Star Wars Television

For the record, I don't think The Acolyte is the best Star Wars TV show ever made. I'm genuinely interested in the era, but it's sometimes seemed a little faltering, and I think the episodic structure hasn't always worked to the show's favor. But I've seen the Star Wars Holiday Special, and The Acolyte most certainly isn't worse than that. When you look at the actual reviews, the comments are often wince-worthy; I randomly took a sample of 30 into an AI-checker, and all but one came through as probably written by AI rather than by real humans.

In other words, there's a very vocal part of the Star Wars fanbase that has decided to hate The Acolyte no matter what. These are the trolls who've wrested statements from Leslye Headland and star Amandla Stenberg out of context, trying to find ways to anger viewers before the show's release. These trolls are now working overtime to create an online "discourse" that's far from reality.

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The Acolyte has been something of a mixed bag so far, but episode 5 is a game-changer in terms of sheer quality. This episode featured some of the best lightsaber combat I've seen since Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, perhaps bettered only by the Ahsoka-Maul animated duel in Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 7. The fight choreography was stunning, and all the more impressive given much of it really was performed by the cast of The Acolyte; Manny Jacinto in particular deserves high praise.

If you'll pardon a technical observation, this was also shot with tremendous skill. Star Wars has often struggled with nighttime action scenes, especially when lightsabers are involved; the LED lighting causes problems, an especially pronounced issue with blue light. But The Acolyte episode 5 is beautifully shot, with the lighting carefully controlled to make sure everything can be seen perfectly. It was delightful, and a massive improvement from previous Lucasfilm stumbles such as the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale.

The tremendous quality of The Acolyte episode 5 puts the lie to the review-bombers. It serves as a reminder that it's best not to attack until a show has finished, until it has been given a chance; these are instead people who had long since made up ther minds, resolving to hate The Acolyte simply because it is somehow "woke." The sheer scale of their actions - review-bombing, AI, and death threats - already seemed as though it was out of all proportion. The Acolyte episode 5 seals the deal, proving that is the case.

After reprising his role as Star Wars villain Director Orson Krennic last year in The Bad Batch, it looks like Rogue One actor Ben Mendelsohn is eyeing a return to that galaxy far, far away for Andor Season 2. Just last weekend, Diego Luna — who plays the eponymous rebel in both Gareth Edwards' film and Tony Gilroy's series — teased to fans at ACE Superhero Comic Con that "there will be characters that you recognise" in the Peabody award-winning show's second series. And now, in an interview with The Playlist, Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios — director of the last three episodes of Andor's upcoming series — has let slip that Mendelsohn is among the recognisable characters fans can expect to see when the show returns.

Whilst singing the praises of his experience working on Andor, Ruizpalacios paid tribute to the heavyweight actors he'd had chance to direct on the show, specifically naming “Stellan Skarsgård, Forest Whitaker, and Ben Mendelsohn” among them. And whilst Skarsgård and Whitaker are familiar faces in the world of Andor, having played Luthen Rael and Saw Gerrera in Season 1, Mendelsohn's Krennic has yet to make an appearance in the series thus far. But with showrunner Gilroy having told Empire last year that the final three episodes of Andor S2 will cover the three days before Rogue One, and with Ruizpalacios directing said episodes, the return of the Death Star's architect at this pivotal point in the story makes perfect sense.

The Acolyte, Disney's newest Star Wars TV show, may be being review-bombed - but new viewership data gives a sense of what's really going on. The Star Wars fandom has always been prone to division, but Leslye Headland's Star Wars Disney+ TV show seems to have become a massive flashpoint. The Acolyte has been review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes; the audience score there now stands at an improbable 14 percent (lower than the ill-fated Star Wars Holiday Special).

New viewership data from Variety gives a sense of what's really going on, though. Provided by Luminate, this data shows the minutes watched of every streaming original TV show over the period from June 7 to June 13. It's largely a boost for Netflix, but The Acolyte's performance is very interesting indeed.

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Still, Disney will be quite pleased with The Acolyte's performance here. The Acolyte is literally the only non-Netflix show to appear in the top ten for that period, suggesting it's a success. The scale of that success will become clear over the weeks, as we get a sense of whether viewers stuck around or dropped off.

It seems some Star Wars fans are accidentally review bombing the 2008 Australian horror film Acolytes instead of The Acolyte Disney+ series. The Acolyte is the latest live-action Star Wars series to air on Disney+, premiering its first two episodes on June 4, with new episodes airing weekly until the finale on July 16. The show has earned mostly positive reviews from critics so far, but it has been incredibly divisive among Star Wars fans, to say the least.

At the time of this writing, the Rotten Tomatoes critic score for The Acolyte is a respectable 84%, while its audience score is an abysmal 16%. Without delving into spoilers, there are Star Wars fans who are not happy about some of the creative choices in the show, feeling as though it doesn't fit with the rest of the Star Wars canon. Others are not impressed with the show's quality, and are unhappy at the direction the Star Wars franchise has been going in general. There are also some people who are upset that the show focuses on female characters and has a diverse cast.

Those unhappy with The Acolyte, whether it's due to legitimate criticism about the show's quality or anger over its "woke" content, have taken to Rotten Tomatoes to let their displeasure be known, spamming the series with low ratings to bring down its audience score. However, some individuals seem to have gotten lost, instead review bombing the 2008 Australian horror film Acolytes, which has nothing to do with the Star Wars franchise in any capacity. Now, the Acolytes film was never popular with audiences anyway; from what we can see using the Way Back Machine, it's gone from about a 42% audience score to a 33% audience score. Still, it does seem as though its score has been impacted by Star Wars fans who actually want to review bomb The Acolyte instead.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2397087

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2397084

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