TV Review — Star Wars: The Acolyte [Some Spoilers]

Star Wars: The Acolyte: The Power of Many… Missed Opportunities. Here are my thoughts on The Acolyte

(Warning – spoilers!)

So, the last episode dropped and after eight weeks of slogging through Star Wars: The Acolyte, I figured it is time to share my thoughts on the show. Overall while I did not care for the series, there were aspects of this show I did appreciate. There has been a lot of online hate leveled at the show, its cast, its writers, and its showrunner Leslye Headland. Some of the complaints I agree with, while others I think are nitpicking and prompted by statements that Headland and Stenberg have made.

It has been reported that when the show was pitched, Headland said “It’s Frozen meets Kill Bill.” This would have been amazing, had its execution followed through with either of those examples. For a production that had a budget of 180 million dollars, it has left many of us confused as to where the money went. Let us break it all down.

The Acolyte had a great lineup, with the likes of Carrie-Anne Moss, Lee Jung-jae, David Harewood, Manny Jacinto, and young stars Amandla Stenberg, Charlie Barnett, Dafne Keen. There was so much potential with this cast that this is one of the first missed opportunities. Fans were bait-and-switched with the advertising, as initial images had Carrie-Anne Moss, only to have her be such a small part of the overall show. Jung-Jae learned English for this role. I dearly hope that we see him again and this does not derail his career. I am also a fan of Stenberg and thought that there could have been so much more with her dual role portrayal (which I will detail below). Despite the poor dialogue and writing, it was great to see Manny Jacinto (a huge fan of The Good Place!). He was my favorite character in the mess of The Acolyte.

The costuming… oh the costuming. Having explored Star Wars fandom groups like the 501^st and the Mandalorian Mercs, I know that so much time and attention goes into the costume design and materials, there is probably a college class on the subject. But these costumes were lackluster. Throughout watching the series, I felt that I was seeing Temu (or Wish) versions of costumes that lacked the gravitas indicative of high-quality Star Wars productions. Again, a missed opportunity to provide even the standard fans expect. This may be seen as a petty criticism, but we have lived in a Star Wars world for nearly fifty years. You cannot cut corners with this level of detail – again 180 million dollars.

While I could dive into the fighting, given that Kill Bill was supposed to be one of the inspirations for the series, really, I am going to cut to the heart of my complaint, the storytelling. It lacked an overall cohesiveness and consistency that at times was comical and other times tragic. Episode after episode the viewers were subjected to actions by characters that would flip and flop with no apparent reason. I know that you can only do so much with eight episodes, but I dearly hope that there was something going on with the back-end writing room where things were altered and cut that screwed with the overall continuity that was originally intended. Look, I seriously don’t mind Jedi being painted in a negative light – I am a cynical Gen-Xer, I appreciate the deconstruction of genres, and showing the Jedi as corrupt or at least questionable makes sense to me, as we later see things spiral in the prequel movies and that the Council has grown complacent and blind in their dominance over the galaxy. But come on! Even if we want to vilify the Jedi, at most the series paints a handful of them as dumb, obsessive (Sol’s NEED to take a padawan, and his focus on Osha is full of cringe), and inept.

I am going to put it out there, the fix to this would have been for Headland to have drawn on another fitting inspiration for Star Wars – Rashomon. For those who aren’t familiar with this seminal Kurosawa film, it uses contradictions, unreliable narrators, and a subjective perspective of the truth. We could have easily had a masterpiece in The Acolyte if this murder mystery revenge tale was told in such a way that all the characters involved were questionable in their stories. We already have that given the “Big Lie” which is the central premise of the story. This would have also covered a number of the logical inconsistencies and questionable actions that took place during the show.

Consider what happened between Mother Aniseya and Padawan Torbin. From one perspective Aniseya entered the mind of Torbin with no presented justification, screwed with his mind, and really messed him up. Or when Aniseya started to turn into a black mist. Why? What was she doing? But it prompted Sol to attack her when he saw Mae also turning to mist. Playing with a shifting perspective could have brought intentional doubt into what was seen on the screen. I feel this would have done wonders to the overall narrative of The Acolyte.

Overall, I am happy to live in a time where there is consistent Star Wars content. I just wish we weren’t sacrificing quality for quantity. Especially with such a hefty price tag.

What are your thoughts? Love it? Hate it? Let us know.

Star Wars: The Acolyte — Official Trailer

Star Wars: The Acolyte was produced by Lucasfilm for streaming on Disney+ June 4^th, 2024. I paid for my own Disney+ subscription to view this and was not provided any screening materials for this review.