I'm sure we all know about the low audience scores given to The Acolyte. Rotten Tomatoes was sitting down at 14% since around the third episode, and was that low up until at least the last episode. Now that it's nearly a week out from the season finale, I figured I'd take another look.
The Rotten Tomatoes score has gone up to 17% and other review platforms have gone up a bit also.
So I decided to read through a few of the recent ones. Here are two examples:
The showrunners accuse fans of "review bombing" but are apparently just fine with artificial review boosting. I saw a bunch of these double reviews and nearly every single one talked about things like diversity, a "fresh take", production values, etc, all in that typical bland corporate-speech type of language.
Whereas the negative reviews are detailed and specific without ever getting into racism, bigotry, sexism, or other things fans are often accused of. If you read through the negative reviews they are often well thought out criticisms of the story itself and the quality of acting.
I just wanted to bring this fake review boosting to the community's attention. If you enjoyed the show, that's awesome. But it's dishonest to dilute honest and fair criticisms of a show.
I’m guessing that the score started low because the people that were going to be unhappy no matter what were the first ones to run to the website to leave bad reviews. I’m guessing most people that did enjoy it just moved on with their lives & wont bother to leave a review anywhere.
So like everything else in life?
Yup, just pointing out that the low score doesn’t mean much. Those people leave behind criticism of everything, of course The Acolyte wasn’t excluded from their wrath. Edit: in other words, there’s no boosting. Those are just reviews from people that liked it coming in.
I've never reviewed a single bit of Star Wars media in my life. The Acolyte was so bad that I felt like sharing my opinion. That's what many other people have done also.
If you actually look through the reviews the majority of the positive reviews are bland copy/paste generic wording. A suspicious number of them start with "As a long time Star Wars fan" and then go on about the diversity of the cast.
Whereas the critical reviews are all unique with valid criticisms about the story or its execution.
And yet even with the artificial boosting the score is still incredibly low. So low that the other shows with the same rating are unrecognizable trash.
How is it that the people who are always contrary managed to tank this show's rating far more than any other show out there?
The answer is that they didn't. A sizable amount of people who genuinely did not like the show have shared their opinions. That's it.
Those are valid reasons to like a show, though we might not all share that opinion. The critical reviews are also valid, not saying they aren’t.
Personally, I never expect good writing or excellent film quality when it comes to Star Wars since it’s never been well written or anything more than a mid-level movie with an amazingly endearing campy atmosphere, and an excellent & interesting world the story takes place in. Aside from Rogue One & Andor, those are uncharacteristically good for Star Wars properties.
No, those are valid things to like about a show. But they do not in any way make something good in-of-itself.
You can feel that way dude, it’s ok
So did you like the Acolyte? What did you enjoy about it?
I liked a lot of it: there were cool fights, the bad guy was awesome, I’m a fan of stuff having to do with the Sisters, and I liked the whole commentary about how these cracks in the Jedi order set them up for their later fall. I thought it was fun & entertaining overall. Also liked it was a different time period other than the usual Skywalker & the Empire.
I thought some of the characters were pretty bland, like Yord & Vanestra’s padawan. The writing wasn’t perfect, but I don’t really watch Star Wars for the high quality writing.