We have never seen a company in our lifetime set itself on fire the way Disney has, not only destroying any value in its own brand, but destroying the brands that it absorbed. And the sad fall of Star Wars is a prime example of that.
Look, let’s be brutally honest for a moment. George Lucas made a great original trilogy (and made a pretty great video game company), but contrary to fan reappraisal, the prequel trilogy was a mess. Some moments were genuinely great. Others were just awful. So, the series wasn’t in great shape when Disney took it over and not everything they did was awful, either. But over time, they have driven every spark of hope into the ground, as brutally as when Galen Marek ripped a star destroyer out of the sky.
(And no, we are not going to explain our deep cut Star Wars nerd joke to you. So there.)
That brings us to The Acolyte, the latest Star Wars travesty, a series airing on Disney Plus. We won’t say that ‘it ruined our childhood’ or anything silly like that, but it is mediocre and it retconned the force and the Jedi in ways that will probably infuriate fans.
And its worst sin is that it is mostly pretty boring.
From here a SPOILER WARNING is in effect.
A strong example of how boring it is, is how they wasted pretty much thirty minutes on a ‘Fugitive’ subplot that goes nowhere. The set up is that the main character, Osha …
(Did they seriously see an OSHA notice at their workplace and get their character name from that? We’re not sure, but from now on we are going to call this character the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for maximum mockery.)
… is an identical twin with another girl named Mae. Mae ends up killing a Jedi. Because everyone thinks Mae is dead, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Jedi thinks for a moment that she the Occupational Safety and Health Administration murdered this Jedi. So, then she is thrown onto a prison transport ship and just then, by luck, a bunch of other prisoners tried to escape. She didn’t actively participate in the escape but since the ship was crashing, she did her best to try to survive it. Then she crashes and she decides she wants to run, after all, probably thinking that no one would believe that she didn’t want to escape …
… which is just a sci-fi version of pretty much The Fugitive’s escape scene—almost the same, beat-for-beat, including the way they made sure our hero escaped with the least possible culpability.
But, hey, lots of good stories rip off other stories and ‘Star Wars combined with The Fugitive with Jedi’ actually sounds like a fun idea for a show. Instead, it just boringly has her captured quickly by a Jedi who believes her when she says she is innocent and that is it. So that is about 30 minutes that went nowhere and if you feel the journey is more important than the destination, well … the journey wasn’t very fun, either. It was just genuinely lifeless. We won’t go over every boring moment, but basically they want you to be intrigued with some great mystery, but in fact, the whole thing is boring and most people act in a way that is deeply illogical.
If you really want a detailed description of the logical failings of the first two episodes, The Critical Drinker has your back:
But it was the third episode that might have really done damage to the brand. Okay, correction: more damage. And it was not just because of this epically terrible scene:
This is Star Wars now thanks to Kathleen Kennedy pic.twitter.com/8gUhIBHzua
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 12, 2024
And the thing is, unless we miss our mark, we think these people doing this ritual supposed to be seen as misunderstood good guys good girls and the Jedi are going to be portrayed as wrong, and out of touch, because feminism. Yes, really.
And if you want to get a sense of how divisive this is, consider how for a long time, Kathleen Kennedy has pushed the slogan ‘The Force is Female.’ There are some people who claimed that official Star Wars never pushed that concept and those people would be wrong:
The Force is female ✨ pic.twitter.com/5uBcfzytQz
— Disney Store (@shopDisney) April 15, 2023
Consider how divisive that is. Until this slogan started to emerge, this author never thought of the force being male or female. It was a great unknowable It to us. Here’s Yoda describing the Force in The Empire Strikes Back:
Notice that every time he talks about the Force, the pronoun is IT. The same can be said when Obi-wan Kenobi first explained the Force to Luke in the original Star Wars.
We aren’t aware of any description of the force being male or female before Disney got its grubby hands on it. It has no sex, and unlike with a freakshow like Ezra Miller, we are inclined to respect its preferred pronouns because the Force truly doesn’t map out onto human characteristics. It's more like sunlight or magnetism than a being with identifiable characteristics. And that is inclusive, allowing men and women to feel like the force could be their ally. The constant stream of female Jedi in the prequels (and in games, novels and so on) only solidified the idea that the Force wasn’t the property of one sex. It could be the ally for anyone.
But this episode definitely made it female. The third episode is a flashback to when the titular twins are children living in a village of essentially space witches. And it is pretty clear that this is where the claim that the show is referred to as the ‘gayest Star Wars yet‘ comes from. They all but say that the twins' two mothers are in a committed lesbian relationship, one being a typical human black woman, while the other looks a bit like a female Darth Maul, which raises the question: Then who is the father of the twins? Well, apparently, they have no father, just like Anakin Skywalker, because everyone liked that plot thread in the Phantom Menace. If there was one thing the Phantom Menace was known for, it was the way George Lucas made one great decision the fans loved after another. Jar Jar was beloved, midichlorians were awesome, the trade talks were great, it was just one great decision after another in that movie.
(Please note, we got very sarcastic towards the end, in case it is not obvious.)
That alone made Bounding Into Comics apoplectic:
'The Acolyte' Makes Massive Retcon To Star Wars Lore, Reveals Lesbian Space Witches Created Life From The Force Long Before Darth Plagueis https://t.co/F32cN70XvG
— Bounding Into Comics (@BoundingComics) June 12, 2024
But it gets worse. The same episode has a scene where the human mother explains the force to her twin daughters. We couldn’t find video of that scene online so we will have to sum it up. The important thing to get is that the show clearly presents every word the mother says as if it is wisdom, like Mufasa explaining the Circle of Life to Simba. So, first, she says that some people call it the force and attempt to wield it but these witches know better. It is actually a thread, so … not an energy field that is inside and outside of us, but just like cords, we guess. And if you pull the thread, you change everything, she says, and that the thread binds people together and people to their destiny.
And you can’t wield it. Except then mom wields it against a bunch of people including one of her daughters. Mind you these were gentle pushes in a little light sparring, but it is still ‘wielding.’ Because why should a writer know the definition of a word they are using?
Then they have the witches’ chant scene we just showed you and the point was for the twins to ‘ascend’ which we guess is sort of like a wiccan version of a bat mitzvah. Right after that was done the Jedi show up. And here’s the part that would really annoy long-time fans: The Jedi were there to figure out if the girls are suitable to become Jedi and if they were, they would abduct them. So, basically, the Jedi are being set up to be bad, actually. Sure, they sound like they are asking nicely, but it is clear in context that they aren’t really asking.
Indeed, that retroactively suggests that when Qui Gon Jinn asked Anakin if he wanted to be a Jedi and asked his mother’s permission, he wasn’t really asking, either.
Then the lesbian space witches are debating about what to do and they tell the twins to deliberately fail the test. If they fail the Jedi won’t want them. Mae says the Jedi are bad, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration says the Jedi are good and we get this groaner of a line from the mom: ‘This isn’t about good or bad. This is about power and who is allowed to use it.’ Oh, barf.
So, if you are keeping score, the lesbian space witches understand the force better than the Jedi, they could immaculately conceive before Darth Plagueis grokked that, and the Jedi abduct children. Why would any of that upset a long-standing fan?
Indeed, as one Twitter/X user noted, Forbes published a piece calling out the craptitude of that episode:
Even Forbes is jumping the sinking ship 😅https://t.co/RNIlb4ykea
— Box Office Forecast 🎬 (@BoxOfficeFcst) June 12, 2024
And others dragged the retcon, too:
🤣🤣🤣 it’s like they took that South Park episode as a playbook instead of mockery
— Stormweather (@markstormweathr) June 12, 2024
I have read fanfict with better plot, pacing, character, and writing than whatever the hell this is.
— Fenrir the ice wolf (@Fenrirtheicewo1) June 12, 2024
Seriously... what the hell!? How is this Star Wars now... truly, we are seeing the death of a living organism at a slow pace.
Make "The Force" really gay!!! pic.twitter.com/d81pluqnME
— Dean Dorame🇺🇸✝️♋️ (@DorameDeano) June 12, 2024
Don’t watch -not even to hate watch.
— RoboFalcon (@TheRoboFalcon) June 12, 2024
Seriously, we really took one for the team in watching this, so you would know not to watch it. Don’t let our sacrifice be in vain.
Dave Filoni loves this show. He loves Leslye Headland. He has always fully supported this show, everything about it. He is the Chief Creative Officer. He is to blame 100%. He's always been trash. #TheAcolyte pic.twitter.com/SGOh3vwCbI
— Marcus (@linwoodsq) June 12, 2024
Dave Filoni has actually made some very good Star Wars in the past, particularly masterminding the CGI cartoon The Clone Wars and was part of the creative team behind the first two seasons of the Mandalorian. So, no, he wasn’t always trash. Our pet theory is that he is saying whatever he has to, to keep his job and he recognizes that for some dumb reason, Kathleen Kennedy isn’t going anywhere. If Disney actually wanted a return on its investment they would fire Kennedy immediately.
This from @iowahawkblog is evergreen when it comes to what the left does to anything they touch… pic.twitter.com/oVJAj55P4y
— The Geekster (@LRgeek1) June 12, 2024
Of course, that was not the only part of the show that received withering mockery. There was also this:
They will never live this down.
— Bushmaster Dave (@clearfluid) June 7, 2024
We admit that this author is not exactly a rocket scientist, but according to our research, it appears that fire can happen in space, but only if you have a rupture of both a fuel source and an oxygen source very, very close to each other. So, it’s not impossible, but it is unlikely. But it also wouldn’t look like just regular flames—as it did on the show. On earth, flames go upward because the heated air rises. But there really is no ‘upward’ when gravity is missing. So rather than going ‘up’ it actually forms a roughly spherical shape around the source of the flame.
And, before you ask, there was no artificial gravity at work in this case. The show makes it clear that our hero (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and her coworker are attaching themselves to the outside of the ship using magnetic boots. You can almost see how they screwed this up: They really wanted to have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration see a fire so that you could see her freeze up to suggest that she had some kind of fire-related trauma in the past. Then someone else said, ‘let’s put the fire in space, so that would look kind of cool.’ So, we got that nonsense, when if they simply put the fire inside the ship, with artificial gravity and a supply of oxygen, you would get normal looking fire, which would invoke that message.
And the extra stupid thing about all that is if they put it inside the ship, they could have made a much more exciting scene. The problem with fire in a spaceship (as pointed out in an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica of all things) is that people have a hard time running away from it in the close quarters of a ship, and it can quickly make all the air poison. The best thing to do with it is probably to open enough airlocks so that you vent out all the oxygen and then with no oxygen, the fire would burn out.
So, here’s a better idea for a scene. She and her coworker are working in separate rooms. There is an explosion and a fire in one the room her coworker is in, and automated systems close the door between them, sealing her coworker in with the fire. Maybe that coworker is trapped under some fallen debris. The captain of the ship is getting ready to blow all the airlocks and send her coworker into space, and she can watch her friend through the window. Realizing what is about to happen, Osha grunts ‘not again,’ and fiddles with the controls to override the airlock purge. She then opens the door and rescues her friend. Then, after they get out of the room, she blows the airlock herself putting out the fire. It wouldn’t be hard to take that idea, and turn it into a scene that that builds sympathy for her character, tells the viewer that she had some kind of trauma related to fire but she isn’t a shrinking violet when it happens again, and is exciting to boot.
Instead, we got a boring moment of mild problems while doing repairs in space.
Other people dragged the show hard:
"A Jedi doesn't pull their weapon unless they're prepared to kill"#TheAcolyte pic.twitter.com/68hoMcenUC
— Ruin Johnson (@RuinTheManbaby) June 8, 2024
Heck, in the original, Kenobi pulled out his lightsaber to chop off a limb in the Mos Eisley Cantina, and then went on with his business.
Charlie Barnett is an idiot. #theacolyte pic.twitter.com/COmhoAezXV
— The Bugle Daily (@TheBugleDaily1) June 8, 2024
Mr. Barnett was around 11 years old when the Phantom Menace came out, featuring Samuel L. Jackson as a black Jedi.
Only 3% of subscribers watched The Acolyte.
— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) June 11, 2024
The new contracts writers negotiated after the strike had a floor for what is considered a hit. If more people watched than that, they get a bonus.
The % denoting a hit? 20% of subscribers.
The Acolyte is a failure. pic.twitter.com/uDPoeIpYf7
The Acolyte costs 15 Godzilla Minus Ones. Each episode is 22.5 million dollars for 30 minutes. Where did the money go? 👀 pic.twitter.com/Hjicw3O4KB
— Lily* (@300mirrors) June 11, 2024
We’re not sure about her math, but Godzilla Minus One was dirt cheap (reportedly $15 million) compared to pretty much every Hollywood special effects movie these days, it looks great and it is a legitimately great movie. Like, not even ‘Good for a Godzilla movie,’ but actually great for a movie, period. We can’t think of a better movie we had watched from 2023.
The Acolyte pitch meeting to Kathleen Kennedy: https://t.co/cl48qCKb5e pic.twitter.com/VRWFqMZDLh
— Prison Mitch (@MidnightMitch) June 12, 2024
Heh.
The cast for new Star Wars series The Acolyte don’t even know the plot of the original Star Wars franchise
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) June 6, 2024
Here Charlie Barnett twice claims that Anakin Skywalker blew up the Death Star pic.twitter.com/c7EekW7mLl
Okay, so maybe Mr. Barnett wasn’t really paying attention to the Star Wars movies.
Great Moments in #TheAcolyte writing.#LegionofMemers @LegionofMemers #RIPStarWars pic.twitter.com/hdEW8cnRJ1
— John Cocozza (@johncocozza) June 6, 2024
Finally, we will point out that in this now-infamous episode 3 of this show, they ironically sent a message that was downright hurtful to the transgender movement. When the Occupational Safety and Health Administration tells her mother she might want to be a Jedi, her mother says ‘Right now, you want to be a Jedi. But as you grow, what you want, it changes. It shifts. Like the seasons.’
So, in other words, right now you might want to transition into being a Jedi, but as time goes on you might regret that decision.
Mind you, we don’t think that they were trying to send an anti-transgender message. It’s just that every now and then our mass media inadvertently says stuff like this. For instance, there were two versions of Pinocchio that came out in 2022—the terrible live action remake of the Disney classic and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio on Netflix, which was sublime—and both of them had a moment where Geppetto said to Pinocchio that he was wrong to make Pinocchio feel like he had to become a real boy to please him. Geppetto told him that he was fine the way he is. We don’t think any of these movies or shows are trying to send an anti-transgender message. We think the truth is that transgender ideology goes against how we approach most other topics. Most of the time, we think it is bad to hate what you currently are and to feel like you are worthless if you can’t change it. And most of the time, we recognize that children are too young to make huge, life-changing decisions. It’s only in the context of gender ideology that we throw these ordinary principles out the window. And in an unguarded moment, these ideologically-driven writers of the Acolyte accidentally went off message.
And that is genuinely funny.
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