The Acolyte - Disney Plus Star Wars Series

[Black Valkyrie]

 

 

[Thom]

10 hours ago, Big s said:

I thought she was kind forgettable other than having one great scene     
still best part of the whole show 

Her fight was the best part of the show! As for forgettable versus memorable, the bar was set pretty low.

[Big s]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Did anyone honestly think it was going to get a second season? 

The Acolyte was eight episodes of pure idiot plot starring an assortment of shallow stock characters... and Qimir.

I actually was about 50/50 on it. They like to make silly mistakes on D+, but lately they’ve been getting a little quicker with the cancel button. 
Willow sucked, but they pulled that one pretty fast and I think that was kinda the beginning there. It’s just too bad that they won’t just make better shows that people could care about watching in the first place.

The Acolyte didn’t deserve a second season and honestly felt complete for the most part by the en anyway. The good guys beat the bad guys and went off into the sunset or something. There were a few loose ends, but nothing that felt important.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

He was neither outwardly chaotic or evil, which is what made him interesting. There was no evil cackling, mustache twirling, or constant threats of violence, which makes him a lot different than your typical Star Wars villain.

Exactly.  Qimir was an antagonist written for a more mature audience.  He's friendly, reasonable, and sincere.  He seems to genuinely care about Osha and Mae's wellbeing.  But his sincere belief in his own philosophy also enables him to commit acts of the most staggering cruelty and violence secure in the knowledge that it's the right thing to do.  Qimir's nice guy exterior isn't a mask hiding pure malevolence like Palpatine's was.  He was probably a good person before he was driven to the Dark Side, and likely still sees himself as one.

In that sense, he reminds me a lot of Marc Alaimo's Gul Dukat from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  Dukat was another villain who was friendly, polite, and even charming whose self-centered morality enabled him to flip-flop between acts of genuine valor and hideous cruelty based purely on his own rationalizations.

Qimir's quite a contrast to the extremely generic Jedi characters or the terribly underdeveloped doormat Osha and psycho Mae.

[Tking22]

It was a bad show, but honestly, I thought Disney would stand by it, viewership be damned, quality be damned, money lost be damned.

[Mog]

So, Qimir wants to be “free” to do his Sith-like stuff. . . by casually killing a bunch of Jedi and drawing even more attention to himself?

I personally don’t care for the character.  Cool fight scenes, but meh, I’m basically ambivalent to more stories about him.

And with those markings on his back, you know it would devolve into “Verny, my old Jedi master, hurt me with her lightsaber whip!” dreck.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Big s said:

I actually was about 50/50 on it. They like to make silly mistakes on D+, but lately they’ve been getting a little quicker with the cancel button. 

Each major studio and network that decided to launch their own proprietary streaming service has been frantically searching for a "killer app"-type show that can be the main draw for their streaming service.  That quiet desperation for a hit series to carry their platform has let a lot of studios and networks to greenlight series concepts that were not ready for primetime... and then cancel them just as quickly when they underperform for cost reasons.

Streaming originals competing with each other on visual quality first and foremost has driven production costs through the roof.  When a single season of a streaming original can have a budget rivaling that of a major motion picture, new shows going direct-to-streaming have to hit their stride immediately or risk cancellation.  There's no more forgiveness for bad first seasons... unless you're Paramount, then you just set hundreds of millions of dollars on fire for no reason other than refusing to admit you were wrong.

The Acolyte cost $180 million.  That's 50% more than what was spent on The Mandalorian and very close to what was spent to produce Dune: Part Two ($190M).  With its garbage viewereship numbers and overwhelmingly poor audience reviews, Disney would've had to be stark raving mad to renew it for another season.  As it stands, it's one one of the most expensive direct-to-streaming flops of all time alongside fellow Disney+ one-season wonder She-Hulk.  

[azrael]

Remember, studios, like Disney, are looking at the numbers. Always the numbers. The numbers tell the cold truth. Low word-of-mouth leads to less views leads to less subscribers. And with little chance that they will make a Blu-ray collection of this series that no one wanted to watch, there is no real way to recoup the cost. Again, watch Matt Damon's interview on Hot Ones. Before streaming, studios could recoup the costs by releasing collections to physical media. But with less and less emphasis on physical media these days (thanks streaming), there is fewer ways to recoup the cost of shows that do badly. So the bar to reach to avoid cancellation is now significantly higher.

[Dynaman]

3 hours ago, Tking22 said:

It was a bad show, but honestly, I thought Disney would stand by it, viewership be damned, quality be damned, money lost be damned.

Disney can't afford to keep losing money any longer.  D+ pulled in a profit (so I hear) and they want it to continue to do so.

Also - though THIS show is off the table I would not be surprised to see these characters come back in another show.

[Tking22]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

Disney can't afford to keep losing money any longer.  D+ pulled in a profit (so I hear) and they want it to continue to do so.

Also - though THIS show is off the table I would not be surprised to see these characters come back in another show.

I'm thinking they'll wrap up the Acolyte story, eventually, with a Marvel Star Wars short-series comic, unless we get something else live action in that era I doubt we'll ever see any of these characters again in live action. 

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, Tking22 said:

I'm thinking they'll wrap up the Acolyte story, eventually, with a Marvel Star Wars short-series comic, unless we get something else live action in that era I doubt we'll ever see any of these characters again in live action. 

I know they'd already announced there were going to be one-shot comics about the backstories of some of the characters... but IIRC the only one they've actually published is the first one, for Kelnacca.  

I'd assume anything that hasn't already gone to the printers WRT The Acolyte is probably gonna be cancelled in light of the show's abysmal performance and cancellation.  They're supposedly only part of a larger project anyway, so they can probably drop them without any real problem.

[Big s]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Qimir was an antagonist written for a more mature audience.

Actually he was a protagonist. The Jedi were the Antagonists of this particular series. They were kidnapping children and then abandoning them. They lied to OSHA, they killed her family. One was a spoiled brat that just wanted to go home and when things went south he went into hiding and eventually committed suicide. One used to be her best bud, but didn’t trust her and constantly threw accusations at her. Another was trying to get in her pants when she knew OSHA was dealing with a lot of heavy mental trauma. Another had Drinking problems and died in a bar. One was so clouded by self righteousness that he lied and could’ve ended all the conflict by just telling the truth. And the worst offender was a wookie that decided to do the ultimate evil by shaving its head. And they were all led by an evil green lady that abuses her pupils until they become a sad simp, and it’s obvious she was trying that evil technique on Smilo.

Smilo was the only one that took OSHA in and didn’t lie to her and gave her the freedom to make her own choices. He saved her at the end of the series.

[Thom]

56 minutes ago, Big s said:

Actually he was a protagonist. The Jedi were the Antagonists of this particular series. They were kidnapping children and then abandoning them. They lied to OSHA, they killed her family. One was a spoiled brat that just wanted to go home and when things went south he went into hiding and eventually committed suicide. One used to be her best bud, but didn’t trust her and constantly threw accusations at her. Another was trying to get in her pants when she knew OSHA was dealing with a lot of heavy mental trauma. Another had Drinking problems and died in a bar. One was so clouded by self righteousness that he lied and could’ve ended all the conflict by just telling the truth. And the worst offender was a wookie that decided to do the ultimate evil by shaving its head. And they were all led by an evil green lady that abuses her pupils until they become a sad simp, and it’s obvious she was trying that evil technique on Smilo.

Smilo was the only one that took OSHA in and didn’t lie to her and gave her the freedom to make her own choices. He saved her at the end of the series.

Which just goes to show that when you try to make the good guys just like normal folk, rather than living up to their ideals, you make them the enemy.

I am sick of 'gritty' heroes.

[Big s]

6 minutes ago, Thom said:

Which just goes to show that when you try to make the good guys just like normal folk, rather than living up to their ideals, you make them the enemy.

I am sick of 'gritty' heroes.

It really was a big mistake to portray the Jedi this way. It makes it really tough to go back into other projects and try to make them heroes when they’re now a metaphor for the Spanish Inquisition. It makes Palpatine seem like a hero for having a plan to wipe them out

[Seto Kaiba]

57 minutes ago, Big s said:

Actually he was a protagonist. The Jedi were the Antagonists of this particular series.

"Protagonist" and "Antagonist" doesn't actually imply a moral alignment... they're not "Good guy" and "Bad guy", even if they are frequently used that way.

By definition, a "protagonist" is just one of the principal characters whose actions drive the events of the story in a work of fiction.

An "antagonist", by definition, is just a character (or concept) that plays an adversarial role to the protagonist in the story.

Osha and Sol are the protagonists in the story, because they are the focus characters of the story and their actions are what drives the progress of the narrative.  Qimir and Mae are the story's antagonists, because they are not the story's main focus and are acting in opposition to the protagonists.

 

Moral alignment-wise... well... in terms of good guys, we have no good guys. 

Everyone left standing at the end of The Acolyte is either an unrepentant murderer or a corrupt Jedi looking to prevent the Jedi Order from being held accountable for the criminal actions of its members.  The dead aren't much better.  All four dead Jedi are co-conspirators in the coverup of a mass casualty event directly instigated by the Jedi, with Sol and Torbin both having directly instigated the violence and Indara having ordered the coverup.  The witches aren't much better off, being an outlawed Cult of Evil living in exile who've used some kind of Dangerous Forbidden Technique to create a child and then split it into two children (or considering their behavior when grown, two halves of a whole idiot) and couldn't resist trying to antagonize the Jedi for no real reason.

Everyone in the story is a sh*thead, so it's hard to care about anybody.

[Dynaman]

My friend was a juror in a criminal trial, one batch of morons bought drugs off another moron.  They took a gun and stole the drug dealer's money and then to hide from the cops moved to the hotel across the street from the hotel where they did the crime.  Even though my friend was only a juror in the trial for the buyers/robbers my friend said every juror in the jury room wanted to convict everyone. 

This show is a lot like that...

[Big s]

51 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

An "antagonist", by definition, is just a character (or concept) that plays an adversarial role to the protagonist in the story.

That’s defining the Jedi and especially Sol. He’s the adversary. His actions led to everything from the start and constantly antagonizes the situation by his lies and his constant stalling to reveal the truth and he’s also antagonizing the audience by playing on their frustrations at the show itself.

Smilo fits into your protagonist description pretty well because he helps drive the story forward especially when he teams up with OSHA. They end Sols constant antagonism in a pretty epic way in comparison to the rest of the show.

57 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Everyone in the story is a sh*thead, so it's hard to care about anybody.

Definitely can’t disagree here though. They’re all basically two sides of the same butt hole

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, Big s said:

That’s defining the Jedi and especially Sol. He’s the adversary. His actions led to everything from the start and constantly antagonizes the situation by his lies and his constant stalling to reveal the truth and he’s also antagonizing the audience by playing on their frustrations at the show itself.

Smilo fits into your protagonist description pretty well because he helps drive the story forward especially when he teams up with OSHA. They end Sols constant antagonism in a pretty epic way in comparison to the rest of the show.

Osha and Sol are the protagonists of The Acolyte... they're the ones who the story follows and they're the ones whose actions drive the plot both in the backstory and the present day events.  Just because Sol is a bad person doesn't make him an antagonist.  That, and his regret about it, technically make him more of a Byronic Hero given his disdain for the Jedi's rigid code, his tragic past, and his passionate belief in his own righteousness that sets off the show's conflict in the past.

Mae and Qimir spend most of the series offscreen, they only really appear when they're interacting with the protagonists, and are defined pretty much entirely by their opposition to Osha and Sol.  They are the antagonists.

The line does blur a bit right at the end, but only because Osha changes sides right before the end.

Had there been a season two and had Osha remained the show's focus character in it, Qimir would have been considered a protagonist then as her companion.

 

[Big s]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Osha and Sol are the protagonists of The Acolyte... they're the ones who the story follows and they're the ones whose actions drive the plot both in the backstory and the present day events.  Just because Sol is a bad person doesn't make him an antagonist.  That, and his regret about it, technically make him more of a Byronic Hero given his disdain for the Jedi's rigid code, his tragic past, and his passionate belief in his own righteousness that sets off the show's conflict in the past.

Mae and Qimir spend most of the series offscreen, they only really appear when they're interacting with the protagonists, and are defined pretty much entirely by their opposition to Osha and Sol.  They are the antagonists.

The line does blur a bit right at the end, but only because Osha changes sides right before the end.

Had there been a season two and had Osha remained the show's focus character in it, Qimir would have been considered a protagonist then as her companion.

 

The first half of the show was Sol antagonizing the situation. He’s still an antagonist. Smilo may have been more in the shadows in the first half, but at the second half of the series he was definitely a protagonist. 

[Thom]

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

..

Everyone in the story is a sh*thead, so it's hard to care about anybody.

Except for Jekki...

[Big s]

1 minute ago, Thom said:

Except for Jekki...

She was pretty bad as well. OSHA was going through a lot of trauma and all Jekki could think about was getting some and leaving her quick because she doesn’t do emotional attachment. She was scum and it was a good thing she got triple tapped

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Big s said:

The first half of the show was Sol antagonizing the situation. He’s still an antagonist. Smilo may have been more in the shadows in the first half, but at the second half of the series he was definitely a protagonist. 

That's being antagonistic, which is not the same as being an antagonist.

One is a synonym for being a jerk, one refers to a specific role in a story.

 

58 minutes ago, Thom said:

Except for Jekki...

55 minutes ago, Big s said:

She was pretty bad as well. OSHA was going through a lot of trauma and all Jekki could think about was getting some and leaving her quick because she doesn’t do emotional attachment. She was scum and it was a good thing she got triple tapped

She left so little of an impression I keep forgetting she exists.

OK, so everyone's a sh*thead except for that one child soldier who was there to show that Sol is an even bigger hypocrite than the other Jedi.

Quote

 

Sol (Flashback): "They don't treat the girls like children!"

Sol (Present): "Has anyone seen my child soldier?"

Qimir (Present): "You mean the one I killed after she rushed me with two lightsabers and tried to chop me into kibble?"

Sol (Present): "Dude! That was a child!"

Qimir (Present): "I feel like the one who brought a literal child to a fight to the death might just be the bigger arsehole here."

 

 

[jvmacross]

The only good character was Darth Plagueis.....thankfully there was no dialogue scripted for him by D+ writers thus he wasn't ruined......yet! 

[Big s]

3 hours ago, jvmacross said:

The only good character was Darth Plagueis.....thankfully there was no dialogue scripted for him by D+ writers thus he wasn't ruined......yet! 

He was more like Darth Pervy Creep. The guy was hiding in the shadows watching naked bath time.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

She left so little of an impression I keep forgetting she exists.

I mainly remember her because her death showed that for all the flaws of this series that lightsaber stab wounds should always be a fatality and nobody in this show got up in the next scene after a stabby stab stab.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, Big s said:

He was more like Darth Pervy Creep. The guy was hiding in the shadows watching naked bath time.

A fair amount of the audience was eating the eye candy too, so at least Darth Plagueis the Wise is in good company there.

Or does this make him Darth Plagueis the Thirsty?

[Big s]

2 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

A fair amount of the audience was eating the eye candy too, so at least Darth Plagueis the Wise is in good company there.

Or does this make him Darth Plagueis the Thirsty?

[jvmacross]

1 hour ago, Big s said:

He was more like Darth Pervy Creep. The guy was hiding in the shadows watching naked bath time.

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

A fair amount of the audience was eating the eye candy too, so at least Darth Plagueis the Wise is in good company there.

Or does this make him Darth Plagueis the Thirsty?

You guys clearly are mixing up your favorite scene with the brief 5 second scene involving Darth Plagueis...lol

[jvmacross]

[TangledThorns]

Finally finished this series. Interesting ideas but not enough to save it from the bad acting and mostly unlikable characters.

[Big s]

54 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

Finally finished this series. Interesting ideas but not enough to save it from the bad acting and mostly unlikable characters.

I felt like the acting wasn’t an issue. They did the best with the bad material they were given.

[Roy Focker]

Remember what allegedly happened with Rogue One? Disney wasn't pleased with what Edward made and had Gilroy do some reshoots. In theory Rogue One had some good ideas but something was lacking if they had someone else do the reshoots. A script that sounded better on paper or whatever. A good director but the wrong director for that particular movie. I think the Acolyte suffered from the same problems. This time none of the higherups ordered any reshoots. How could they afford it with the budget they already spent making it.

 

[renegadeleader1]

30 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

Remember what allegedly happened with Rogue One? Disney wasn't pleased with what Edward made and had Gilroy do some reshoots. In theory Rogue One had some good ideas but something was lacking if they had someone else do the reshoots. A script that sounded better on paper or whatever. A good director but the wrong director for that particular movie. I think the Acolyte suffered from the same problems. This time none of the higherups ordered any reshoots. How could they afford it with the budget they already spent making it.

 

Unfortunately you'd be wrong there regarding reshoots. Reshoots were done in order to expand the role of Qimir and add Manny Jacinto to more episodes.

 

That's one of the reasons the episodes feel so disjointed. Qimir wasn't supposed to be revealed as the Acolyte until after the final battle, and scenes were cut to insert him.

[sh9000]

 

[Big s]

9 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Unfortunately you'd be wrong there regarding reshoots. Reshoots were done in order to expand the role of Qimir and add Manny Jacinto to more episodes.

 

That's one of the reasons the episodes feel so disjointed. Qimir wasn't supposed to be revealed as the Acolyte until after the final battle, and scenes were cut to insert him.

Honestly, that wasn’t a mistake in my opinion. The show was already disjointed to begin with and the only good stuff was with Smilo Ren and especially that Jecki pin cushion scene was a highlight in a bad show.