also was disappointed about Kelnacca actually. Not awful, I know Kelly is coming.
i'm just a sucker for Wookies in general. I absolutely loved Krrsantan in the Book of Boba Fett and stoked to get new wookies into the lore, so I'm eager to get more backstory for this guy.
And I hope The Acolyte does well enough from a viewership standpoint to encourage Disney to keep exploring other eras of the Star Wars Universe. I think Andor and - to a lesser extent the Mandalorian - have done well to show that there are good stories to tell, that can be well received, set in this universe that take place away from the Skywalker family. Now I'm hoping the Acolyte does the same but shows them that exploring other eras within that universe is fruitful soil to plow as well.
I'd honestly love to see something like a cop show - sort of Streets of San Franscisco or NYPD Blue but set in a Regional Outpost of New Republic. Different episodes checking out different crimes in a particular sector of space - running afoul of bounty hunters; crossing paths with various crime syndicates like Black Sun, the Cymorah or the Pikes;
I think they were planning a show sort of along those lines - Rangers of the New Republic - but I also think it was supposed to be built around Cara Dune and so got scrapped. But I'd be down for a similar idea I think.
@panthercult I'm with you. Kelnacca was the only definite figure want from the trailer, everyone else was a wait for the show. Is it a stereotype for Wookiees to be mechanics, and are the Jedi kinda jerks for perpetuating it? Krrsantan (I refuse 'Santos'. If you aren't going to call him Krrs, or even Krry, then I would have gone with Santa) obviously does the opposite of fixing things.
I also hope it proves there's a market for stories outside the Skywalker family and time. I saw Headland was talking about the KOTOR era as well, i thunk wanting to explore Kreia. Yes please, let's give it a go!
Your NYPD Blue idea could even work for a pair of Jedi, if need be, if the entire rest of the cast are fringe types exploring galactic characters, cultures, and issues the franchise has not touched yet. Some old Qui Gon and Kenobi books kinda sorta did that idea. When I first saw the TPM trailer, I set myself up for disappointment but I was hoping that pair would be more like William of Baskerville and Adso from Name of the Rose. There was a touch of that with Qui Gon's nonconformist views, but a followup to Acolyte with a pair of Jedi learning about issues within the order really could borrow from Rose quite a bit.
Your NYPD Blue idea could even work for a pair of Jedi, if need be, if the entire rest of the cast are fringe types exploring galactic characters, cultures, and issues the franchise has not touched yet. Some old Qui Gon and Kenobi books kinda sorta did that idea. When I first saw the TPM trailer, I set myself up for disappointment but I was hoping that pair would be more like William of Baskerville and Adso from Name of the Rose. There was a touch of that with Qui Gon's nonconformist views, but a followup to Acolyte with a pair of Jedi learning about issues within the order really could borrow from Rose quite a bit.
I could be into that - it'd definitely be a compelling take. (Name of the Rose is an all time great book, so nice nod there) And would also be a way to examine whether, in fact, the Jedi Order is itself it's own set of fascist enforcers or is truly a body for maintaining peace and balance throughout the galaxy - or whether those are sometimes the same thing.
Ah, Christ man. Are you on your way to pitch that?! It's perfect.
There already is a Star Wars cop show.
Honestly, i would love a scar squad show. Could have a touch of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern where they're at major events but were off screen.
I heard about it but, oddly, never read any! And I think... Wasn't the guy responsible for Troops behind that as well?
Heh, ah whatever. To me it was a big deal at the time because some fan who did something cool actually went on to something legit.
Disney has been delivering loads more Star Wars to people that actually want to watch Star Wars content. As with any continuing IP, different people like different elements of it. Very few people seem to stay on board for -everything-. I was there when the Prequels divided the entire SW fanbase. Before big bad Disney 'ruined' it with all their wokeness of having black people and women? Or whatever the fuck pitiful little right-wing loons are bitching about today. Even way back when it was still George, not everyone agreed on what made for 'proper' Star Wars. Nothing has changed except the dumb reasons people have for hating stuff.
Like these absolute losers that can't have a conversation about modern media without talking about 'wokeness' or 'agendas' or making out-of-context, absolutely bad faith references to comments made in interviews. Frankly, it's beyond tiresome that all the people complaining about 'agendas' in television and film are very clearly the ones with an agenda. And also, very generally speaking, are stupid as fuck, infinitely tiresome sub-humans that probably couldn't hold a decent, reasonable conversation if you got a voice actor to shove a hand up their ass and use them as a puppet.
Which, let me be very clear in adding, is all these people are. Culture Warrior losers parroting whatever someone else on YouTube is currently angry about.
Nobody hates Star Wars more than the "fans" of modern Star Wars, written by bad writers who haven't seen the previous movies or just don't care in general.
If you have to look for problems in the old movies to defend the new ones, or say something like "they were all bad, guys!" maybe we have a problem. Expect better.
I would argue that if you "have to" look for problems in the old movies then you're just not very observant. The prequels made things worse, for sure, but even the true original gangsta' had some dumb as shit stuff in it. Want to talk about bad writing ruining Star Wars? How about Anakin Skywalker's child being 'hidden' from him on ... his own homeworld... using his actual last name... living with his father's actual family?
That might actually be one of the stupidest things.. in the fucking history of cinema. There it is. In the OT.
There's a few other things in there that are just flat out bad writing. Then when you introduce the prequels, which are all fuckin' George, so we can't blame Disney hiring bad writers, you also introduce a metric fuckton of new problems and inconsistencies between the two trilogies.
If anything, making sure the writing sucks is the MOST Star Wars thing Disney could do.
A lot of them have said many times in interviews that they haven't seen the previous movies. They don't like the prequels (JJ), or "your SW theories suck". They are simple tourists who took this job for personal gain, nothing more.
I'm actually struggling to see what's wrong with that. The only time I ever played in a Star Wars tabletop roleplaying game (it was the d20 version of Star Wars, so the system wasn't exactly great), the GM had never watched Star Wars. He read the gaming books, which had lots of lore and stuff in them. That was it. He understood the setting that way and ran a FANTASTIC game for a group of five Star Wars fans. Because he was a really good GM. That's something that mattered way more than if he had gone in as an existing fan.
Not being a fan beforehand doesn't preclude you from adding something meaningful or well-crafted. It also doesn't preclude you from ever -becoming- a fan of the material (many people involved in comic films seem to have 'come around' rather than started out as comic fans). Many of 'your theories' DO suck. Plenty of hardcore Star Wars 'fans' hate the prequels - so I'm not sure why it's bad if a director doesn't like them.
It seems like it gets to a point where we're setting the standards for who can make this stuff way too high. And we're making the elements that must be present (or not present) way too personal. It becomes less about 'is this a well-crafted piece of Star Wars media in line with existing quality standards' and more about 'is this the perfect piece of media specifically for me?' And it's far harder to hit that latter goal.
I'm not saying someone that doesn't like the prequels or hasn't seen the movies at all will necessarily make a GOOD Star Wars show or film. I'm only saying it doesn't mean they -can't- and is therefore not a relevant point.
Also, to your point that nothing means anything and people can just make up anything... .yeah. That's literally what George did. He ignored huge swaths of the OT when he wrote the prequels, and then fans spent two decades making excuses for him and re-writing the subtext of the OT to explain the absolute bullshit in the PT rather than just admitting that George just made it up and ignored anything that didn't jive with what he wanted to write that day. Then those same fans, making all those excuses, absolutely berate 'Disney' for doing exactly the same thing.
The only people I can respect on that side of the argument are OT purists that ONLY like the OT. It's still... you know.. not amazing and has notable problems. But I can at least appreciate the commitment in saying anything that isn't spelled out in the OT is non-canon or whatever.
I guess I cut a lot of slack with people "forcing their own agenda" in art since art is really supposed to be a mirror anyway, usually of the artist's perspective on society or what have you. So I'm not surprised when a gay person has gay stuff they wanna talk about, even in a galaxy far far away.
It's only an agenda when it's not the agenda of the person speaking. Full stop. Boys kissing boys? AGENDA! Boys kissing girls? Totally normal and something that should be seen in every film. Black people? "Well, I guess if it's appropriate to the setting.' White people? Everywhere. All the time. In every fantasy world and on every planet. Totally normal and I can't imagine how that would be an 'agenda' of any kind.
You're bang on that art is a mirror of society and specifically of the views of the person doing the art. Every time, virtually without fail. Some views are just so normalized or 'acceptable' that we don't see it as readily. Because, at their core, all pieces of media have THEMES. And if people don't understand what themes are, then that pretty much explains why their critiques of media are so utterly worthless and also absolutely fucking insipid.
Man i wish there was just one place to discuss Star Wars content that wasn't just an endless rehash of butt hurt man babies ranting about how current Star Wars stories aren't as good as the Star Wars stories they grew up with. i really thought the Fwoosh might give me a better chance of that, but sadly no.
My one disappointment from episode 3 of the Acolyte was not getting to see more of Kelnacca - was really hoping to get a little more about him - but I suppose i'll have to wait.
I am interested to see if we get a bit of Rashomon style storytelling to see these events from Mae's perspective as it seems unlikely she is the true architect of destruction of her coven.
I am guessing Koril is probably responsible, but i am interested.
I'm still very lukewarm on this show, personally. It's.. fine. I'm not offended by it. It's not bad enough to make me stop watching like Echo was. And I'm interested.. enough?... to want to know how this all shakes out. But I'm also not, like, chomping at the bit for the next episode? I suppose it's more to the point to say that if Disney cancelled the show right now and didn't air any further episodes, I'd be slightly sad about it for about a day and then I'd probably forget the show ever existed.
I think a big part of it is that the jumping around they've done for these first three episodes means that I don't actually care about any of these characters. Genuinely can't even easily recite their names. If they killed whatshername force-girl in the next episode and carried on with a different character as the primary protagonist for the rest of the season, I genuinely wouldn't be at all bothered.
And I don't think that's just an issue here with this particular show. I feel like a lot of recent TV shows - particularly in the Disney realm, have struggled to create characters that I found engaging -early on-. Pacing is certainly, in my opinion at least, an issue for whomever is in charge of that. Kind of like how these companies cannot seem to find anyone in capable of understanding how to light scenes so that the audience can still see the 'dark' stuff without having an engineering degree for their television settings. It's an ongoing issue that's true across many pieces of media right now.
Also, I think spending an entire single episode on a flashback was a mistake. If I was starting to get invested in these characters at all, the momentum of that feeling slammed into a wall with this episode. Maybe I'm weird, but spending an entire hour with a main character but as a child - a particularly and uniquely fucking irritating child - does nothing to endear that character to me. I literally care less about these people now than I did at the end of episode 1. So.... there's that.
Really, as pedestrian as this is, I just want a show where a bunch of Jedi fight some Sith and stuff. If you're going to give me the Jedi show.. give me the Jedi show. If not.. give me some scoundrels and blasters and spaceships and leave the laser swords out.
Also, to your point that nothing means anything and people can just make up anything... .yeah. That's literally what George did. He ignored huge swaths of the OT when he wrote the prequels, and then fans spent two decades making excuses for him and re-writing the subtext of the OT to explain the absolute bullshit in the PT rather than just admitting that George just made it up and ignored anything that didn't jive with what he wanted to write that day. Then those same fans, making all those excuses, absolutely berate 'Disney' for doing exactly the same thing.
This is accurate and it's the reason why I can't get too wrapped up in Star Wars. It shouldn't take me reading deep into fan message boards or me seeing one particular podcast were Dave Feloni or Sam Witwer or Freddie Prinz Jr. explain the reasons why some plot point actually makes sense if you look at it a certain way. It should be there for me to see in the story itself. In many cases it's not.
Regarding the OT: While there certainly are plot holes, and while George certainly made it up as he went along to the point where there are contradictions even within those first three movies, spending too much time pointing that out is a useless effort, even as a rebuttal to modern SW criticism. Those movies transcend its own shortcomings in the eyes of 99.9% of the fans because it's so entrenched in their memories of their childhood. It's like remembering grandma's delicious Sunday dinners, everything about it was always perfect, then a family member points out that her cookies were always a little on the stale side. You know it's true, grandma's cookies were stale, but it doesn't matter to you because of the feelings those Sunday dinners invoke. That's the OT. Those three movies have a hold on nerds in a way no other Star Wars ever will. That nostalgia is a hell of a thing.
(I am probably one of those OT purists you mention in your post....I have a lot of head canon of how pre and post OT should be, and that's fine).
I personally look for new Star Wars to not compound inconsistencies that have been there from the beginning and I personally find it frustrating when both George and Disney have done just that. I think that's why I'm checked out. OT gets a pass.....kid brain looked passed those plot holes and continuing to look past them is grandfathered in to adulthood. But adult brain wants them to try to shore some of those inconsistencies up, but it's just gotten worse. I revisit the prequels every so often. I think it's a matter of me wanting to give the original creator the benefit of the doubt, I WANT something to click, for me to say, "Oh, that actually is pretty good", it hasn't happened for me yet. I feel I've given Disney an honest shot, it's not doing it for me.
The Acolyte: Without getting into the subjective "good writing/bad writing" I will say that I can handle some social commentary, I probably look for it and want it more in Star Trek. The very best Star Trek will comment on an issue in-depth, they will turn it on its ear, and in the very, VERY best cases explore BOTH SIDES and let the audience decide. That takes smart, nuanced writing. I don't personally look to Star Wars for social commentary, but if it seeps in, fine, whatever. If it makes me think, fine. If it's done well, fine. But thinly veiled social commentary, the kind where your message is used as a very blunt instrument instead of letting the audience discover it organically on their own as the story unfolds, that I can do without. To me that's like saying you really, really want to tell the audience something but you're afraid they're not smart enough to pick up on it, so go in heavy-handed. Having a group of homosexual witches confronting a group of Jedi who they feel don't like them because they're different, and then pluck from that group of very diverse Jedi the one white male to put into a "thread choke", not too subtle. The best kind of writing on social commentary has faith that the fans are smart enough to get the message on their own. I don't feel that's the case here.
When I was a kid I used to use those jumbo size Sweetart rolls as a lightsaber handle. They were the perfect size for my tiny hands.
Until I ate them.
Until I ate them.
Your hands?!
@yojoebro82 We absolutely agree about the OT, but just come to different conclusions. What you're saying is exactly why I think it's important (in modern SW discussions) to bring up the imperfections, some of them truly massive, with the OT. Because people DO have rose-colored glasses about the OT and that leads them down the path of thinking new Star Wars media is so much worse than the original. It isn't. It's just that the OT exists in that moment of time for you (the imperial 'you') as a fan that it doesn't matter how bad it was, it will always be better than what comes after.
That's totally fine. But if we're going to discuss and critique media, we should do so with intellectual honesty. And part of that is knowing when you're being unreasonably kind as much as when you're being unreasonably critical. It's okay to just say 'I like the OT more because I grew up with it and it MEANS more to me.' That's a perfect way to approach how you critique everything else in the franchise.
In terms of compounding problems - I think that's inevitable and I'm not convinced there's any way to make non-derivative content that doesn't amplify one problem or another, because so much of early SW content is flawed in different directions. You HAVE to choose to ignore this or that, which is going to make that or this even worse and more pronounced.Some things have made admirable attempts to marry incongruent plot elements, but then end up making new problems themselves (Kenobi did some of this). You're stuck either not making any new content, making content so far removed from existing events that they don't impact each other at all, or making something that's going to mess with something else.
Maybe that's why I tend to overlook a lot of it; I just don't view 'make Star Wars content but don't have any inconsistencies' as a viable option. There's going to be problems because Star Wars is already so plagued with problems that you simply cannot avoid them all. The best you can do is try to avoid the biggest ones. I mean, The Acolyte totally did a midichlorian count. We'll never be free of that fucking horseshit. We just have to hope, like in The Acolyte, they kind of hand-wave it away a bit.
I also don't think anything in The Acolyte, or any SW media so far, has been a social commentary hammer. I think, as I said before, this is one of those things where it depends on what you're sensitive to and what you pick up on. Even what you consider to be 'social commentary' at all.
I mean.. there's ZERO indication that we saw a 'group of homosexual witches.' That's just, with respect, total nonsense. What we saw was a -WITCH COVEN- (with aspects of being a Nunnery). The idea that the Jedi 'use the force correctly' and force-witches don't and maybe need to be stopped or viewed as dangerous/enemies isn't new to The Acolyte, so it's hardly fair to act like this show in particular is cramming social commentary into this concept. It's also dangerous ground to walk if you see two women potentially having a lesbian relationship and assume that all the women around them therefore MUST also be in lesbian relationships.
Sigh, I wasn't planning on rejoining after the last blip/return, but it's clear from reading this thread that you people are lost without me. So I guess I am back. You're welcome. 😋
Some assorted comments:
1 - The idea of Star Wars TV show that was based on day to day life in a Galaxy far, far away - probably with a crime and law enforcement focus - was actually part of the plan, as best we know, for what was the first live action Star Wars TV show that was proposed - Star Wars: Underworld | Wookieepedia | Fandom - I would love to hear more about the 50 scripts they supposedly completed.
2 - Lucas surrounded himself with great people - while I get that many want to push back against the Lucas was a great director/creator/whatever narrative by pointing to his wife editing and Kasdan writing and Kurtz producing playing major roles, I think Lucas deserves the recognition as being the vision behind it all - maybe the first edit of Star Wars ANH was terrible, but unless Marcia Lucas and Gary Kurtz went out and directed hours of reshoots then the core building blocks still came from Lucas. I think people forget that no one had to try to make what was basically a throwback to cheap movie serials and try to have such high production values, costumes, effects, etc., or get a great full orchestral score from Williams, or try to get some great actors like Guiness to lend some gravitas. Just watch the first 5 minutes of ANH - from the music to the tag line of "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." to the scroll to the Star Destroyer filling the whole screen with the use of the rear sound channels in some theaters to Vader coming out of the smoke - that was epic for a genre that was never considered epic. Basically, Star Wars or a film like it never had to be made.
3 - Which doesn't mean it is perfect by any means, but the main thing is what other film has ever been asked to support 50 years of follow-up media - its not like it was designed to be the introduction to a franchise that would have 8 more films, a couple of side films, 100's of hours of animated TV, 50+ hours of live action TV, 1,000 comic books, 200 novels, plus role playing games, video games, etc. There is no feasible way that the 6 hours of the OT with maybe a dozen main characters could be expected to set a whole universe of storytelling rules and background and not have there be contradictions and poor stories or new things people don't like. Especially as it was not written at that depth to begin with, compared to say the world-building Tolkien did for Lord of the Rings or Herbert did for Dune, which could lead to unlimited stories. Nor did anyone think in 1977 that people would have seen the film 50 times and have in-home access to watch it whenever and so on. These were meant to be "one and done" viewing for the most part, maybe a few TV showings years later on one of the half-dozen TV stations people had access to. The world is just so different than when ANH came out in terms of media and tie-ins...
4 - I like The Acolyte so far. I am amused by the criticism that the last episode was stupid because how could a fire kill the coven and why was the one twin so evil - as if those might not be obvious plot points that might get explored and this episode clearly wasn't designed to say we know everything we need to know. (Hint, I am sure that the evil twin has been getting evil tutelage form whomever killed the coven...)
5 - While not defending the true bigots and "anti-woke" crowd, I do think some of the fan backlash is due to how media and PR departments cover entertainment - they often focus so much on the casting and inclusiveness in the stories they write to promote the shows and make (in my opinion) somewhat grandiose comments on the societal impact of such things (for what is really mostly mindless entertainment) that a cynical person might wonder how calculated their inclusiveness is and how much is genuine. In Star Wars the shows themselves seem to not make a big deal about this stuff in the storytelling - no one is going "I can't believe a young woman of color can be a Jedi" nor is it a plot point in the show - but when the media coverage around it makes it a talking point, it sort of bleeds into the show from the audience side so it gets noticed. Basically, it isn't that they might be making a point, it is that they tell everyone they are making a point so you end up noticing it in an inorganic way that places context on the story from outside the story. I kind of resent that media coverage as it pushes the "real world" into Star Wars where I don't think it naturally fits. Not sure if that makes sense.
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