The Acolyte (live action series set in The High Republic era) - a general discussion thread — Page 5

GuardianoftheWhills said:

Fan_edit_fan said:

Basic flat looking Disney show…yep that about somes up my reaction too. It looks somewhat interesting but I’m just WAY over Jedi and their robes and their religious blundering. After Andor season 2 it’s looking extremely boring and bleak unless they bring Tony Gilroy to a different SW project. He gets it.

Agree. I was cautiously optimistic about this because Russian Doll was wonderfully inventive. But the trailer looks generic Disney+ show. The lighting & cinematography in several shots is bland.

Maybe it’s the way the trailer has been put together. But it’s dampened my expectations.

The same here. The trailer left me a little underwhelmed, though I hope that is just the trailer itself. We’ve been told that there a lot of on location shooting and not much Volume work, but that trailer didn’t showcase that, or look different to shows like Kenobi, Ahsoka, Book of Boba Fett and seasons 2 & 3 of The Mandalorian.

I hope we get another more in-depth trailer soon.

RogueLeader said:

Acbagel said:

5.5/10 trailer for me. Feeling pretty neutral about the show in general, but remain a little bit intrigued. It didn’t match the tone of the poster though…? I don’t know, I’ve watched the trailer 5 full times and something felt a little off or shallow with the trailer itself, but it certainly wasn’t bad. For some reason, the lighting/presentation of the sets still doesn’t fit with the “feel” of a George Lucas set/lighting/background/costumes. I know they can’t really perfectly replicate it with the differing technology nowadays, but there has to be a way to resemble the grand scale of a Lucas set piece. Do the shots still feel… flat or like they’re missing something? Even with this, I am interested to learn more about the show and will follow with cautious optimism.

This is a great question. This is the kind of thought that makes me want to make a Star Wars fan film, even if it was more of a proof of concept film, that was just about trying to replicate that Lucas/Original Trilogy look. There may be fan films out there that do this but I feel like I’ve never seen it. Instead of things looking clean and modern, go for the aesthetic of an older era.

Since I watched this Acolyte trailer, I’ve actually been thinking a lot about how why most of the time Disney Star Wars doesn’t “feel” like Star Wars, and one thing that I concluded was that I think that the production teams are totally missing that the eras of in-universe Star Wars history need to match the real-life decades of which they were originally produced. For example, any OT Empire vs Rebels content should have a '70s-'80s feel in terms of dialect, speech patterns, hairstyles, and costumes, whereas your prequels era content should have a '90s-'00s vibe with all of those things. Everything Disney produces, no matter the placement in the Star Wars timeline, feels like the real-life present day with modern lingo and fashion. Star Wars culture evolved in universe in a different way than our world due to how George filmed the movies non-chronologically, but Disney has been completely unable to replicate that.

The High Republic should’ve tried to replicate like a 1920s America vibe, or since it appears to have a bit of Eastern influence and design perhaps a 10th-11th century Japan vibe, or just base it on some other era of the real world that gives this whole High Republic era in Star Wars a distinct feel rather than just another 2024 Hollywood replica. Instead, we get another Black male character with the modern-day “Killmonger cut”, and if you’ve read any of the other High Republic content it’s got multiple female characters (one black and one white) with the half-shaved head + combover hairstyle that modern Hollywood loves to depict “masculine” females with. These aren’t overall design choices that make The Acolyte and the High Republic era feel unique. I think without George, the Star Wars production teams have been missing the value of having the eras of Star Wars feel unique in and of themselves, as we now have Sequels content and OT content and High Republic content that all feel like ~2020 America.

Andor excluded of course, it’s so 70s right down to formally being the grimy thrillers Star Wars '77 would be analyzed as cultural antidote to. The writing is timeless, the mullets and moustaches, even the Niamos beachwear feel so in line with ANH’s time period. And don’t forget the junky analog tech! Machines are big and unwieldy; Dedra has to do what’s basically an archive search by asking an attendant to collect those files from giant tube computers. There are illegible glass interfaces of lines ala Yavin and Hoth, tons of tactile knobs and switches and buttons, etc. Modified AK-47s as the symbolic weapon of revolution circa the 70s is loaded imagery, just like the modified StGs and Mausers in the OT evoke WWII. I was hyped as hell when Cassian was sentenced to prison by a 70s credit card machine.

And it makes it thematic. Nemik has a whole right-to-repair bit about technology being lost or forgotten; one of the many ways Empire imposes its will is through centralized uniform technology, moving populace away from the different lines of communication and information they maybe once had access to. Seperatist projects like tactical droids with databases in their head, Techno Union touch screens, or Umbaran bubble fighters fall by the wayside in distinctly important ways. It’s great!

Stuff like that really puts us right back into the space A New Hope is in. Whereas, yeah, it feels like a lot of other Star Wars stuff recently just conceptualizes “Star Wars” as anything that’s been in the movies before. Fair game for inclusion at any point, regardless of its faux-historical context. Aside from looking like a very modern Disney+ show in lighting and costuming, I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t any real technological difference between High Republic and Mandalorian eras in Acolyte. I would have loved design that feels more historical than just “cool” for the characters.

That trailer is a nice showcase of everything I dislike about Force-based characters and modern fight choreography/cinematography. Hard pass.

Idk…guess I will reserve judgment for when I actually see the show ,but was not impressed with the trailer and agree with the previous assesments so far on the flat look . Biggest thing that took me out of it was the fight scenes lifted straight out of The Matrix . Cool that Carrie Anne Moss is in the show , but all I could see was Trinity in a Jedi Robe . That " bullet time " effect has been copied to death by movies and shows since the Matrix first came out . Sure ,this is supposed to be the Jedi in their prime , but the choreography could be done another way . The show needs to distinguish itself from the style of everything else in my opinion . Give me a good story any day over edgy, cool and flashy fight scenes . Even with older stuff like the look of the old republic games , I felt the tech and look could have been more unique to reflect those much older time periods , instead of showing ships and armor etc , that didn’t look much different at all from later time periods . What I would love to see is a show that goes much further back in time and has a look akin to the original Tales Of The Jedi comics as drawn by Chris Gossett . Now that would be unique .

Didn’t like the trailer at first, but it’s growing on me now.

I was curious when I heard some time ago that Carrie-Anne Moss was going to be in it and that it was in a time period irrelevant to anything Sequel-related.

Then I saw the trailer. And now I want Elon Musk’s neurolink to block my memory of everything I just saw. Unless those were all their worst shots and fighting choreography combined in one trailer to mindtrick us this will be doo-doo time.

PsyGemini said:

left me with a barf taste in my mouth.

You may be a little more emotionally involved with this than you ought to be

NFBisms said:

Andor excluded of course, it’s so 70s right down to formally being the grimy thrillers Star Wars '77 would be analyzed as cultural antidote to. The writing is timeless, the mullets and moustaches, even the Niamos beachwear feel so in line with ANH’s time period. And don’t forget the junky analog tech! Machines are big and unwieldy; Dedra has to do what’s basically an archive search by asking an attendant to collect those files from giant tube computers. There are illegible glass interfaces of lines ala Yavin and Hoth, tons of tactile knobs and switches and buttons, etc. Modified AK-47s as the symbolic weapon of revolution circa the 70s is loaded imagery, just like the modified StGs and Mausers in the OT evoke WWII. I was hyped as hell when Cassian was sentenced to prison by a 70s credit card machine.

And it makes it thematic. Nemik has a whole right-to-repair bit about technology being lost or forgotten; one of the many ways Empire imposes its will is through centralized uniform technology, moving populace away from the different lines of communication and information they maybe once had access to. Seperatist projects like tactical droids with databases in their head, Techno Union touch screens, or Umbaran bubble fighters fall by the wayside in distinctly important ways. It’s great!

Stuff like that really puts us right back into the space A New Hope is in. Whereas, yeah, it feels like a lot of other Star Wars stuff recently just conceptualizes “Star Wars” as anything that’s been in the movies before. Fair game for inclusion at any point, regardless of its faux-historical context. Aside from looking like a very modern Disney+ show in lighting and costuming, I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t any real technological difference between High Republic and Mandalorian eras in Acolyte. I would have loved design that feels more historical than just “cool” for the characters.

Definitely agree here, those ISB meeting scenes had all the right acting demeanor for the cultural transition to 70s/80s Empire. The tech looked great, the locations were vast and alive, it didn’t look sterile and flat, the technology matched the era, etc. Absolutely phenomenol production. Aside from the lack of aliens, it’s interesting how the least “Star Wars” story looks and felt the most like Star Wars out of any live-action production we’ve seen so far.

I think some sporadic earlier episodes of The Mandalorian had the right vibes too, but it’s been something that the selected directors have consistently struggled with. Hope it gets identified and addressed soon!

screams in the void said:
…Even with older stuff like the look of the old republic games , I felt the tech and look could have been more unique to reflect those much older time periods , instead of showing ships and armor etc , that didn’t look much different at all from later time periods . What I would love to see is a show that goes much further back in time and has a look akin to the original Tales Of The Jedi comics as drawn by Chris Gossett . Now that would be unique .

For sure! I’d say out of any potential project, I want to see Disney try to very authentically adapt the Tales of the Jedi comics into a movie saga/show. Not remake them for modern audiences, but really, really try to adapt them in the style that they were originally created.

Upon further reflection, I think they shoulda given away more about the plot in this first trailer. “Mystery marketing” for Star Wars no longer works with general audiences, it seems.

I’m starting to get more excited for this show again, thankfully. Everything the cast and crew has been talking about sounds promising.

This new trailer and the scene that leaked the other day just haven’t really “done it” for me, unfortunately.

daveybjones999 said:

So the new trailer for this show has dropped and it’s way better than the first one we get a much better sense of the stakes and the scale that the story is going to take place on. The action we see here looks better than the previous trailer as well. Also, it seems like the color grading is a bit better and we’re seeing scenes with more desaturated colors and a better sense of characterization. So the trailer makes me way more hopeful for the show, but there’s still something that feels missing and I’m not sure what it is.

Agree on this one, new trailer did a much better job than the first teaser. Made me a little bit more hopeful for this project. I disagree with a lot of the criticism online about this, and while I don’t think it looks great, I remain slightly optimistic about this story. Something does still feel off about it though! I don’t feel “High Republic” setting when I watch. It looks like a very sterile hollywood production, but I’m open to being wrong about that once we start seeing full episodes.