The creator of Disney’s canceled Star Wars series believes fan-driven commentary now shapes the franchise more than the movies themselves.
the Acolyte was a good, if flawed, first season.
Interesting time period, interesting look into the Sith.
Completely squandered because fans are insufferable.
The acolyte was terrible from the first episode. The plot was bad, the characters were bad, it was barely grounded in Star Wars as an actual IP - meaning the IP could have come after the story was written it felt so irrelevant. Like it’s not just “we just fumbled the details and somewhere along the way a good thing got broken” it was big picture stuff in so many scenes. Like palpatine returning and creating death star ships and dying to lightning again doesn’t happen because a good script and good teams attempted to make a good film and something got mistranslated eventually, it was flawed from the start. Which is as upsetting as it is, for me personally at least, because the IP is a slam dunk gold mine of easy to tell and rewarding stories. I can’t even imagine being handed a 2 billion dollar easy payday to make a trilogy and having no artistic opinions about what is going to happen and what it’s going to mean.
I’m ranting again. Whoops. I could believe YouTubers have outweighted influence on a film’s production. I do not believe anyone involved in the Acolyte, especially higher ups who should be able to steer their own boat, could convince me that was what went wrong with that show.
A mature series about how the Sith convert people, even do some good via evil means, and make a case for why characters like Maul and Dooku and Ventress were converted would be fantastic. In fact Dooku has had some good development in the animated world showing a bit as to why and how he turned. There’s a gameplay trailer for a character I do not know, showing them being influenced by a powerful sith, and it’s compelling enough for what it is. Like, it’s clearly the rights holders are not artists or fans and the structures at play do not allow a good thing to be produced with any meaningful regularity. The only star wars rule nowadays seems to be the thing is bad from the start or, if it was surprisingly good, it will get run into the ground ASAP.
I think the writers and directors had some ideas that were bad from the start, which is a bit of a shame, because they did have some good ideas. Addressing the ethics of other force users and taking kids could have been interesting, but they really fumbled it.
If they listened to the fans, everything would be Andor-level writing, Mandalorian-level characters with Clone Wars-level story and world-building.
Just do that.
If they listened to the fan, we would have had 15 movies of just Han Solo, Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker running around the galaxy, killing Stormtroopers. We sure as shit wouldn’t have gotten ANDOR, the overtly political show, from the fans, those who keeps whining about politics in their media.
Listening to the fan is what gave us The Rise of Skywalker.
I’m a fan and I wouldnt want to watch a show written by me. I think its more Disney trying to make Star Wars using the logic that worked for the MCU. Throw shit at the wall and see if it makes money
that’s not what the MCU did. MCU plots were drawn from decades of comic book content, adapted relatively faithfully, and orchestrated buy a guy who was passionate about comics. If star wars did that (with extended universe books) it would be in a much different place right now.
But no, they said fuck all that, we’re gonna do our own thing haphazardly planned between 2 directors with wildly different visions for the plot, whilst peppered with regurgitated scenes from the original trilogy.
We were all hoping for a Thrawn trilogy and we got… this
Nah. If they listened to the right fans, that happens.
That actually might be a good thing considering how shit the prequel and sequel movies were.
This sounds a lot like “How dare fans make negative comments about bad shows and curb our attempts to make more of said bad show!”
Here’s a hint make good shows like Andor with compelling characters and good writing. I don’t hear anyone complaining about that show.
I’m always surprised by the image quality in that screenshot. It looks like it’s taken from a bad cam bootleg. But that is what the movie actually looks like. They phoned everything in, not just the story.
I absolutely love season 1, it might be the single best season of television I have ever seen. The acting, the sets, the music, the writing!, the way it weaves its themes into the story masterfully, ever second feels intentional and characters are real, breathing beings that grow and change and hurt, and how every action has a consequence and motivation. It’s perfect.
Season 2 - to me - is bafflingly bad, with so many issues that I’ve legitimately, and somewhat ironically, given the topic of this post, considered starting a YouTube channel over it. It feels like after finally being given a good Starwars show in season 1, the fan-base has gaslit itself into liking season 2.
Oh no. I haven’t watched season 2 yet.
Are you telling me they took the home run, slam dunk, unbelievably good setup they had for Season 1 and fumbled it in season 2? I’ve specifically avoided spoilers and reviews cause we’re going to watch it regardless given how good season 1 was.
Without spoilers, what made season 2 bad? Was it the same thing with Mando where they completely lost the plot in order to sell different characters and toys? Or…?
The only issue with season 2 is that it’s basically 4 seasons crammed into one. Disney had cancelled the next four seasons for being too expensive so they tried to wrap up the story in one.
This is hardly visible though. Maybe tightening everything up actually benefitted the series.
No, don’t worry, not as bad as Mando. And again, plenty of people praise Andor S2 even beyond S1, so, don’t get discouraged by just my opinion.
For me, the first arc was just… Bad. For multiple reasons, which you will discover. The second arc gets a lot better, the 3rd I actually really enjoyed and the 4th was… Ok.
Again. To me.
Discussing this without spoilers is difficult, but in very general terms: I feel like they threw overboard too much of the gritty realism for “cool” character moments. Instead of logically motivated decisions, things happen because plot. Chances for character development are squandered left and right. Everything is rushed (because apparently this should have been 4 seasons, not 4 arcs?), except when it is super dragged out for no reason. This deals a blow to the impact of scenes, because characters have no time to react to devastating occurrences. And, while petty, I have to mention it: the set design got way worse, esp. in arc 1, but also sometimes later on. Extremely obvious greenscreen/the volume scenes for scenes where it would have been trivial to find onsite locations.
It is still the best star wars out there, just… A 6.5/10 instead off 11/10.
In my personal opinion.
Thanks for this. I’m happy to know it’s still passable for you. Just sad to know they couldn’t keep it up. Unbelievable that they wouldnt approve 4 seasons or front the cash for good set design.
I thought it was better than passable. It just kind of wandered around for the first few episodes, which they would have been better off not doing to make the most of the few episodes left. But, I loved how theh wrapped it up and then I went and found a fan edit of Andor that edited Rogue One in the style of Andor splitting it into episodes and changing the ost to one less campy sounding to finish it out.
Yeah… But at the same time, they didn’t HAVE to do 4 arcs and to catch up to Rogue One. They could have just made one arc into a season and given it the room to breathe.
Edit: there are seriously great sets in the Season, which just makes the… Suboptimal… Ones stand out.
It was bad. The pacing was wrong. The plot muddled.
Some of the best shows ever you could say the same thing about their first seasons.
Further they killed off some characters they shouldn’t have. Which is most of them. They cleared the field
Fans just want the same thing over and over, you need to try new things, i enjoyed the acolyte but I get it’s not for everybody, but if new ideas weren’t tried we wouldn’t have the mandalorian.
i’m STILL pissed at disney for caving to bigots and cancelling acolyte >_<
The vast majority of star wars YouTubers are spineless fanboys that do whatever Disney wants them to. If you can’t make the people that lose their mind at the sight of Anakin happy, you failed miserably.
