can just make an invisible wall with the Force, why bother fighting someone hand to hand?

Osha's back on the Jedi ship, and teaches a Padawan the most important technical support technique of all... "turn it off and on again".  

There's that idiot plot again, though.  Master Sol and Yord have a quick debate over trusting Osha... with neither of them acknowledging the elephant in the room that neither has any kind of proof to support their viewpoint.  Yord believes Osha killed a Jedi Master despite an airtight alibi and only anecdotal evidence.  Sol unconditionally trusts her despite having no actual proof of her innocence either.  His circular reasoning WRT her guilt aside, Yord actually makes some sensible arguments that Master Sol ignores in full.  So Master Sol takes a business call with his seaweed-colored colleague who fails to note that Osha has gone from "had a sister, confirmed dead" to "has a sister, missing and formerly presumed dead" without any actual evidence.

Believing whatever you're told without evidence seems to be a bit of a theme with this series.

Spoiler

Conveniently, a suspect matching the description of Osha - who has been in custody the entire time - has broken into a Jedi temple.

For some reason, the Jedi are perfectly willing to accept this airtight alibi... but the equally airtight alibi they had at the start of the series just didn't count for some reason?

Sol's more senior Jedi Master friend jumps seamlessly from admitting that Osha has an airtight alibi for the attacks to wanting to put this girl they've wrongfully arrested in harm's way because "she might be an asset".  

Yeah, Master Sol... don't bother to tell Yord that you have evidence exonerating Osha, just tell him you're not taking the prisoner to Coruscant.  That's great communication.  Then pull rank and belittle him.

OK, I'll admit it... I asked for non-heroic Jedi and the The Acolyte delivered exactly what I literally asked for.

I was just expecting something more... fun?  Personable?  Capable of displaying more emotions than "deadpan" and "dull surprise"?  These Jedi are non-heroic, but it's mostly just because they're awful judges of character and kind of sh*tty people.  Which is realistic, I guess, it's just not very fun or interesting.

Spoiler

Mae goes to see Qimir, who is apparently sleeping off a night of heavy drinking with the door open in a shop whose owner he either murdered or at least mugged.  That's an awfully trusting criminal.  Mae drops that she's got three more Jedi to kill, including Mr. No-Sell, and that she has to off one of them without using a weapon in order to make her master happy.  She asks Qimir for poison and gets a flask of ominously glowing something or other and a speech about the Jedi's philosophy.

's it just me, or does Osha have a shoshinsha tattoo?

Master Sol asks Osha if she believes that Mae is behind Indara's murder... and somehow absolutely nobody is considering the remote possibility that there could be a totally unrelated person who just happens to look similar to Osha and her believed-to-be-dead sister Mae in the galaxy's 100 quintillion person population.  Master Sol apparently feels a bit guilty about Mae's "death", despite claiming he's made peace with it.

Mae shows up at Torbin's just as Sol and co. are rocking up to the front gate, and starts guilt-tripping him over some crime he's supposedly committed and offering him "absolution".

Osha has a vision and takes off in a different direction, and Torbin straight-up chugs the poison before anyone can get to him.  That she beats them to Torbin kind of begs the question of why the rest of the Jedi on site took such a roundabout way to Torbin's room.  Osha, of course, has to immediately behave in a maximally incriminating manner by entering the room with the fresh corpse and touching evidence.  (Naturally, the thing to do with a phial of what you think might be poison is stick that sh*t right under your nose and take a DEEP breath...)

This really is just a full-on f***ing idiot plot.

This story can ONLY occur because everyone in it is behaving like the biggest idiot possible at all times.

Spoiler

Yord enters the room through the same door as Osha and calmly announces that Osha didn't do it, because he was watching her the entire time.  Why he didn't seem to feel compelled to stop her from tampering with evidence at a murder scene is another matter entirely.  He was conveniently killed by a poison native to Osha and Mei's home planet, despite this apparently not being it.

Yord proposes a reasonable plan to capture the imposter in the apothecary shop that the poison had to have come from, and the Padawan quite sensibly proposes that it'd be easier to just put the civilian they wrongfully arrested and are holding indefinitely without trial in danger by having her go talk to the potential accomplice-to-murder in an environment full of poisons.  Neither Master Sol nor the other Jedi in the group see anything wrong with effectively strongarming this civilian prisoner into assisting with an arrest of a dangerous suspect.

Seriously.  What the hell.

If this is how the Jedi protected the peace in the Republic for thousands of years, it's amazing it took another 113 years for them to get Order 66'd.  

Spoiler

Osha, for her part, goes in wearing a shawl she buys off the street to conceal the fact that the wire she's wearing is a droid's head the size of her fist.

Qimir outs himself to someone he either taks a while to notice isn't Mae or notices right away isn't Mae but feels like monologuing about his having provided a murder weapon to Mae to... and Master Sol shows his sagacity and infinite capacity for logic by... oh wait he doesn't do any of those things.  He offers to let Qimir off with just a warning despite Qimir having just confessed to being an accessory to at least one RECENT murder.

There it is... the obligatory "I have a bad feeling about this".

Spoiler

Sol, buddy, if you don't want her to confront her sister why are you keeping her with you instead of sending her back to the ship?

They have a brief back and forth about grief and revenge which is dialog as flat and lifeless as the pair of wooden planks delivering it, and then Osha drops the bombshell of having figured out Mae's hit list.  It's four Jedi stationed on her homeworld 16 years ago: the already dead Master Indara and Master Torbin, the token wookiee, and Master Sol himself. 

Mae is two thirds of the way to officially being a serial killer, and our boy Master Sol is telling Osha to have faith in her.  His confrontation with her mere seconds of screen time later is a little more lively, with a sense of quiet horror that she's murdered two people.  Her oh-so-witty reply is to try an overly elaborate kung-fu move that he stops with one hand without even moving.  So we get another meticulously choreographed but surprisingly dull fight scene where Mae is just swinging for the fences 24/7 and the Jedi is seemingly bored and barely moving.  This fight does feel slightly more lively than Carrie-Anne Moss's completely phoned in performance, but mainly because Master Sol uses a few throws instead of just blocking.  He also stealthily disarmed her.  Mae has a breakdown after Sol reveals Osha is alive and Yord confirms it.

Osha actually blunders into Mae mid-chase as she's trying to escape, but misses her shot with the stungun by a country mile.  The Jedi decide to just stare at her instead of chasing the violent offender getting away through the city.

Sol talks to his boss, and she wants to set up a council meeting.

Mae, meanwhile, goes right back to Qimir's place and tries to kill him right in front of the Jedi keeping watch.  Somehow, they don't notice.

Jump cut to Khofar, a forest planet where the wookiee jedi lives.  We get to see him scare off some scavengers trying to loot his home by roaring and using the Force to disarm them before snapping their gun like a twig.  As establishing character moments go, that's pretty on-brand for a Wookiee.  

 

On the whole, The Acolyte's second episode was definitely better than the first.  It has all the same problems, but the plot feels at least a little more together and flows better from set piece to set piece.  It's still an idiot plot, but it's no longer an incoherent one.

If it were handled differently - like having civilian law enforcement trying to solve these murders instead of the Jedi - The Acolyte could be an interesting story about hunting a killer out for revenge across the stars.  Its main narrative flaw is that most of its cast are Jedi.  They've got some good actors here but their performances come across as wooden and boring because they're playing characters for whom displays of emotion are fundamentally out of character.  By the same token, the antagonist's performance comes across just as bland and insipid despite a capable actress the character is limited to the extremes of just a few emotions like anger and sorrow.  So it leaves just two people in the story thus far who actually behave like relatable people, so the performances don't really shine because they're sharing every scene with flat characters.

The Jedi just aren't relatable as characters.  Audiences can relate to Din Djarin's desire to protect the Child, to Boba Fett's desire for a better life, to Obi-Wan's lingering guilt over Anakin, or to Cassian Andor's smoldering discontent with the injustices he suffers.  There's nothing to relate to in Sol, Indara, Yord, etc. thus far.  Even Osha's participation in the story seems little more than incidental.

[the_foul_fowl]

Spoiler

 

's it just me, or does Osha have a shoshinsha tattoo?

I spotted that too! 

Caught both episodes yesterday, and I'm kinda meh about it so far. The premise of having a murder mystery set in Star Wars is intriguing, but as of now it's not exactly compelling tv. Might be a combination of the production values and characters up to now, hope it improves over time.

At least the starship designs looked nice, I liked that they seemed to reflect s more simple, geometrical aesthetic

I wonder if Yoda would make a cameo... technically he's been training Jedi for a few hundred years!

[Seto Kaiba]

By sheer coincidence, I noticed a minor call forward in The Acolyte's first episode.

The planet that...

Spoiler

... Osha ends up marooned on when the Republic prison transport she's on suffers a prison break and crashes...

... first appeared in Star Wars: the Clone Wars as the setting for a brief story arc where the son of an assassinated Separatist senator derailed peace talks on Mandalore and tried to hire the Death Watch to assassinate Count Dooku as revenge.

That episode just happened to be next on my watch-through of Clone Wars after watching The Acolyte.

[sh9000]

Only watched the first episode so far.  Oh cool Carrie-Anne Moss.....what?  Hmm not sure if I'll continue.

[Big s]

On 6/5/2024 at 8:42 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Spoiler

 

We're doing the old "the suspect matches your description, even though it's literaly impossible for it to have been you" schtick.  They even brought the bar owner, and arrest her even though they can't actually link her to the crime.  (It's only possible for one person in a galaxy of 100 quintillion to look like her?)

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Big s]

On 6/5/2024 at 8:42 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

All right... wading into this one while the fine folks from animal control de-bat my attic.  (No, that isn't a euphemism for anything.)🤣

 

  Reveal hidden contents

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A hundred years before the rise of the Empire, it is a time of peace.

The Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic have

prospered for centuries without war.

 

Then, in what sense is this Star Wars?  Star Wars without wars is just stars... and that's either astronomy or zombie bait.

  Reveal hidden contents

But in the dark corners of the galaxy, a powerful few

learn to use the Force in secret.

So... the Jedi?  As noted, they make up one ten-trillionth of the galactic population at most.

  Reveal hidden contents

One of them, a lone assassin,

risks discovery to seek revenge....

*loud snoring noises*

You guys didn't even get the text fade right!  It fades out twice as fast as the transition to the planetary atmosphere.

... we're in Japan?  Did someone tell the Star Wars guys Ueda's a real place in Nagano?  It doesn't look like the Urban Economic Development Association... too rural.

And we open with the titular character staring dramatically into the middle distance while dressed like they robbed a renaissance fair while in ninja cosplay.  She's wearing a cloth mask, some kind of chest plate that looks like a single gargantuan lamellar scale, and ring mail... with what appears to be a purple bath towel on her head that's really the hood of an unwise purple knit robe.  What the hell is the ring mail in aid of?  She's fighting people with laser guns and laser swords that melt metal on contact.

Wow... we're right into it.  1:30 into the first episode and we're already at the fight scene that was featured in the teaser at The Phantom Menace's re-release.  She walks right up to Carrie-Anne Moss's character in this dingy space pub, announces she has unfinished business with her, does a dramatic kung-fu pose, and says "Attack me with all your strength".

Well, the first casualty of this roaring rampage of revenge is my immersion.  RIP, you were with us for only two minutes and just three lines of (intelligible) spoken dialog, but forever in our hearts.💀 

Who wrote this crap?  Oh... Leslye Headland, the executive producer, wrote this.  Delightful.  That bodes SO WELL for this show.

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The only thing saving this scene is that literally everyone else present seems to think this is incredibly stupid and bust out laughing.

This leads directly to the fight from the teaser.

Seeing it now in full, the trailer's cut was far more exciting than the genuine article.  One of the main things bringing it down is Carrie-Anne Moss's performance.  She's totally phoning it in, in a very obvious way.  There's pulling your punches, and there's making it painfully obvious you're pulling your punches.  It's like watching a solo martial arts demonstration by Amandla Stenberg that just happens to be taking place in the same space as Carrie-Anne Moss unenthusiastically doing a warmup before a jog.  Moss comes across not as tranquil or calm and collected, but as bored until she's blindsided by being killed by a single throwing knife that appears to have no edge and to have only penetrated about a quarter of an inch.  That has to be poison, otherwise this is in barely in "does it need stitches?" territory.

After all that fuss and being so prominent in the advertising, Carrie-Anne Moss...

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... is only in this series for six minutes and fifty-two seconds.

She doesn't even make it to the title card!

That first scene on the ship after the title card?  The droid in the hallway looks like a prop nicked from an episode of Red Dwarf or a fan film!  Actually, the same could be said for the whole scene.

Shield generator repairs on the outside of the ship... don't they have droids for this?  They had droids for this in the prequel trilogy.  I do appreciate the attempt to tone down the incredibly racist asian caricature the Trade Federation was in the prequels though.

Oh no, a small fire provokes a dramatic flashback that causes our lead character to stare vacantly into the abyss for a while while remembered sound effects happen.  

Can we briefly stop to appreciate that we have a character who is a repair technician on a ship whose owners don't care about workplace safety who is named Osha?

As in, Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Naming wise, this is up there with the likes of Cad Bane, Moralo Eval, or Darth Sideous.

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The ship is boarded by Jedi... who look goofy.  Maybe it's the mustard colored tabard over the cream robe with the white cape, but the two of them honestly look like they wandered onto the wrong set from either a Lord of the Rings fan film or a revival of The Chronicles of Narnia.  

Hey...that pointed I mentioned before gets raised.  Only droids are supposed to be doing repairs on the outside of the hull in space.  Apparently "Osha" is defying OSHA. 

The Jedi starts to do a thing with his hand, and the crew immediately tell where her quarters are.  Osha returns to her room to find the Jedi awkwardly squatting on her bunk it's clearly not a space he can vertically fit into to sit normally.  I feel like this scene should've been rethought a bit so it doesn't look like this guy was waiting not more than 5 seconds between retakes to stand up?

Nobody's delivery here is believable.  The whole interrogation scene is really stilted... and there's a throwaway line that's clearly meant to get the politically-motivated crowd involved.

We're doing the old "the suspect matches your description, even though it's literaly impossible for it to have been you" schtick.  They even brought the bar owner, and arrest her even though they can't actually link her to the crime.  (It's only possible for one person in a galaxy of 100 quintillion to look like her?)

Good lord, that droid looks like a Red Dwarf prop too... honestly, it's like a low-rent version of Kryten with an immobile face.

Wait... the ship that's leaving isn't the one that pulled up!  What the hell.

So we get to see Master Sol at the Jedi temple... I can't help but feel that using the Force to open the door is a bit extra considering it's an automatic door AND there's a manual button.

Apparently the Jedi consider a single person's identification of the perpetrator by face alone to be "strong" evidence.  It seems they don't actually care about justice, just about making an example of someone.  How... heroic.

So apparently droid pilots are just built into the chairs... and can be turned off by talking to them?  Nothing about this sequence of events makes sense... and this has to be the least secure prison ship imaginable.  One has to wonder why the droid pilots haven't turned back on with the ship clearly out of control and crashing.

... so the Jedi went and picked up the escape pods from the prison ship, but didn't look into the actual crashed ship itself? 

This seems to be an authentic idiot plot so far.

The story is only able to proceed because everyone involved (most of them Jedi) behaves in the stupidest manner possible.

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So we've got Osha wandering around in the desert chasing herself... but she's hallucinating, and it's all very dramatic in a forced and uninteresting way.

We're even doing The Shining-style creepy twin rhyming.

The Republic had the time go go all the way to Carlac and pick up the escape pods and go all the way back to Coruscant with the prisoners and imprison them... why is this second trip necessary?  

Blech, the wardrobe choices here... Master Sol is wearing a brown undershirt, a sage green shirt over that, then his mustard tabard, and a brown robe.  The Padawan in the awful makeup is wearing salmon pink, cream, and mustard.  It's like the wardrobe department's marching orders for Jedi were "dress this man like a mid-90's ad for a Taco Bell."  The interior decoration is no better.  We've got seafoam green walls, with white and red trim to match the white and red floors.  Who picked these colors?  I want to know who looked at this and said "Yes, that's exactly the look I am going for."  This is like a spot for Ugliest Homes in America.

It really is remarkable how remarkably unlikeable all of these characters are.

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I'm calling it now, Osha is going to die.  We're gonna see a Dahj and Soji Asha type situation.

"The Jedi live in a dream."

With the reverb on that voice, it sounds like the speaker lives in a plastic bucket.

It's somewhat satisfying to learn that speaker is, in fact, wearing a big plastic bucket... er... a helmet... on his head and THAT'S why he sounds like someone doing a bad Duke Nukem impression from the inside of a bucket.  I'd call him Lord Buckethead, but that name is already taken by someone much saner.

Also... he talks about how the Acolyte kills without a weapon.  Does... does he not count all the throwing knives as weapons?  Who is he narrating this for?  I know the Sith are edgelords supreme, but is he just standing on this cliff talking to himself or what?  Does he have fourth wall awareness?  Is he talking to the audience?

 

All in all... ugh.  One episode down and I am already ready to call this one the worst of the Disney Star Wars shows so far.

It's not a slow start.  There's a LOT going on here and a lot to unpack.  It's just that all of it is nonsensical and it's packaged with some of the worst acting and writing I've seen since the prequel trilogy.

I guess the bar owner only recognizes her due to the fact that she made him put railings on the second floor of his bar due to OSHA standards.

[jvmacross]

6 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Only watched the first episode so far.  Oh cool Carrie-Anne Moss.....what?  Hmm not sure if I'll continue.

She may re-appear in flashbacks when the show is ready to reveal the terrible deeds the 4 Jedi did to Mae or whatever those people are...

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

She may re-appear in flashbacks when the show is ready to reveal the terrible deeds the 4 Jedi did to Mae or whatever those people are...

Even if she does, there's no payoff.  

Master Indara's less a character than she is a plot device, and it's pretty clear they only cast Carrie-Anne Moss to play her for the sake of the trailers to convince prospective xennial viewers this'd be a spectacular martial arts feature like The Matrix.  (Which is a REALLY dated reference if you think about it.  They were leaning on borrowed gloss from a TWENTY-FIVE YEAR OLD movie to sell this series to us.)

[Big s]

Saw the second episode and this show obviously didn’t hire very good writers. I’d still say that so far it’s not as bad as the Obi show, but not as good as the boba show, even though that one wasn’t that good either.

Spoiler

Why did the bad twin have to have someone trick the doorman droid just so she could throw a jammer on the droids lid when the droid always has its lid showing.

as Seto said previously, no one used the front door. And why didn’t good twin say anything to anyone as soon as she noticed super hippie instead of manhandling everything first.

Good twin was totally hitting on the trainee.

Spoiler

“I’m better company than a droid, and more flexible “

 

Edited June 7 by Big s

[jvmacross]

6 hours ago, Big s said:

 

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“I’m better company than a droid, and more flexible “

 

Lando would disagree....

[Big s]

2 hours ago, jvmacross said:

Lando would disagree....

Lando definitely has a freaky side 

[Roy Focker]

Even with its problems I'm not hating it (yet) like I did with Ahsoka, Boba Fett and Kenobi. Those shows were sequels to better shows made before them and had really good trailers that lied to you. 

This show's trailer warned everyone to lower their expectations. So far that's working me. The Acolyte looks cheap, has wooden acting and writing is too simplistic but I'm not that mad at it because they didn't over hype the show.

[Duke Togo]

Not to cross franchises, but the Jedi come off as almost Vulcan in this show. There's an air of superiority and righteousness about them that is not flattering, which I think is very intentional. I don't think we're supposed to like them very much. Though, I do like Sol a lot.

[Seto Kaiba]

As a casual Star Wars viewer, I definitely don't feel like the trailers for The Acolyte warned me to lower my expectations for the series.

IMO, both the trailers and the extended preview for The Acolyte made the series look far more action-focused and exciting than what we actually got.  They also made it look a LOT more professional-feeling and polished than the finished product by showcasing the action rather than the writing and omitting the truly cringeworthy aspects of the scenes they'd used for the promotional materials like Mae's unintentionally hilarious tendency to pose dramatically and challenge Jedi to "attack [her] with all [their] strength".

 

Spoiler

Can we take a moment and appreciate how truly imbecilic the writing behind our antagonist is?

Mae's entire MO is to walk up to a Jedi Master - a highly-disciplined warrior-monk raised by a monastic order with a philosophy of nonaggression and technical pacifism - and pose dramatically before challenging them to attack her for no reason.

The showrunners expect us to be able to take Mae seriously while she does this, despite also showing that even the characters in the story find this behavior either laughable or completely absurd.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Duke Togo said:

Not to cross franchises, but the Jedi come off as almost Vulcan in this show. There's an air of superiority and righteousness about them that is not flattering, which I think is very intentional. I don't think we're supposed to like them very much. Though, I do like Sol a lot.

I had the same thought.

Specifically, the Jedi in The Acolyte remind me a lot of the Vulcans from Star Trek: Enterprise.  They exhude that same arrogant belief in their own superiority, they show the same unwillingness to consider evidence that contradicts their own conclusions until hard evidence leaves their view in tatters, and they show similar cracks in their emotional reserve where irritation leaks out into snide and snippy responses when one of their perceived inferiors isn't toeing the line.  Master Sol is no exception to most of this too.  Look at how readily he dismisses Yord's views out of hand except when they align to his own desires.

Lee Jung-jae's delivery as Master Sol reminds me a lot of Gary Graham's performance as Minister Soval later in Enterprise's run after his character's racist views toward Humans had softened.

[Big s]

7 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

The Acolyte looks cheap, has wooden acting and writing is too simplistic but I'm not that mad at it because they didn't over hype the show.

That really the one thing keeping this show from being as bad as the Obi show. I’m not mad at it despite its flaws and that’s probably because they don’t have an established character that they’re ruining. There’s some serious cheese, some less than stellar acting, some terrible writing, but they haven’t trashed a major character like Boba, Obi, Vader or Lando yet. We’re still only two episodes in and at this point it could go south very easily or we might luck out and the show may end up tolerable. I doubt it will end up great and may not even be good, but by not screwing up a beloved icon, it may be one of the least offensive D+ projects 

[kajnrig]

I think my one big gripe with the show - otherwise I feel for it about as much as I feel for anything Star Wars, which is to say, very little either way - is that they've decided to stick with the Prequels depiction of the Jedi as opposed to just, y'know, changing them to be more interesting. With this being Wuxia Star Wars and all, I'd have expected them to pattern the Jedi after the Shaolin monks of the big screen, from which they could have drawn all manner of varied tropes: the overly strict headmaster, the down-to-earth teacher who looks out for his students, the perpetually drunk one, the mischievous meat-eater, the entitled bully, etc. The Jedi of the Prequels was always a half-baked idea (much like a lot else of the Prequels), one that I'm disappointed to see persist. You can have a cast of pious monks who are still characters. This insistence on everyone being emotionless... it's such a detraction, I don't get why they don't just ignore it.

Otherwise, I think it's alright. I think they could have undercranked the fights a bit to make them punchier, but they're alright. The edit on this three-second sequence (starting at 0:12 in case the timestamp doesn't stick) struck me as particularly bad - the first shot has her in the air, foot coming down from above, the second shot shows him defending a kick coming from below.

I had a laugh at the whole edgelord Mae challenge thee to a duel pose. It was obviously meant to be a ridiculous display, which it was, and it illustrated an aspect of Mae's character, that being a bit of naivete and greenness. Yes, it's a bit stupid, the show as a whole is a bit stupid, but... how to put it? I sat through all four Ip Mans. I can sit through this.

[Raikkonen]

Star Wars brand entered religious status quite some time ago. Either don't believe in it anymore or you feel obligated to somehow defend it. 

[Seto Kaiba]

18 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Star Wars brand entered religious status quite some time ago. Either don't believe in it anymore or you feel obligated to somehow defend it. 

 

Man, they weren't kidding... the prequels really DO have a meme for everything!

Seriously though, there seem to be plenty of Star Wars fans willing to find and acknowledge both the good and the bad in pre- and post-Disney material.

[Raikkonen]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Seriously though, there seem to be plenty of Star Wars fans willing to find and acknowledge both the good and the bad in pre- and post-Disney material.

I remember trying hard to preach the good of Epi 1 and Epi 2 during their releases. But, looking back, undoubtedly my love for the OT embossed into my childhood was dictating my opinion then.

The turning point was Force Awakens, at the moment of the "a bigger death star" that just sucks energy out of a star, then shoots a beam that precisely splits into different directions to pinpoint a variety of planets, and it's all visible from the ground of another planet. Right there, at the cinema, I leaned forward and quietly said "What ******* am I watching?"

Since then, I'm relieved I'm no longer under it's spell, and saved myself a lot money and space. 😁

[mechaninac]

17 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Since then, I'm relieved I'm no longer under it's spell, and saved myself a lot money and space. 😁

That, right there, is the greatest, most ironic and self-defeating, "contribution" Disney/Lucasfilm under KK ever made to Star Wars and I, for one, am eternally grateful for all the savings from them turning the IP into something mostly unwatchable and impossible to support financially in any form.

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

The turning point was Force Awakens, at the moment of the "a bigger death star" that just sucks energy out of a star, then shoots a beam that precisely splits into different directions to pinpoint a variety of planets, and it's all visible from the ground of another planet. Right there, at the cinema, I leaned forward and quietly said "What ******* am I watching?"

As a casual Star Wars enjoyer, breaking points like this are a bit beyond what I can properly understand.

I've never been invested in the deep lore of the Expanded Universe so most of what gets the fandom upset goes right over my head.  I'm rather happy to just take these stories as they come and weigh them on their individual merits.  (I'll spare everyone the engineer's rant about diverging vs. collimating beams.)

Most of what I see when I look at the flaws in Disney-era Star Wars is the new heads at LucasFilm struggling to get to grips with what their audience wants from Star Wars.  They're still at the point of building stories around existing characters and set pieces they know (or think) the fans already like instead of considering what makes a Star Wars story fun and engaging.  The Acolyte is hardcore pandering to fans of the Jedi, but it's kind of dull because the Jedi themselves aren't relatable or interesting characters.

 

12 minutes ago, Raikkonen said:

Since then, I'm relieved I'm no longer under it's spell, and saved myself a lot money and space. 😁

As long as everyone's doing what's right for them as an individual, it's all good. 👍

[pengbuzz]

59 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As long as everyone's doing what's right for them as an individual, it's all good. 👍

I'm still waiting for one of the Zygons to do a Vulcan neck pinch on a Moclan soldier....

[Big s]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

I'm still waiting for one of the Zygons to do a Vulcan neck pinch on a Moclan soldier....

I’m not even sure which franchise you’re Mocklan here

[Tking22]

I watched episode 1 last night and it was just rather boring. Even the much touted lightsaber scenes weren't really anything special, I doubt I'll jump right into episode 2, I'll probably wait for the whole season to wrap up then binge it. Funnily enough I just started Jedi Survivor on Gamepass, that's scratching the Star Wars and Jedi itch I had, I also have the newest season of Bad Batch to watch, that first episode didn't really do anything for me. 

[Thom]

Pretty meh about this. Underwhelmed for the most part. I won't quibble and say I was not watching for CAM (Carrie-Ann Moss) but I was...

...and then she was gone in under ten minutes... What an all-out waste of an actress! The one playing the green Jedi Masters should have been there and CAM should have had her role.

And then there are the easy-out McGuffins.

Spoiler

1) an ex-Jedi believed to have murdered another is apprehended by a too young Knight and his Padawan, himself an old friend of the suspect. I would think a group of seasoned Jedi would have been there for overwhelming numbers of an obviously dangerous individual. I would have expected the same kind of entourage that tried to apprehend Palpy.
2) said suspect is transported by droid guards on a standard prison ship. A situation just ripe for an escape. They believe she killed a Jedi Master and she is not under live guard!
3) of course, the escapees blame the suspect for the escape when they are caught, and only one is mind-dived to find out that she (said suspect) risked herself to save him. The others are not mind-dived so as to not reveal that she in fact chose to stay.
4) the real murderess gains access to a Jedi Temple, the first time, by fouling the security system at the gate. The second time she gains access it is as easy as coming in through a sky light. (and yes, I am wondering if there was a pan under the floating Jedi to capture his 'release?')
5) and of course, the suspect, who is following all the others to the next victim, veers off in a temple she has never been in - and somehow arrives at the next victim before everyone else who were already rushing to get there... This sets up another moment where she is thought to be the killer, which is quickly defused because she was followed and the other Knight vouches that she did not do it. So, no reason to do it at all.
6) and back to CAM, an egregious misuse of Carrie-Ann Moss. This is an actress who should be playing the green Jedi Master's role, not being wasted in the first ten minutes. I'd be more invested if she was still in it, as obviously she was brought on to gain interest, but it was quickly wasted.

For me, this show (so far) ranks way bellow the Boba and Obi-Wan series. It has some great sets and costumes, great FX and such, but it needs better writers and directors - and to stop allowing obvious short-cuts to just to push the scenes. Was really hoping for more.
 

[jvmacross]

Well that explained....nothing

[Duke Togo]

Good episode. More pieces to the puzzle, but we're still missing some key pieces, I think.

[Big s]

55 minutes ago, Thom said:

For me, this show (so far) ranks way bellow the Boba and Obi-Wan series.

The only reason that for me it ranks slightly above the Obi show is that it’s not ruining a beloved character or characters. Just a bunch of crappy characters that I don’t care about in a show I don’t really care much about.