My Take on his take: He wanted to like it. He made himself "like it" I get it, this is what's there, liking things is less frustrating than hating things... I do this sometimes with certain foods.
According to the scuttlebutt around the hall of loonies obsessed with making star wars content, this fella has been rewarded by TPTB for his ability to contort himself into a good review With merch. But his eyes. His eyes are screaming for help inside his head. (Some of the scuttlebutt suggests he only likes it because his girlfriend does, to which I reply. Yeah. That's what you do in that situation.) But you know the deal with scuttlebutt. Ignore it completely or get too invested into it and youre gonna end up knocked on your butt eventually.
And even this guy has a lot of things to say about the writing trends in Disney.
I do like streamers like this over some of the more...religious passion for star wars channels.
Its so wild how much culture war politics has infiltrated entertainment, even in Star Wars. Which I get there have always been politics in Star Wars, but it seemed to be from a place to make you think rather than react. Now we're firmly entrenched in 0 to nuclear in less than 60 seconds. It makes it really hard to not believe in brainwashing through pop culture with this kinda culture war seepage.
He's 10000% right about needing to move away from the skywalkers and Empire Age. He's wrong about the relatable story though. The Acolyte is not a show about bringing things together, its about tearing things apart.
We need more Sith Stories, and to do that, they need to get fucking rid of the god damned rule of 2. They don't need to retcon it. They just need to introduce other Sith Factions who didnt buy into Darth Bane's competitive reality television inspired genocide. Though that would be a hilarious parody show. Sith Academy. Where a bunch of edgy and rebellious baddies compete to see who gets to be the next top Apprentice and just spend a season watching each class darwin award and murder each other till there's only one left to get the rose from Darth Dumb Ass, because why would you axe all but one of your resources, and no Sith Lord has followed that stupid rule in private since it was put on the books. I mean what other Force Blue Laws are there on the galactic books? lol That would be a fun adult animated series in the SW verse. But I digress.
There were kernals of things that were worth exploring. But they needed to be developed beyond story board. A lot of things happened to satisfy the plot, if this were a book over a show I would say it was told by an unreliable narrator.
Deus Ex Machina can work. Its risky as fuck, and Ive only ever seen it used to my satisfaction once, and that was in the Dark Tower series, surreal just works better in horror. I think the Acolyte could have worked as a Star Wars Horror story. Horror is the best medium to tell stories of flawed characters and corrupt systems. The aesthetics of horror by their nature make them essentially morality plays. The Acolyte wants to be a morality play, which is fine, but it should have been a sci fi horror fantasy instead of a run of the mill Star Wars project.
Ultimately I think what we have here, is a failure to communicate.
Dr Cats says everybody needs to smoke a few bowls, eat a few edibles and sit down and have a back and forth. Star Wars fans will give production a break and sign off on multiple genre star wars projects, and TPTB will start investing in more and better writing standards, and you know, at least half the time, make an actual star wars project thats just simple pew pew lasers sounds in space and colored laser swords and pithy one liners from nerf herders.
God I mean if we're going to ip cross over places everywhere, and changing up the formula, fucking just start doing cross genre projects: A Horror Star Wars, A Police Procedural Star Wars, a coming of age road trip star wars, a romantic comedy star wars. You're obviously gonna try to subvert the Star Wars genre for reasons that Im sure make a lot of sense to you, so just fucking lean into it, but call a spade a spade. Stop insulting the audience when they want the band to play the songs they bought the tickets to the concert for. Stop billing it as the classics. Just be honest with what your doing Hollywoob, nobody ever got overly pissed off from being spoiled for choice. But plenty of people get bent out of shape when theyre told, hey this refuge that you found here for all these years of lonliness and isolation and ostracization from elsewhere. Well it's not for you, its never been for *you* and you're not welcome here, get lost. You're everything thats wrong with the times in which we live. And let's be real here. Who wouldnt?