Random Star Wars Thoughts

[Totenkindly]

I'm watching The Acolyte more. Kill the Younglings!

 

[The Cat]

I'm watching The Acolyte more. Kill the Younglings!

*Clutches my krayt dragon pearls* Gasp. Think of the children!

 

[The Cat]

Oh. Right.

 

[The Cat]

I guess from a certain point of view. You are.

 

[Totenkindly]

Being generous, I'll give The Acolyte Episode 1 a 6/10.

• If you're gonna get Carrie-Anne Moss in your crappy show where she can be cool, then
  
  Don't kill her off within 5 minutes. I am reading now that the showrunner based it on Trinity with a lightsaber and wanted to show how Jedi were vulnerable, and this would supposedly be shocking. Almost no one reads it that way, you idiot. It reads as "They hyped CAM being in this series and it was all a lie." IOW, it just seems lame and doesn't mean anything whatsoever except Disney using cynical marketing tactics.
• Having identical twins raised separately for decades typically precludes them from having exactly the same complex hair style and coloring years later. Even Deceptions (1987) with Stephanie Powers got this part right.
• Yeah, more boring "Star Wars" style where no scene or episode is set up to generate actual emotional tension but just cuts from one scene to the next.
• More dumb one-dimensional Jedi fluff speech and attitudes, except for Sol -- the Qui-Gon of his time but with more gentle emotion.
• Amandla Stenberg (the lead) at least is likeable and charismatic on screen.
• Dafne Keen actually has zing. you go girl!
• Yord reminds me of Eleanor Shellstrop's fake fireman demon boyfriend Chris Baker in The Good Place S2 -- one-dimensional, rockin' hard abs, and immediately goes from 0-90mph for no reason. Dude, just put the lightsaber away, you're embarrassing yourself. I bet he'll end up being some kind of Sith nutjob.
• More silly droid and spaceship antics. Yawn.
• Fortunate Aviation Disasters -- when your malfunctioning ship doesn't drive straight into the ground at 500mph after breaking the atmosphere (nor burns up) but instead comes in at such a gentle angle that both you and the craft survive the crash relatively intact.
• More derivative/dumb youngling shit. Is this really what the culture was like for centuries? I'd go bugnuts and lightsaber a post office or something.

I don't think this series is made for adults -- it's made for 14 year olds of either gender, and their parents can endure watching it with them.

 

[Totenkindly]

Okay, I'm just going to suggest this now before I go into the series any further.

The obvious plotting is that Osha and Mae are separate people. Osha is being blamed for Mae's crimes. Mae has been raised in hate, Osha has been raised in love but also disillusionment from the Order. That's the straightforward approach. some kind of resolution will allow Osha to bring her sister back to the Light side.

If the show has more creativity, the next obvious twist is this:

Mae is either the sister's spirit verbatim or some kind of psychic residual who was created/trapped in Osha's mind when Mae died in the fire, due to the agonizing traumatic loss of losing a twin. This happens in movies -- like the American remark of "The Uninvited" or both versions of "Goodnight Mommy."
So actually Osha's body is the killer when Mae is in charge.
Osha does not know of Mae's existence.
Mae knows of Osha's existence.
A sith is effectuating this dual nature of hers and using Mae to his/her own ends.
But depending on whether the final shot is a flashback of some kind or current time, it could preclude Mae being part of Osha.

That's all I got so far.

 

[The Cat]

Being generous, I'll give The Acolyte Episode 1 a 6/10.

• If you're gonna get Carrie-Anne Moss in your crappy show where she can be cool, then
  
  Don't kill her off within 5 minutes
• Having identical twins raised separately for decades typically precludes them from having exactly the same complex hair style and coloring years later. Even Deceptions (1987) with Stephanie Powers got this part right.
• Yeah, more boring "Star Wars" style where no scene or episode is set up to generate actual emotional tension but just cuts from one scene to the next.
• More dumb one-dimensional Jedi fluff speech and attitudes, except for Sol -- the Qui-Gon of his time but with more gentle emotion.
• Amandla Stenberg (the lead) at least is likeable and charismatic on screen.
• Dafne Keen actually has zing. you go girl!
• Yord reminds me of Eleanor Shellstrop's fake fireman demon boyfriend Chris Baker in The Good Place S2 -- one-dimensional, rockin' hard abs, and immediately goes from 0-90mph for no reason. Dude, just put the lightsaber away, you're embarrassing yourself. I bet he'll end up being some kind of Sith nutjob.
• More silly droid and spaceship antics. Yawn.
• Fortunate Aviation Disasters -- when your malfunctioning ship doesn't drive straight into the ground at 500mph after breaking the atmosphere (nor burns up) but instead comes in at such a gentle angle that both you and the craft survive the crash relatively intact.
• More derivative/dumb youngling shit. Is this really what the culture was like for centuries? I'd go bugnuts and lightsaber a post office or something.

I don't think this series is made for adults -- it's made for 14 year olds of either gender, and their parents can endure watching it with them.

Gotta do everything they can to drive that wedge antilles between sires and childer. After all alienated insufferable children grow up to be very spendy Disney Adults. It's the circle, the circle of liiiiiiiife.

 

[Totenkindly]

Acolyte Episode 2 -- maybe a 5/10. Plot-wise it moves more, but it loses a bit on how straight forward it all is.

• Scratch my cool idea, nope, it's just what it looks like -- twins who have exactly the same unique hair style despite not seeing each other for 16 years.
• My Good Place line must have been psychic, because Manny Jacinto (who played Jason Mendoza on The Good Place) is in the episode. Lol.
• The H2H fight between Mae and Sol is interesting. But most of the action is eh.
• The dialogue is passable at best, at times it is clumsy.
• There's a mystery of what happened 16 years ago unfolding, but does it matter?
• About the coolest 'moment' is when Mae escapes the two Jedi. Like, that felt kinda cool. And then the actual escape after is all kind of lame.
• Wookies who use the Force look really dumb. Like, I can't tell whether this show is supposed to be making fun of SW conventions or just lamely playing into them.
• Is there a compelling reason to tell this story? We haven't found it yet.

 

[The Cat]

Acolyte Episode 2 -- maybe a 5/10. Plot-wise it moves more, but it loses a bit on how straight forward it all is.

• Scratch my cool idea, nope, it's just what it looks like -- twins who have exactly the same unique hair style despite not seeing each other for 16 years.
• My Good Place line must have been psychic, because Manny Jacinto (who played Jason Mendoza on The Good Place) is in the episode. Lol.
• The H2H fight between Mae and Sol is interesting. But most of the action is eh.
• The dialogue is passable at best, at times it is clumsy.
• There's a mystery of what happened 16 years ago unfolding, but does it matter?
• About the coolest 'moment' is when Mae escapes the two Jedi. Like, that felt kinda cool. And then the actual escape after is all kind of lame.
• Wookies who use the Force look really dumb. Like, I can't tell whether this show is supposed to be making fun of SW conventions or just lamely playing into them.
• Is there a compelling reason to tell this story? We haven't found it yet.

It worked better in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game d20 and Saga Editions.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

• My Good Place line must have been psychic, because Manny Jacinto (who played Jason Mendoza on The Good Place) is in the episode. Lol.

This has nothing to do with Star Wars, but my favorite Jason line on The Good Place centered around his misunderstanding of the word claustrophobic. I wanted to find a video, but no such luck.

 

[Totenkindly]

I forgot the lead for The Acolyte played sweet Rue from "The Hunger Games."

This has nothing to do with Star Wars, but my favorite Jason line on The Good Place centered around his misunderstanding of the word claustrophobic. I wanted to find a video, but no such luck.

omg. I totally forgot about that too.

Anyway, it does making him here kind of hard to watch, because occasionally he says a line that reminds me of Jason and I want to laugh.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I watched the rest of the first episode and I liked it much more than I expected. In fact, I found myself caring about Master Sol and Osha, and thought they were great characters. I don't care about the other characters, especially the Jedi with the yellow lightsaber yet and the dumb haircut (Yord?).

It did slow down a bit when Osha reached that snowy planet. I liked the final scene even if it was a little cheesy.

I liked the scenes on the Trade Federation ship; it felt very "spacey" to me which Star Wars doesn't always nail.

I'm guessing this all ends in some confrontation between Mae and Osha.

Aside: I think if I were a Youngling I perhaps would have been the one seeing fire in my vision, which might have gone differently with a different Master present.

 

[Totenkindly]

I watched the rest of the first episode and I liked it much more than I expected. In fact, I found myself caring about Master Sol and Osha, and thought they were great characters. I don't care about the other characters, especially the Jedi with the yellow lightsaber yet and the dumb haircut (Yord?).

Yeah, Yord is kinda "gung-ho" Mr. Young Intense Jedi about everything.

He gets to be slightly less of a cliche in E2 -- like, he's actually useful, albeit annoying.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

The Acolyte, Episode II

I like this show better than I thought I would. I think, that, unlike Obi-Wan, I'll be able to finish it. And unlike Boba Fett, it's not dealing with existing characters to ruin. I think I feel better about it than I did about Ahsoka at this point in the series. Ahsoka was so heavily referential towards other things, even if I'd seen or read most of those things. This series seems to care more about telling a story more than offering up various cameos, which helps a great deal. For instance, we're not seeing Yoda, thankfully.

(The Dark Jedi in Ahsoka were cool, though.)

Apparently Sith have the ability to use Force miming.

I don't really like the idea of "absolution"; it seems a bit contrived to me.

Sol should have given Qimir a free Jacksonville Jaguars shirt with the name of whoever the most famous QB is. That would have worked.

How incompetent is Mae with those knives? She couldn't even hit Qimir.

I'll tell you one thing: I actually love the the Wookiee Jedi. I suppose I am required to disclose that I was a Wookiee Jedi once for Halloween, so it could just be that it made me happy to finally see one. Although my character had a red lightsaber, so perhaps he was no Jedi. I just used a werewolf mask and some brown cloth gloves (shaggy maybe? I can't remember). I think I tried to give more hair to the werewolf mask by using spirit gum, which probably looked stupid.

Lucas is on record saying "Wookies can't be Jedi" which makes no sense. I'm glad they ignored that. (I think the explanation had something to do with rage, but they let Anakin Skywalker be a Jedi, so....)

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

There's a really dumb thing about the prequels that gets overlooked because it's fairly subtle.

Everyone has rightly criticized Padme's reaction to Anakin slaughtering the Tusken Raiders.

But what people don't realize is that Yoda has the same reaction.

It turns out Yoda knows about this, too, and does absolutely nothing. There is a scene where Yoda meditates, and we hear audio of a lightsaber and screams, and then some (pasted in from Episode I) dialogue of Qui-Gon Jinn saying, "Anakin, no!" Meaning, Yoda can sense what Anakin has done, and he does nothing more than furrow his burrow, if that. The fact that he knows about it never comes up beyond perhaps shots of Yoda frowning but not actually doing anything.

I think this indicates that the whole scene with him slaughtering the Tusken Raiders after his mother died was a mistake that shouldn't be part of the narrative. The fact that this happens before he officially "turns" causes a whole host of problems George wasn't able to write his way out of. It makes a giant mess of his whole narrative arc. Why is him turning to the Dark Side so significant if he had already committed mass murder? I have some theories about why this scene was included while having all the other characters ignore it, but they would devolve into pedantic pompous academic discourse.

 

[Totenkindly]

I just send to chalk it up as bad story writing. Kinda like all the chatter about e3 of The Acolyte and whether it undermines established knowledge of the Force.

Like, there is no method. No use in trying to justify or attack the writing as if there was a point being made. Sometimes it's just not good or purposeful, it's just messy or inept.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Episode 3

I hate to say it, but this show is growing on me. I think it is one of the better of the D+ shows. Even with much less Carrie-Anne Moss than advertised. I suppose this is the only other episode she appears in.

My main reason I like it is that I care about the characters and the story. I find myself invested in them and the story instead of just cameos and production design. (although, I do have something to say about this episode visually). There are dumb things every episode, but I find there's also plenty of things I like. For instance, there's the dynamic of the one sister being drawn to the dark and the Nightsisters, and the other being drawn to the lightside and the Jedi, and I thought the tensions and struggles between them were compelling. I thought it was cool that Osha was an outcast who never felt she fit into that community, precisely because she was drawn to the light. Meanwhile, Mae, the dark child, is the "good" obedient one. It seemed like an interesting comment on our surroundings and how we relate to them.

I'm not sure what to make of the Nightsisters; at times they seem ok, but at other times they, for a group of witches, they ironically remind me of a fundamentalist Christian community. With regards to the twins, I think some kind of weird Force rituals were implied, but maybe one of them mated with a man before killing him, and that's what really happened? It's odd that a Zabrak gave birth to human twins through the power of the Force.

Anyway, Mae is basically a school shooter, isn't she? Toxic dark side clinginess in action, I guess. This is probably what the Jedi meant when they warned against attachments.

I didn't notice anything that broke the Force, just that the Nightsisters had a different interpretation of it, which they should, being a different sect of Force users. The Force is just a label one group of people uses to describe this phenomenon; to the Nightsisters, it's the Thread.

I also thought this episode was absolutely stunning visually. I usually think the visual/PD of these things is pretty good and marvel at them, but the difference between this and some of the other Disney shows is that there's nothing left besides this; it's like being at a theme park rather than watching a TV show. This, though, was jaw dropping. If I had my way, what I would do is take an edible and travel into the screen, and wander around on this planet; it was awe-inspiring.

 

[Totenkindly]

Haha, just kidding.as Episode 3 was easily better than the first two episodes, although I didn't like many of the scenes involving the Jedi -- aside from Sol coming to save Osha and then showing his attachment to her at the end.

The dialogue is still written pretty high-level rather than feeling substantial (people don't normally talk in high concepts, they allude to concepts by grounded speech unless they are teaching a philosophy class), but I appreciate the scenes with the witches. I don't know why viewers get hung up on different ways of viewing the Force. The Witches tend to think of it is as threads, and they are focused on pulling or releasing threads tying things together; that is a valid concept. Who knows what is the reality of it? These are all just ways of describing the invisible elephant, they are just different frameworks.

I really really liked the scene when Osha and her mother talk, and her mother is like the perfect parent despite everyone else being critical -- you know she loves Osha because she listens to her, she recognizes authenticity, and she is willing to sacrifice what she wants if it means that her daughter will find the path that she needs to be on. Damn. That was maybe the best scene in the episode.

I felt that showing Sol hiding behind a tree watching the girls to be laughable (to the degree of "OMG he's stalking those little girls!") but it was so heavy-handed and over-dramatic. And then when the four Jedi just crash the ritual and have the dumbest lines on earth. I really am starting to hate Jedi overall. Sorry, I don't like the Wookie. It feels like they just wanted to throw in a Wookie Jedi to seem cool, but everything about the Jedi and their arrogance is irritating -- and then insisting no one else can train children, but they are allowed to train thousands of children. Like, fuck off, you guys ever hear of the Prime Directive? If this is actually going somewhere critical of the Jedi, then that would be appreciated; but I have the feeling that somehow this massacre of the coven is going to be someone's fault who is not a Jedi, so the Jedi just "happened to be innocent people who were nearby" and they'll blame it on Coven infighting. Because no one will ever really criticize the Jedi order constructively, but venerate them instead.

I also liked that the two sisters were at loggerheads. Twins are such an odd thing, in terms of their relationship, torn between being so similar but also wanting some differentiation and personal identity. It seems like a legitimate fight.

I dunno, I always feel like the action in these things is pretty flat. Nothing really that interesting here for me. It was relational moments that were most interesting. I didn't really notice any special effects that stood out to me.

 

[Totenkindly]

...there's the dynamic of the one sister being drawn to the dark and the Nightsisters, and the other being drawn to the lightside and the Jedi, and I thought the tensions and struggles between them were compelling. I thought it was cool that Osha was an outcast who never felt she fit into that community, precisely because she was drawn to the light. Meanwhile, Mae, the dark child, is the "good" obedient one. It seemed like an interesting comment on our surroundings and how we relate to them.

Yeah an interesting contrast.

I'm not sure what to make of the Nightsisters; at times they seem ok, but at other times they, for a group of witches, they ironically remind me of a fundamentalist Christian community. With regards to the twins, I think some kind of weird Force rituals were implied, but maybe one of them mated with a man before killing him, and that's what really happened? It's odd that a Zabrak gave birth to human twins through the power of the Force.

I feel the same about both the Jedi and the Nightsisters. They are all irritating. At least with the Nightsisters, they are the disadvantaged group so I give them more leeway. The universe IS out to get them, and they were just minding their own business doing their thing when the stupid Jedi show up randomly to spy on them. I guess it depends on how you view society. Were the Nightsisters innocent religious folk just doing their own thing, or were they like the David Koresh folks or cultists abusing their children / grooming their daughters for abuse? I did not see any child abuse. In fact, I saw one mother who was a wonderful example of good mothering.

Meanwhile the Jedi seem to be culling children from zillions of worlds to indoctrinate in their order and precluding others the ability to teach the force.

It's not really clear how the twins were created. I don't even much care. Virgin births? Whatever. It's overused in Star Wars.

Anyway, Mae is basically a school shooter, isn't she? Toxic dark side clinginess in action, I guess. This is probably what the Jedi meant when they warned against attachments.

Jedi aren't attached when they should be attached. At least I see Sol as being presented as the "best" of them, and he definitely has an attachment to Osha. The others are flakes. I really really dislike most Jedi. I hate also that this is all presented unironically, as if the Jedi are great; most of them have just been terrible with their heads up their asses. I don't get how they are judged critically by some of the fan base willing to comment on it, but the writers all seem to venerate them for this kind of philosophy and behavior.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Yeah an interesting contrast.


I feel the same about both the Jedi and the Nightsisters. They are all irritating. At least with the Nightsisters, they are the disadvantaged group so I give them more leeway. The universe IS out to get them, and they were just minding their own business doing their thing when the stupid Jedi show up randomly to spy on them. I guess it depends on how you view society. Were the Nightsisters innocent religious folk just doing their own thing, or were they like the David Koresh folks or cultists abusing their children / grooming their daughters for abuse? I did not see any child abuse. In fact, I saw one mother who was a wonderful example of good mothering.

Meanwhile the Jedi seem to be culling children from zillions of worlds to indoctrinate in their order and precluding others the ability to teach the force.

It read to me as though the Nightsisters thought the Jedi would force the twins to go, although that actually wasn't the case. Mae is worried about Osha "leaving" which means that she doesn't anticipate going with the Jedi. That could be inaccurate.

I assumed Mae did the massacre because that's what Osha seems to believe and Mae doesn't deny it, but I could be wrong and it's someone else.

Jedi training should probably start when older (maybe about college age) and then these issues wouldn't crop up so much, but I guess we're stuck with it as a concept because of the prequels. I suppose that idea is supported by the OT as well (Luke is 'too old').

It's not really clear how the twins were created. I don't even much care. Virgin births? Whatever. It's overused in Star Wars.


Jedi aren't attached when they should be attached. At least I see Sol as being presented as the "best" of them, and he definitely has an attachment to Osha. The others are flakes. I really really dislike most Jedi. I hate also that this is all presented unironically, as if the Jedi are great; most of them have just been terrible with their heads up their asses. I don't get how they are judged critically by some of the fan base willing to comment on it, but the writers all seem to venerate them for this kind of philosophy and behavior.

What I meant by attached with Mae is that it's that it's a possessive kind of love that isn't particularly interested in what the other person wants; it's a feeling about another person but not for another person. But perhaps what Mae does with it isn't as bad as I thought. We have the word of one child who wasn't there, and that's it.