Acbagel

Sent to everyone!

Hadrian sunrider said:

Acbagel said:

Thanks for the great review and feedback! I definitely agree with a lot of those points. This edit is ~3 years old now and I’d do some things differently now, so when I get back to re-editing my ideas I’ll be making many of the changes you suggested.

Is Luke still alive somehow in the universe of this fan edit?

“No one is ever really gone”. You’ll see Luke in a different life by the end, but no, he is not still physically alive after the end. I made these edits in a One Canon/Crucible Canon in mind (https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-crucible-canon-merging-eu-and-new-canon-as-smoothly-as-possible.50053287/), so while in Disney Canon TRoS takes place in 35 ABY when Luke isn’t yet so old, my film takes place in 65 ABY after all of the Legends storylines, leaving Luke, Leia, and Han to pass away in their 80s-90s here.

EddieDean said:

Can you render and save your pre-Alpha 3.5 hour cut? It might serve as a good basis for those of us who’d like a two movie version of season three… 😉

Haha, the struggle of not having enough content for two strong movies, but too much for one… The stuff I just cut out that I’m referencing are very superfluous scenes in my opinion. I just removed the “Droid bar” scene in Plazir, and trimmed down some of the briefing scene Boba gets from the palace droid. That saved me 5+ minutes right there. So little things that maybe add a tiny bit more context to the world, but ultimately have nothing at all to do with getting the clans to retake Mandalore. And for a saga finale, I want to avoid some of what I thought Episode 9 did wrong by focusing waaay too much on the little individual events rather than wrapping things up on the grand scale.

Hendrik1104 said:

Hey, your work sounds amazing. Just wow how much time you spent for this project. Would be honored to get a link to watch it.
Greetings from Germany.

Greetings! Thanks for watching, I sent you this project and the Sequel Trilogy that you requested. Hope you enjoy!

Shoya Haa’runi said:

Su’cuy vode! Can’t believe I missed mando’a being added, kandosii! On that topic however, in the original folders I received I checked in book 1 but it hadn’t updated to include the special edition. Do I have outdated folders? And to mirror everyone else here, can’t wait for the final updates!

Su’cuy tug’yc! If your link leads to a folder with a poster and trailer, that should be the special edition version. You can check around 18 minutes into the film to make sure they’re speaking mando’a there. But I’ll DM you again just to make sure.

Darth Sadifous said:

Hey Acbagel, just checking in to see how things are progressing. I know last time you posted that Book 6 was in an almost pre-alpha phase. Have you been able to problem solve some of the issues you were running into with the sequence of events, etc. Has a revised Book 5 been locked in or are things still shifting due to you tinkering with Book 6? Don’t mind viewing clips if you need an extra set of eyes/ feedback. Eagerly looking forward to this cut. Also, do you think you would even attempt an edit of The Acolyte? I wish you the best and may the force be with you!

Hello, Darth! Progress went a little slower than anticipated, my company had to move offices and that took me out of production for a whole week, but I got some good time in the last few days and I’d say I’m right on the edge of having a full alpha cut completed. I watched the first 1.5 hours of the film last night and made some additional cuts and touch-ups. The pre-alpha was still sitting at over 3.5 hours, so I have a good portion I’m forced to cut out. It’s a little bit painful making cuts on things I worked a long time on, but sometimes it’s simply necessary. My Plazir-15 storyline dragged on far too long and I had to trim it down quite a bit. Some of Boba’s sequences needed cut down a bit too for better balance with Din’s scenes. There is just a lot of story to work with and I need to find the right flow for it all, trying to keep it focused on the main theme of gathering the clans to retake Mandalore but having some side adventures along the way. We’re getting closer! I could release some small clips from the Mandalore base battle soon, I’m really loving how I’ve paced some of the segments.

The main hold-up with releasing Book 5 is that my Din and Grogu reunion in Book 6 uses parts of the travel scenes to Ossus. So since I haven’t 100% finished the sequence in Book 6, I don’t have an exact split of the scenes worked out yet to avoid repeats. Once I get through that, I’ll be ready to re-release 5. I just received the first draft of my final release poster yesterday and it’s looking amazing! Exactly as I sketched it out. The artist is very talented. It’ll look like a very high-quality rendition of one of my other posters… Really excited about it!

Regarding The Acolyte… I don’t know. I won’t say never, but I’d be more motivated to work on Ahsoka, Kenobi, redo my Sequel Trilogy films, etc. I do think it would be vastly improved by an edit and I certainly have ideas, but I don’t think it adds much to the Star Wars mythos. I’d have to entirely recontextualize the events to feel good about releasing that story, and it sounds like a fun challenge, but I don’t have the passion for deep diving into that show right now. It took me ~3 years after The Last Jedi before I could stomach watching it enough to start doing an edit haha. I’m friends with Movies Remastered and have helped him on a couple of his edits, so I’m currently doing some Sith eyes tracking on Qimir for him, but that’s as much as I can handle right now! Maybe one day…

rocknroll41 said:

According to MSW, proper filming starts in 3 weeks, but they already filmed some key scenes in secret recently. Most likely just the scene or two where Mando himself will be unmasked, since Pedro has to prioritize Fantastic Four this summer.

Temeura Morrison just apologized for canceling some fan events in Perth, so he’s probably headed to film some Boba scenes!

KumoNin said:

I’d love to reply to every single bit of that, I’ll just say different strokes 😄

I’d definitely welcome it! Always appreciate different perspectives from people with different backgrounds from me, and perhaps different reasons for liking Star Wars in the first place than me. Some of what I say in my review I consider objective (such as poor scene transition effects, low-quality CGI/green screen, structural issues in episodic formatting), and other parts I certainly acknowledge as a subjective opinion (whether a character had a satisfying arc/conclusion, if an actor’s performance was done well enough, how it meshes with other Star Wars themes).

An interesting tidbit from recent interviews with Leslye and Manny is that there was an idea to have them kiss at the end (and they shot it, even!), but it didn’t feel earned and the actors suggested the hand hold we see in the final version. Genuinely perfect wrap-up of their arcs for this season

Haha, well I’m glad it was at least toned down from that… I’d be curious to at least hear your opinion on 2 points as someone who seems like you enjoyed the show.

1. Regarding this romance, I truly have difficulty seeing how these types of “relationships” aren’t seen as anything other than abusive Stockholm syndrome reactions. Osha has no idea who Qimir is, and within a 48-hour span she: watches him murder her colleagues for the given reason of “they can’t tell anyone I exist”, is kidnapped while unconscious and taken to an unknown planet and placed in a cave, is exposed to his nudity, is encouraged to kill her former mentor in cold blood by embracing the dark side. I understand dark side romances, they can be twisted, but it really seems like the natural reaction would be for Osha to HATE Qimir and want to kill him as she falls rather than forgive him for all of that insanity and want to serve him. How does an ending of mutual attraction/interest/respect make sense to you as a “genuinely perfect wrap-up of their arcs”? My mind is unable to even go there for a second, I can’t fathom it.

2. Is there a justification for the cover-up lie that makes sense to you that I am missing? Or is it just something you don’t mind as a “flaw” in the show and can look past it? To me, writing consistency and coherency is the #1 most important aspect in my enjoyment of a production. 10x more than any battle or VFX or setting or music or anything. So having this resolved/explained would do wonders for me.

I’ll do another analysis of viewership numbers in a few weeks once another few data points from Nielsen come out, so instead of a preface this week, I instead made another thread about the future of Star Wars in a post-Acolyte world where we’re discussing potential storylines following this conclusion. Let’s finish this show out with my last review until the holiday season with Skeleton Crew!

The Acolyte - Episode 8: The Acolyte (I’m not repeating myself, that’s what this episode is called!)

For reference, I do not use the modern review scale of 7.5 being “average”. A 5 is average. Refer to this scale for all of my ratings. I am going to be reviewing this episode individually, and also giving the entire show a final rating in each category.

Pacing and Structure

Without the intro and credits, we received 41 minutes and 21 seconds of new content in the conclusion. That brings the entire show to a runtime of 4 hours, 27 minutes, and 15 seconds, averaging ~33 minutes/episode. I was much more pleased with the runtime this week as it was well above average. It is astonishing how much more complete each episode feels when it’s not 26 minutes like in previous weeks. The pacing got off to a rough start with a jarring opening that didn’t feel like it flowed naturally from last week. It directly continued a scene from 2 weeks ago, and the flashback week completely disrupted the flow of that cliffhanger. I don’t think it’s a good move to rely on answering cliffhanger endings from multiple weeks prior. But once we got through the awkward opening and intro logo, things started to move smoothly with Mae’s escape from the ship. Past the 10-minute mark, we get some attempts at tension building by “slow” scenes of Vernestra talking to a senator, Osha and Qimir talking, and Sol wandering Brendock. These 10 minutes before the fight scene starts aren’t a bad idea, but I did think they were drawn out without adding anything we didn’t already know, and they ended up derailing some of the excitement. Once the action begins with the lightsaber duel, we’re brought back to life, but then hampered again by a much slower and repetitive Mae/Osha discussion and spar. The audience’s interest is most definitely in the Sol and Qimir duel, so the cuts back to slow conversations were not interesting. After an entertaining battle, we get WAY too long of a walking sequence with Vernestra and her squad. Her character takes up about 25% of the screen time in this episode, and I have consistently found her to be the dullest part of the entire series. She did play an important role in this episode, so I don’t fault them for giving her proper plot impact, but every scene she’s in just moves at snail speed. I thought we were finally going to see her do something other than sulk around hallways and have her confront Qimir for a duel with that heavily marketed lightwhip… but no, she just talks and walks. Overall, the pacing here did feel like it led to a conclusion and it was better done than the average Acolyte episode. I’d put this in a similar category to episodes 3 & 7, where I do like the overall runtime, but certain scenes are paced too slowly. Due to the very short average runtime and awkward pacing throughout the entire season, I’d give the whole show a 3/10 on the pacing.

Structurally, this episode worked well as a conclusion. The placements to get everyone back on Brendock where it all began is a good idea, and this definitely felt like it was meant to wrap up a season. Not a series, however. I am not going to include any definitive future prospective seasons in this review, but I have to judge it both as a self-contained story and as a potential setup for future stories. This finale 100% relied on cameos for its biggest moments. You shouldn’t put two major characters in here for 3-5 seconds each just for flippant reasons. These moments felt impactful for the few seconds, but without any payoff whatsoever, it doesn’t feel like they belonged in the episode itself other than to tease for a future season. Especially having the most prominent one happen 25% into the episode, only never to be referenced again ended up as more of a distraction and false anticipation for the next 30 minutes, ultimately leaving me feeling let down when the most interesting concept of the whole show is nothing more than the tiniest snippet. Aside from the cameos, the episode was structured well with a clear beginning, middle, and end, so I appreciate the completeness of the overarching picture, even if many of the specifics are left unresolved. Unfortunately, I cannot give a high grade to the overall structure of the show as it is genuinely one of the worst-structured storylines I have ever seen. I thought the entire mystery box plot mechanic failed miserably, the flashback episodes completely derailed any bit of momentum we developed, and I thought this entire series would have functioned much better as a single 2.5-hour film or perhaps a 2-part release of 2 hours each. So due to the terrible placements of the flashback episodes, and multiple episodes feeling like they should have been combined into one (1 & 2, 3 & 7, 4 & 5), I would give the structure of the show as a whole a 2/10.

Dialogue and Writing Quality

As the show concluded, the main thing that stuck out to me in this category is that all dialogue from every character sounds very much the same. Listen to the cadence of how Sol speaks vs how Osha speaks vs how Vernestra speaks. They deliver extremely slow and deliberate lines, taking time to emotionally emphasize certain words. Even Qimir, Indara, and Jecki, all speak relatively similarly. Yes, they choose different words and have minor personality differences, but the deliveries are quite common. Can you remember a moment of fast-talking high-energy conversation where lots of words are said? The subtitle file for this show is going to be very short. Anyway, this episode remains middle of the road here as the show has done as a whole. It’s not trying to accomplish anything intellectual with the dialogue and simply serves to communicate basic exposition and thoughts. It’s quite elementary, even down to someone like Vernestra who is seemingly involved in the political realm and you’d think she’d be able to deliver more artistic or charismatic sentences, but her lines are along the lines of, “The man who killed your mother was a Jedi. He was my friend. And he did terrible things.” That’s as basic as you could possibly get when trying to communicate an idea. There is no nuance. There are no descriptive, softening, or emotive words. Adjectives are banned. “Why use many word, when few word do trick?” Most of the dialogue in the show looks like that, just trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible without any nuance or emotive words. I mentioned this in previous weeks when disagreements arose. There are never any thought-out objections to ideas or plans. Someone may briefly voice a disagreement, but actual discussions and back and forth are non-existent. For example, in a supposedly very emotional moment, Osha asks Sol, “Why didn’t you tell me?” And he responds, “They would have sent you away. You were too old. They never would have let you become a Jedi.” (I don’t even understand this dialogue because she did become a Jedi at that same old age? Not sure what hiding the mother’s death had to do with her age or her ability to train as a Jedi) Yes, Sol communicates proper emotion with his tone and facial expressions, but the vocabulary of these characters rarely matches that. We need some additional human language in between there. Anything at all to create a more natural speaking tone and conversational approach. Overall, this show was below average in the dialogue but I can’t say it was actively bad, just felt empty and void of deeper thought. I’m giving it a 4/10 in this category.

Now we have the complete storyline… I have reserved a great deal of criticism for the writing due to the “mystery box” nature of this plot. I wanted to give it a fair chance to unfold and not make any pre-judgments. Now that we have the full picture (save some possible future connections that aren’t exactly relevant to the sequence of events here), I thought that the specifics of the storyline in this episode, as well as the show as a whole, were an absolute mess that forced you to turn your brain off, ditch all logic and reasoning, and not look at or think about any of this deeply because it simply cannot and will not hold up to any degree of scrutiny. When I squint, I can see the big-picture story Leslye wanted to tell. I can even more clearly see the themes and messages she wanted to communicate. But on camera, on my TV screen, this entire show seemed like it was the first draft copy on a whiteboard and the connective tissue hadn’t even been written yet. The big-picture events are here, and I actually think they could have worked well, but the intermediary glue and connecting plot devices in no way justify or explain how the big-picture events happen. I could write endlessly about what I don’t think worked in the writing department, but for the sake of time and sanity, I want to focus on three main points.

1. The Culmination of the Jedi Cover-up - This whole show has painted Vernestra as some sort of independent agent with the Order, able to unilaterally make decisions and act without any oversight. Her entire role here continually prompted my brain to ask “How is she allowed to do this?” and “Why is no one else getting involved?” The way this played out with her ability to constantly put together “secret” teams of 6-12-man Jedi squads and deploy them across the galaxy without Council oversight significantly undermined the established hierarchy of the Jedi Order. Then the episode’s conclusion, Vern convenes a meeting with the Supreme Chancellor and several Senate members, during which she fabricates a story implicating Sol. The blatant lie is presented without any pushback or skepticism from other knowledgeable Jedi or senate members, even though it’s been presented as if this knowledge is not at all secretive. Many seem to have an understanding of what happened, yet this beyond-out-of-the-blue explanation goes through this committee without challenge, and also somehow through Yoda. The episode further suggests that many Jedi are either complicit in or oblivious to this deception. This scenario assumes a level of collective ignorance or compliance that is difficult to reconcile with the established character and vigilance of the Jedi Order in this time period. The notion that the Council would not make it the #1 priority to investigate and verify the causes of the deaths of about a dozen Jedi, especially when linked to such a significant cover-up, strained all plausibility. Given the interconnected nature of the Jedi community, it is just inconceivable that such significant events would go unnoticed or unexamined. The deaths of multiple Jedi would inevitably become a major topic of concern for hundreds if not thousands of Jedi who interacted with so many of these fallen brothers and sisters, especially since we’re talking about murders of both Masters and Younglings… This episode outright asks us viewers to accept the reality that no other Jedi, many of whom would logically be aware of at least some of the true events, would speak out against Vern’s falsehoods. Sol is supposedly the killer, and when it is talked about, you’re telling me no one would be like, “Hey, uh… wasn’t Sol actually here on Coruscant in this very temple when Indara was killed a few days ago…?” “Hasn’t he been training the Younglings right here in this room?” “Yeah, he was showing me how to meditate at noon 3 days ago during the murder! Someone go check the schedule and the cameras!” Not to mention, didn’t we have multiple witnesses that IDed Mae, who is also now in custody at the temple? How does the Council not seem to care about any of this mountain of evidence? How are Jedi being killed en masse and they’re turning a blind eye to all of it? How does Grandmaster Yoda not sense any of this and deploy the most prominent Jedi Masters to investigate? He sensed Anakin killing Tusken Raiders across the galaxy, yet he can’t sense the massive conspiracy of murders happening right under his nose? This is not even a time when the Dark Side is “clouding” the vision of the Jedi. Sidious was responsible for that and Yoda is seeing these visions through that cloud, THAT’S what we’re supposed to see as Yoda struggling, but here he looks like a complete chump having no control over the Order. I don’t even understand what Vern feels like she needs to cover up? Is she hiding ALL of the truth simply because she still cares about… Qimir? Her former apprentice, apparently, as that was suddenly revealed (but extremely obvious, like every other “reveal” in this show). I genuinely don’t understand what is wrong with the truth here. Implicating Sol as a fallen Jedi seems WAY worse than just about any other explanation. Here is a short list of everyone who can easily give first-hand eyewitness accounts that directly contradict this lie:

Tasi Lowa, Yord’s Apprentice who was investigating Indara’s killer in episode 1. She investigated the initial murder scene and interviewed eyewitnesses of Mae’s attack on Indara. Every single piece of evidence pointed to Osha/Mae, nothing could’ve possibly indicated Sol. Can you imagine how bewildered she would be to hear this news? Surely she’d think something was amuck?

The bar owner from episode 1 who positively ID’ed one of the twins and dozens of other bar patrons who saw Mae walk up to Indara and threaten her in a combat stance.

The entire outpost of Jedi on Olega who are WITH Sol the entire time when Torbin is discovered to be dead.

Eyewitnesses on Olega like the young girl who was bribed to let Mae into the Jedi outpost.

Ki-Adi-Mundi and everyone in the room during that scene who watches footage of Mae ATTACKING Sol. Did Vern delete this footage…? Even assuming so, isn’t that MORE suspicious since multiple Jedi would testify to the exact same thing? Sol was not using a single act of aggression against Mae. CLEARLY, she was the aggressor trying to kill him. Like what possible explanation is there to point to Sol as a deranged fallen murderer according to the dozens to hundreds of pieces of evidence from Olega? And if the cover-up is that Sol used Mae to murder the Jedi, that’s even more unbelievable because everyone in this show has commented about how she’s not that strong and looks slow, she’s way outclassed by Sol without a weapon on camera, yet we’re supposed to believe she has murdered 3-4 masters and an entire squad of elite Knights in lightsaber combat. No.

Bazil. He is friendly with the Jedi and saw EVERYTHING. There is no way he’d defend Vern here.

Everyone on the Brendok Jedi team that saw how Sol didn’t have any self-inflicted wounds, and then suddenly Sol’s body is gone and didn’t return to Coruscant so they’re unable to perform an autopsy. Did this group of 11 other Jedi not discuss amongst themselves like “Hey, did you move Sol’s body?” “No… Did you?” “No…” everyone glares suspiciously at Vernestra

Any Jedi who arrested and processed Mae. Since apparently, they believed she murdered Sol, they told her as much, and then Vernestra waited until she was on Coruscant to make up this lie.

Every Jedi in the Temple who can confirm Sol’s whereabouts at the time of all these murders. Folks, this is not like Sol is within a 30-minute drive and could sneak out, kill a master, and make it back to Youngling Class in time (though this show does indicate starships can enter orbit and teleport across the galaxy in mere seconds). The accusation is that he was stealing starships, or has some unregistered personal starship, flying across the galaxy, killing Indara, sneaking around Olega and being involved in tons of other events and killing Torbin, sneaking to Khofar and killing half a dozen Jedi and Kelnacca, then flying to Brendock to kill himself. Sol. SOL. The softest, sweetest teacher… COME ON.

Of course, Vern knows the actual killers of Osha/Qimir could easily present evidence and wreck her entire scheme if desired. And we’re supposed to believe Yoda looks at all of this, gives Vern a thumbs up, and moves on.

Any way that I try to understand this cover-up, I cannot begin to fathom how it’s believed by even a single member of the Council, let alone the entire Order and Senate. Sorry, but you are required to suspend reality and sensible writing in order to accept this cover-up plot device. It makes absolutely no sense in-universe. It’s a good idea for a story on paper, but the idea itself was not fleshed out in any sensible way.

2. Sol’s Guilt - Poor Sol. Read my earlier reviews and you’ll see that he was a character I actually liked for much of this show until they turned him into an absolute idiot here in the end. He confesses to Osha that he murdered her mother without trying to explain why he did what he did. I thought he had indisputable probable cause so this entire arc has never resonated with me. Mother Aniseya, a dark side using witch, was turning into a demon-looking monster with sharp teeth, dissolving a child who he thought was Osha (who wanted to be freed from this world), there was mention of the fire, and thus Sol was trying to protect Osha, as well as himself and Torbin who had been previously violently attacked. So let’s say even if Sol would 99% be justified for his actions in a court of law, even in a Senate tribunal outside the Jedi Council, let’s just say he still carries some guilt from that night because, yeah, I guess it would be traumatic (though the events here do not seem that much greater than any ordinary Jedi mission where death occurs. These guys train their entire lives for situations exactly like this and have presumably seen worse already as a Jedi Master). So he has been wanting to tell Osha the truth and he’s been wanting to explain himself to Mae for 16 years. So here he finally gets the chance to talk to his beloved Osha, the closest thing he will ever have to a daughter, and out of nowhere she just murders him by force choke without even wanting any kind of explanation about why he confessed to killing her mother. The man she has looked up to as a father figure for years upon years for most of her life. And Sol, being an idiot, lets her kill him, lets her fall to the dark side, and ruin the rest of her life by walking away with a child-killer. Even if you want to say it’s “loving” in some twisted way for Sol to just let Osha “be herself” or something, Sol watched Qimir butcher a squad of Jedi like a day or two ago. He watched him gut Jecki, a child. Does he not care enough for Osha to stop her from being seduced to the dark side by a deranged mass murderer? I get that Leslye wanted to tell his story to show “flaws” in the Jedi or something like that (and see the KOTOR comic line if you want an actually fantastic deployment of such an idea), but like above, the idea looks like an idea on paper and not one that makes sense as a sequence of events in a very interconnected plot. Sol’s entire character arc was a massive letdown

3. Mae/Osha’s Fate, and the Light v Dark - Why doesn’t Mae just decide to stay with Osha in the end? After ALL this, Mae is just going to give up everything, her memories, her very existence essentially, all so Osha can go train with Qimir in her place? The whole show Mae has been killing people and causing chaos to get what she wants, and now what she wants is for Osha to… replace her in life itself? I guess Osha has been dealing with this anger inside of her all this time, so she fell to the dark side in a few hours and went from a sympathetic sister to a cold-blooded murderer, willing to then mind-wipe her own sister in order to get what she personally wants, which is… training in the dark side? With the man to murdered her friend Jecki, who apparently she had at least a slight romantic interest in. On paper, this seems to show that the dark side is extremely corruptive and it looks like this should be a dark and depressing storyline, but the tone of all of these events is not at all reflective of that. The tone seems to want us to sympathize with Osha and see the Jedi as in error, and Qimir as justified. The show attempts to paint every good decision as bad and every bad decision as good. The true heroes are Mae and Osha because of their love for each other (though it’s not loving at all to let your sister get mind-wiped) I’ve talked about flip-flopping character motivation every single week, and this was just the culmination of it all. Nothing in this storyline of the twins made sense up until this point so it’s unsurprising, but I would have at least had some respect for the plot if it somehow figured out a way to have it where Qimir got the twins to fight each other for the right to be his apprentice. That would be the true nature of the dark side. Let’s show what a real Sith apprentice would be willing to do to get that coveted spot. I think the arc of the protagonist of this show is beyond any sort of rational explanation when you try to break down what each sister wanted. I don’t think there is a human on earth that could sit down right now, and beginning til the end tell me what Mae wanted and did and what Osha wanted and did and come up with a coherent explanation of these events. Again, I see thematically what Leslye wanted to do here, but the events are incoherent nonsense.

I need to stop. I could expand this list 10 more points rehashing previous criticisms that didn’t culminate well here. But I think I’ll just move on. Look, this show does some things well, its higher ratings are in other categories below. Everything in this show isn’t terrible, but the writing and overarching storyline truly demand you to turn your brain off and not think. At the end of the day, all writing and storylines have both objective and subjective elements, but for me, I have to be honest and give this show a 1/10 in this category.

Production Quality and Creative Direction

This show remains rather small in scale, and we have gone to the same location multiple times now, so there’s not always a ton to comment on in terms of new production and creativity. The standout design was certainly the asteroid/ice field surrounding Brendok. The concept was great and served as a unique obstacle to creating entertainment value in this escape sequence. It was certainly appreciated rather than just having an empty orbit for the setting. I can’t say it looked incredible or anything though, as when you review this multiple times, you can see the editing tricks they used in order to mask some of the challenges of such a setting. The objects in space are extremely blurred, which makes sense for a high-speed chase, but it doesn’t do anything to help the beauty of the scene. Even with a vast field, it still manages to feel small with tons of close-up shots both inside the ships and outside. The green screen work with the actors was not very smooth, and the depth perception was very wrong when you’d see a shot of Sol or Mae up against a cockpit window. The ship designs looked good, though they functioned more like cars driving on the road rather than free-floating spaceships. One of the shots reminds me of the movie Cars when Mater and Lighting go “tractor tipping” and the farming vehicle tries to run them over. Overall, it was a good sequence, but not stunning in any way. The various senate chamber rooms looked extremely industrial rather than diplomatic and had many odd colors inside. Tons of purples and reds and dark blues, I just didn’t understand what the aesthetic was. The fight sequences had great VFX throughout and continue to be the production highlight of the show. I’ll mention it here as well, while we only saw a glimpse, the Plagueis model looked great. Perhaps the CGI wasn’t perfectly crisp and textured, but they didn’t necessarily need to do that here. Many had big concerns about how a Sith Muun would look and some were calling for a species change because it would look “too goofy”, but his model was really great and I’d love to see it utilized again in some manner. The wipes and overall editing of this episode were less bad than previous weeks which were the worst I have ever seen in Star Wars, so I’m glad to see that corrected here. There were a few distracting cuts, but much improved from the lows. Overall, this show has done an adequate job of production quality. Nothing has been spectacular, there have been some low moments, but also some that I think perfectly served their purposes. Carried by the combat VFX and lessened by poor green screen integration and distracting post-production editing, I give the visual quality of this show a 6/10.

As far as the creative direction of the episode, again I have to give props for the very competent integration of a Sith Muun. The music, CGI model, and movement all looked very good. The ruined Brendock set did a good job of showing natural overgrowth over the decades, and the sets did a solid job of being transformed. I was quite disappointed in the lack of creativity in the designs of Vernestra’s Jedi squad, however. There are 12 Jedi standing in this plaza, and every single one of them is human aside from Vern. I thought I maybe could see some tiny horns on one that make him look like a Zabrak, but it’s very clear, and even then, it’s a human-adjacent species. They all have some very wacky hairstyles, face paint, and tattoos, but it’s a bunch of very obviously dressed-up humans. We got a Kel Dor in a previous battle, and these Jedi do not do a single thing so I’m not sure why the alien designs are so stifled here. Such a perfect chance to feature 75+% alien species from the Order, but it’s so bland. Additionally, I do not enjoy this trend of every single Jedi having copy-paste yellow-brown robes. The PT did great with the diversity of costumes and colors on robes, and I’m not sure if this is purely a High Republic thing, but if it is, I can’t understand why that suddenly changes in 80 years. The other costume I need to highlight is Vern’s “wedding gown” outfit she dons at the end in order to look… important? I don’t know, but it looked like a placemat for my dinner table with some roughly sewn symbols on it. I have listened to the costume designer discuss her ideas in interviews, and I’m simply not a fan of her vision for Star Wars costumes. It looks like highfalutin posh goofiness instead of historic Star Wars aesthetics. The clash of Vern’s robes on her black and red “emperor’s chair” was obviously thematically intentional, but sometimes it just doesn’t need to be that deep. George Lucas made Luke’s 2nd lightsaber green because the blue was blending into the Tatooine sky too much when it was blue. Sometimes just make things look good rather than going way over the top. The Sol v Qimir was wonderfully choreographed once more and I hope to see more from this team, though I’m interested to see if they’re able to expand beyond the kung-fu style that marked this show. I do have to point out that I despise the usage of slow-mo in combat scenes like this. It looks terrible and things are way cooler when we see their speed in real time. Imagine the PT duels cutting to slow motion and spinning cameras when Maul kicks Obi-Wan off a ledge or when Dooku cuts off Anakin’s arm… In contrast to the mostly great Qimir duel, the Mae v Osha fistfight was the worst battle sequence of the series. That’s obviously a difficult concept to pull off with one actor and a stunt double/CGI, but it did not look good in any capacity. This is a hard category to score overall, because for the most part, the fighting was the best we’ve seen in decades, but the general creative inspiration was missing. I saw next to nothing that made me feel like I was experiencing a new era for the first time. I suppose it’s so close to the PT that it can’t look increasingly different, but it also didn’t look like the PT. I don’t think the overall ideas for creative design meshed well, especially compared to the concept art that has come out, it just missed the mark and nothing looked visually awe-inspiring. Overall, since I have included choreography in this category from the beginning as combat is an art, this category gets a 6/10.

Performances and Characters

Amandla Stenberg just could not deliver the depth of performance needed to sell this episode, and in the role of Osha and Mae, it has severely hampered my ability to connect with these characters. She genuinely tries to display emotions like anger and sadness, but fails to convey them realistically. If she had delivered a great performance with the twins, maybe I would have felt something differently about their arc or at least been able to feel what they seemed to be feeling, but there was a true disconnect in the acting/directing here. At the end, when they’re saying goodbye, it’s obviously trying to make us feel sorrow for them, but I simply never do. I’m nothing more than bored as I watch yet another fip-floppy and wooden delivery. The flat performance of the primary protagonists of the show is one of the greatest failings of the series and of the finale in particular. The Acolyte really relied on her to deliver something special, and granted, it’s a very difficult task, but I have to be honest and admit she just doesn’t accomplish what was needed to sell it. Side characters like Lee Jung-jae and Jacinto are indisputably the stars of the show, even if the character motivations were very confounding at times, the performances made nearly every scene with them engaging. Compare any scene with Sol or Qimir to one where Osha and Mae are talking to each other and it’s day and night. Unfortunately, not many other actors were even given a chance to shine and I thought some of the talent was wasted. You bring in proven actors like Carrie Ann Moss, Dean-Charles Chapman, and Dafne Keen, yet they’re barely allowed to show their great skills. Whereas Rebecca Henerson as Vernestra was hired due to familial relations rather than talent as this character, and somehow surpasses Amandala for the stiffest and most boring performance I have seen in a very, very long time. I really would like to give this category a high score due to some phenomenal acting skills from a few characters, but half of the screen time goes to performances that are very low-rated so I have to score the acting of this show no higher than a 5/10.

Mae / Osha - An indecipherable mess of a character, where two distinct personalities are impossible to identify (I guess this lines up with them being one mind or something). Far too much screen time leading to the most boring scenes in the series, no discernable character arc, weak abilities, unbelievable actions, etc. 2/10

Master Sol - Massive potential with a fantastic start to the character. Unfortunately is completely ruined by the end, and I lose all sympathy for him due to idiotic decisions and weakness of will and spirit. It is impossible to look up to this character anymore after his conclusion. 4.5/10

Jecki Lon - Right when she was starting to get interesting, she was removed from the show. A bit wooden, but did well enough for me to enjoy the few scenes she was in, and had a cool duel. 6/10

Yord Fandar - A bit weaker with Jecki on the interest level, was kind of intentionally written as a stuck-up dumbass and not supposed t be very likable. Somehow got a cult following on social media, I guess because of his body? This character needed a lot more growth, he was a nothing burger. 4/10

Master Kelnacca - A huge wasted opportunity. A wookiee Jedi master is a great idea, but he wasn’t even a real character. No discernable traits or personality, no spotlight, first combat scene was cut, and we barely see him after the second. Just wasted all around. 3.5/10

Master Torbin - A complete failure of a character. I cannot begin to understand his decision-making as a padawan, how he excelled so quickly as a Jedi after the events of the flashback to become a master, and why he decided to take the vow and kill himself. Truly a mess of writing here. 1/10

Master Vernestra - Stifled by an absolutely atrocious performance, given lines and actions that do nothing to develop her, setting up an impossible to believe cover up, marketed with a lightwhip only for it to get used for 0.8 seconds to kill a CGI beetle, and locked up every scene she was in. 1/10

Master Indara - Extremely boring Jedi portrayal, no-nonsense but also no personality. Not much to say in terms of character arc or growth. She goes by the books and dies in under 20 minutes of screen time throughout the whole season. 3/10

Qimir - Bright spot in this show, carried by great acting and mysterious aura. Not a fan of the costume design whatsoever, but was an intriguing character nonetheless. Background was not explored nearly enough, and I truly wanted to see any sort of exploration into his background or dark side nature. This entire show should’ve been about him. He should’ve been The Acolyte. 7/10

Mother Aniseya - Solid performance and interesting voodoo-esque cult leader. Nonsensical decisions lead to her death and head-scratchers aren’t good for making for interesting characters. 4/10

Mother Koril - Extremely grating and annoying character, unreasonable, hampered by poor acting, character disappears with no arc whatsoever 2/10

Overall, there were many forgettable or terrible characters, one half-great character, and one really good one. Show gets a 3/10 on it’s characters.

Conclusion

Finale Episode rating: 3.6/10 (I’d call it “pretty weak”, but not “terrible” or “decent”)

Pros:

Sensible episode structure giving ways for all characters to end up where it all started
Another great lightsaber duel
Strong emphasis on the themes it was trying to convey (even if I disagree with them, I recognize that it communicated them)

Cons:

Extremely disappointing and unsatisfying payoffs to mysteries
Character motivations and arcs that are inexplicable
Obnoxious cameos and “tune in for season 2!” revelations

Best scenes:

1. Qimir v Sol duel
2. Ship chase in ice field
3. Ending montage structure (didn’t like the specific events that occurred, but it flowed nicely and looked good)

Worst Scenes:

1. Vernestra explains the cover up
2. Sol lets himself die
3. Mae / Osha talk under the tree and mind wipe

(Special mention: I got physically repulsed when Osha and Qimir held hands. STOP with these creepy sexual harassment-looking relationships with our villains. Reylo, Qimirsha, GROSS. Genuinely, deeply, unsettling and repulsive. The fan art from people who like the ST and The Acolyte wanting to “ship” these abusive relationships with male murderers and young women in power-imbalanced roles blows my mind away. I have to pretend it’s not real life where people actually support this shit.)

Series Rating: 2.2/10 (I’d call it “Very bad”, but not “unwatchable” or “kind of bad”)

Mocata said:

They should stop making weird garbage. Any time period, any genre, just stop with the bad scripts and low quality productions. Ideally in a movie format. But they couldn’t even get Obi-wan and Boba Fett right, and those were basically impossible targets to miss. Maybe their current infrastructure will collapse and it can be started over, but it’s hard to imagine.

I understand the dislike for some recent productions, but what is “weird garbage” to you is someone else’s introduction to Star Wars and their absolute favorite storyline. I am hoping this thread can be somewhere that folks can analyze the Star Wars fandom itself and speculate specific ways to ensure better financial and critical success. Any particular storyline you’d like to see represented in theaters? What would you do if you were in charge of selecting the next movie to produce?

Daiyus said:

I’m of the opinion that quality trumps quantity. The Mandalorian was a landmark moment, it had the whole world invested in Star Wars again. When it came out the attention to detail, quality and presentation was clear. As they’ve tried to latch onto that success and spin-up more and more concurrent projects they’ve all suffered in some way on the quality front, with Andor’s first season being the standout exception.

I’d like to see a return of a focused approach; tell a story, move on to the next one. The limited series idea has merit vs. films, but it has to be a script written for the format. If the story requires a film format, have the guts to stick to it, even if it’s a Disney+ only release. I’d much rather one quality project a year than three or four mediocre or compromised ones.

I agree with this to an extent! Back in GL era, it was quite focused on EU material surrounding what George was working on at that time/had worked on before. The KOTOR project was the biggest deviation we had ever seen, and amidst the PT, it was a wildly successful choice. I think 1 show, 1 film, and 1 game/year is a very achievable goal. Rotate these toward the preferences of the various core fan groups and I think we’d start to see a better trend in quality/viewership/reviews. Thanks for your thoughts. What do you think would be the best “one story” to focus on next? (Let’s be realistic and think past 2026 projects that are already slated)

rocknroll41 said:

Great write-up Acbagel!

Unfortunately I don’t think simply making “a little something for everyone” (i.e. different things for different people) is enough to unite the fandom, as each group generally seems to think Star Wars should only be made for their tastes specifically (even if not everyone admits it). Doesn’t help also that a ton of YouTubers nowadays make an entire living from hating Star Wars, no matter what it does.

Of all the groups you mentioned, I’m in the one that you described as “not very protective, fine with whatever direction Disney takes.” I honestly think at this point they should just keep doing whatever they’re doing, cause people will get mad no matter what. There was a time when even ESB was divisive, ffs!

It won’t necessarily unite the fandom, but it will at least satiate them to a degree. Right now I’d estimate you probably have 30%-60% of Star Wars fans saying they’re not pleased with the direction of the franchise (I know this is a wide range, but it’s pure speculation so I have to guess and be generous on either side. Either way, it’s a significant portion of dissatisfaction. If you read the study linked in OP, Star Wars consumer demand has decreased by 54% since 2020). OT purists have been mad for 2 decades, EU enthusiasts have been mad for a decade, GL Star Wars fans are up and down on the recent stuff, Disney-supportive folks are generally happy with recent years and glad for new stories, and casuals have been consistently tuning out post-2019. I think by throwing bones to various groups and hopefully crossing over here and there to satisfy multiple groups at a time, you’d foster a less angsty environment. They may never love one another, but if you give each group any semblance of real hope for something they want to see, then they’ll stay distracted enough to stop clawing each other’s eyes out.

Indeed, each group selfishly wants what they want and there’s nothing wrong with that. I would like nothing more personally than for Disney to announce that their Canon timeline is disbanded and they’re going back to the EU, similar to how they first did it with “Legends”. But do I think that would be “best” for the Star Wars brand? Not at all, and I think I have the self-awareness to say even though I selfishly want that for myself, I think that doing that would create even more rifts and fracture support for the stories I want to see. I want Disney to make a lot of money telling good stories so they can keep investing in quality production. There has to be a balance in strategies to accomplish this.

Yes, the YT/media “grift” must be entirely ignored by Disney. I won’t say the biggest YTers will hate “everything”, small sects will, but the algorithm does not support small sects of grifts. I run millions of $ in YT ad campaigns/year at my job and watch tons of channel trends, I am quite in tune with how view bumps work. The Acolyte is making people a LOT of money and they are milking it for all it’s worth, but the algorithm will soon move on to other content and the rage bait will move to another topic. Probably another franchise. These types of viewership spikes in “grift” channels did not occur during The Bad Batch, TCW S7, or Andor. I’ve done in-depth studies of a particular channel that during the ST era was capitalizing on the hype leading up to 8. They were making extremely positive and supportive videos pre-TLJ, and it was a nonsense “leak bait” channel that was pure made-up speculation, but they framed it as if they had “sources” feeding them info. The views were going WILD. I spoke directly with this channel and they sent me their earnings numbers. They were working 1-2 hours/day and making ~$150k/year. Post-TLJ, this channel rode the algorithm to capitalize on the controversy of the film, and then again after TRoS, and now the channel focuses solely on the “woke culture” in Hollywood. They have grown 5x and I’m sure their earnings are scaling quite well. This is obviously a channel to 100% ignore. The individual told me they genuinely don’t care/believe what they’re pushing and they just do it as a job to make a lot of money. I think these channels are very easy to identify, ignore, and not even take into consideration when looking at strategies for successful Star Wars.

Amidst a fascinating compilation of studies from Stat Significant about the uniqueness of the Star Wars fandom, I want to start a discussion about where Star Wars can go in future projects that could create unity and growth. I’m opening with my personal analysis of the state of the brand, and want to keep track in this OP of various recommended projects to track ideas and see what eventually comes to pass.

The State of Star Wars in a Post-Acolyte World

As I reflect on the state of Star Wars after the last 7 weeks, it has become clear that this fanbase is truly unlike any other in existence. It is an unruly beast with many heads, akin to some Biblical creature in Revelation. How does one tame (or at least direct the aggression of) this wild beast into a well-behaved pet? Disney+ has been hemorrhaging billions of dollars over the last few years. Star Wars hasn’t been in theaters for nearly 5 years, and it has been nearly 8 years since there has been a movie that was not extremely divisive and also financially successful (Rogue One). The High Republic sales are astronomically lower than previous EU, and modern video games have been released at a snail’s pace. We’ve also seen one of the most successful original streaming releases of all time in the Mandalorian, had numerous big money-making films like TFA, received critically acclaimed and successful “Jedi” games, and had some great additions to comics and novels in the canon timeline. This is of course a natural ebb and flow of a multi-billion dollar effort. It isn’t unexpected, and such a large purchase and integration is bound to have times of trial. However, there are clear signs of the uniqueness of these challenges. The present divisiveness has grown into a festering wound that I would like to see addressed before things get worse.

The OT v PT war of the early 2000s was our first glimpse at what was to come (the mini-controversies of RotJ feeling more “childlike” are microscopic bacteria compared to what is visible today), and today’s divisive battle makes that initial trilogy duel look like toy soldiers in a sandbox. If any semblance of unity or shared enjoyment is the goal (and perhaps it’s not, perhaps Disney is simply done with certain sects and wants them to fade away into the abyss) then the path forward must involve a concerted effort to understand and address the diverse expectations and preferences of the fan community. I hope the goal for Star Wars is still to tell timeless stories that deal with issues that cause us to question and come away with positive understandings of spirituality, mortality, peace, love, selfishness, emotion, reason, etc. All of this value is taught through a fantastic sci-fi fantasy setting with depth in lore and vast buckets of technologies and species. I think this worldwide phenomenon of Star Wars is still waiting to be utilized and by acknowledging past missteps and actively working towards a more unified and satisfying narrative approach, the franchise can regain its cultural footing and continue to inspire and captivate audiences around the world.

This preface analysis aims to dissect the current state of the Star Wars fanbase, identify the core groups and their unique perspectives, and propose strategies for fostering a more cohesive and harmonious community. Only by embracing the richness of its diverse fanbase and catering to the various cliques can Star Wars hope to chart a course toward a brighter, more inclusive future.

Core Groups of Star Wars Fans

The Star Wars franchise, spanning nearly five decades, has cultivated a diverse and passionate fanbase. However, this diversity has also led to deep divisions among fans, each group with their own preferences and criticisms. Understanding these core groups is essential for fostering a passionate community. Here, I identify five main categories of Star Wars fans and explore strategies to bridge the gaps between them.

1. Original Trilogy Purists

Characteristics: These fans hold the OT as the pinnacle of Star Wars. They often critique changes made in special editions and may be skeptical of new additions to the saga, such as the PT, and animated projects.

Preferences: Practical effects, 80s nostalgia, original storytelling, and the character arcs of classic heroes like Luke, Leia, and Han.

Challenges: Resistance to new characters, ideas, and storylines that deviate from the original trilogy’s tone and style.

Solutions and Specific Projects -

Restoration Projects: Restore and release the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy on Disney+. This project can be announced in Year 1 of this plan and released in Year 2, providing OT Purists with access to the untouched classics. (GL has said he doesn’t necessarily care for these to be re-released, but somehow, some way there has to be a way to get these made available on D+. You would instantly buy massive favor with this sect if these were readily available for viewing on their home devices)

Spin-off Series and Films: Develop a series focusing on the untold stories of original trilogy concepts. For example, a series exploring a Stormtrooper’s journey in response to the Death Star’s destruction, a Rebel Pilot’s missions in the Galactic Civil War that culminate at RotJ (Rogue Squadron, the “top gun” themed film seemed to be a perfect fit here), or even use an existing character like a young Wedge Antilles. This can be pitched in Year 2 and released in Year 4.

Tribute Documentaries: Produce a documentary series, “The Legacy of the Original Trilogy,” featuring never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew. Film new interviews reflecting back on “the good ol’ days”. This can be announced in Year 1 and released in Year 3.

The reality is that this group already feels disenfranchised, and at ~40 years out from their conception, they are genuinely dying out and cannot carry the brand forward. But they should be absolutely treasured for eternity and be given a respectful send-off.

2. Expanded Universe Enthusiasts (Here I am, Lord. Uh, I am a member of this sect is what I mean)

Characteristics: Devotees of the now non-canonical Expanded Universe, rebranded by Disney to be known as “Legends”. They appreciate the depth and complexity added to the Star Wars lore through books, comics, and games. Open to different storytelling methods and perspectives, but needs to respect big-picture Star Wars themes.

Preferences: Characters like Grandmaster Luke, Mara Jade, Revan, and Darth Bane, and events such as the Yuuzhan Vong War or Mandalorian Wars. Essentially, prefer the “ruleset” of the 80s-00s and do not like seeing much changed from what they know.

Challenges: Discontent with the Disney acquisition and subsequent rebranding of all the EU as non-canonical, receiving no new production (Except SWTOR, I still see you, sweet prince), and do not enjoy having aspects of beloved stories being mildly adapted into “lesser” versions in Canon. Ie: The Solo movie poaching minor arcs of the EU book trilogy while ignoring the core story and pacing of said trilogy.

Solutions and Specific Projects -

EU Characters Faithfully in Canon: Introduce beloved EU characters into the new canon through series and films. This cannot be done in a way that deeply alters or lessens their previous storylines. Place these characters into situations that don’t alter their previous arcs. Let fans continue to personally headcanon ways for EU and Canon to co-exist. For example, bring Mara Jade into a Disney+ series exploring her life pre-EU introduction in the timeline. Use her in Canon stories around big events in the EU. Announce these projects in Year 1, with a release in Year 3.

Animated Series: Develop an animated series that faithfully adapts popular EU storylines like the OG Tales of the Jedi comics and doesn’t get close enough to Canon to interfere with it. I would additionally look at diversifying the animated art styles. TCW style is great, but not conducive to all storylines. Look at how Visions diversified the studios. I can see something like Arcane for this project. Announce in Year 2 and release in Year 4.

Re-cast and Tell EU Stories Set in the EU: I’d put this 5-10 years down the line… but recast Han, Luke, Leia, and create the EU Thrawn trilogy/NJO. Don’t worry about Canon integration, just openly release some EU stories set in the EU. No reason we have to forget these beloved storylines just because TLJ Luke exists. Let each sect keep their beloved stories. Thrawn Trilogy is the most influential EU project of all time. The Heir to the Empire novel alone sold 15 million copies, which is roughly equivalent to 20% of the tickets sold for Return of the Jedi. This statistic alone highlights the substantial fanbase dedicated to the Expanded Universe, and that is just one single novel. You would print money moving from this trilogy to NJO in live-action.

3. “George Lucas Star Wars” Defenders

Characteristics: Fans who grew up with the prequel trilogy and appreciate its story arcs and character development, particularly of Anakin Skywalker. Deeply appreciate the OT as well, but generally like the movies and maybe a couple of games and shows.

Preferences: Political intrigue, expansive world-building, large-scale battles, and the Jedi Order/Galactic Empire’s rise and fall.

Challenges: Sensitive to criticism of GL Star Wars, not fond of Canon additions that add to/alter the context of the original saga’s events.

Solutions and Specific Projects -

Clone Wars Continuation: Create an additional season of The Clone Wars to explore untold stories and character arcs. Finish Utapau arc, Son of Dathomir, Dark Disciple, untold Boba v Cad story. Move on this immediately, almost every group will love this. Announce in Year 1, and release the new season ASAP.

Continue Saga Novels: Commission a series of novels set during the GL Skywalker saga, focusing on key events and characters like Mace Windu, Sidious, and Boba Fett. Canon seems to be doing this currently to a degree, but it’s disjointed and completely up against a wall with the EU. Notice how they will not retell EU stories and they’re towing an awkward line here. Not sure what the solution is honestly, but there needs to be a new strategy for the book releases as sales are currently abysmal. Announce a new plan rollout in Year 1, with the first novel released in Year 3.

Expanded Universe Film: Produce a live-action film that delves into the complexities of the Clone Wars from different perspectives, such as a war drama. Perhaps a Quinlan Vos movie, might be a good slot for Filoni after his Thrawn movie. Announce in Year 2, release in Year 5.

4. Disney Era Admirers

Characteristics: Fans who enjoy the new direction taken by Disney since acquiring Lucasfilm. This includes the sequel trilogy, standalone films, and new series like The Mandalorian or The Acolyte. Generally pretty open and accepting of any direction, not super picky or protective.

Preferences: New characters like Rey, Kylo Ren, and the integration of modern feeling and diverse storytelling.

Challenges: “Bored” of the GL Skywalker era. Sensitive to backlash from fans of aforementioned sects and those who dislike changes in tone and narrative direction.

Solutions and Specific Projects:

Sequel Trilogy Novels: Publish a series of novels that further develop the characters and storylines introduced in the sequel trilogy. Let’s see a back-and-forth journey of Rey and Kylo in between TLJ and TRoS. Announce in Year 1, release the first novel in Year 2.

New Series and Spin-offs: Create a new series that expands on the sequel trilogy characters, such as a series about Rey’s journey to rebuild the Jedi Order (probably set before the upcoming Rey movie). Announce in Year 3, release in Year 5.

Crossover Events: Develop crossover events in The Mandalorian and Ahsoka that tie into the sequel trilogy, creating a cohesive narrative bridge. This is already being done pretty well, and I think it’s great for this group of fans. Don’t stop doing this just because of backlash from other groups.

5. “Casual” and Newcomer Fans

Characteristics: Individuals who enjoy Star Wars but do not engage deeply with the lore. They appreciate the franchise as entertaining and accessible. Enjoy it when it is culturally relevant, ignore it when it is not.

Preferences: Broad appeal content, straightforward narratives, and prominent pop culture moments.

Challenges: Lack of deep knowledge can sometimes lead to misunderstandings or oversimplifications of the saga’s complexities. Certain projects will inevitably be inaccessible to this group.

Solutions and Specific Projects:

Star Wars Introduction Series: Develop a Disney+/social media series that re-introduces the Star Wars universe to newcomers, explaining key concepts, characters, and events in an engaging way. Bring in celebrities if you need, make Star Wars feel “cool” and break whatever remaining stigmas exist. Announce in Year 1, release in Year 2.

Multi-media Experiences: Bring in new apps, games, and in-person experiences for people to engage with. Contract themed events whether at bars, theaters, restaurants, etc. Don’t let Star Wars fade into the background for this group. Let the average person have a reason to say they’re a fan by keeping it an occasional and enjoyable part of their life.

Cultural Phenomenon Moments: Sometimes you just have to get lucky here, but Grogu was the epitome of this. Produce family-friendly stories that provide standalone, easy-to-follow characters set in the Star Wars universe. To keep Star Wars in the cultural forefront, this needs to keep happening.

Many of these groups will feel they belong in primarily 1 or 2 and secondarily in another. That’s wonderful, crossover is very healthy. And of course, there will be the rare deviation of a big-time 1 & 4 that hates 2 & 3 and deviates from all norms. I have certainly missed some things here and perhaps am too broad already, but for the sake of being able to generally keep track of things, let’s move on. Let’s look at some big-picture proposals on how to bridge some gaps between our groups.

Strategies for Unifying the Fanbase

1. Equal Respect for All Groups

Strategy: This needs to be first and foremost, but any and all projects need to be respectful of all the groups. If you’re going to massively rewrite an EU character to tell a new Disney Canon story with them, you need to first celebrate their EU arc and clearly identify this as a new timeline and not just a slap in the face. We have seen complete EU erasure to the point where it’s not even acknowledged outside of republished books that they bank on to boost their presently terrible print sales. And on the flip side, if an EU story is going to be told, don’t do it in a way that makes it try to come off as “superior” to a Disney canon story. Acknowledge the value of each era of Star Wars content. Official channels and influential Star Wars voices should celebrate the contributions of the original, prequel, and Disney eras without pitting them against each other. Ie, do NOT open the new trilogy following the PT with the line, “THIS will begin to make things right.”

Specific Projects:

Documentaries and Retrospectives: Create a docuseries that covers the making and cultural impact of each era, including interviews with key creators and actors. For example, a series like “Star Wars: The Legacy Continues” could delve into the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and the Disney era, showcasing behind-the-scenes footage and fan reactions over the decades.

Multigenerational Panel Discussions: Host panel discussions at major conventions featuring creators and actors from all three eras together. Don’t separate things so much. These panels could actors from different trilogies discussing their experiences and the evolution of the franchise. Give a “Sith Apprentice” panel with Sam Witwer and Manny Jacinto for example. Have fun with it!

Themed Marathons on Disney+: Organize viewing marathons on Disney+ that mix content from all eras. For instance, a marathon could include the opening movie from each trilogy followed by the premiere of The Mandalorian or The Clone Wars. Run themed character marathons like an Ahsoka-organized viewing list. Emphasize the continuity and shared universe of Star Wars.

2. Expanded Canon Integration

Strategy: Integrate elements of the Expanded Universe into the new canon. This acknowledges EU enthusiasts while enriching current narratives.

Specific Projects:

Thrawn Trilogy Adaptation: As mentioned above, I think this is the #1 project to get moving. Create a high-quality live-action or maybe an animated adaptation of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. This could be a limited series on Disney+, introducing some of the most beloved EU characters into the modern era while staying true to the original storylines.

Knights of the Old Republic: You have to take advantage of this era. Fix whatever is happening with the game remake and develop a new film or series set in the Old Republic era, incorporating popular elements from the games and comics. Remaking the games will serve to tell those specific stories, but build around them. Run a young Revan/Malak Mandalorian War show. This project could explore the ancient Jedi and Sith history, appealing to fans of the EU and those interested in new, untold stories.

Meaningful Cameos and References: Introduce EU characters in existing series without doing so in a “cheap” way. Respect and enhance the EU arcs, don’t just toss them in for name recognition and brief pops of attention on social media.

3. Open Dialogue and Feedback Channels

Strategy: Create official channels for fan feedback and discussion, promoting a sense of ownership and involvement among fans. Maybe this is unrealistic in today’s corporate-driven world that generally doesn’t mind eating the little man for breakfast, but throwing any sort of bone to their fanbase looking for feedback, or at least any sort of acknowledgment about the state of things is desperately needed. Marvel X-Men has done it in times of division, Dragonball Z certainly did it… This is possible and healthy.

Specific Projects:

Star Wars Town Halls: Host virtual town halls where fans can ask questions and provide feedback directly to creators and executives. These sessions could be live-streamed on platforms like YouTube and Disney+. Do NOT PR sugarcoat it with BS. I know that’s a big corpo nightmare, but find creators/figureheads who can openly engage with the fans. It is truly not difficult to have discussions with respectful disagreement. It’s a lost art. Bring it back.

Interactive Online Forums: Develop an official Star Wars community platform where fans can discuss theories, share fan art, and interact with creators. Moderators and Star Wars creators can participate in discussions, providing insights and fostering a sense of community. Pay some Star Wars celebs to drop in and discuss every once in a while. Star Wars feels unreachable currently. We have lost a sense of community and the beauty of old forum discussions (actually, much like this one 😃 ) social media interactions aren’t cutting it.

Surveys and Polls: Conduct regular surveys and polls on social media and the official Star Wars website to gather fan input on potential projects, characters, and storylines. Results should be shared transparently, showing fans that their voices are heard and valued.

4. Modern Storytelling

Strategy: This is simply a reality of the world, but we can’t live in the 80s or 00s forever. New content should be both innovative and respectful of the franchise’s heritage. Balancing nostalgia with incredible new improvements can appeal to both long-time fans and newcomers.

Specific Projects:

High Republic Series: This era was a good idea, but the launch was flubbed. Marketing and projects were a mess. Worst book sales in Star Wars history. Expand the High Republic publishing initiative into a live-action series or animated show, focusing on a group of Jedi and their adventures (I don’t think the Acolyte did anything to help this era whatsoever. Being set 80-100 years before the PT and primarily trying to tie into TPM storylines did nothing to this era which dates back 500+ years.) This era is ripe for fresh stories, but outside of a couple novels, we have nothing to care about. Look at how KOTOR brought the Old Republic onto the map. We need something influential like this to kickstart this era’s popularity.

Children’s Programming: Continue to make new series aimed at younger audiences that teach timeless lessons. Young Jedi Adventures isn’t bad, but it is extremely shallow and relies on bright colors and fast-paced cuts more than good storytelling. I have a 4-year-old daughter that I’d love to introduce to the beauty of Star Wars. We started watching this show together and made it through a season. She thought it was ok, got her into things enough to want a lightsaber… But then I showed her The Clone Wars. Specifically, the TotJ Ahsoka prequel followed by more Ahsoka episodes and she is absolutely obsessed now. Children do not need things so dumbed down. YJA feels like it’s directed at the attention span of a 1-2-year-old but is actually aimed at the 4-7 range. Don’t underestimate the mind of a child, truly wonderful it is! I watched A New Hope at 6 years old and was beyond engrossed with Star Wars. Bring back the timeless childhood magic by trusting the young mind.

5. Community Building Events

Strategy: Organize events that bring together fans from different groups, fostering mutual respect and understanding.

Specific Projects:

Star Wars Celebration: Expand the annual Star Wars Celebration to include more interactive experiences, such as live-action role-playing games, fan film screenings, and cosplay/lightsaber dueling competitions that celebrate all eras of Star Wars. Celebration is a great idea, but ultimately still feels so corporate, sterile, and “safe” rather than open and genuine.

Global Fan Meetups: Coordinate global fan meetups on Star Wars Day (May 4th) where fans can gather in local theaters, libraries, and community centers to watch films, participate in trivia contests, and share their love for Star Wars.

Charity Events: Organize charity events like “Lightsaber Runs” or “Jedi vs. Sith” sports tournaments where fans can participate and raise funds for good causes. These events can be live-streamed and promoted on social media to encourage widespread participation.

Collaborative Fan Projects: SUPPORT collaborative fan projects such as fan films, fan fiction anthologies, and art exhibitions. Disney can provide resources, platforms, and even official recognition for outstanding contributions, fostering a sense of community and creativity. Highlighting random fan art of current projects is okay, but again, it’s extremely basic and doesn’t feel authentic. Embrace the fanbase rather than fearing it. Core theme of Star Wars here.

Conclusion

This is my personal opinion and speculation, but I truly hope Disney can celebrate the rich history of Star Wars, honor the diverse preferences of its fanbase, and create a more inclusive and unified community. Acknowledging the value of each era, integrating beloved EU elements, fostering open dialogue, ensuring inclusive storytelling, and organizing community-building events are key strategies that I think would help bridge the gaps between different fan groups. This approach not only respects the legacy of Star Wars but also ensures its continued growth and relevance for future generations.

I want to catalog some of your ideas for projects and track if any come to light. Did I miss any Core Groups of fans? What’s your idea to change course? Or is Disney doing great as is and doesn’t need any alterations?

Great feedback all around, folks. I’m still writing some content for the review. It’s taking me a very long time to break down both the episode and season as a whole so I’ll have to push my in-depth review to tomorrow. Writing a big post for a new thread as well to generate some discussion of the many unique desired futures of Star Wars.

Regardless of what we individually think about the show, it’s undeniable that the last 2 months have been… monumental for the brand. For better or for worse, this show generated attention like nothing since the peak Sequels/Mando finale. Engagement statistics show it as the 2nd highest moment since Disney’s purchase, so we’ve definitely just lived through something significant in some way. Just trying to break down what it all could possibly mean.

When I write my review for tonight’s episode, I’ll want to preface it with a larger commentary about the show itself rather than dealing with the performance numbers, so I will make a separate post about that now. Why do I care to do this? Well, first of all, I’m a numbers nerd… I work in TV/streaming advertising for a career, so looking at channel/show performance and viewership numbers and strategizing plans based on that is what I do anyway. I think very interesting trends can be discovered, and the media industry has always fascinated me. Second, I’m a Star Wars nerd. I want good shows and I want them to do very well in capturing the public eye, so looking at how current storylines are doing helps me understand the direction Star Wars is going/could go in the future. Nielsen dropped their numbers earlier than usual this week, so let’s take a look!

Analyzing Viewership Numbers for “The Acolyte” on Disney+

Following the underwhelming ratings for the two-episode premiere, Episode 3 numbers reveal that the ratings are still tracking lower than Ahsoka but higher than Andor. The two-episode premiere garnered 488 million minutes of total viewing time. However, in the week that Episode 3 was released, this number had dropped to 370 million minutes. It is important to note that Nielsen’s data does not break down viewership numbers for individual episodes, and there may be some carryover from the first two episodes into the third week.

Comparative Analysis with Ahsoka

For a fair comparison, let’s keep a close eye on Ahsoka, which also released its first two episodes simultaneously, followed by a single third episode. I know many people think that Ahsoka is more “watchable” for people since it featured a known character, but Disney investors don’t care. They look at numbers. I’m not trying to make an argument about if Acolyte was “good” for it not featuring a known character, I’m simply trying to play the role of the Stuffy Suit looking at my pocketbook. Ahsoka achieved a Nielsen rating of 829 million minutes for its first two episodes. With the release of the third episode, Ahsoka’s viewership dropped to 487 million minutes, a figure that aligns with the average of the first two episodes. In week four, Ahsoka recorded 459 million minutes. In week five, Ahsoka saw a significant increase to 577 million minutes with the inclusion of Anakin setting social media abuzz. Keep these numbers in mind through the rest of this post and the coming weeks as we analyze trends. The structure of the two shows is very similar with Episode 5 being considered the “best” and one that generates lots of positive talk.

Nielsen Ratings for Star Wars Series on Disney+

Here are the Nielsen viewership numbers for the first three episodes of each Star Wars series on Disney+:

• The Mandalorian S2:

  • First episode: 1,032 million minutes
  • With 2 episodes released: 955 million minutes
  • With 3 episodes released: 873 million minutes

• The Book of Boba Fett:

  • First episode: 389 million minutes
  • With 2 episodes released: 563 million minutes
  • With 3 episodes released: 467 million minutes

• The Mandalorian S3:

  • First episode: 823 million minutes
  • With 2 episodes released: 889 million minutes
  • With 3 episodes released: 1,115 million minutes

• Obi-Wan Kenobi:

  • First two episodes: 1,026 million minutes
  • With 3 episodes released: 958 million minutes

• Ahsoka:

  • First two episodes: 829 million minutes
  • With 3 episodes released: 487 million minutes

• Andor:

  • First three episodes: 624 million minutes

• The Acolyte:

  • First two episodes: 488 million minutes
  • With 3 episodes released: 370 million minutes

Luminate Streaming Charts Comparison

I waited for Nielsen numbers to be released since they are the industry standard. However, Luminate’s streaming charts came out much earlier, and now that I can analyze multiple weeks of comparable data for The Acolyte, both Nielsen and Luminate report very similar minutes viewed (only deviating ~3-5% from each other in Weeks 1 & 2), indicating consistency in their viewership metrics. I am still going to wait for Nielsen numbers since they are primarily used in the professional realm, so I will withhold comment from the future trend that Luminate shows is coming. But with Episode 3 being one of the longest at 42 minutes, The Acolyte only managed 370 million minutes. This does not bode well for the coming trend, as many people tuned into this episode to see the “controversy” for themselves, but as many did not enjoy this episode, we will soon definitively see that they do not stick around from week to week.

Average Viewership Analysis

It’s important to understand how to properly analyze Nielsen data. “Minutes watched” can seem like a dumb data set to begin with, and when surface-level “journalists” try to paint a story without taking the time to calculate the numbers they can often come to inaccurate conclusions and lose the ability to see trends. The best way to track performance is to look at whole-season averages going week to week. We assume that each person watches an episode from start to finish (yes, I know that is not realistically the case, but we are using this as a baseline to extrapolate the number of viewers. The number of people who watched at least part of an episode is higher than the number I am about to provide as a “view”. I am working with a consistent baseline that a whole episode runtime acts as a single view. For this task, we need to focus less on the precise specifics of individual watchers and more on the overall trends of mass numbers). So to calculate a “view”, you simply have to take the total viewing minutes provided by Nielsen and divide it by the total runtime of the show.

(Mando S1 did not get Nielsen ratings, and we all know S2 was a major phenomenon success, so I’m trying to mainly compare Acolyte to recent releases post-Grogu hype. I also just couldn’t find accurate Mando S2 budget #'s for the next part of my analysis…)

• The Book of Boba Fett: 952 million minutes total, 89 minutes runtime, average views: 10.7 million
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: 1,984 million minutes total, 135 minutes runtime, average views: 14.7 million
• Andor: 1,109 million minutes total, 161 minutes runtime, average views: 6.89 million
• Ahsoka: 1,316 million minutes total, 132 minutes runtime, average views: 9.97 million
• The Mandalorian S3: 1,712 million minutes total, 77 minutes runtime, average views: 22.23 million
• The Acolyte: 865 million minutes total, 119 minutes runtime, average views: 7.27 million

From Disney’s Perspective, Cost/View

Let’s go one more step here and look at the investment aspect from a financial standpoint. Maybe we don’t necessarily care as viewers, but the money movers absolutely consider this. We are going to take the show’s budget, divide it properly into the number of episodes, and then see how much a view costs Disney.

• The Book of Boba Fett: $4.21/view
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: $3.06/view
• Andor: $8.71/view
• Ahsoka: $3.81/view
• The Mandalorian S3: $2.02/view
• The Acolyte: $9.28/view

Future Prospects
Given the significant budget and high expectations to introduce new viewers to the era of the High Republic which Disney has heavily invested in, The Acolyte’s current performance is disappointing on paper. Its viewership numbers are lagging behind other Star Wars series, and if this trend continues, it could spell trouble for the show’s future. I know Leslye has ideas in her mind for season 2, and it looks like the writing team made some preliminary drafts, but it was very obvious that it was not going to receive the green light until the Season 1 performance was evaluated. This is quite interesting compared to something like Andor which was comparable in budget/episode, also received relatively lower viewing numbers, but was immediately green-lit for a Season 2. I have looked at the Luminate Acolyte data for future weeks, and if Nielsen continues to track similarly, this is definitely headed for an indisputably terrible reception from the general public. These numbers are going to look much, much worse in 2 weeks.

Conclusion
The Acolyte’s viewership numbers indicate a concerning trend for Disney+ and Lucasfilm. Despite a significant budget, the show has failed to capture the audience’s interest at the same level as its predecessors, which were also falling below expectations. D+ has been hemorrhaging money as a platform, and we are likely to see a huge reevaluation of Star Wars production in the very near future. Skeleton Crew is going to be released later this year, but it’s been picture-locked for nearly a year already, they’ve just been sitting on it. Andor S2 and Ahsoka S2 are the only other projects currently in production. These are both still remnants of the “old way”. The future of Star Wars shows beyond 2026 is wide open and I would expect to see a very different approach.

Please recognize that at the end of the day, Disney and ONLY Disney possess the real numbers to do a proper cost/benefit analysis. I am simply working with publicly available data that I can compare between all streaming/cable shows and I try to see trends between them. Thanks to any numbers/Star Wars nerds who made it this far with me!

Great compilation of the work and progress so far. There is already a thread for this project though: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Kenobi-Trials-Of-The-Master-Fanedit-by-PixelJoker95/id/103482

With the insane variety of articles releasing where some say The Acolyte is one of the most successful launches of a show ever for Star Wars, and others saying it’s at the bottom of the barrel, I wanted to wait for the Nielsen Data to come out before analyzing the show’s public performance. Well, the premiere numbers are out, and they’re not great… According to Nielsen’s analytics for the debut week, The Acolyte garnered approximately 488 million viewing minutes across its two-episode debut, averaging ~244 million minutes/episode (in reality, the first episode always has higher numbers than the second, so probably more like 280 million episode 1, 208 million episode 2).

The Mandalorian Season 1: Data Not Available
The Mandalorian Season 2: One episode, 1.032 billion
The Book of Boba Fett: One episode, 389 million
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Two episodes, 1.026 billion total, 513 million average
Andor: Three episodes, 624 million total, 208 million average
The Mandalorian Season 3: One episode, 823 million
Ahsoka: Two episodes, 829 million total, 414.5 million average
The Acolyte: Two episodes, 488 million total, 244 million average

The series launch is most comparable to Andor, which ended up actually improving its watch time as the season advanced due to very positive critical reviews and generally good word of mouth/social media commentary (even in light of the claims of it being “slow/boring”). So it will be interesting to watch week by week as the Nielson numbers reveal if this show had a similar pattern to Andor, or if the generally negative word-of-mouth/social media commentary and mediocre critical reviews will cause viewership to dwindle.

Either way, it’s difficult to see a world in which Disney Executives see the show as a financial success. Unless the viewing numbers skyrocket toward the end (and I don’t find that very probable), the show failed to produce high viewing numbers, good reviews, or positive public perception of the brand. Whether you personally like it or not is irrelevant to the point I’m making here, I am simply trying to view it from an investor standpoint, and from the premiere alone, it’s immediately looking like the high marketing budget did not payoff as desired and a Season 2 wouldn’t be worth the money.

The Acolyte - Episode 7

Pacing and Structure

Without the intro and credits, we received 36 minutes and 10 seconds of content this week. I also have to note, that about 10% of this episode was actually identical or nearly identical scenes from Episode 3. I tried counting up the non-unique minutes of content. It depends on how nitpicky you want to get with what counts as a repeated scene (does an angle of Sol watching Mae and Osha sing their song for 30 seconds count as new content when we’ve already seen the entire song up close?). Still, there are about 3-4 minutes of scenes that are not providing any new context whatsoever, even showing the exact same camera angles and going word for word through the same events. So with only ~33 minutes of genuinely new scenes, as with previous episodes, I ended up feeling like the overall plot was moving way too fast, the character decision-making process was far too rushed, but many scenes still ended up feeling way too slow. This was no doubt an extremely difficult episode to pace well, how do you show the same 40 minutes of events from a different perspective in an engaging way? I can say that what we ended up receiving as the attempt didn’t do it for me and the show continued its battle with itself on how to pace the plot flow in the timeline.

When analyzing the structure of this episode, I want to focus on its placement in the series as a whole as well as an individual piece. This was finally the big reveal episode. This was the one that contained information intentionally withheld from us for 6 weeks now, it was to serve as the story for finally letting us know what happened that fateful night 16 years ago, or at least, let us know what happened from Sol’s perspective or point of view. During the last 6 episodes, Sol has constantly alluded to something bad that happened. He has insinuated that it was kind of his fault, or at least needed a bit of explaining and revealing of the truth. However, this episode wasn’t structured to present the story from Sol’s perspective as he told Mae of his recollection; this was mainly a story of the Jedi perspective on the whole, especially from Tobrin’s perspective.

So rather than as a story from Sol to Mae, this episode served as a story of Leslye to us as the audience. This was written to explain the “opposite” point of view from the third episode, which gave us the perspective or point of view of the twins and the witches. And so now together we have the whole picture. We know the full story of that night, and without a doubt, I think these two episodes should have been combined into one episode that started out the season. Because these “big” revelations felt not terribly interesting, and certainly not worth the 6-week wait with all the teasing. This storyline was potentially a good start to a story but it was not a good culmination to a mystery that is revealed in the penultimate episode of a season. I simply don’t feel happy about sitting through six episodes to get this one. I would have been much happier starting the season off with some combined 60-minute intro of these scenes spliced together. That could have served as the basis for a story to come about how one girl becomes or tries to become, a Jedi after a horrible and confusing event. The other twin, thought to be dead by the Jedi, is of course found and saved by a dark sider, by a Sith, and she becomes his acolyte or apprentice. And eventually, there is this confrontation between the sisters where they both try to save each other from the opposite point of view. One tries to save her sister from the Sith, the other tries to save her sister from the Jedi. That sounds quite interesting; still not as interesting as the marketed story of a pre-TPM story about a Sith Acolyte, but I digress!

Basically, I think a better structure for this entire storyline would be to ditch the whole mystery idea. The whole Rashoman approach did not do anything beneficial for the plot and that whole attempted aspect completely fell flat. I don’t feel like the previous episodes built up to this in a way where I wanted or even needed to spend 36 more minutes here so I could know what happened that night. I don’t think there was anything shocking about how any of the events played out. I watched it and simply thought, well yeah, that is pretty much how I thought it would have gone down. It was all a big misunderstanding more or less, there was no major twist or reveal of a mystery of any kind. I MUCH would have rather had another 40 minutes of present-day plot development to have a shot at a satisfying conclusion, maybe just show Sol simply explaining in a few minutes what he did wrong from his perspective. We still haven’t seen the space dogfight/chase through the asteroid field, Leslye has said there is another lightsaber duel, so it seems like Episode 8 is going to be light on the plot and I struggle to see a satisfying potential ending.

Dialogue and Writing Quality

The dialogue was back on par with episode 3, still being a weak point in the show. This show has a routine and constant issue with characters disagreeing with an idea or solution to a situation, and then with one additional exchange of dialogue, they immediately change their minds, sometimes after one single sentence without any additional consideration or counterpoints. When I say the episodes feel “rushed”, this reason is a primary offender. The characters do not deliver lines that seem to come from genuine thoughts, they deliver lines that are intended to move the plot to the next scene. Ie from this episode: Indara says she needs to go into the coven alone because of the danger, Sol says “There are 50 of them”, Indara says “50 women and 2 children,” Sol says, “We should go as a group,” then Indara instantly says “Fine,” and they all immediately walk in together. Why even write this disagreement? What is the purpose of this exchange? The ENTIRE disagreement lasted a whopping 14 seconds, never to be referenced again. This is what I mean when I say it doesn’t feel like the characters are voicing actual real-life thoughts, they are just saying words from a page to move from room to room. And I have to mention the stand-out line, “Go, girl. Get mad.” Ahh, it’s just not good dialogue in any sense. Some of it is still serviceable and it’s not always actively bad, but I’d be consistently giving this section a 4/10 each week.

This episode had to carry a LOT of narrative weight. One of the biggest questions I’ve had in the show is why Torbin would feel so much guilt to take a Barash vow for 10 years only to ultimately kill himself. Why did his conscience so burden Sol that he felt such a moral responsibility for what happened? Why did Kelnacca essentially leave the Jedi Order to become a hermit? So let’s tackle the answers here. For Torbin, I still don’t know what precisely he feels guilt for. Sol’s is a bit more apparent with how he chose to drop Mae instead of Osha, but Torbin…? Was it because he feels like he is responsible for all the witches being killed even though the Mother actively used the Dark Side/magik to mind control and torment him? She got inside his mind and started to egg on his thoughts about… wanting to go “home” to Coruscant? Somehow this additional mental seeding of his boredom/worries caused him to act beyond irrationally. In an effort to get the Jedi Order to allow the four of them to complete the mission of investigating plants on Brendock, Torbin decides to go and abduct the twins because this proof of a vergence in the Force “is our ticket home”, but he already had blood sample proof of their unique connection to the force. Why was that report not proof enough? What would kidnapping the girls and bringing them to Coruscant accomplish? How did he think that would go down when reporting to the Council who just told him not to intervene at all…? I just cannot possibly understand what was happening here. I want to be gracious and go with the theory that his judgment is still very clouded by lingering effects of the mind control, but in the very next scene, he is shown to have “fortified” his mind and can no longer be attacked in this manner. So he rushes back to the coven, and Sol chases him, but upon arriving, Sol doesn’t convince him to leave, they just walk in together to get the kids. Witches and Mae end up dying in the ensuing combat, Torbin gets wounded, and Osha is saved. So what exactly is burdening Torbin so much that for the next 16 years? I can understand being traumatized and needing some counseling or something, but the timeline the show presented was that for the next 5 years following the event, Torbin graduates as a Padawan, becomes a Knight, BECOMES A MASTER, then takes the Barash Vow and remains in a meditative state for “over ten years”. Folks, Torbin had this big smudge on his record, recovered enough from the trauma to become a Knight and then a Master at what, 24-ish years old? That is extremely rare and would indicate that he is some sort of force prodigy, and you just don’t get that vibe AT ALL from the show. I’m sorry, but this sequence of events is kind of beyond explanation. It is very, very low-quality writing. Just to finalize this and break it down easily, please examine the story of Torbin’s character and tell me if this is acceptable:

Torbin was extremely “bored” after 7 weeks of collecting plants and wanted to go home badly. Torbin’s master confronts some witches and he is mind-controlled in a sense and the witch plays on his desire to leave. At this point, he is likely scared and bored and just wants to leave the planet. He finds out the Twins are special, ignores his master’s commands, and flies off alone to fight the entire coven himself and kidnap two kids. Sol arrives, goes in together, battles witches, fights Kelnacca, and is injured and traumatized. He goes back to Coruscant, heals (what happened to bacta tanks…? Luke did not remain so scarred and mutilated from the Wampa), continues training for a few more years, becomes a Knight, very quickly becomes a Master in his mid-twenties, then still so burdened by the night, he takes that Barash Vow and enters a complete trance for over ten years, awakes and sees Mae, instantly kills himself with poison. It’s just… No. Not possible.

I could write equally in-depth about Sol’s guilt, but it’s more of the same. At least he has the added pain of choosing to save Osha instead of Mae, but I don’t think he was in the wrong whatsoever to stab the Mother. She starts using magik to transform into a demon and “Osha” starts dissolving into thin air as he has a ton of guns pointed at his head. What the hell was he supposed to think? The Mother says she was just going to let Osha leave, but… Osha wasn’t even there? Why would she not just calmly agree to tell Sol this instead of turning into a demon-like figure? And when Sol goes to save Osha/Mae, he chooses to try to lift enormous collapsing metal bridges instead of just lifting two 40 lb girls off the bridges…? Just a lot of events that make little sense. Kelnacca’s only guilt was getting mind controlled and injuring Torbin I guess, and I’m not sure how that leads to 15+ years of solitude and depression.

Aside from the nonsensical character motivations, I was really expecting some sabotage on the reactor for the fire burning down a massive complex in mere minutes. Showing the book fire touching some wires and sparking is truly horrendous justification for an entire mountain complex collapsing to the ground. I thought we’d see some Sith involvement here, much greater Jedi guiltiness, reason for the fire, explanations of the conception, etc. I will reserve some judgment for next week in case Qimir reveals anything new, but I didn’t get the sense that we weren’t told everything.

Production Quality and Creative Direction

Not a lot of new sets here. We see a nighttime Jedi camp, a little on the exterior of the facility, and more of the courtyard. So there really isn’t much new to analyze here. All the same characters, costumes, and sets for the most part. The CGI looked absolutely terrible on the speeder scenes which were each only about 5 seconds a piece of an actor wiggling awkwardly in front of a poorly meshed green screen. There was no sense of scale whatsoever between the camp, the travel, the surrounding forest, or the facility itself. The practical effects and VFX continue to look great whenever actual battles are occurring, but the surrounding scale and depth of production look very shallow. Case in point, when the complex starts exploding for some reason, we see one single exterior shot of an explosion, then we cut back to the courtyard and there is debris everywhere. The whole setting changed, but they didn’t bother to show it collapsing indoors. I can’t blame the lack of budget here. A lot of sets felt extremely small and cheap in this episode. Also, we have some extremely obvious Automated Dialogue Replacement occurring on the opening camp scene that points to heavy reshoots/recontextualization. There really wasn’t an A/B plotline to balance this time around, so the transitions between scenes felt much improved from previous weeks. I wouldn’t say they were great, but definitely not nearly as distracting as they have been.

Not a lot of new creative direction here either. There were no new creatures or worldbuilding, no new ships aside from the speeders. I did like the designs of those quite a bit, but their CGI looks so blurry and out of place… It looks like the ship in orbit of the planet a couple of weeks ago, the one that looked like a PS2 render. The combat still is above average for the Disney productions and I was pleased watching the Kelnacca battle. He looked a bit stiff in the costume, but the acrobatics surrounding it helped a lot. I don’t think they fully portrayed Wookiee’s strength very well here though, he seemed to be physically subdued a bit too easily. Especially with Torbin’s backhand blocking and holding a full power kill swing… but it wasn’t a bad fight. No clue what they were going for with having all the other witches die when Indara “disconnected” Kelnacca. That just came off as a “Wtf, why did they all die” moment rather than a satisfying payoff. All in all, it was a rather “safe” and small-scale episode that didn’t introduce many new elements of creativity.

I do need to at least make a small mention of the end credits music… That was… a first for Star Wars. Modern pop music doesn’t really bring me into feeling like this is the Star Wars that I know and love. I like telling new stories in universe, but you have to make it feel in universe. Making people think directly of earth and 2024 culture is very strange directing. I am not at all a fan of that trend and hope it quickly dies right here.

Performances and Characters

As expected, Sol was the standout performance once more. Even through some somewhat confusing motivations like an inexplicable draw to Osha, he delivers his desires in a very believable manner. His performance as he held up the bridges was great as well, showing his depth of ability in portraying feelings like stress, worry, and love. I thought Dean-Charles Chapman gave off a pretty solid performance of a padawan as well. He is 26 in real life, but in the show appeared more to be 18-20 and I thought he gave a good effort at this role. “Trinity” just doesn’t have a character she can work with, there was really no personality to display and it feels like a bit of a waste and that almost anyone could’ve played Indara. Aniseya does a solid job at delivering her voodoo-inspired character, but Korril comes off as very forced and the anger her character has isn’t being adequately communicated in her emotional range.

Torbin - A complete failure of a character in my opinion. I cannot begin to understand his decision-making as a padawan, how he excelled so quickly as a Jedi after the events of the flashback to become a master, and why he decided to take the vow and kill himself. Truly a mess of writing here.

Sol - I don’t entirely buy the weight of his guilt after seeing this. I can understand some pain toward Mae because he dropped her, but his main flaw was his attachment to Osha, and I thought he’d been talking to Osha like he earned her scorn for something he had done. I guess that was in reference to not saving Mae? Just not too sure where he is coming from with all of this, and while he started out as a great character in Episode 1/2, I can’t say he has stayed as one due to the confusing motivations. Still above average, but it seemed like he had a lot more potential for a huge character arc than what we got. Next week could elevate him quite a bit though depending on how things conclude.

Kelnacca - This really isn’t a character beyond someone in the background. Like, try to explain his personality to me. He had no development as a person whatsoever. Disappointing as the concept of a Wookiee Jedi is awesome, wish he would’ve been in the spotlight more.

Indara - Extremely boring Jedi portrayal, no-nonsense but also no personality. Not much to say in terms of character arc or growth. She goes by the books and dies in under 20 minutes of screen time throughout the whole season.

Conclusion

I held back a handful of criticism of Episode 3 because I expected satisfying payoffs to all of the mysteries, but the payoffs were overwhelmingly disappointing. This would be my least favorite episode of the season, and while individually maybe not as poor as Episode 3, its placement as the penultimate episode of the series is disastrous for the overall pacing of the show and the potential to conclude well.

Rating: 1.9/10 (I’d call it “terrible”, but not “unwatchable” or “pretty weak”)

Pros:

Continued good choreography in combat
Some actors do well in displaying believable emotional performances
Lightsaber stabs continuing to kill people 😃

Cons:

Extremely disappointing and unsatisfying payoffs to mysteries
Character motivations and arcs that are inexplicable
Repeated scenes and poor placement of episode deflate the conclusion

Best scenes:

1. Kelnacca v Sol/Torbin battle
2. Both sequences in the courtyard did well with tension-building
3. Aside from the “metal detectors” I liked seeing the Jedi in the opening on a “boring” mission during the High Republic as without a Galactic threat, that’s the kind of tasks they had at times

Worst Scenes:

1. Torbin gets bored and rushes away
2. Mae’s fire burns down the complex by touching wires in a stone wall
3. Every repeated scene from Episode 3 that did not add new content

Interested in reading this! Appreciate your work, could you send the link if you get the chance?

There were some more “watch minutes and engagement” streaming numbers for the Acolyte that came out this week from ReelGood, but that is a different company than the last drop of data, and one set says this is the second most watched Star Wars show behind Kenobi, and the other says it has far less viewers than Ahsoka… Third-party streaming data collection is not very reliable right now, so I’ll wait until the Nielson ratings come out before commenting further on the “performance”. Instead, I want to preface the review with a comment on Leslye Headland’s recent interview on The Mary Sue podcast.

In the interview, Leslye discusses how she wanted The Acolyte to explain why the Jedi are hesitant to train Anakin as an older child to give new context to the Prequels, “Is that why when Anakin shows up they’re like, ‘he’s too old to train,’ like, ‘we’ve learned that this doesn’t work.’ Those were the things that I was interested in.” She also briefly discusses the Ki-Adi Mundi “drama” and how she got approval from Pablo Hidalgo to change his previous Legends age to give new context to his line in The Phantom Menace. They’ve also done the same thing with Vernestra in this show, making her somehow still alive from the other High Republic books, extending her lifespan hundreds of years… All that to say, in recent years, Disney’s approach to expanding the Star Wars universe has frequently involved recontextualizing and providing new explanations for key aspects of the original Skywalker saga and other parts of their new Canon. The Ahsoka novel getting retconned for the Tales of the Jedi episode comes to mind. As does the Kenobi show rehashing the moment in Rebels with Ahsoka and Vader. Repeating plotlines and constantly trying to reference other moments has certainly become a prominent trend. While this tactic might seem like a way to add “depth” to other beloved narratives, it often results in unnecessary and shallow revisions that stifle the creative potential of these new stories. By revisiting and altering the context of pivotal moments from the original films and other works, Disney is at constant risk of diminishing their impact and alienating long-time fans who hold these moments on a near-reverent platform.

This type of “retconning” (sometimes only retconning Legends, but I’m also referring to the explaining of some new context for current canon), while intended to offer clarity, often feels forced and detracts from the originality of the current show/movie’s storytelling. From a big-picture view of Disney’s direction of Lucasfilm, this trend suggests a lack of confidence in creating fresh, compelling content that can captivate audiences without relying on the crutch of the Skywalker saga’s canon lore. As they’ve decided to bring in a ton of different directors and writers who seem to have a personal story they want to tell but need a way to cram it into the Star Wars universe, you lose the passion of wanting to purely tell a Star Wars story for Star Wars sake. It seems as though every new director wants to put their stamp on the universe by “adding” something, rather than personally taking a backseat and letting a story develop on its own.

Moreover, this trend of recontextualization can inadvertently undermine the narrative weight of what George first intended. Key moments and lines that once carried significant emotional and thematic heft that were very intentionally framed by Lucas are somewhat diluted by these added layers of explanation. How do you find a writer who is so passionate about Star Wars itself that they have a 3-6 movie/season vision for a story? Is that even possible in a post-Lucas era? This feeling of a one-off “demo” where a 6-8 episode season is released and then “We’ll wait and see if people want a Season 2” is a terrible storytelling model for the epic saga that is Star Wars, especially when there are such tight production timelines. We either need visionaries or we need adaptations of previous visionaries (Zahn’s novels, for example. Or Veitch’s Tales of the Jedi comics. Traviss’ Republic Commando series even, and as controversial as her vision of Mandalorians/Jedi may be, she had a long-term vision for her story). Is that Favreau and Filoni planning everything? A new leader? I don’t know, but it still feels like the problem with the Sequel Trilogy is occurring. Too many cooks in the kitchen each trying to interject their own take on the dish rather than a head chef bringing together a complimentary menu.

The Acolyte - Episode 6

Pacing and Structure

Not considering the intro and credits, we are up to 31 minutes and 9 seconds on the runtime this week. Still feels very short. While some parts, particularly the interactions between Qimir and Osha, are well-crafted and engaging as they slowly develop, the overall pacing often feels inconsistent. There are moments where the narrative drags, interspersed with rushed segments that fail to provide sufficient depth or context. The episode seems to oscillate between compelling character-driven scenes and seemingly superfluous content. The back-and-forth pacing of various plots detracts from the main storyline, which really needed to move forward this episode. The attempt to balance multiple plotlines, including Sol’s mysterious guilt, Qimir’s manipulative tactics, and the Jedi investigation, all left me feeling disoriented, especially about the timeline of the sequence of events that were going on. I am craving more cohesive primary storytelling rather than the quick bouncing around to slow or overly expository scenes. I will say it again, I LOVE slow, lengthy stories. But this show doesn’t have the length. It only has the slow…

Moreover, the pacing issues are exacerbated by the episode’s tendency to introduce new elements (Osha’s untapped “powers”. “The power of two” possibly hinting at a Dyad? Qimir’s scar. His reasoning for being a Sith) and characters (Vernestra’s apprentice), without adequate setup or follow-through. This all results in a sense of narrative clutter, where significant moments and character developments are lost in the noise of extraneous details. By streamlining the plot and honing in on the core storylines, the show could achieve a more engaging pace. Streamlining does not mean shortening the runtime. It can actually be done with more time on each episode because you can write larger stories, but take your time in getting from plot point to plot point.

The structure is hindered by an overreliance on mystery without delivering timely resolutions or adequate clues to keep me invested. This has been a recurring problem throughout the entirety of the series, and this issue is exemplified in Sol’s character arc. His guilt and past actions have been repeatedly hinted at for 6 episodes now, but they still aren’t addressed. We have had at least 4 conversations that I can remember where Sol tells Osha/Mae that he will tell them the full story and explain everything, but is either immediately interrupted or says he will explain when “the time is right”. Over and over and over he has promised that this story will clear everything up, but when 75% of the story has gone by and we still don’t have a clue what he is talking about, the constant teasing is not enjoyable. I suspect next week is another Flashback episode where we will actually get an answer, but the approach of saying a lot without saying anything continues to create frustrating problems with the structure of the season. It feels like the narrative is artificially prolonged to fill the episode count rather than naturally progressing toward a satisfying conclusion. Additionally, the balance of the A/B/C plots in this episode was once again a mess of transitions, often cutting away as soon as a moment started to become interesting. I think to the directing of something like Breaking Bad where you can watch a very slow scene play out for 15+ minutes straight with no cutaways at all, and it’s entirely engrossing and hypnotizing… You can do slow scenes in incredible ways, but the constant cutting around to different characters with no measure of time has not been an enjoyable experience. Again, since Week 1 it has felt like a ~3-hour movie plot that needed trimmed down to 2.5 hours but instead has been stretched to death for a subscription model. Akin to Mandalorian Season 3, we have two episodes left to wrap up a major storyline in a satisfying manner, and the task looks almost impossible.

Dialogue and Writing Quality

The dialogue in this episode was split between some big highs and lows. On the positive side, the exchanges between Qimir and Osha actually exhibited a nuanced understanding of Dark Side seduction tactics, drawing parallels to Palpatine’s manipulation of Anakin and other falls throughout Jedi history. These scenes were well-written, showcasing a methodical approach to turning someone to the Dark Side by exploiting their doubts and internal conflicts. However, these moments are contrasted by other lines where the dialogue falters. The dialogue has always felt like it’s saying something “deep” but it never communicates concrete or coherent points. The lines still feel like when you would set the spacing just a little extra on your papers in college while using as flowery of language as possible to meet a length requirement. Saying a whole lot, but it’s all actually a whole lot of nothing. It suffers from a lack of clarity, with characters acting in ways that seem driven more by “mysteries” in the plot rather than genuine motivations. It seemed like Sol didn’t realize that Mae was tricking him because that’s what the plot “needed” to happen rather than a natural outpouring of Sol into this scene. The same can be said about what he tried to say over comms. It feels like he should be screaming, “SITH! SITH! We were just attacked by a force user wielding the dark side and a red lightsaber and everyone is dead,” but for plot’s sake… he sends a moronic and unclear message and then leaves the system.

In terms of writing quality, this felt like Episode 4 where there really wasn’t a lot that happened. The episode spent a ton of time without any dialogue at all with scenic shots of the island and environments, Bazil walking around investigating, Sol trying to repair the ship a few times, and Osha sitting in quiet. The delve into philosophical discussions about the dark side and the Jedi was the highlight, and while some moments were intellectually stimulating, they often came at the expense of advancing the plot. Sol’s confession about his past sins to the Jedi Council is abruptly mentioned as we all continue to wonder how he can’t sense Mae posing as Osha, but then out of nowhere apparently Bazil tells him offscreen and he stuns her. This sequence of events lacked the necessary emotional weight and context to resonate fully as a satisfying conclusion to this mini imposter plot. Vernestra’s side story moving alongside Sol and Qimir’s was extremely confusing in terms of how it was progressing over time and felt like that entire segment could have been moved to a later point in the series rather than forcing it in so suddenly and having them just miss each other in the same system. The episode also suffers from its inconsistent tone. While the scenes between Qimir and Osha are at times tense and psychologically rich, other segments like Bazil doing “air karate” before nibbling on Mae and a droid squirting oil on her face in a gag moment feel out of place, disrupting the overall mood. This tonal dissonance makes it difficult for the episode to maintain a steady rhythm, as it swings between serious drama and seemingly unnecessary “filler” content that doesn’t lead anywhere. Did we really need to spend ~20% of the episode watching Bazil wander around the ship and plug the droid into a charger? Only to never even show a scene of him revealing his discoveries to Sol?

If the show had focused on exploring the Sith, showing how a Sith master/apprentice tries to turn and train a person who once had good intentions or corrupt a Jedi Padawan, it could have been really good. Qimir seems like a great evil protagonist. We could see how his Acolyte’s original beliefs get twisted as they fall further into the dark side, eventually plotting to kill their master and take their place, continuing the cycle of the Rule of Two. This is how the show was originally marketed before it morphed into this quasi-mystery about two “force prodigy” twins. Qimir, who was once a Jedi, seems to have been involved in the events 16 years ago, but it’s unclear if he was actually a Jedi or if he’s lying. He wants revenge on the Jedi, but the show is again vague about his true motivations. I suspect the scar on his back is from the lightwhip, hinting that Vernestra was his former master? Historically, Disney’s lack of overall vision and plan for a Star Wars narrative is evidenced in this show. I suspect it will continue the same MO of hinting at certain events or Legends connections (Plagueis, Tenebrous, Bal’demnic) and siphon small references but never actually commit to anything big because they genuinely do not have a bigger plan. Like “Project Necromancer” being hinted at and somewhat described in what, 3 or 4 different shows/movies now, but we still have absolutely no clue about the specifics, because Disney doesn’t know them.

Production Quality and Creative Direction

If the runtimes continue as they have, we are going to be looking at close to $1 million/minute in production costs. That is an astonishingly high number, and I am continually left wondering where that has gone. I think there may be some overinflated staff salaries occurring here, because I do not see anything in the show that justifies that cost. It still wavers between some sets, like the interior of Sol’s ship, looking very good, and other sets, like the interior of Qimir’s cave, looking absolutely terrible. I have to specifically mention this shot:

These rock steps look so unnatural and are easily seen as the typical styrofoam-ish/plastic that these synthetic set props are made of. This doesn’t look like a real-life cave, it looks like steps up onto a ride at a themed amusement park ride. And while I liked the design of Sol’s ship having that disconnected shuttle, the resolution and CGI on the ship in orbit were extremely low, looking more like PS2 cutscenes than a $180 million 2024 super-budget production. Bazil’s animations still look very good, and the new mini-elephant creatures had decent effects.

There really wasn’t much introduced in terms of creative art direction. The “Unknown Planet” (which I suspect is Bal’demnic due to the cortosis mine) visually resembled Ach-To to a confusing degree. It was quite empty, looked more like Earth than a galaxy far far away, and one tiny family of an alien species doesn’t feel very sci-fi. The creature looked great as a design, but to cut to that same group three different times just made the environment feel small and cheap. I wish we would see things on a larger scale. I’m not sure they properly utilized the environment and CGI as well because at one point Qimir told Osha she needed to start swimming if she wanted to make it to the ship by sundown, but the ship was CGI’d in only like… 100 yards away? It looked like she could get there in 3 minutes if she wanted. There was even a little bridge of rocks that appeared to go almost all the way to the ship. There was really nothing new or inspiring in this episode, lots of repeated sets that looked similar to the comments I had already made about them in previous episodes.

Performances and Characters

The performances in this episode are generally stronger than they have been prior, with some actors effectively portraying their characters’ complex emotions. Qimir again stands out as the highlight, showcasing a dynamic range of pain, desire, and psychological manipulation. Sol’s deliveries are on par with his excellent performance thus far, and Osha/Mae continues to lack depth. I have to say, Vernestra is the flattest, most wooden, and dullest character I’ve seen in any form of media for a very long time. Her scenes bog down the rest of the plot in this episode and her line delivery is extremely stilted and awkward. I believe she’s supposed to have played a large part in Qimir’s backstory, but it’s hard to care because she’s acted so poorly. And I can’t get over constantly seeing her human skin underneath the fading green face paint. She doesn’t really look like a Mirialan. Mog’s introduction and performance was some sort of gag-like character and I did not enjoy him whatsoever. Appeared unfit for the role and extremely foolish, intentionally.

Character motivations and development suffer due to the writing. I have massive whiplash trying to follow what characters want and why they are behaving the way they are.

Qimir - He has solidified himself as the most interesting character in the show. We need some concrete motivations and character drive soon though or else the mystery and intrigue will become tiresome rather than… titillating. They leaned into his physical appearance and visceral “draw” to the dark side, the opportunity to “live free”. Good characterization, but it needs development/conclusion or it will become as frustrating as the other constant overhanging mysteries.

Sol - Unfortunately, due to repeated foolish character decisions, my opinion of his character has greatly lessened. He was duped far too easily by Mae, he failed to reveal proper information over the comms, I have no clue what he actually wants anymore… Starting to lose me a bit with his character arc. Next week will be crucial to see how his revelation affects him.

Mae/Osha - Really nothing new to add here. Both characters are still incredibly indecisive and indistinguishable from one another. Bland performances and confusing character motivations lead me to dislike the characters thus far.

Vernestra/Mog - I would say this pairing is verging on being insufferable and a pain to watch. The stiffness and shallow performance of Vernestra (who was not at all like this in the books, from the little I’ve read) is terribly complimented by the intentional ineptitude and foolishness of her apprentice, Mog. It seems like both characters are here to do nothing more than make the Jefi appear incompetent. And they do it in the most boring ways possible.

Conclusion

This felt almost exactly like Episode 4 in terms of having a ton of time where nothing really happens in a way too short episode, except 6 lacked that “Wow!” moment that 4 had.

Rating: 3.8/10 (I’d call it “weak”, but not “very weak” or “decent”)

Pros:

Qimir’s psychological manipulation and application of the draw of the Dark Side
The discussions of cortosis and Qimir’s demeanor
Sol restraining Mae, at least he made the right decision finally

Cons:

Continued indecipherable character motivations
Tons of wasted time with Bazil and the slow development of overhanging unsatisfying mysteries
Vernestra

Best scene (I really can’t think of 3 unique scenes that I enjoyed, they’re all just Qimir and Osha in the cave):

Qimir manipulates Osha in the cave

Worst Scenes:

1. Vernestra investigates with Mog
2. Bazil wanders around but we don’t get to see the conclusion of his revelation
3. Mae fails to do anything at all in Sol’s ship

Launch of the “Outbound Flight” Visual Novel Project

Hello, I am announcing the commencement of an ambitious new visual novel project, starring the 2006 EU novel from Timothy Zahn, “Outbound Flight”. This immersive storytelling experience is a test project in the visual novel genre, blending cutting-edge AI imagery with a captivating audio narrative that explores the beloved story in a new format.

About the Project

This is a labor of love project that stems from my passion for both the EU as well as trying to innovate and push the limits of modern-day storytelling. Essentially, this is a detailed adaptation of the novel with a full cast of voiced characters, a narrator, sound effects/tracks, and accompanying AI imagery. Using DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT scripts, I have been able to create (mostly) consistent character and ship “profiles” and go line by line through the novel, generating an image for each and every sentence. I began to experiment with animating some of the images as well, so feedback on that would be appreciated. Yes, things get a little wonky at times, even the best AI image generation software is going to struggle with the complexity of the tasks I am feeding it. Because I am essentially writing a whole paragraph prompt for each sentence of the novel, sometimes the technology is limited. However, everything is consistent enough to bring you into the moment for a unique experience, and as I rewatch it, I have a much easier time picturing things as if they were being brought to life. With the sentence-by-sentence images, I have also manually added soundtracks, audio effects, and a unique cast of voiced characters for an authentic “audiobook” experience. If you are someone who struggles to focus while reading or just want to experience this novel from a new perspective, maybe give this a shot. At the end of the day, this project is certainly an experiment, and in the first chapter, you can see the various techniques that evolved as I tried to nail things down. Interested to hear if anyone thinks it’s a fun watch, but I can confidently say I had a lot of fun letting the creativity flow as I was making it. It’s a fun time to bring something you love to life in a new way!

Key Features

1. Consistent AI Imagery: Utilizing advanced rendering techniques, my aim was to deliver visuals that bring Zahn’s characters and universe to life. Every scene, from the rustic cockpit of the Bargain Hunter to the haunting beauty of distant star systems, is crafted with meticulous detail in the prompt generation. When things got really wonky, I’d take parts of various generations and combine them in Photoshop to make the scene I wanted. No, not every scene is perfect without glitches, it would take an eternity to get that right… But imagine this more like a concept art sketch as you planned the movie rather than the movie itself. Examples below:

Qennto, Maris, and Car’das evade Progga’s ambush in space

Maris glares at the distant, unfamiliar set of stars as they venture beyond known space

Progga the Hutt contacts the crew with his demands

The Bargain Hunter is caught in the Chiss “Connor Net” attack

Qennto and Maris prepare to welcome their Chiss boarders into their disabled ship

2. Rich Audio Narrative: I attempted to create a professional audiobook-style production, similar to what you’d get when Star Wars itself releases one. Yes, my voice cast is entirely custom-created AI voices as well, so through dynamic dialogues generated through Eleven Labs Speech-to-Speech synthesis, AI-generated SFX, and some Star Wars music backdrops from the EU, I tried my hardest to bring emotionally charged moments to life and ensure that listeners are having an immersive experience.

3. Faithful Adaptation: I first began creating this only using dialogue and events from the novel, and cutting out the normal “novel” descriptive sentences, but it felt very shallow and like I was doing a huge disservice to Zahn’s work. Even though it took 10x the amount of effort, I decided to move forward with a perfect one-to-one adaptation of the novel’s text so that everything is perfectly represented. Of course, I have to take personal creative liberties on the appearance of the characters, environments, and ship designs, but I did everything through the text provided in the book. Unfortunately (actually, probably very fortunately and for a great reason), DALL-E 3 has some random copyright restrictions, so sometimes it will refuse tasks that it believes are Star Wars intellectual property. “Outbound Flight” lends itself well to this however as it is such a unique story and setting, it doesn’t have a ton of copyrighted designs that are very classically Star Wars.

Goals

The goal was to push the limits of 2024 commercial AI technology to see what can be accomplished. It is also a test of my own skills in programming, storytelling, and creativity. A seamless blend of storytelling and visual artistry purely through AI is not yet possible, but this is a small glimpse at what the future could deliver. I hope I can transport a few watchers into the story of this novel in a new and enjoyable way. One day, AI will be able to take an entire novel and generate a seamless “movie-like” experience… It is a future that is both exciting and worrying. But one thing is for sure, the technology is here to stay. It’s going to revolutionize art, music, games, movies, etc. I know there are varying opinions of the application of AI when combining someone else’s arts, but to me, what I attempted here does not take anything away from Zahn/Star Wars and I hope it drives people to engage with more material. At the end of the day, ALL credit goes to Timothy Zahn and the original Lucasfilm team who made this possible.

Video Preview

CHAPTER 1 COMPLETED (18 minutes 32 seconds)
Chapter 2 In Production

Feel free to leave any and all feedback about the project itself. I would like this thread to stay on topic about the “Star Wars Fan Edits or Other Projects” aspect rather than on AI itself. That type of conversation can happen in other areas of the website or in DMs if you are interested. If there is feedback on my particular application of AI to the story or tips for improvement, etc, that is perfectly fine! DM me if you’re interested in viewing it in full.

Book 6 update:

I completed my first full pass on the Battle of Mandalore! I can’t even say Act 3 is even in the Alpha stage yet, I’d still say it’s “being filmed” per se… But I have everything organized into chunks, started making combat edits and changing some scene orders, game planning on how to resolve everything, etc. So I’ve gone all the way through the battle scene by scene to categorize everything, and I can start to see a vision for it. It’s a very tough battle to fix. The timings of events are beyond reconcilible. I will explain some of that after my next pass, but it’s genuinely the worst edited segment of the whole show. The order of events is truly impossible, there are massive missing chunks that were cut/unused for whatever reason, extremely choppy pacing, no cohesive geographic mapping to the base, and so much more… And probably the worst wipe transitions I have ever seen in Star Wars. Still a lot of technical and story work to do, but it’s coming along.

vranir said:

Very excited to see your take on Mando S3. The original version was so incredibly mediocre.

Yeah… I’d use harsher words than mediocre though. There are some very good individual scenes, but as a whole it’s a huge step down. Even with the action choreography and missing VFX… I have found multiple stormtroopers in this final battle that have the “X” red tape on them, meaning the VFX team was supposed to CGI the armor on them or put a blaster bolt there but they missed it, so there are background characters with un-CGI’d prop pieces. The whole production was just very, very rushed and sloppy, for whatever reason, this season just did not get the time and care that other parts of the show did.

Patali said:

I did just watch the scene again, and there isn’t a TON of room after his “I was.” line. So it would be a tight cut. That being said, I’m pretty sure your cut from him saying “I am Boba Fett” was already pretty tight because it cuts right away to Fennec. So, I think it will be possible but you’ll have to look and decide. But thanks for considering it.

I checked this out and agree that it works! Will be in Book 2 for the “Special Edition” release soon.

That’s interesting how you view Book 2. I will be honest, I think the big factor and reason why for me, is that I actually really liked BoBF, especially the flashback sequences. I love the Boba character in general. In fact, years ago now when “The Mandalorian” was coming out, I was literally asking “Why couldn’t this have just been Boba Fett?” Like literally Boba Fett finding the child etc lmao. Which in a way I think COULD have worked. That could have been Boba’s redemption story, since the child is an orphan just like him.
But thats just my fan fiction.

Actually, in the early scripts, the whole show was about Boba instead of Din’s role. They couldn’t work it out with timing for Temuera and also wanted a blank slate rather than having to deal with the complexity of Boba’s character. There were even plans for Boba and Luke to interact, but they cut it to tell a “smaller” story instead. I agree that if done right, I would’ve loved to see Boba instead as the main protagonist!

And yes I’m the most excited for Book 6 because it will be having not even watched Season 3, so I will be a good guinea pig for you to try that out on

I am super interested in seeing your review on everything. Definitely giving me motivation to finish quickly!

Darth Sadifous said:

Hey Acbagel, I am looking forward to the revised Book 5 and the eventual release of Book 6. Also, I would not mind a standalone book of Dr. Perishing’s arc if that is in the cards.

As for cutting Moff Gideon’s clone plot from the final, I would be down for that. However, I am cautious of this approach as this plot point could play into the announced Mandalorian movie. I believe Giancarlo Esposito even playfully eluded to this possibility in a fairly recent interview when asked if he could return. Just something to think about, but you could always alter down the road if it does indeed influence the upcoming 2026 film. I can’t wait to see what you have been cooking. Take care for now and may the force be with you!

I really don’t think they’d go back to Gideon… They have to know the kind of eye rolls they’d get for that. His appearance in S3 was already way more than enough IMO. But yes, I can always re-edit if something becomes important in the future. Excited to see how the upcoming will fit into my re-edit saga one day! From what I have access to right now though, the cloning plot is a terrible distraction that adds to the conclusion feeling extremely rushed and unsatisfying.

All the links are sent! Been getting a lot of interest in DMs and Reddit out of nowhere on these recently, not sure where it’s getting posted around… But thanks all. I am interested in diving back into these movies one day, they were my earliest projects so I know there’s a ton I could do differently now.

MagMaxx said:

Hello man, no more news about this edit? I got really interested

Hello! I began working closer with PixelJoker95 on his edit when I was starting this project, and he could do a lot more on the VFX side of things than I could so I put a pause on this. We collaborated on some ideas and I helped on the writing of some in-person scenes he was filming, so I didn’t want to rush my release when he was bringing so much to life on his end. His edit has been delayed for the past 6+ months, but it’s still going to be released this year so I’m keeping this on hold until his is out. Mine might not even be necessary after his, but I’ll see if I want to make any storytelling changes after that. Thanks for your interest, it was a fun project so I’d like to pick mine up again some day.

With the major cliffhanger at the conclusion of Episode 4, it seemed that the intended “weekly discussion” that Disney was hoping would ensue would be about the identity of the Sith and excitement for the upcoming battle. I did see some of that, but it was overshadowed by a lot of conversations about the relationship of Canon v Legends, George v Disney, Ki-Adi Mundi’s birthday, etc… If you’ve followed me or my work on this website, you know that I’m a BIG EU guy. The movies made me love Star Wars, but the EU made it a near-spiritual and inseparable part of my life. I have poured into countless Novels, Comics, and Games from the ever-vast storyline that is now dubbed “Legends” by Disney. Even amidst my great love and preference for that time and universe, I still maintain to hold a healthy mindset about the state of things, both then and now.

Under the unique headship of George Lucas, whenever he added new information to Star Wars, the EU always adapted to try to respect what he said and made. No, he didn’t consider the EU to be top-level definitive Star Wars or part of his personally written canon that he wanted to keep consistent, but he checked off on every single big-picture story and said of the EU, “I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia, so if I want to come up with a name or something else, I check to see if it’s already been used… They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible.” George and the EU had a very symbiotic relationship because he knew how much it meant to the fans, it made him a lot of money, and he did genuinely think that there were some great ideas in it that he pulled from (and also some bad ideas that he did not like). Did you know that George took from the EU: Aayla Secura from the “Republic” comic series, Double-bladed lightsabers from the Old Republic “Tales of the Jedi” comic series, the name “Coruscant” from Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy, Lightsaber blocking force lightning from “The Last Command”, etc. He skimmed through the comics from time to time as he didn’t have enough bandwidth to read novels entirely, but his creative team would come to him with general checklists such as: “Are you okay if someone writes a backstory on Yoda?” “No” “Are you okay if we make a game about Darth Vader having a secret apprentice in between 3 and 4?” “Yes” “Are you okay if Luke marries Mara Jade” “I guess, but I don’t know if I really like that” (paraphrasing quotes and answers here). All in all, some things he approved of immediately, some he outright declined, and some he needed to peruse more and never got around to a definitive answer. The mysterious mind of the Maker!

George personally created Darth Bane and the Rule of Two. He also made Darth Plagueis a Muun instead of a human. He was heavily involved with the storyline direction of Shadows of the Empire. Dark Horse wanted to kill Quinlan Vos but George told them to keep him alive. George also wrote the prologue in the “Shatterpoint” novel. So to outright say that “George didn’t consider the EU to be Star Wars at all” isn’t accurate, and neither is saying he held it to the same level as his movies. Again, they maintained a relatively symbiotic relationship. Compare that to how Disney has handled it, and I think you can see that perhaps they misjudged how much a large sect of the fanbase still treasures the EU, even to this day. 10 years ago, when Disney “decanonized” Legends, they stated, “…all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected. Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development. ‘We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon’… This is just the beginning of a creatively aligned program of Star Wars storytelling.” In retrospect, this seems to be nothing more than PR talk as almost immediately their shows and books started contradicting each other. They hired movie directors who didn’t know who Darth Plagueis was. The entire Sequel Trilogy was written one by one without a plan… No, the EU was never perfect in terms of continuity either. I would venture to say that it is impossible for any franchise so large to be perfect. But there was symbiosis at one time, whereas now I see more of a parasitic relationship. Disney wants to skim off the top of Legends without committing to faithfully telling the stories, harming both their ability to truly have free reign while also upsetting longtime fans. Changing Mundi and the nature of Cereans, extending the life of Vernestra and the nature of Mirialans, these don’t seem to be decisions that are well crafted by a cohesive story group. They are cameo scenes made without much thought toward a larger lore.

Anyway, Acolyte Episode 5 was good. Let’s get into it.

Pacing and Structure

Like last week, with the intro and credits removed we are left with 27 minutes and 4 seconds of scenes here. A whopping 12 seconds longer than last week and still placing it in the bottom of the barrel for live-action show runtimes. I’ve made this point nearly every week so I don’t see a reason to continue in depth the same critique. Sub-30-minute runtime = very bad. It is nearly impossible to tell a quality storyline in an 8 episode season with these weekly releases. Outside of the lightning flash episode length, the pacing is quite good for the middle segment. The action sequence plays out in an intriguing manner, and the whole middle 15 minutes I was glued to the screen. Unfortunately, as soon as the fighting stops we are wrenched into some excruciatingly slow scenes of Mae and Osha that drag this section down once more. Overall, the pacing was better than in previous weeks, but still flawed in major ways.

The episode opens from the perspective of Osha recovering from unconsciousness as we miss the events immediately following the force push. We’ve missed a little bit of the battle as some Jedi are already dead, but within a minute we’re back into the action. Again, this whole idea felt like a contrivance for the purpose of weekly TV rather than something that felt natural in the momentum of the show, but from there on out we’re treated to a mostly great sequence of events. From the callback to the beetles making previous scenes feel more worthwhile, to the setup for the next episodes with new plot points, this episode is structured quite well in its placement in the season. I fear another looming flashback episode is once again going to derail the momentum we just built up, and I’m hoping it won’t consume an entire week like last time and perhaps simply be integrated into ~10 minutes of another “present-day” episode. Future structure aside, this episode did a solid job of organizing the fight into chunks, though it did struggle massively with balancing A/B plots and transitions, but more on that later.

Dialogue and Writing Quality

The dialogue was a small step up from previous weeks, though not anything great, perhaps the best of the season so far. That might be a bit telling as this was the episode with the least delivered lines… However, some of the conversations between Sol and Qimir did well at creating tension and intrigue. Though I still can’t call the dialogue “good”, because it continues to come off as a tad pretentious, as if it’s pretending to say something really deep and philosophical/meaningful, but it doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny. Or perhaps its significance once again relies on future episodes to expound upon its meaning. Qimir carried the the episode with some haunting lines referring to Jecki as an “it”, Yord’s description of Qimir’s fighting style was well-phrased, but the conversation between Mae and Osha once more proves to be the lowest quality of the episode, delivering the 4th “What have you done?!” from Osha so far…

This episode is lighter on writing in favor of a long action sequence, but even amidst the battle, we see some story and character development. The highlight of this battle to me was the unique situation of Qimir attempting to both kill the Jedi who are attacking him in order to preserve his identity, as well as trying to kill Mae who is a third party who knows too much and is simply trying to escape. This plot setup led to some great moments of storytelling inside the battle itself and is a great example of how fights don’t just have to be solely for the sake of action. The best fights are multi-layered with intrigue and situations that complicate a standard 1v1 whack 'em duel. The writing of different characters intervening and the multiple situations occurring at once was done fabulously. The decision to execute key characters here was a bold move. I want to say I love it, and I can say I wholeheartedly approve of the brutality of the Sith that created the most shocking moments in the episode, I also feel slight disappointment that we are losing some characters that were barely scratching the surface of development. While the violence and deaths were well-directed in and of themselves, I didn’t feel any loss at seeing the deaths of these characters aside from a loss of interest in their previous scenes. I was only at the very beginning stages of starting to connect with the primary side characters, and now they’re gone. I would say the fault of this is more in the pacing and short episodic structure of the show rather than the writing decision to kill them.

As I heavily suspected since episode 1, the reveal of Qimir was unsurprising to any degree. The show marketed itself as a “mystery crime drama”, but I have not been the least bit surprised by anything that has occurred so far. The mysteries have all been very obvious in your face reveals, the lead-ups to resolutions have been more blatantly confusing than interesting, and I think this show would have been much more successful if it was written as a 2-part “action thriller”. With Qimir revealed as Mask Sith, we still are left with questions about his placement in the Rule of Two. Or perhaps he even has ties to another force cult, such as the Knights of Ren (did anyone else catch the Kylo Ren theme motif playing as he encountered Osha at the end?). His line delivery to Sol left this open-ended enough that future episodes could take it in multiple directions. However, I am not left greatly anticipating the answer in excitement, but I am merely peeved that we have watched ~63% of this show and still cannot say we have even seen a Sith yet. A much more exciting premise for the Acolyte would’ve been one where Qimir is the main character and we see everything from his perspective. Mae/Osha seems quite irrelevant to my interest in anything happening in this show.

Speaking of, the writing whiplash continues in the Twindom. I have no idea where they are going with those characters. The final stand-off between Osha and Mae could have used another pass (or five) in the writer’s room. Mae’s character continues to be unintelligible, somehow going from wanting to kill Kelnacca and all the Jedi, to wanting to surrender to the Jedi, to wanting to escape the Jedi, to wanting to live happily ever after with Osha after trying to burn her alive as a child. The show clearly wants to show us what “really happened” at a later point, so while the “Twin swap” isn’t a bad idea on paper, it doesn’t feel like it has enough consistency to generate intrigue because both characters are complete wild cards. There is barely a difference between their motivations since they both 180 every single episode. What is the distinction between them at this point? I am also left baffled as to how Sol can’t sense a difference between Mae and Osha, nor can he see the giant tattoo on Mae’s forehead… I suppose Sol is battered and unbalanced right now, but still, it seems quite obvious that “Osha’s” behavior has changed and it’s strange that Sol was so easily duped (and Basil smells the difference and is going to start squawking). The other writing critique would be the beetles easily overwhelming Qimir and flying him away. It felt extremely awkward and contrived as a way to extend the plot beyond its natural conclusion at this moment, and Qimir’s sudden onset of ineptitude to remove a flashlight off his back after murdering 7 highly trained Jedi did not add up. Overall though, the writing served to create a great battle sequence but didn’t measure up to that greatness in the moments of quiet.

Production Quality and Creative Direction

While some of the aforementioned forestry props are once again notable distractions, the VFX intermixed with the battle scenes very smoothly. The lightsabers shorting out looked realistic, the force pushes through walls and plants had great use of practical effects and CGI, and the progressive dirt and grime on the actors reflected the progression of a grueling battle. The ash-like material falling from the sky contrasted with the red dirt at the feet helped make this forest feel less like Earth. While the setting itself was small in scale, it utilized itself perfectly and made the most of what the area had to offer. The beetles picking up Qimir would be the one Red “X” I’d throw on this episode’s visual quality, but aside from that, everything looked great visually.

Dare I say this was the best lightsaber fight I have seen in live-action since May 19, 2005? I’ll be upfront here, the choreography was really good. I wouldn’t say it rivaled the Nick Gillard-directed Prequel battles, but it was the closest thing I’ve seen to them from Disney so far. I would say the Sequel Trilogy lightsaber battles were atrocious, so I suppose the only comparable duel would be Ahsoka v Baylan, but this certainly beat anything in that show. The use of the environment in the battle was incredible, with people flying through doors, foliage, the Sith’s unsettling movements around the forest, and the switches between lightsabers and hand-to-hand made for thrilling changes of pace. Not only was the setting properly utilized, but the lightsaber moves themselves were fast, coordinated, acrobatic, and executed with intent. There were a few moments where I could see gaps in what a character “should” do and their actor waiting on some cue to move, but those moments were few and far between. I was highly impressed with the visceral use of violence, especially in the kill moves. I did gasp at the brutality of Qimir against Jecki, which is the first time in a LONG time that Star Wars violence has made me do that. This whole fight sequence was a massive step in the right direction for Disney, and Christopher Clark Cowan should be commended for his action directing here, as well as major props to the actors involved in the training. This battle felt like Star Wars. I wish it were the standard for action scenes rather than the exception at this point, but what a great new standard it set. Here’s to hoping we see more of this choreography crew in future projects. I also want to credit the fantastic addition of cortosis from Legends, the integration into a suit of armor was a great creative twist to a traditional battle.

I’m not exactly sure where to place this critique because I don’t know who is handling this aspect, but someone at Disney/Lucasfilm desperately needs to go to wipe transition school. These lightning-fast wipes right in the middle of battles are unbelievably jarring, so much so that they genuinely make me laugh out loud when I see how bad they are. Two times we have Sol start to run at Qimir and out of absolutely nowhere, a 0.5-second wipe transition follows his back and cuts to some other slow-moving scene. It’s bewildering as to why this is happening. I know Star Wars is infamous for wipes, but certainly, someone is looking at WHEN those wipes occurred in George’s movies, right? How are they getting dropped in these episodes in such amateurish ways? The post-production editing is sloppy to the degree of seeming like a joke. That’s harsh, but I have no other way to describe it. I work in the TV industry personally (documentaries, sports, commercials), and using fast wipes between 2 active concurrent fights back and forth is… childlike. There was another circle swipe that simply vanished a few frames early and seemed like a visual glitch. It’s like the editing team was sent a “Trasnisiton quota” a week before release and realized they had come up short and hastily went through this show and dropped some into completely random places. It’s bad. I saw this happen at the end of the Mandalorian season 3 as well, some of the worst wipe transitions I have ever seen. So it’s a recurring problem that seems outside the writers’ ability to prevent. Something is going on with their mutually shared editing team that needs to be corrected ASAP.

Performances and Characters

Manny Jacinto stole the show with his unmasked Qimir. His casual portrayal of murder and mayhem was expertly performed. He truly embodied both the mystery of the dark side user as well as the strength of one. Major props to his choreography in battle and the dedication he put into perfecting this segment. I am more excited to see him on screen again than anyone else in the show based on his performance. Another standout was an excellent effort made by Dafne Keen as Jecki. Her movements in action were incredible, especially for her age. Extremely impressive, and while I was not so impressed by her regular line deliveries, she gave a perfect final act for her character that will leave a lasting impression on my perception of this show. Sol continues to excel at delivering emotions as we see a new unbalanced side of his character. Sadly, I say this nearly every week, but the deliveries from Mae/Osha are the stand-out weak point in the show. There is barely a detectable facial performance given, and the lines do not feel like they’re coming from an in-universe character. I know it’s not aided in any way by the whiplash character “development” they’ve had, but anytime these two are the main focus of a scene it never ceases to be the worst part of the episode. Amandla doesn’t have good chemistry with… herself, and even the videography of these scenes is poorly done as the two are almost never in a frame together. The acting and directing around their relationship are not good at all.

Qimir - Even with one of the most obvious reveals I have ever seen, this character instantly became the most intriguing person in the whole show. Every interesting question now revolves around him. Is he really a Sith? Master or Apprentice? Why does he want a new acolyte? What’s his background story? How does he know so much about Sol?

Sol - After my previous concerns that he was becoming too one-dimensional, I was glad to see a new side of him in this episode. It was a great decision to show his distress and “break” him to an extent. I am truly not sure if he will recover or continue to unravel, so I am happy to see that this character has depth beyond empathy.

Mae/Osha - I am lumping them into the same category now because these two are truly indistinguishable to me. Their motivations can change on a dime, sometimes they love each other and want to sacrifice their life to save the other, sometimes they hate each other and try to kill the other, sometimes they want to faithfully serve their friends, sometimes they want to betray their friends. Now that they’re role-swapped, it’s just as believable that Osha turns dark and Mae turns light? Again, it’s not a bad idea on paper, but the characters needed to have individual consistency before now for it to be executed well. Additionally, these characters are both exceptionally weak in the force, consistently beaten by almost everyone in the show. I half expected Qimir to offer Jecki a place at his side instead of Mae or Osha. Neither has shown abilities to be greater than a standard Jedi youngling, so I’m not sure why Qimir is so interested in them.

Other characters? - With no Yord or Jecki moving forward, all we have left is… Vernestra? That’s a really weird writing decision to only have 5 named and voiced characters at this point in the show. Sol, Qimir, Mae, Osha, Vernestra. Those are the only action figures left. I am hoping for a big new Sith reveal soon. There were signs of a David Harewood casting for the show, so I’m hoping that’ll be Tenebrous. Sooner, rather than later would benefit the story.

Conclusion

Rating: 7.1/10 (I’d call it “Good”, but not “decent” or “great”)

Pros:

Best live-action lightsaber choreography in ~20 years
Qimir stole the show with new character intrigue and Jacinto’s performance
Didn’t shy away from big character deaths and Sith violence

Cons:

Lack of an intriguing primary protagonist
A couple of confusing plot contrivances (Qimir and beetles, Sol can’t recognize Mae)
Continuously terrible runtimes, episode structure, and editing

Best scenes:

1. Qimir v Jecki
2. Qimir mentally breaks Sol down
3. Qimir’s casual depictions of Sith violence

Worst Scenes:

1. Mae and Osha talking on a hilltop with more character nonsense occurring
2. Sol getting duped by fake Osha with a giant forehead tattoo
3. Qimir gets confused by a flashlight and carried away by beetles

It has been over 4 years since The Acolyte was first announced, and here we are halfway through the show after production delays, logo changes, and marketing messaging alterations from “It’s a Sith-led story” to “An investigation into a shocking crime spree pits a respected Jedi Master against a dangerous warrior from his past.”. The story thus far has been… Scattered. Unclear. It raises new questions each week, but are they good questions? After Episode 3 was lambasted in public for being “the worst Star Wars production ever”, The Acolyte had the impossible task of trying to right course if it wanted to live up to the hype when it was originally announced (2020 was a different world…)

All in all, when we refer to the original announcement of the show, “The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era”, does it stack up to our expectations so far? I think it’s clear that Headland had an overarching vision for a Star Wars show and was able to live out her dream of bringing it to life. It’s also clear that the nature of Disney+ forced the show into an unintended format that is causing many viewers to feel disjointed in their experience of watching the story unfold. So without further ado, let’s tackle The Acolyte - Episode 4: “Day”.

Pacing and Structure

With the intro and credits removed, we are left with 26 minutes and 52 seconds of scenes here. Out of 61 Star Wars live-action TV episodes, this marks it as the second shortest episode ever made, only surpassed by The Mandalorian S03 E04 “The Foundling” (the raptor creature steals a kid episode). I’ll just say it upfront: This runtime is horrendous. Somehow this episode manages to feel both excruciatingly slow as the crew wanders aimlessly through a forest without any plot development, as well as give off a “blink and you missed the entire episode” vibe. It’s hard to even evaluate the pacing because this is clearly an incomplete episode. It was forcibly broken up into two mini-episodes at the demand of a streaming service’s subscription expectations. I don’t have anything else to say other than that this is a terrible idea for the proper development of a storyline, and the pacing in this episode is simply non-existent. They had to pad it with unnecessary scenes to meet the bare minimum runtime, but not reveal too much in these scenes because the actual plot development was intended to occur in the “next episode”. This pacing was the worst of the season.

Aside from the lack of an ending in favor of a frustrating Cliffhanger trope, the episode is structured decently. The structure of showing Mae ahead of the Jedi investigation works, as the Jedi meet and prepare for their next move, Mae moves ahead with the advantage of Qimir’s knowledge. However, the Jedi have a tracking advantage with Bazil and quickly catch up. This culminates as both squads end up in the same spot as night falls, and the Sith shows up. Overall, it’s a good idea on paper, but again, this episode is so artificially cut in half that it has to get a negative score in this category. The feeling I got watching this was one of, “To Be Continued… Right Now.” However, the screen stays black instead of coming back in 2 minutes from the commercial break. This episode concludes not on an anticipatory and quality Cliffhanger, but on a plain old annoying one that has “Big Corpo Intervention” written all over it.

Dialogue and Writing Quality

The dialogue continues to be serviceable but still comes off as stilted, somewhat boring, and overly explanatory. When you look for it, you can’t miss how every character has to always explain exactly how they’re feeling in the clearest terms possible. There is no nuance, it is always stated plainly as fact and without reflection or hesitation. I mentioned this before as this is actually akin to how George wrote dialogue and I appreciate the subtle Star Wars charm in this cadence of speech, but it is missing one very key aspect to the delivery. Rhythm. When George spoke on the critiques of his dialogue, he was quite self-aware of it sounding rather unnatural, but ultimately defended his choice by saying, “I’m not known for my dialogue. I think of it as a sound effect, a rhythm, a vocal chorus in the overall soundtrack.” The dialogue of The Acolyte is not functioning as the chorus of a beautiful song, it is functioning merely as a tool to deliver exposition that the characters, environments, music, emotions, themes, etc, are not delivering themselves. If you are trying to emulate the odd-mastery of “Wooden Dialogue” that George coined, you better have all of the pieces around it to make it function, and The Acolyte misses on other marks which makes the stiff dialogue stand out.

When I analyze the Writing Quality, I do so on two fronts: 1. As a self-contained storyline, inconsiderate of its placement in the Star Wars universe 2. As an ever-important story told in the intricately woven web of Star Wars lore and mythos. First, on the mystery crime-thriller front. The episode begins with an ominous setting that generates intrigue as Kelnacca lives in solitude, seemingly connected to Mae with symbology painted on his walls. The anticipation for a showdown with a Wookie Jedi Master is palpable. Unfortunately, we are immediately bogged down by a poorly written conversation between Osha and Jecki where the former has doubts about continuing the mission and the latter tries to persuade her to join. It’s a waste of time because I think we all inherently know that Osha isn’t going to get left behind and written out of the next couple of episodes. Her doubts last all of 50 seconds until Sol once more validates her self-confidence and she’s back on the squad. This same exact conversion has occurred in past episodes, as well as will occur again in 3 minutes when Yord again has to bolster her confidence. I believe this is all written as an attempt to show that Osha is struggling internally with her sister being alive and a “should I save her or kill her” conflict, but that can be communicated in many other ways other than 5+ 60-second conversations with surrounding Jedi rehashing the same exact premise.

On the flip side, we start to learn more about the interesting dynamic between Mae and Qimir, and these conversations carry the episode through a long slog through a forest. There really isn’t much to say about the majority of this episode as it truly is just scene after scene of the contested groups walking and occasionally giving updates on their geographical location. Unless the anticipated duel next week ends up back in the Beetle forest section, that whole scene was very pointless and added only time padding, as well as an eye roll of “Why the hell would you touch that” and the odd conversation of Osha feeling morally distraught for the flesh-craving bug dying, yet we just previously established that she is now mentally prepared to kill her sister in a few minutes…

Before addressing the events that led to the Cliffhanger, I need to move to the Star Wars front of analysis and examine the Jedi Temple scene. The Acolyte is up against a huge wall with rules established in The Phantom Menace. It is attempting to tell “a Sith-led story” from the perspective of the Jedi/former Jedi in a time when no Jedi is allowed to know about the Sith. I knew there would either have to be a cover-up, a lot of deaths, or a plot hole. I think we start to see the roots of all three of those happening in this scene. I’ll start with the worst offender here… Ki-Adi Mundi. Not only did they decide to rewrite his age by 100’s of years (In Legends, Ki-Adi wasn’t born for another ~30 years after this show’s ending, yet in this show he’s already old enough to start graying), they had to completely alter the nature of the Cerean species to take their average lifespan of ~70 years to 250+ years. I have to forcibly ask, “Why?” There are so many other Jedi who could have functioned in the role the Ki-Adi plays in this episode. Yoda, Yaddle, Oppo Rancis, Even Piel, Plo Koon, Tera Sinube, a new Jedi, etc. I think they went with Ki-Adi because he is specifically the one who comments on the Sith in TPM, but his presence in this scene is the opposite of what they should have done to handle this. Keep every single major Jedi completely away from this sequence of events so they have actual deniability instead of bringing them in but making them look like morons by overlooking this threat. I need to see more to know how it plays out, but I will be returning heavy-handed to this plot point if the Jedi are massacred by this supposed “Master and his Splinter Order” and Ki-Adi NEVER makes a connection to the Sith. Unfortunately, I sense this is the trend as the writers have begun trying to defend their storyline by simply saying Ki-Adi “doesn’t know anything about the Sith” here and making jokes about it while ignoring the fact that he should not even be born yet.

I have a major writing critique about Mae’s decision to surrender to the Jedi, but will leave that for her section in my Character review, so let’s move on to the best writing in this episode. The lead-up to the Cliffhanger. Mae’s inexplicable 180 aside, the last 4 minutes of the episode are bone-chilling and save the entire experience. The twist of Kelnacca’s premature death is the perfect kind of subverted expectation, though unfortunately I was left wishing we got to see that. Somehow, this confrontation was initially in the script but (NOTE: this writer actually deleted this Tweet during the time I was writing this review, so caution that this image may provide spoiler-y information for a future plot point)
cut out of the $180 million budget…. The best shows I have ever seen never skip the big moments. Breaking Bad, early Game of Thrones, and House of Cards, all let the viewer experience nearly every moment of drama and don’t use cut scenes as surprises to reveal new information. This disappointment aside, the directing of the arrival of the Sith is executed perfectly. I would go as far as saying it was the most emotion I have felt in any episode of this show so far, and has me more excited for the next episode than at any point of this series so far, even pre-release (granted, this isn’t saying a ton, but it’s an improvement for sure). Overall, the writing here was downhill for 90% of the episode with a few well-written scenes sparsed throughout such as the conversation with Yord and one of Mae’s talks with Qimir before a huge spike in the ending. It’s not good but was certainly saved from disaster at the end.

Production Quality and Creative Direction

The quality of the sets and creature designs continue to be all over the place, some sticking out as B-movie quality and some impressing with their believable as real-life execution. The wide panning shots of the environment look great, and I appreciate how they transformed a generic Earth forest into feeling like an alien world with the use of high-floating fog, unique sunset lighting, and the use of both mountains and trees. Every wide shot looked incredible, but it did not hold up to closer inspection. The show is having trouble with the synthetic practical effects, and it is very easy to spot plastic/styrofoam props. From the bugs on the trees before they turn into CGI, to the obvious fake plants and tree trunks scattered about, to the visible bald cap on Vernestra, to the glue on Jecki’s horns and fading face paint, this simply does not hold up to the budget it was given. Kelnacca’s costume and the Jedi robes still look stiff and fake, however, his hut and Basil both look fantastic. It’s really been hit or miss on a lot of set pieces.

The planet Khofar was well-designed on paper and the attempt to make alien fauna was welcomed and only held back through poor texturing and lighting on the prop placements. Coruscant and the Jedi Temple continue to look underwhelming, and the continued problem of overreliance on humans was especially evident in the Temple training and planning rooms. Compare to Prequel Temple sets and take any side by side to count up the aliens, background activity, and scale. I will give major props to the design team on Basil, he looked and sounded fantastic, and was a wonderful addition of the Tynnan species from Legends. His direction as an independent character was fantastic and also perfectly in line with Star Wars history. I will say that I am not at all a fan of the “Smilo Ren” mask. Unless this is an intentionally ironic/edgy costume from a tryhard Apprentice who will soon be humiliated, it just doesn’t play. Sith don’t dress like that… Especially in this time period of stalking in the shadows. However, the direction of his demeanor and costume outside of the corny smile is well done.

Performances and Characters

Though Sol carried the previous episodes, I think his deliveries were a step back this time, perhaps in part due to repetitive emotional expressions and dialogue. Mae/Osha continues to be a major weak point to me in terms of embodying their characters, Jecki remained as flat as possible, and the random Jedi lines were not inspiring either. Thankfully, Charlie Bennet actually really stepped it up as Yord and I thought his conversation with Osha was very well done and he felt like an actual in-universe Jedi. Qimir delivered a new range of emotions that were a fresh take in the show, so overall I’d say this category has stayed static at “not very good, but carried by a few solid performances from individuals.”

As we’ve reached the halfway point of this series, we should have some genuine connections to the characters and start to see the direction of the character arcs. Some are meeting this goal, while I think others are completely failing.

• Osha - The primary traits I see in her are doubt, confusion, and lack of self-confidence. This is not a particularly fun set of characteristics for the main character of a show. Her motivations continue to be all over the place from scene to scene. She’s not presented as an emotional character; she is stoic, introverted, self-reflective, and anxious. She has flip-flopped numerous times on her decision-making process and I have absolutely no idea where they are taking her character, and not in a fun and mysterious way but in a way that the character feels like she is not communicating the mind of an actual person to the audience.

• Mae -

1. Her character, like Osha, is a complete mess at this point. There are no indications whatsoever about where her motivations come from and she has already 180’d multiple times, worst of all in this episode when in a beyond bewildering decision, decides she’s had enough of murdering Jedi Masters and is ready as a young woman to spend life in a max-security Republic prison. Her “love” for her sister could not be more out of place, as we just saw in a flashback that Mae displayed serial killer behavior in torturing animals and trying to burn her sister alive in a locked room, yet 3 scenes later we are expected to believe that she is ready to be: A. tortured/killed by a Sith Lord, or B. tortured and possibly killed in a Republic prison. This decision was beyond defense, yet again the writer decides to do so by saying, “She’s not “good” in that moment she’s just super tired of this pointless (what she considers pointless) missions and errands her master is making her do.” Sorry, but this is not in any way a believable decision. Unless Mae is an imbecile with a death wish, it’s just not a sympathetic character arc. Did any of us look at this and say, “Oooh, that’s cool, I like how she developed that way”? Or did we all collectively groan, “Ohhh come on, you cannot possibly be that stupid”?

2. One side critique of Mae: I don’t think this writing team understands the Dark Side of the force. It is not merely a tool that you can tap into at will to gain enough strength to kill a Jedi Master and then go back to being a reasonable person who genuinely loves her sister. The Dark Side corrupts you spiritually. Headland touts that she is such a big fan of the EU and KOTOR, yet compare Mae’s flippant usage of the Dark Side to what the iconic Jedi Bastila Shan said of it, “The dark side is not simply giving in to anger or temptation to use the Force to destructive ends. These things only lead to the dark side. The dark side grows stronger and more insidious the closer you draw to it. It begs you to surrender to it, to release all its terrible power… and it becomes harder and harder to resist. And once you stop resisting, it is too late. It twists you up inside and turns you into a mockery of everything you once stood for.” My friends, how is it that a few sentences of reading on a screen can make me fear the Dark Side more than seeing ~2 hours of a character use it in live action? Let us hold storytelling to a high standard because high-quality Star Wars is indeed possible, it’s just not being presented in these TV shows.

• Sol - Sadly, I think Sol’s writing is proving to be overly one-dimensional. His character was not developed in any new direction, he only rehashes his care for Osha over and over and over, but I am intrigued with the possibility of seeing him in action in the next episode.

• Qimir - Perhaps I will eat these words soon and will retract this and apologize, but is it blatantly obvious that Qimir is “Masked Sith”? From the very beginning of Episode 1 when Qimir quotes the Sith Code, he was my #1 suspect for undercover Sith. I thought the same in every single scene since and was hoping this was good and intentional writing to throw us off the trail, but now I am worrying that it’s just extremely poorly disguised and bad writing. I don’t hate the idea of the twist, but it did not seem mysterious in any way other than being “This is the guy who you’re obviously supposed to believe is the Big Bad but turns out to not be”. Except… I am quite confident it is. His lines about lessons to Mae, his change of demeanor when she wants to quit, the sudden killing of Kelnacca when no one else knew his location… Not a mystery at all in my mind. I really hope this ends up not being the case because that means Qimir has his entire costume packed in his rucksack that he is clearly opening and digging around in front of Mae, he somehow breaks out of the trap, changes clothes, rushes ahead to Kelnacca at inexplicable speeds on an alternate indirect route, kills Kelnacca, then “flies” up into a nearby tree to await the others, all before either Mae or the Jedi get here. I get “a bad feeling about this” reveal in that it will be true but the details will not be explained or addressed in any way.

Conclusion

Saved solely by the final few minutes…

Rating: 5.4/10 (I’d call it “Fine”, but not “pretty good” or “pretty weak”)

Halfway point show rating: 4.2/10 (I’d call it, “pretty weak” but not “bad” or “fine”

Pros:

Great wide shots of Khofar
Bone-chilling thematic setting and entrance of the Sith
Basil was a standout alien design and plot integration

Cons:

Multiple characters have extremely confusing motivations and flip-flopping decisions
Practical effects look overly synthetic and don’t blend in
Atrocious runtime and disjointed pacing

Best scenes:

1. Sith entering the story
2. Yord talking to Osha on the hill
3. Mae and Qimir starting their venture into the forest

Worst Scenes:

1. Mae having a schizophrenic episode and a 180 of her character motivation (goes entirely against what we saw for 40 minutes in the flashback last week)
2. Journey through the forest where nothing happens (I stopped counting at double-digit wipe transitions between 30-60 second scenes of walking)
3. Jedi Temple planning scene (I am very concerned that this weak scene is going to be the only explanation of how the Sith stay in the shadows)

Patali said:
Book 2 remains my favorite movie. To me it feels the most like a single movie rather than several TV episodes put together. I say that with love, I’ve watched your first 4 films and think they are all the best way to enjoy these series. But it seems, if you’re keeping almost all of the different plots as you’ve done, that it is a feeling that is impossible to get away from entirely. Book 2 did the best IMO.

I remember you saying that from your initial reviews! That is very interesting, I love that perspective. Personally, I would say it’s my least favorite of my films, but it’s definitely the most unique/individualized out of them all so it makes sense that some would prefer it based on its structure. I agree that in order to make the other films more “movie-like” rather than still feeling somewhat episodic, I would have to cut a lot more content. I could definitely make them all feel like movies, but I think that would bring the series down to ~4 movies instead, and to me, it always feels bad when TV shows are cut down way too much into movies because the character development is so slow in TV shows, I never feel like I’ve connected as I do in movies that are designed to function around that timeframe.

Will be really interested to hear what you think of Book 6 eventually, as it’s structured similarly to Endgame where it doesn’t have a standard movie structure, but rather it’s a long-form sequence of connected building events that culminates in a final battle.

BOBA: I am Boba Fett.
FENNEC: Boba Fett is dead.
BOBA: I was.
CUT

I think that “I was.” line is great. And when you cut out the cringy “left for dead on the sands” and leave it just as “I was.” I feel it implies something greater, like Boba isn’t just referring to the Sarlacc and Jabba’s palace, but even more that he is saying “I was.” as in his whole life from when his father died, that moment in the opening. He was dead inside until he found his new family. It says a lot with two words, and through the magic of editing turns a cringy line into great writing.

Awesome! I love this idea. I will double check the delivery of the line and its tone to make sure it works in my edit, but I’m all for it on paper. Makes a lot of sense thematically. Thanks for the suggestion. As I go through all of the Special Edition edits, I’ll be referring back to your reviews of each movie too, so thanks again for writing those.

milkbundt said:

These all sound amazing! Could you please share a link with me? Thank you so much!

Sent! Would love to hear your thoughts after you watch.

Book 6 update:

I’m ~50% through my first pass of edits on the Battle of Mandalore. It’s a doozy! There is so much going on that is horrendously paced, so I don’t yet have enough to fully share the plan. I’m trying to break down everything in chunks to see what the various elements of the battle there are so I can restructure the whole thing. Currently, I have listed:

Arrival on Mandalore & entry into the base - I am planning on completely altering the whole “native Mandalorians” plotline. I thought it was incredibly distracting and added very little other than some cool-looking primitive armor sets. But overall, very forgettable characters that were tacked on at the last second and given a ton of forced dialogue. I am hoping to reframe all of this as occurring on Nevarro BEFORE they leave for Mandalore. The whole dinner and “boat” journey will act as an Intertribal council/Landsmeet where the various leaders intend to settle their differences and get on the same page before liberating Mandalore. Thankfully, the wastes of Nevarro look quite similar to the nothingness of the Volume setpiece of Mandalore… So with some crops and color grading, I think this might work, but not 100% sure yet. Might have to call an audible and replace it on Mandalore.

Ambushed by Beskar Imperials - Reframing this as our Mandalorians are overwhelmed and pushed back further into the base rather than the show presenting it where they absolutely annihilate the ambush and choose to go deeper.

Trapped by Gideon and Paz’s Last Stand - Restructuring everything here to make it actually make sense why Paz sacrifices himself.

Axe Flies to Space - This one is tough because Axe bails in the initial ambush, and he flies to orbit for SO long. It’s incredibly jarring every time we cut back to him in this plotline. Haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to handle this whole plotline of the TIEs attacking the capital ship just as Axe sends down reinforcements. I can guarantee you that I am not leaving it in the same order/context as the show though, it was extremely poorly executed there.

Bo-Katan Hides while Waiting for Reinforcements - I think it’s incredibly dumb how her squad enters the base, then exits the base and flies to a cave, then flies all the way back to the base and enters again. All the while… We have no idea what the Imperials are doing. Din is randomly wandering around and 1v1,000’ing the Imperials and Gideon while the entire attack force is hiding on a cave farm for 20 minutes. Restructuring all of Bo’s Squad’s movements here. They’re now losing the battle, flee from Gideon, escape into a heavily truncated cave section without flying away, and then will re-enter through the main hanger when the reinforcements join.

Din’s Capture and Break-out - Man, this is a bad sequence of events. Going to try to sync up some events to actually explain how Din breaks free of capture because it’s a huge eye roll why they randomly send him off “for interrogation” with only two lackey guards escorting him away. Makes no sense why Gideon considers him so important and does not oversee him whatsoever, and then freaks out when he escapes, somehow can’t track him down in his own base where there’s a perfect holographic GPS on his every move, then Din somehow wanders into the cloning center and… yeah.

Din Wanders Around - There is a huge chunk of time to solo Din walking around trying to find Gideon. It’s some decent action sets, so I don’t want to cut it, but I need to restructure and pace it differently. The whole timeline of the battle is completely thrown off by this segment. I just don’t understand what the Imperials are doing, there is no urgency whatsoever. No plan to address anything that is happening.

Gideon’s Clones - Maybe this will be a controversial call and someone can persuade me otherwise, but I am planning on cutting everything to do with Gideon’s clone army. It was my #1 worst part of Season 3 because of how shallow and glossed over it was, and Gideon’s rage reaction to their destruction is on my “Top 10 Worst Star Wars Dialogue” list. I thought his reaction was so comically over the top and out of nowhere that it completely took away from the battle with Din. I thought the show always hinted that Gideon was cloning in preparation for Project Necromancy and Snoke/Palpatine, not that he wanted to overthrow the entire Imperial Remnant by himself with his personal army of force-sensitive clones. It’s very easy to remove and I see no benefit to this random alteration at the last minute that has no resolution other than “Oh, look, I accidentally ran into some cloning tubes, let me blow them up real quick”.

Battle with Gideon - I think this is the best part of the whole battle, so I plan to simply do my classic acbagel frame-by-frame edit here.

Ending Sequence - This show ends so abruptly after the scene where Grogu saves them, and unfortunately, there’s not a ton I can do to change it. I’m still hoping to actually be able to show some of the space battle and have Boba join there as the reason the TIE’s aren’t obliterating everyone (seriously… where tf did they go? There are dozens to hundreds of ships in this base and we saw a ton fly to space and obliterate the Mando capital ship, and then they just vanish from the entire episode?) and also add Boba to the ending ceremony. I am planning to redo Armorer’s speech with some AI since I have a great model for her, but overall I just want to extend this sequence. Looking at options for how to slow it all down into more of a montage.

With all that said, I still need to cut 15-20 minutes out of the film, but I think that’s at a healthy place. Back to work!

As we’re ~12 hours away from Episode 4…

For those of you who liked the show so far, what are you hoping to see happen tonight? Which characters do you want to see in the spotlight? What are some plot developments you think would create more intrigue/excitement?

For those who haven’t liked it so far, what could they do storywise to turn ship for you? We’ve seen the production quality and that is what it is (not incredible, but not awful), so is there any way to recover your interest in the characters or plot?

I thought the flashback was a massive and unnecessary distraction and really took me out of the pacing of the first couple of episodes which I rather enjoyed, so I am hoping Ep. 4 can stay focused and deliver some genuine character connections here. Let me spend some time with our Jedi team, and give some well-written interactions between them. I didn’t like Episode 3 at all, but I thought it was the best-paced episode so far (aside from the lack of action sequences). I think the absolute worst thing they could do this episode would be to go back to the lighting fast pacing of Episode 1/2 and stay light on character development in favor of “we need to get this plot moving”. I feel like I’ve had very little time to connect with anyone yet, it’s like every scene is only the tiniest snippet of a person but I don’t actually know anyone.

Additionally, I think we really need to start seeing the Sith presence. I was hoping this show would tell the story from their perspective instead of making them the horror film monster that you barely see glimpses of… So I’m hoping the latter half of the show will bring one of them to the forefront. I think a very intriguing Sith could recover my interest, as we still have ~2.5 hours of scenes. Give me a good Sith movie and reasons to connect with the Jedi characters from here on out and I could become fond of it!

Hey, folks! I have successfully recovered and relinked everything from my SSD upgrade and drive reorganization. Nothing was lost and the project is back in action. As I began structuring the Battle of Mandalore, I made the Executive decision to cut Dr. Pershing. I put a lot of work into that episode so I still plan to release it sometime, might be a good “short film” watch to do between Books 5 & 6 in the future. But I desperately needed the runtime and it was way throwing off the pacing in general, so I feel much better about keeping Book 6 either right at or under 3 hours now. Going back into “full-scale” editing mode next week to get back to finishing this saga!

I will bounce back and forth between finalizing the Special Editions of the earlier books (this is simply enhancing SFX, double-checking colors, and adding Mando’a/consistent story elements as I alter Book 6), re-releasing Book 5 to match the events of Book 6, and completing Act 3 of Book 6 so I can prepare for the final release. Still waiting on some elements from the other artist I previously mentioned, so I want to tie at least the final Book 6 release into that and call this project COMPLETE! … at least until 2026.

In the meantime, if anyone has thoughts on how to improve Mando S3 E07 & E08 (the final two episodes), the time to share is now. Will be going frame by frame through everything over the next couple of weeks and completing this edit. So let me know if you have general or specific ideas for improvement. Once I have a solid game plan, I’ll drop my big-picture idea for it here as well.

Finally, I have gotten a few DMs about if I’m going to do an Acolyte edit. I will say, maybe. I think the show is begging for one, and I’m sure at least a dozen other people are going to jump in the mix to do it. So it depends on the timing, my interest as the season goes on, and if anyone else steps up to execute the same ideas I’ve had for it. I know I don’t want to touch it until we see more of the show’s episodic structure between the past and present because flashbacks could really change the plans in my head for it all. If you’re interested in my thoughts or reviews about the show, I have been writing detailed reviews of its lore and cinematic attributes here: Episodes 1/2, Episode 3.

Fullmetaled said:

What’s the latest on this, the project has been radio silent for a while now.

March 9th: "I’m not giving regular updates because I’m at the point where I’d like to wrap things up and prepare for the next stage. So, all I’m doing now is dialogue removal (a.k.a., making the actors not talk to match the cuts better), creating alternative shots and reactions, and removing blinking in case of reversed shots. It doesn’t seem too bombastic, but there are almost a hundred of these shots throughout the film. I’m just more focused on actually working on the film than announcing anything or engaging in discourse online.

I wish I were a millionaire with an unlimited budget and time to work on TOTM only, but the reality is far different. I’m one of the VFX artists who unfortunately lost their job due to recent strikes, so I have to take on a side project now and then just to survive and take care of my family." (a post on YouTube)

May 12th: Someone asked if the project was canceled in a YouTube comment, “No, no worries of that. I’m just quiet while working on the final VFX shots.”

June 8th: Someone asked on a YouTube comment, “Is this thing dead?” Pixel answered, “No!”

Thanks for the great review and feedback! I definitely agree with a lot of those points. This edit is ~3 years old now and I’d do some things differently now, so when I get back to re-editing my ideas I’ll be making many of the changes you suggested.