NFBisms

I absolutely believe it’s worth exploring why something does or doesn’t work, don’t get me wrong. That’s kind of my whole obsession, yk? I don’t post walls of text working through my thoughts on something on a forum because I fundamentally misunderstand that. I apologize for being a bit glib, but my frustrations are actually that I don’t think people are being good enough at it. /respectfully

DZ-330 said:

You’re right, terms like “good,” “well-paced” and “competent” are subjective.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t be evaluated.

“Well-paced” usually refers to a story that keeps the audience engaged without dragging or rushing, and “competent” writing means the plot and characters are coherent and compelling. These aren’t arbitrary standards; they’re widely recognized in storytelling. And when Disney’s content doesn’t meet these standards, it can affect viewership and revenue. So, while subjective, these qualities still have real-world implications for the business.

ok define dragging, rushing, coherent, compelling, etc

I realize this is annoying but I truly think whatever thesis you can make from this kind of thing falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. I’m not saying things can’t be evaluated or that I even disagree about the Acolyte, but trying to speak on some kind of objective corporate tip, from your own purely personal engagement with the content’s quality is arbitrary. Your opinion is not invalid, you’re just not going to discover an insight worth saying out loud.

“Make good things, not bad things!”

Mocata said:

Disney never had a spine to start with and it doesn’t care about these current day ethical quandaries and diversity inclusions. People like to argue over it but it’s not true. This is a soul-less corporation that was about to tell some guy his wife dying in their park recently was her fault because she signed a D+ user agreement. They just want money, and they thought these projects were a way to make it. When the viewers and subs take a hit then we see shows getting cancelled (or removed). That’s all there is to it; numbers in a share holder meeting and money spent versus money earned.

☝️

I just don’t think we can use these subjective words so definitively and then make up arbitrary diagnoses from that. It’s dialectics 101 guys

BedeHistory731 said:

NFBisms said:

Spineless, craven decision IMO.

Absolutely. It’s just giving the not-so-nice side of the fandom more ammo to blame the show’s issues on culture war BS instead of it just being an overpriced yet poorly-written piece.

Also, I’m pretty sure it means the High Republic stuff is on the way out in favor of more Skywalker-era stuff.

I don’t even really care about that (we can ignore them), and honestly it’s a decision that does make sense. I think this show, in a healthier, better managed property, doesn’t even get made as it is in the first place.

But they did make the show. The ol’ cynical, views and money business shit guiding the boat doesn’t become less of a bummer just because I didn’t think the show was great. Shows’ first seasons are exactly where they used to find their feet. Imagine if Breaking Bad didn’t get the chance it had. The Clone Wars. Irregardless of the potential, it always sucks to see that studios won’t trust their creators outside the equation of money. They need to invest in ideas, back creative when it counts, stand by them, help them. Let a rough first season develop into something good. Build an audience

And you’re right, The Acolyte is the first big thing in the Disney acquisition that ventured outside of the common conceits and eras, where do you think they’ll retreat back into? this isn’t just about headland’s show

here’s to another decade of buckethead and green baby, gimme that filoni slop

Spineless, craven decision IMO.

Vladius said:
However the structural stuff of the Jedi, as far as masters with multiple apprentices, decentralization, Jedi with lovers, families, and children, a lack of a standard uniform, etc. are all consistent with how the Jedi were portrayed in everything else (mainly post-ROTJ material because that was what we had) up until the prequels came out. After that, KOTOR retconned the 4000 BBY time period as way more pared down and similar to the movies in terms of portrayal and visual design.

Right, all I’m saying is that some of the the current direction has been reconciling, at the very least making room for, TOTJ-like Jedi as historical.

Jedi Survivor’s whole High Republic subplot has a lot of the same elements, for example. Dagan Gera and Santari Khri’s outfits are not standardized, they have autonomy to explore, build, and recruit throughout the galaxy for their own project (Tanalorr) that is largely unencumbered by oversight. The High Republic Jedi are also generally much less strict on attachments, to the point that romance and basically-marriages are common.

I think a lot of it gets hamstrung by its proximity to, and the desire to “explain”, the prequels (see: The Acolyte) - but The High Republic gets as close to the old understanding of the Jedi as it can before being obligated to fit into and set up the prequels’ state of play.

Ultimately doesn’t mean anything, but the fundamentalism of the prequel Jedi has been retconned into a particular period.

I’m not saying you CAN’T reduce it to just one time period of history, I’m saying you SHOULDN’T because it’s very limiting in terms of stories you can tell. I know you know this already, but it’s an out of universe change which is why we emphasize pre-1999 (real life) not pre-4000 BBY or pre-1000 BBY or something.

Sure. I don’t disagree. Obviously I’ve expressed liking what emerges from the prequels, but I think it does have its limits. At the very least, a bunch of things to write around. I’ve hit diminishing returns on it after Acolyte, for sure.

I don’t know what you’re talking about with the bureaucrat thing.

Granted, it’s like right up to the 1999 line (late '98), but - Redemption. Nomi’s administrative obligations [as a Republic representative] to the conclave rebuilding the Order basically pre-creates Andor’s whole Mon and Leida Mothma bit between her and Vima, (which pushes Vima to seek out Ulic). Nomi, Tott, and Sylvar get into political squabbling about whether Ulic should be tried for his war crimes. They have diplomatic roles on Ryloth and Cathar.

It feels closer to the roles of the prequel Jedi (more than the Dudes Rock™ of the Qel-Droma boys in the preceding titles), even if it’s all predicated on Jedi having children or being widowers.

Maybe beside the point of this thread, but all of the Tales of the Jedi stuff is still implied to be true of the Jedi at one point in the galaxy’s history.

Hell, Master Odan-Urr from those comics is basically who writes the modern Jedi Code in new canon, (his discovered annotations, at least). The mural in Palpatine’s office (ROTS) depicts The Great Hyperspace War. Even pre-1999, the TOTJ comics themselves begin to hint at the direction of things when Nomi, Sylvar, and Tott basically become bureaucrats after The Sith War.

I don’t keep up with High Republic stuff really, but of the stuff I have (Jedi Survivor, The Acolyte, and Dooku: Jedi Lost), a big friction in those is going from a looser Jedi mandate to the inevitable tie to the Senate and a heavier handed High Council. Even in the prequels themselves (and granted, this is gleaned from Jedi Lost context), Dooku at the start of AOTC is still [unofficially] considered one of their number despite having endeavors counter to the Jedi’s code and official political affiliations.

Granted, it’s a lot of writers making stuff work or having their own interpretations, but a lot of the “dogmatic” read on the prequel Jedi has to date been contextualized as not as strict as it may seem to a tortured-for-other-reasons Anakin Skywalker. Yoda is forgiving Jedi for having children or gambling problems constantly. What are the consequences, really, of breaking the rules? The code is just a guide, an ideal aspiration.

Vladius said:

NFBisms said:

Something I’ve been thinking about (and this is perhaps American centric) in regards to the current approach is how much better all of this would have played in a different time. As we further burn through the backlog of Chapek’s tenure over-investing in D+ (yes, there’s context) - it’s clear all of these new shows have been targeting different audiences, and that the streaming landscape where every studio is their own distributor has done zero favors to that end. Handicapped it, even.

Back in the day, all of this would be optioned out / syndicated to different networks!

Mandalorian-verse to primetime (ABC/Fox/etc)
Bad Batch + animateds (maybe even Ahsoka) to Cartoon Network
Andor to whichever premium cable channel
The Acolyte to Freeform, The CW or MTV
Skeleton Crew to ABC Family
Obi-Wan as Direct-to-Video miniseries/movie
etc, etc.

It used to be such an important part of a media’s identity, where it played, who it was for. It was “easier” for many to skip The Clone Wars because being on Cartoon Network implied certain things about its prescribed audience. The Star Wars movies were being marathoned elsewhere after all, on TNT or the USA Network.

The shows wouldn’t be better (maybe they would, w/ network guidelines) but as “consumers”, our choices would inherently be better informed.

What the Disney+ of it all does is put all the shows on the same expectation for a broad subscriber base - the same audiences - even if that’s not what they’re trying to do. Even to unsubscribed spectators looking from afar, in other countries even, it all becomes a series working through the “latest installments”, not a franchise with diversified demographic objectives. We have to figure out this stuff by waiting for a thing to come out, a waste of everyone’s time.

To say less of the “Disney” branding itself being inescapable and inflexible. It has completely painted the way y’all have engaged with the work of like five different creative teams. My frustration with that aside, I can’t even really blame those fans for it. Streaming and the growing monopolies in media have just been doubling down into being their own distributors, becoming “brand families”, etc. - the ways of figuring out profit/strategy for this stuff is stuck between antiquity and new media.

At the same time, this stuff wouldn’t even exist without streaming economics being fucked up. Luckily, hopefully, like I alluded to before, it really is a case of us reacting to a backlog. Shows take a while to produce, we’re just catching up to what’s probably been figured out over a year ago. That isn’t optimism about corporate good sense mind you, it’s just that literally, we’ve been seeing the illusion of the streaming model tangibly break down all across the industry the past few years. I think if we’re talking about what’s coming next, some of what has been expressed in this thread is coming. The slow downs, the return to films, etc. Whether or not that era will be any good is another question.

I see what you’re saying and there probably would be less backlash, but I think the shows probably would be a lot better as well. There would be greater independence and the networks would focus more on trying to get ratings and repeat viewers every week, rather than a sort of abstract thing where they make the equivalent of TV movies to increase the relative prestige and value of a subscription. The networks themselves would all front the costs of the shows and do more with less, rather than Disney’s own shows all competing with each other for budget and sometimes pointlessly ballooning into millions and millions of dollars.

I do agree with this, I was just contending with the shows as they currently exist but realistically there would be more of a collaboration between the network and studio in this scenario.

I think a “good” example of what we’re talking about is Marvel TV pre-2020. I think that whole thing is in a similarly diluted, played-out spot as Star Wars nowadays - but before Disney+ really took off, they had just as many different properties, if not more. The different ecosystems they nurtured kept the brand(s) healthy, fans didn’t feel like they had to watch everything until it doubled down into making Disney+ Events™️ every season. Now those fans don’t care in much the same way Star Wars fans don’t.

But at one point this had been their presence on TV:

ABC
Agents of SHIELD
Inhumans
Agent Carter

Freeform
Cloak and Dagger

Hulu
Runaways
Helstrom

Netflix
Daredevil
Luke Cage
Jessica Jones
Iron Fist
Defenders

And that is just stuff that was [ostensibly] for their healthy MCU. There were still their cartoons and other “non-canon” shows (Legion on FX). Eventually it all becomes that franchise’s version of Legends when they focus in on D+, but at the time it didn’t dilute the energy for Infinity War or Endgame. When I talk about Star Wars following that example, I’ll be clear that I’d rather there just be less of it overall, but when dealing with the hand they have - they should have leaned further in this direction.

Making everything a Disney+ event is doing them no favors. “Disney+” in general is just rough branding.

deleted, apologies

But also - Jon Favreau could just be a hack. (affectionate)

I believe that just as easily, he’s always been of a piece with the Russos, Shawn Levy, and JJ Abrams - business is a part of their art. Grogu was always his baby - his marketing savvy - he doesn’t need the studio to tell him to retreat back into it.

And that doesn’t mean execs didn’t, but at what point in the blanket diagnoses does Gilroy’s blank check from saving R1 reconcile with what should be Favreau’s for delivering Mandalorian?

In any case, I think most of the problems in everything else are truly just Star Wars as a property being disadvantaged for being high concept and spectacle-driven, demanding more time and budget for prep, VFX, and production design than the average TV show. That is what goes beyond the “typical” - and again, these are not typical times. All of that under the pressures facing every part of the industry is going to blowback seemingly worse, especially relative to the standard we were used to for it in Old Media.

Going back to BOBF onwards as delineator, that is precisely where the shift I discuss in my previous post begins. At the point production there starts, Mando has been a success, and Chapek is well into his term, having put into motion his D+ pump. Obi-Wan, Andor, Ahsoka, and Acolyte are materializing around this moment in time. If anything, it’s the opposite of interference - lack of support or blind faith - that proves to be a weakness and/or strength of these productions. Iger sucks, but Chapek notoriously didn’t care what he was greenlighting. It’s all a part of the context we should be looking at.

Well, I don’t think it’s that simple, either.

I think if we’re talking about the quality of the streaming shows - the oversaturation of them, the budgetary constraints - we can point to the top-down direction (from Disney) to pump out shows for their streaming service. Creative direction in the micro is a different conversation (but not entirely unrelated), and I think broad pop culture punditry just hasn’t been good about parsing out what’s relevant to what they want to talk about when. People have been conflating a bunch of things to one catch-all pattern of their choice, whether it’s an imagined incompetence, a perceived political agenda, or disagreement with an assumed creative direction.

It leads to wonderful insights like “they should just focus on making Good™ things!”

But there is information that can lead these conversations in a more productive place. I think we should be able to look at how the Andor we know gets made, for example (THR) :

The subtext here is that the “streaming economics” were Bob Chapek’s (and the entire industry’s, really) irresponsible, inflated spending on a streaming gold rush, greenlighting as much as realistically possible in this period. That timing is really what ensures Tony Gilroy’s involvement in Andor. With that extra cash being thrown around, LFL is able to secure him and the money that makes his manifesto possible - the big budget, the 12 episode seasons, etc. Otherwise, Andor remains in development hell, maybe one of the earlier versions with another creative team is made instead.

That bad business practice is literally what made a great show, this stuff isn’t as algorithmic as it’s made out to be. The Acolyte and Filoni/Fav’s pet projects like Ahsoka and BOBF are borne from the same context. They just didn’t leverage in a similar way. Or were less successful. Maybe they were in some way, and it didn’t pay off! This is all aside from each team’s own creative strengths and weaknesses too.

These are different teams handling circumstances and pressures that, yes, Disney puts them all under. How each one worked inside of that creates their own dialectical discussions worth having. Was there too much supervision or not enough? There isn’t a shadow council really mandating what they should be doing, it’s still just people developing their own pitches through financial stress tests, maybe some arbitrary corporate preferences - a hunger games of ideas vs ideas until they are produced.

But the problem when there is one, is always Disney, on some level. It does reflect back on them, what they are doing, the initial choices that puts things in motion, how they did or didn’t help. There’s no point in defending them IMO. That doesn’t mean it’s a monolithic animus with its own agenda or ideas. And that animus certainly isn’t one Kathleen Kennedy.

In truth, even when it’s bad, Star Wars isn’t special. Every one of the million little reasons it’s stumbled in the past few years has manifested in ways throughout the entire industry. We can only hope we’re almost through the worst of it, on a delay.

Something I’ve been thinking about (and this is perhaps American centric) in regards to the current approach is how much better all of this would have played in a different time. As we further burn through the backlog of Chapek’s tenure over-investing in D+ (yes, there’s context) - it’s clear all of these new shows have been targeting different audiences, and that the streaming landscape where every studio is their own distributor has done zero favors to that end. Handicapped it, even.

Back in the day, all of this would be optioned out / syndicated to different networks!

Mandalorian-verse to primetime (ABC/Fox/etc)
Bad Batch + animateds (maybe even Ahsoka) to Cartoon Network
Andor to whichever premium cable channel
The Acolyte to Freeform, The CW or MTV
Skeleton Crew to ABC Family
Obi-Wan as Direct-to-Video miniseries/movie
etc, etc.

It used to be such an important part of a media’s identity, where it played, who it was for. It was “easier” for many to skip The Clone Wars because being on Cartoon Network implied certain things about its prescribed audience. The Star Wars movies were being marathoned elsewhere after all, on TNT or the USA Network.

The shows wouldn’t be better (maybe they would, w/ network guidelines) but as “consumers”, our choices would inherently be better informed.

What the Disney+ of it all does is put all the shows on the same expectation for a broad subscriber base - the same audiences - even if that’s not what they’re trying to do. Even to unsubscribed spectators looking from afar, in other countries even, it all becomes a series working through the “latest installments”, not a franchise with diversified demographic objectives. We have to figure out this stuff by waiting for a thing to come out, a waste of everyone’s time.

To say less of the “Disney” branding itself being inescapable and inflexible. It has completely painted the way y’all have engaged with the work of like five different creative teams. My frustration with that aside, I can’t even really blame those fans for it. Streaming and the growing monopolies in media have just been doubling down into being their own distributors, becoming “brand families”, etc. - the ways of figuring out profit/strategy for this stuff is stuck between antiquity and new media.

At the same time, this stuff wouldn’t even exist without streaming economics being fucked up. Luckily, hopefully, like I alluded to before, it really is a case of us reacting to a backlog. Shows take a while to produce, we’re just catching up to what’s probably been figured out over a year ago. That isn’t optimism about corporate good sense mind you, it’s just that literally, we’ve been seeing the illusion of the streaming model tangibly break down all across the industry the past few years. I think if we’re talking about what’s coming next, some of what has been expressed in this thread is coming. The slow downs, the return to films, etc. Whether or not that era will be any good is another question.

Channel72 said:

NFBisms said:

On the contrary (and I know this won’t move the needle for you), something I actually kind of appreciated here was the effort this went to show the Jedi not as space cops. I think that angle gets overplayed a bit; it’s easy to villainize them in that lens, but that’s hardly the point. This has a more productive distillation of the subtext.

Ehh… I don’t know. I haven’t watched the whole show yet, but I remember in Episode 2 they literally have the Jedi in a helicopter-like ship hovering in the sky at night with blinding floodlights beaming down, screaming things like “This is the Jedi! You are under arrest!” over a megaphone. I really could not tell the difference at that point between the Jedi and the LAPD.

The Jedi in this show did more “cop-like” things than they ever did in the Prequels, like arresting people, interrogating suspects, etc. While we often joke that the Prequels basically turned the Jedi into glorified space cops, I don’t think the Prequel Jedi ever actually arrested anyone, except when Mace tried unsuccessfully to arrest Palpatine. The closest they come to cop-like behavior in the Prequels, I think, is when Anakin starts yelling at that shape-shifting assassin outside a nightclub in Attack of the Clones. But for the most part, the Prequel Jedi were portrayed as diplomats, negotiators and advisors in The Phantom Menace, and then as bodyguards, soldiers and Generals in the other two films. In Attack of the Clones Obi-Wan took on the role of a detective when investigating the assassination attempt on Amidala, but he comes across more like a Private Investigator or FBI agent than a police officer.

I now want to see a parody show where the Jedi have to cruise around the Galaxy and show up to random people’s houses to settle civil or domestic disturbances. In the first Episode, Jedi Master Plo Koon and his new Padawan respond to a 10-16 at the intersection of Dune Street and Kerner Plaza in South Central Mos Eisley, and talk down a meth-crazed Jawa who became violent after a Twi’lek that lives upstairs complained about loud cantina-band music blasting all night.

I guess to rephrase, I think the show tries to emphasize Jedi As Cops are not The Problem™, but merely a symptom of the Order’s larger failings - an inevitable consequence of the pressures put on them, but not how they are supposed to be/structured to be. The string of murders pushes our characters into an investigative role, yes, but pointedly in this era, under the council and Senate’s noses. Sol and co. are basically rogue. And it’s especially something that they are not equipped to handle [yet]. Every Jedi we meet in this show is book-ish more than warrior.

Not to mention they fail wholly at finding leads, making arrests, or like, not all dying.

I think Headland is being too “clever” for her own good in trying to create the predictable associations early, only to “subvert” them later. The fumbled Rashomon thing for example is seeing the events on Brendok in different perspectives, and the only real difference / new information I can gather from episode 3 and 7’s depictions is the emphasis that the Jedi didn’t come to the planet to enforce law. That every way they fucked up wasn’t because the Jedi are inherently cops, but because Torbin and Sol were being a bit much. What the Jedi really want to do is meditate on the Force and scan for midichlorians in plants and stuff.

(And to tangent off of that, the whole Rashomon thing they try to do here is incorrectly implemented. The whole point of that device being used in the original movie is about the unknowability of the events that transpired! Everyone having their own truths, no one being right or wrong. It’s not about incomplete or hidden information like it is here! But I digress.)

If I had to be earnest, I think Andor is the best Star Wars media probably ever produced? It’s perfect. So I will always be grateful for that.

But I think weirdly enough, Andor more than anything is what has allowed me to feel at peace with Star Wars? Like, I can put it to bed now. When I joke about ending it all, it’s coming from a real place of love and satisfaction. Not trying to be cynical.

The middling/bad nature of the prequels - and to a lesser extent, the sequels - has always left Star Wars an unresolved question in my mind. There’s potential here, I’d always imagined it, and I’ve always been looking for it - in books, in comics, in cartoons, the shows. I developed so much understanding of the universe along the way, to speculate about it like it was real, find interesting conceits to explore. I’ve never been fully satisfied with any one thing, and it only got harder as I got older, as I branched out and became a fan of other things.

But I always saved a place in my heart for Star Wars. So when the perfect cross section of where I am now as a film fan, and all this “language” I’ve honed over the years as a nerd came out - it was, idk, meaningful to me. I could “grow up” now, move on. Gilroy took every nerdy way I’ve thought about the Star Wars galaxy and put it into something I could genuinely enjoy as an adult. So removed from the canon being built on the other side of the franchise, so singular in its refraction of the OT story I already loved. And it was a Gilroy project through and through! As a big Michael Clayton-head, I couldn’t be more pleased.

I only came to this realization after not really feeling the subsequent releases (Mando, Ahsoka, Acolyte), but also not really feeling any kind of desire to “fix” them like I would. I wasn’t even disappointed. They just weren’t for me.

So Andor really changed the franchise for me, from an investment in its world and timeline, to a complete series of films I adore, a TV show that I love. I’ve gotten what I’ve always wanted from this whole thing and those movies aren’t going anywhere. And I think ultimately, even if it’s not Andor for you, that’s the end of the line for everyone at some point.

Vladius said:

Acbagel said:

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

I’m sure you know this already but the answer you’re going to get will always be
*The prequel Jedi (possibly all Jedi) are bad and were always corrupt and the real villains
OR the lite version, *The Jedi were “flawed” so it makes sense that they’re “flawed”
*“Watch the prequels” “Watch The Clone Wars” “Watch Tales of the Jedi”

I really don’t want to get into politics here but Osha and Mae’s mom basically unalived herself by cop. You’re supposed to think Sol is in the wrong because she was “unarmed”. He’s like a cop thinking someone has a gun when they reach into a glove compartment and really they have a hairbrush or something, and shooting first and asking questions later. Like you said that’s not the situation at all because they were already attacking the Jedi and she was literally transforming into a shadow demon and starting to evaporate a child, but I’m pretty sure that’s the idea and it worked on much of the target audience for the show.

On the contrary (and I know this won’t move the needle for you), something I actually kind of appreciated here was the effort this went to show the Jedi not as space cops. I think that angle gets overplayed a bit; it’s easy to villainize them in that lens, but that’s hardly the point. This has a more productive distillation of the subtext.

The group on Brendok was doing botanical/geological surveys. They are scientists and researchers, practitioners in the Force. Not knights-errant, or even diplomatic peacekeepers. (This is what Torbin is lonely and frustrated about!) Even around the temples, we see these very particular Terry Gilliam-character, nerdy British guys as Jedi. Vernestra herself isn’t comfortable with hyperspace and being out there in the field. The show articulates that in this era, they are wont to be academics. They aren’t even tied closely to the Senate yet!

Just wanted to put out there that I think it’s very different from the prequel Jedi flaws. It explains how we get there, but I think Sol’s mistakes here are more as a man of faith, not a cop. He thinks he’s hearing the Force, but he’s really feeling his own fears and desires. Personal paternal instincts, filtered into something external he needs to answer to. He doesn’t realize he is driving the action, not just following the whims of nature.

I end up liking this because I think the prequel’s cop thing ends up muddling what is actually kind of wrong with the Jedi pedagogy and how institution exerts pressures. The cop thing has always been something unique to the Clone War era and context, but there is something more real and timeless about organization and positing a “correct” side of the Force here. Sol is just unfamiliar with other ways of interfacing with the Force - the Jedi way tells us everything else is a corruption - and to be fair it does look bad.

This all feels really nuanced, because Indara is a good example of a master working within the guidelines. She is able to step outside their beliefs and tell Sol that the markings could just be a cultural thing, not necessarily an abomination in the Force. She explicitly tells Sol that Torbin needs to make his own mistakes and gives him the space to do so. Indara wants to leave everyone be. And I think if Sol isn’t there, this doesn’t go bad. But he fails as a Jedi more than because he is one. It’s important that the Jedi are human and that’s okay, what is bad is the need to cover it up to not rock the boat, to minimize mess. The organizational pressure that pushes these human characters to lie.

i wish the show was good

The reversion-back-to-“good” is a central tension to the read I’m putting forward here. To tie it back to the OT Vader discussion, in this perspective it’s a performance. Not even necessarily a mask on his true self, but a desperate grasp on to his better self. Gradual or abrupt, linear or nonlinear - is beside my point, I think it’s just supposed to be a struggle. And I do think that has interplay with ROTJ’s portrayal of Vader’s redemption. It’s playing with the question of ontological good/evil. Can someone fundamentally be “just” a psychotic killer? [is it] too late for me son

He wants to believe he has the morals not to kill Dooku, he buries the memory of the Tuskens because that’s not what a good Jedi [master] does. I think the amount of time spent in ROTS of him angsting about his responsibilities vs desires makes it relatively intuitive that he is performing, deferring to doctrine and procedure harder than ever before. (“Not the Jedi way” “against the Jedi code” “never been done in the history of the Jedi”) Compensating for his failure and disappointment in himself into rigidity

This especially when that’s not how he was characterized in AOTC. It’s basically Catholic guilt, sin motivating piety. The Tuskens being evoked early in ROTS as a response to Anakin’s performed morals is functional in that lens.

I do think you’re right about the weirdness of Padme being super cool with the massacre in AOTC, though.

The other things that muddle it is stuff like the Padme death anxiety simply making no sense, and yet being given central focus. The fascism that peeks out also generally just makes Anakin unsympathetic. It’s odd because these explain motivations for different parts of his arc - but they barely if at all synthesize with one another.

1. Padme is cool with Anakin killing those Tuskens because they need to be in love
2. The nightmares of Padme’s death motivate the deal with the devil
3. Anakin’s failed search for absolution explains the upfront costs
4. The fascist side of Anakin gives him something to stay around for when it all goes bad

It’s all a mess BUT i think can be kinda compelling to think through

Just stopping, and ending Star Wars forever

I’m someone who didn’t like the show up to this point, but I think the finale did kind of save it for me? I at least really admire what it was trying to do; I think the unsettling nature of the whole story kind of came together in the end. It did feel “evil” to me, the payoff of Osha being the one to strangle Sol to death in Jonestown just feels dark and appropriately uncomfortable, even if it wasn’t fully earned.

But yeah, it’s very weird and bad throughout, Osha and Mae never really work as characters, but I’m sold enough on this as the relatively mundane start of a secret rotting that informs the whole saga. It’s intimate with big implications, deceptively fucked up. I think that feeling it leaves me with is generally just a fun impression. I had fun with a trashy show.

Channel72 said:

NFBisms said:

When he chooses Palpatine, he’s making a deal with the devil to “save Padme’s life”, liberating himself from the [Jedi-informed] conscience he did have. It’s not that what he does from here “doesn’t count” but it’s not a reflection of who he is (well, idk, loaded philosophical question) or who he wants to be. Hayden crying is some of the most striking imagery in ROTS and it happens several times.

I think the problem with Anakin’s decision to follow Palpatine is the absurdly extreme cost of doing so that Anakin has to pay right up front. I mean, I can understand Anakin (or anybody, really) agreeing to do some seriously evil stuff in order to save the life of a loved one. But Anakin is told that, in order to save Padme, he has to basically mass-murder everyone he’s ever known, including children. That goes well beyond “my first Dark Side experience”. The justification, I guess, is that Anakin desperately wants to save Padme and he’s slightly pissed off at the Jedi for denying him a Council seat. But this is so weak - the character-work really isn’t there in the script to justify Anakin’s decision. It’s a ridiculous and jarring leap to go from “well I’m now an accessory to Mace Windu’s murder, I might as well just roll with the whole Dark Side thing” to “I will now methodically murder hundreds of people including defenseless children on the off-chance this Sith stuff pans out and saves Padme”.

I think it’s important that those upfront costs aren’t his First Dark Side Experience™. It’s still the Tuskens.

What I’m positing is that the guilt and self-hatred of that has permanence, informs his internality, even by the time of ROTS. When he bows to Palpatine, he can agree to the terms because he’s already spent the past three years haunted by what he’s done, already knowing well the shape of evil inside him. It’s what he’s been running away from, to reputation as a hero (a good man), and what he hopes is masterhood (vindication as a Jedi).

In the face of the Jedi’s persistent doubt and rejection, that protective self-image crumbles and he is left to confront the darker projections - the guilt, the secrets, like the wife he’s hiding, who he cares about most in this moment. Who has he been fooling? As a Jedi, he’s already failed.

So this all has more to do with himself than it does the Jedi Order’s faults to him, or even the politics of the situation. Anakin is lacking in the tools to actualize as anything more than the monster he’s feared himself to be, who Yoda always warns him he’d become. He’s fulfilling his own internalized hatred, and that started with the Tuskens. imo

(sorry btw, i don’t mean to be a prequel apologist, i also am disappointed with these movies, i just end up here when i have to think about it)

A perspective that can kind of make it all work for me is that Anakin does this stuff and hates himself for it.

We do see him struggle with guilt over the sand people (albeit in a badly written, painful-to-watch scene), so it’s in the text. But what’s crucial is that he wants to be a good Jedi and hero, that he knows what his responsibilities are, what’s expected of him. He isn’t overtly sociopathic - he cries about having done these monstrous things, and even in ROTS, just about his unbecoming feelings.

I think the evil he ends up doing - while contradictory to - can still inform, the colder more balanced Vader we get in the OT.

Anakin throughout the first half of ROTS defends the Jedi council and their doctrine to Palpatine; looks to it first, to Yoda, when having a crisis of faith. He performs The Hero, and his relationship with Obi-Wan is great: brothers with someone who thinks him to have grown wise, a good friend worthy yet to be a master. There is something re: his ambition for power there, but I think importantly with the context of his original sin (the Tusken massacre), a question also of absolution. And he clings to all of it. He yearns to be validated by the Order and find in himself that “hero” (to his 9 y/o self’s eyes) - up until it’s clear they would never let him in. Not because Mace doesn’t take him seriously, but because of what Anakin comes to accept about what he’s hiding.

When he chooses Palpatine, he’s making a deal with the devil to “save Padme’s life”, liberating himself from the [Jedi-informed] conscience he did have. It’s not that what he does from here “doesn’t count” but it’s not a reflection of who he is (well, idk, loaded philosophical question) or who he wants to be. Hayden crying is some of the most striking imagery in ROTS and it happens several times.

I think after burning down all that has caused him strife - good and bad - more than just an empty shell, is the motivation to meaningful affect control on his world. It is kind of a reset into the dignified agent of justice he wanted to be as a Jedi, just without the guardrails. And once again performing that role in cover and self-loathing of what more he’s done.

She even has a different accent at the start. Leia is an all-timer

Thank you! And very nice!

Channel72 said:

This episode fully leans in to what was implied about the Jedi in the Prequels: they go around imposing their will on the Galaxy like the Spanish Inquisition, snatching away Force-sensitive children essentially at gunpoint. The Coven acted like they had no choice in the matter, and instead tried to trick the Jedi into leaving. Nice “Guardians of Peace and Justice”. They’re more like the Galactic Gestapo.

I never liked how the Prequels portrayed the Jedi and this show really leans into that portrayal. Ahh well, it is what it is.

I’m someone who actually loves how the prequel Jedi were portrayed, but it worked far better for me as emergent background. Here, in making a point, the whole concept becomes less enticing. Particularly because it feels like the witches were intentionally designed and written to generate friction, already starting from an oppositional perspective, rather than letting the Jedi flaws come out in organic praxis.

It’s fun to see the pursuit of selfless detachment trip into selfish moral vanity, how faith in the metaphysical can lead to inaction and neglect, how pragmatism = paternalism, how responsibility becomes authority, how peace can lack justice. These are all cool themes - that “The Jedi kidnaps children” can absolutely be a symptom of - but feels forced as a character’s primary vendetta. It leans too far into the Jedi as stickler for nonsense rules, and not Jedi as an insitution worth dissecting. And especially when the alternative, opposing way of life is so vaguely defined - what are we supposed to be getting out of this?

I think if anything - if we really are doing the Rashomon thing - this should have just leaned into portraying the Jedi as Osha’s liberators, and then show her family as loving in the recontextualization. Not this odd middle ground.

Also, I don’t think this episode was that redundant. I mean, all we knew before was that Osha’s family died in some fire and Mae seemed to blame the Jedi. I didn’t necessarily expect that Mae herself started the fire. But I do agree that the first two episodes shouldn’t have revealed so much information, especially since so much of it was revealed in rather clunky expository dialogue. Like at one point one of the Jedi actually tells Osha something like “your entire family was killed, etc.”. Pretty clunky, and completely redundant since we see these events play out in Episode 3 anyway.

Mae was actually said to have started the fire first thing when Sol explained what happened to Osha’s family. It’s later the point of Osha staying behind when Sol confronts Mae at the end of episode 2, Sol can sense that Osha still feels angry at Mae for killing their family.

I feel the opposite about how they should have handled it though. I wouldn’t have minded leaving this all to the exposition until a more complete revelation later. It was already pretty efficient. Maybe have some short cutaways like when Maarva was talking about Clem in Andor, but a whole episode? idk. Perhaps this could have even been intercut with the present day plot if they were so dead set on it. I think my biggest issue is how much of the pace it slowed down for very little returns.

I think what made it especially frustrating was that this was all more or less what the exposition detailed in the premiere episodes. Nothing particularly interesting about the coven or the twins or the Jedi was revealed, they could have snuck some of these details into the first two.

Just kinda feels like a waste of an episode - even though I’m 100% sure we’re going to get a Rashomon-esque revisit of these events down the line.

BedeHistory731 said:

NFBisms said:

sad that anyone agrees with Anjohan, it’s just empty rhetoric

Yeah, but I find it pointless to try and change minds here (outside of purely technically discussions).

Fair, just wanted to stake a claim that the post at the top of this page doesn’t represent the community. I like it here a lot because it’s full of smart, thoughtful people, not the kind of stuff being peddled above. It’s like you said, this niche corner of the fanbase has always been a bright spot, we don’t need the outside culture war to plant a flag here.

Anyway, back to The Acolyte. Even if it’s pretty mediocre at the moment, I am interested to see if it will have more interesting things to do as it goes on.

Kogonada is directing the next episode, which is a very compelling choice to me; Columbus is one of my favorite films. I’m interested to see if any of his sensuous photographical style will translate on production design this overtly “loud”, if he was even able to imbue this with any of his own sensibilities. It seems to be primarily a flashback episode based on stills released on the official site.

Which also made me realize that Torbin looked so weird to me because he wasn’t actually an old man! That was Tommen from Game of Thrones lol. He’s probably going to play a big part in the flashbacks if he was cast, which also means it wasn’t a complete waste of Carrie-Ann Moss. The flashback timeline is probably pretty expansive.