Star Wars: The Acolyte

Axe_meister

New series on D+. 
Watched the first episode. Not sure yet. The actors all seemed a bit wooden to me.

stonevibe

It is getting bad reviews all over social media. I haven't watched it and so I couldn't give an opinion. 

RaymondLin

I watched both last night and the takeaway feeling was..."I've seen this story before!"

It is another....dark side force user who appears from the corner of the galaxy, Jedi (our character) goes to investigate.  

sev112

We’ll see how it develops. We all had the same thoughts after 2 episodes of all the others, but look how good Andor turned out to be.

my personal observation is that is doesn’t look 100 years before Star Wars to me, it could just be at the end of the trilogy compared to long before it 

WezV

It's not Andor, but very little Star Wars is.

It seems to tie in nicely to the prequel era

crunchman

Given his lifespan, is there any chance of Yoda turning up?

WezV

A lot of chance I would say, especially if it gets more than 1 series. I hope they don't overdo it as it is quite nice to have something seperate from everything else we know.  A short cameo would be best

Maybe se will get Yaddle

VimFuego

I quite liked it, obvs very kung fu/martial arts movie based, but good fun, and with a hint of the more sinister side of the jedi (something they have very successfully written out of the history books).

snowblind

Review I've seen of it was not kind. Derivative, poorly written with attempts to hold the plot together through implausible coincidences and too much reliance on people being stupid. There are elements to suggest it was penned by an american sitcom writing team in their off hours between series of "Modern Family". 

Brio

Oooh. I like Modern Family.

guitargeek62

snowblind said:

Review I've seen of it was not kind. Derivative, poorly written with attempts to hold the plot together through implausible coincidences and too much reliance on people being stupid. There are elements to suggest it was penned by an american sitcom writing team in their off hours between series of "Modern Family". 

This isn’t directly aimed at you @snowblind but I don’t get the whole “Reviews are bad so I won’t bother.” mindset; I’d much rather just give something ~15 or so mins of my time and try to make a call from there. For new shows I at least watch the pilot release (i.e. both episodes on this, as they’re usually intended to be binged), then go from there. 

Note: The assumption there is that I have enough interest in a show/film’s concept or crew to begin with!


p.s. I liked the first two, perfectly watchable and a nice new flavour of star wars without being galaxy-jarringly different. 6/10 so far (on a true bell-curve)

snowblind

@guitargeek62 Understand where you are coming from. Granted there is an element of, "I haven't tried it so I won't like it" but given constraints on time and the usual reliability of the reviewer ( at least from my perspective) there is enough information to suggest there are better things I could be doing than watching Acolyte. I've just been rewatching "Altered Carbon" and it strikes me how much better made that was than much of what I've seen recently. Far too often I see stories with impossibly powerful characters who, despite being able to obliterate planets with the wave of a hand, show all the intellect of a housefly. Also somewhat irrationally I'm becoming more annoyed with the concept of just being able to hop in a spaceship and nip over to the next galaxy to catch the bad guy before he finishes his/her pint. I'm all for suspension of disbelief if the tale being told is good enough to warrant it but the older and grumpier I get the more I like there to be at least a nod in the direction of reality.

Its like all the Marvel stuff was great for my son when he was 8 but now even he recognises how superficial the more recent offerings have become. There seems to be too much recycling of ideas and in many cases, sheer laziness when it comes to plot development. It is possible to tell a story without 541t having to explode every 30s or "we can save the universe if we can just find XYZ widget - oh look. I just tripped over the magic widget after it fell out of Grandad's old tool box.Never realized Grandad was really an immortal superhero in disguise. Fancy that. Gosh how we laughed".

Granted the internet can be cruel. Content creators and reviewers make good livings out of eating each other alive. Consumers can get overly invested in fictional universes, sometimes at the expense of their own grip on reality. It might be nice however if instead of doling out huge sums of money to people with a track record of mediocrity we could seek out some genuine creatives and give them a shot at producing some worthwhile entertainment.  

 

guitargeek62

snowblind said:

I'm all for suspension of disbelief if the tale being told is good enough to warrant it but the older and grumpier I get the more I like there to be at least a nod in the direction of reality.

Ah - there's your problem, mistaking Star Wars for science fiction instead of fantasy!  

You're right on the rest though, a lot of media feels all too derivative and 'safe'. Altered Carbon was a great example of what 'proper' sci-fi could be, but the audience wasn't there hence it got canned.

DuploLicks

guitargeek62 said:

snowblind said:

I'm all for suspension of disbelief if the tale being told is good enough to warrant it but the older and grumpier I get the more I like there to be at least a nod in the direction of reality.

Ah - there's your problem, mistaking Star Wars for science fiction instead of fantasy!  

You're right on the rest though, a lot of media feels all too derivative and 'safe'. Altered Carbon was a great example of what 'proper' sci-fi could be, but the audience wasn't there hence it got canned.

Firefly was a good successor to the Star Wars-esque space opera. Shame that got canned as well. 

Jetsam1

Firefly was great. At least I do have the DVDs.......

Watched the Acolyte and I prefer not to make snap judgements based on the first episodes. IT is what I expected and setting the base for moral arguments against the Jedi and the fact that they are potentially vulnerable and they know it.

Came across as a kung fu style movie as said above and in terms of the characterisations this is the old Jedi so avoiding emotion and being wooden are probably the thing as Anakin was so very different to be noticeable.

Let's also be honest, there aren't that many stories really which is why I suppose after 100 years of mass market cinema, TV and Radio tropes are ineviteable.

Altered Carbon was a distopia from what I remember, and still based in basic human fears of death and immortality?

slacker

I watched 2 episodes. It's OK but has moments of stupid writing. For example, I get show dont tell and we need to know lead character was in a fire but don't show it looking like a campfire when it's in space.

TimmyO

I was entertained. 

robgilmo

I couldnt stay focused, although focus hasnt been my thing lately, watched both and kept looking for something else to do.

Grumpyrocker

Wasn't blown away by the first episode. But by the end of the second they had me enough that I'll watch it all.

Rabs

Grumpyrocker said:

Wasn't blown away by the first episode. But by the end of the second they had me enough that I'll watch it all.

Pretty much the same here....  

It was somewhat simplistic in terms of plot and dialogue but so far it seems better than Ashoka and Boba Fett (but thats not saying much) so we will see where it goes. 

CavemanGrogg

RaymondLin said:

I watched both last night and the takeaway feeling was..."I've seen this story before!"

It is another....dark side force user who appears from the corner of the galaxy, Jedi (our character) goes to investigate.  

How many corners does the galaxy have?  I'd at least like some advance notice or warning over how much more shit people are trying to polish with branding.