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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.
We can try to assume it was Mae, but I have trouble believing a young girl barely a witch could have killed all of the coven who was used to using the Force "as a group" rather than as "one person" and we clearly saw the Coven was stronger than any specific individual. They should have easily restrained Mae. The fire didn't seem to have killed them. They were lying dead scattered all around the courtyard.
And in Episode #1, didn't Mae accuse the Jedi of killing her coven? She wanted revenge for what they did. I don't remember the specific words at this point. One could think she was just made that they "took her sister," but somehow all those adult coven members died.
This is the kind of plotting that Disney SW is well-known for (well, even pre-Disney) and why these stories tend to be frustrating. In the past I assumed there was a method here to properly explain it, but based on past shows, I doubt that will happen.
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').
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.
Mae's love is possessive -- but also remember that twins are like "two parts of the same soul, split into two." She's only as possessive as being possessive over part of herself. Although I think we both agree that actually Osha is a separate person, not half of Mae. But this is one of the struggles twins might face, how to differentiate without denying their twin.
We won't really know, because all of the Nightsisters aside from Osha died.
We can try to assume it was Mae, but I have trouble believing a young girl barely a witch could have killed all of the coven who was used to using the Force "as a group" rather than as "one person" and we clearly saw the Coven was stronger than any specific individual. They should have easily restrained Mae. The fire didn't seem to have killed them. They were lying dead scattered all around the courtyard.
And in Episode #1, didn't Mae accuse the Jedi of killing her coven? She wanted revenge for what they did. I don't remember the specific words at this point. One could think she was just made that they "took her sister," but somehow all those adult coven members died.
This is the kind of plotting that Disney SW is well-known for (well, even pre-Disney) and why these stories tend to be frustrating. In the past I assumed there was a method here to properly explain it, but based on past shows, I doubt that will happen.
Mae's love is possessive -- but also remember that twins are like "two parts of the same soul, split into two." She's only as possessive as being possessive over part of herself. Although I think we both agree that actually Osha is a separate person, not half of Mae. But this is one of the struggles twins might face, how to differentiate without denying their twin.
I think what will probably happen is that it will be revealed that the Sith or whatever he was that we see with Mae on the coast of that one planet did it, which is unfortunate because it will probably lead to the plot being wrapped up in an easy and boring fashion. I'm disappointed by that possibility because it makes the conflict between the two less interesting.
No matter how critical someone wants to be about The Acolyte, I do think we can all agree it was reviewed-bombed. I find that really annoying, because it is taking the place of legitimate criticism -- and now it just becomes incessant arguments between the review-bombers who hate anything by Disney regardless vs the sycophants who are reacting against the review-bombers by claiming the show is better than it is. Meanwhile, the truth is somewhere in between, and it never gets discussed in a valuable way because of the polarization.
No matter how critical wants to be about The Acolyte, I do think we can all agree it was reviewed-bombed. I find that really annoying, because it is taking the place of legitimate criticism -- and now it just becomes incessant arguments between the review-bombers who hate anything by Disney regardless vs the sycophants who are reacting against the review-bombers by claiming the show is better than it is. Meanwhile, the truth is somewhere in between, and it never gets discussed in a valuable way because of the polarization.
There's definitely some weird polarization. At the end of the day, it should be enough that its fun and people enjoy it. And not everyone is gonna enjoy everything, that used to be ok in reviews. I always thought that was why there were so many out there, I personally enjoy y'alls reviews on things more than most of what's "professionally" availible.
What bothers me is with all the glut on the market you would think that would lead to enough room for more inclusion, forging new creative directions AND give things that feed nostalgia and keep feeding the roots of where everything came from. Literally everything and anything all of the time! IT should be great for everybody. There should be enough for everybody...alas.
There's definitely some weird polarization. At the end of the day, it should be enough that its fun and people enjoy it. And not everyone is gonna enjoy everything, that used to be ok in reviews. I always thought that was why there were so many out there, I personally enjoy y'alls reviews on things more than most of what's "professionally" availible.
What bothers me is with all the glut on the market you would think that would lead to enough room for more inclusion, forging new creative directions AND give things that feed nostalgia and keep feeding the roots of where everything came from. Literally everything and anything all of the time! IT should be great for everybody. There should be enough for everybody...alas.
I think the problem is too much banking on nostalgia and cameos from that. They often seem to think that's enough, rather than telling a good story.
Because of the place in the timeline, there aren't really that many cameos and the ones that are there ( the Trade Federation) fit. There's no dumb stuff like "Hey, here's Luke Skywalker's X-wing. You want to see that again, don't you?" ( No, I don't. It served its purpose.)
They dont seem like they're banking on nostalgia as much as they're using it as a bait and switch. It feels like marketing to me, not nostalgia. I used to invest in Star Wars, now I check out Star Wars...from a safe distance. Like a train wreck, The Sand People, or the majestic Kyraat Dragon, the entire planet of Degobah, and anywhere near Kylo Rin when his sports team loses. MAintaining a safe distance is clutch.
There's definitely some weird polarization. At the end of the day, it should be enough that its fun and people enjoy it. And not everyone is gonna enjoy everything, that used to be ok in reviews. I always thought that was why there were so many out there, I personally enjoy y'alls reviews on things more than most of what's "professionally" availible.
Yeah, I have said it before that I have realized I am probably not the target audience for most Star Wars products. I resonated far more with their video games and a few one-off films, and apparently that is the product aimed at me. Frankly I feel most of their stuff is more aimed at 12-14 year olds + families, and hardcore fans who love anything SW.
I'm disappointed because there is some cool ideas in that setting, but it is never going to be written on a very adult/dramatic level that could stand dramatically with actually good dramas. It will mostly be used to sell product and toys and lunch pails and play toys and whatever else.
I think this is actually the problem with most fantasy or scifi (or even horror) genre films and shows -- they obsess about their fantasy/scifi/horror elements rather than TELLING A HUMAN STORY using those elements.
Like, The Boys is doing well because it's actually a socio/political show about our culture and over-commercialization, that uses superheroes as its flavor. It's about the corruption of capitalism.
What else is good right now? I assure you, it's because it is a show about something substantial that is reskinned by the genre, rather than a genre show focused on its own genre trappings.
What bothers me is with all the glut on the market you would think that would lead to enough room for more inclusion, forging new creative directions AND give things that feed nostalgia and keep feeding the roots of where everything came from. Literally everything and anything all of the time! IT should be great for everybody. There should be enough for everybody...alas.
There should be. There is not. It's because like above, it's all being used to sell product to the largest demographics they can get, and they're scared to do anything new and/or take something in an unexpected direction because that fan base flips out. So it's all self-referential and dumbed down. Self-referential doesn't have to be bad, but they're still playing the "I have a bad feeling about this" joke for what little laughs remain.
Yeah, I have said it before that I have realized I am probably not the target audience for most Star Wars products. I resonated far more with their video games and a few one-off films, and apparently that is the product aimed at me. Frankly I feel most of their stuff is more aimed at 12-14 year olds + families, and hardcore fans who love anything SW.
I'm disappointed because there is some cool ideas in that setting, but it is never going to be written on a very adult/dramatic level that could stand dramatically with actually good dramas. It will mostly be used to sell product and toys and lunch pails and play toys and whatever else.
There should be. There is not. It's because like above, it's all being used to sell product to the largest demographics they can get, and they're scared to do anything new and/or take something in an unexpected direction because that fan base flips out. So it's all self-referential and dumbed down. Self-referential doesn't have to be bad, but they're still playing the "I have a bad feeling about this" joke for what little laughs remain.
Same. Han Solo telling Chewbacca to keep his distance but try to not look like you're keeping your distant...I don't know fly casual, is good advice for engaging with Star Wars for the most part in general.
I think Star Wars fandom online has always been like that. I joined a community around 99 or 00 and it was divided between "bashers" and "gushers", deriving from the reaction to the Phantom Menace. The bashers acted as though a childhood trauma had been retroactively inflicted upon them, and the gushers believed George Lucas was a creative genius who could do no wrong.
It's something intrinsic to the fandom. I don't know why that is; maybe it's because Star Wars lives so much in people's imaginations (it's an entire galaxy of possibilities, and what did people do in the decades before TPM came out), and people get upset when they see something that steps upon their own imaginings.
I think we're due for a "Next Best Reich" film led by a mysterious dark force user, and they'll develop a new machine for destroying planets. Oh the horror!
Star Wars: A New Beginning is the official sequel to the Skywalker saga. The plot is expected to be about Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. The film will be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who also directed episodes 4 and 5 of ‘Ms. Marvel’. Daisy Ridley...
Star Wars: A New Beginning is the official sequel to the Skywalker saga. The plot is expected to be about Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. The film will be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who also directed episodes 4 and 5 of ‘Ms. Marvel’. Daisy Ridley...
Star Wars: A New Beginning is the official sequel to the Skywalker saga. The plot is expected to be about Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. The film will be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who also directed episodes 4 and 5 of ‘Ms. Marvel’. Daisy Ridley...
Sorry to be negative, but i really hated E4 of The Acolyte. I don't even feel like listing all the ways i hated this episode.
The main one, though, is (1) having characters completely change their minds / course of action seemingly just to follow the plot they already had planned and (2) dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Can't ANYONE on their writing staff actually write even HALF-realistic dialogue? There are so many shows on TV, and even the average ones have better dialogue than than this series. It's like they hired a Star Wars fan club to write and showrun this, without them having actual credentials or something. I know the runner has only written sparingly (she's more of a director?) and the best thing she worked on was Russian Doll. But I don't even want to WATCH that show after watching four episodes of The Acolyte. Like, at best, the dialogue is infodump material, and at worst it's a bunch of people saying clumsy things to each other in ways that aren't even directed well.
(The guy who plays Sol, for example, was great in Squid Game; he must have been well-directed; I know he learned English for this show, but his delivery is so flat and he doesn't seem to have been given any emotional direction for his lines, aside from "DON'T SHOW ANY EMOTION BECAUSE YOU ARE A JEDI." And he's actually one of the BEST on this show, sigh. Carrie Anne Moss actually lucked out, having her participation cut way short after the opening to E1; run, Carrie, run!)
There are other issues. Like, these people don't really think about how to position their characters in the scene. At least twice Osha has been caught WAY out in front of everyone -- she's the only non-Jedi -- while the rest of them stand in the back without trying to reposition anyone. In the first encounter, after about a 10-15 second staredown, the monster that OSHA pissed off flies right by her to convenient attack Sol 20 feet beyond her who has his lightsaber -- no, it should have swooped in on Osha and gutted her / carried her away. This happens again when the Sith lands 20 feet away from Osha and she just stands there while all the Jedi in the background pull their sabers and wait a d the Sith slowly walks forward. This is so asinine. At LEAST get someone who has played TTRPGs on your stage crew, they can tell you what needs to happen.
With Disney on MCU Phase 4+ and everything since TROS for Star Wars, I feel like I'm watching people with little skill or experience with show-making trying to make shows. WTF, Disney? You have multiple BILLION-DOLLAR franchises here and where on earth are you hiring these people from? What are their credentials? Why aren't you paying top-dollar for experienced people to create these stories and worlds for you? I think Tony Gilroy has been the only really experienced guy who has made them a show (and then maybe Faloni) and it really really shows.
The Acolyte E5 might be the best OVERALL episode so far -- and I think it could primarily be because the weakest parts of the show (dialogue and story development) weren't really very big in this episode, it is mostly just fighting.
The few moments were they did talk often devolved back into the same old dialogue problems:
Empty dialogue that already says things the audience knows
Dialogue where people sound like they are avoiding saying something the writers don't want us to know -- like Mae arguing with Osha and SOUNDING like she wanted to say Sol is the one who killed /instigated the deaths of everyone in their coven, but just never quite says it. ["You can't trust Sol!" // "Of course I can, to the degree I'm gonna arrest you, Sister!" Why wouldn't Mae just provide specific reason why Sol could not be trusted?? If she can't, the writing is weak. If she can, she would have blurted it out so again the writing is weak.]
Dialogue that is just enigmatic for no purpose, like what Jason Mendoza says as the last line of the episode. Like WTF was that supposed to mean?
THe "i just forgot what I said a minute ago" bit -- Osha blatantly watches Yord get hurt (leg) so he has trouble standing, then tells him as they are fleeing that they have to go back, then sees him limp again and suddenly says, "Oh, you're hurt!" Doh, yes, Osha. YOu watched him get sliced on the leg.
There's also some flip-flop decisions/motivations:
Mae is going to turn herself in. Then Jecki attacks her without a weapon. Mae could have just complied but now she's fighting her? Weirdly, Mae had been told to kill a Jedi without a weapon, and she keeps pulling a knife on Jecki who is mainly fighting unarmed -- so Jecki is a better sith acolyte than Mae, lol. Anyway, like, which is it Mae? Are you quitting the Sith or don't you know just how to quit them? Do you want to continue to serve them or are you going to turn yourself in? Then she's right back to where she was before after all the Jedi are dead, deciding now she's going to be Osha and kill more Jedi. Okay, whatever.
But anyway, this is a big fight sequence. In general, this episode really delivers and could contain the best choreographed fight sequences in any SW D+ TV show. Some of it is a little dumb, like when one Sith with a lightsaber can somehow fight off 8 jedi with lightsabers -- if they properly coordinate, that would be a no-winner for the sith. But the best parts are the one on ones -- Jecki vs Mae, Sith vs Sol, Sith vs Jecki and Yord, Sith vs Jecki and Sol, etc. Some really nice moves here. and I also felt worried during the fights for some of the combatants.
And I think they did a great job of highlighting just how good Dafne Keen is in these types of roles. Ever since she did X-23 in Logan, she was decent -- and she does some really cool stuff in this episode, with her 1to1 with Mae and also when she is fighting the Sith. At one point she switches to two sabers, which is always problematic in how they choreograph it -- basically, historically, it's hard to fight equally with two equal weapons, usually you have a rapier-and-dagger (one attack, one block) in your approach -- but here they managed to have her doing some windmills and repositioning in a way that the two-weapons is being used for both offense and defense believably. I was kind of impressed at how NOT-lame it looked much of the time. [Looking at Keen's filmography -- I could have sworn she was in more, she always gets high marks. but she's only 19.]
Of course, the Sith turns out to be exactly who we thought it was the whole time
But that's fine, and they were a little better with their line delivery than Keanu Reeves, so that's a plus!
I just fail to understand how Jedi can't figure out the switcheroo, it's so freaking obvious and should have also been on their roadmap... But whatever.
I'm surprised there are eight episodes. I would have expected the next to be with the finale, and I don't think they have material or cast to do three more episodes. (This episode had a big winnow out.) But I guess we'll see!
I'll get around to watching episode 4 and 5 of the Acolyte soon, but I just wanted to express my opinion that I don't like the Rule of Two (the idea that there can only be two Sith as a time). I think it's limiting and not really relevant to how evil seems to operate. The idea is that Sith can barely work together because they'll always try to overthrow or dispose of the other one for more power, so the most we can have is 2 (even though everyone always has secret apprentices on the side, which makes the concept even dumber because nobody can stick to it).
Think of totalitarian regimes, though. They never could have arisen without people working together. Perhaps there might be jockeying for power and fighting to sit at the Big Dog's table, but to some extent there is working together to achieve an individual goal. The individual desire for power can be tempered by a shared hate or fear. I think having that in these stories would be more interesting, intimidating, and realistic.
If I write the rest of my fanfiction, I'd work that in, because my main goal with that is to write the kind of movie I would have preferred to watch.
I'll get around to watching episode 4 and 5 of the Acolyte soon, but I just wanted to express my opinion that I don't like the Rule of Two (the idea that there can only be two Sith as a time). I think it's limiting and not really relevant to how evil seems to operate. The idea is that Sith can barely work together because they'll always try to overthrow or dispose of the other one for more power, so the most we can have is 2 (even though everyone always has secret apprentices on the side, which makes the concept even dumber because nobody can stick to it).
Think of totalitarian regimes, though. They never could have arisen without people working together. Perhaps there might be jockeying for power and fighting to sit at the Big Dog's table, but to some extent there is working together to achieve an individual goal. The individual desire for power can be tempered by a shared hate or fear. I think having that in these stories would be more interesting, intimidating, and realistic.
If I write the rest of my fanfiction, I'd work that in, because my main goal with that is to write the kind of movie I would have preferred to watch.
Darth Bane had a shitty philosophy. I maintain he just wasnt sith enough to cop to the fact that he was just a two bit serial killer with delusions of grandeur.
