I won’t pretend it was a good series, but the incel review bombing was an unnecessary distraction. It had potential and I would have liked to see them correct course and continue the story for another season.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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I am not sure there was any real "incel review bombing". Looks more like an excuse of the show's creators. The show was shockingly bad, even from a purely technical standpoint. It felt like a not very good fanfiction. The Kenobi show was the same.
Anecdotally, a right-wing chud I’m unfortunately acquainted with was pestering me for weeks about it — and he’s not even a Star Wars fan.
That entire article is based off coincidental reasoning, and does nothing to connect the review bombing (which did occur) to anything incel or right wing.
Yes, it's absurd that the Acolyte's audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes dropped to below the Holiday special or any other piece of Star Wars media faster than any other piece dropped, but that article itself calls out the most likely reason: people believing that the third episode was retconning the canon of Anakin's "virgin birth" making him the chosen one by implying the twins were also "virgin birth" force babies.
That's kind of a massive, setting breaking retcon, if that was in fact what the show was saying (which still seemed to be the implication as of the end of the series). I can understand why that would draw more ire from fans than any other new piece of Star Wars media under Disney. No outside agitators needed.
I doubt enough people realized this for this effect. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan myself and this went completely over my head. I don't doubt that dedicated Star Wars fans picked up on it immediately, but most probably only heard of it from these. I see that a lot online. People decide to hate a piece of media even before it airs and then collect reasons for it after the fact.
But that's just my guess, anyway. I haven't watched The Acolyte farther than episode 4 or 5, but not because of anything specific. Just didn't grab me to keep watching. I thought I'll come back to it eventually, but now that I know it's canceled I probably won't.
The Kenobi show was a 7/10 and I'll fight anyone that says soft-canonizing Corran Horn wasn't worth 6/10 in and of itself.
It started off very rough, but by the end I thought it was much better than the Bad Batch, the Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka. Not everything can be Andor, but this was better than most SW Disney has put out and almost all the Marvel shows they've tried to force feed their audience.
Haters gonna hate, but while I did not enjoy every episode, on the whole I really loved this show.
Yeah, it's a bummer.
That speaks more to your lack of taste than the show's quality. The show was laughingly bad. From acting, to directing, even the special effects.
TIL that art can be objectively evaluated and rated. By this person anyway.
Of course it can. There is nothing subjective about bad directing, bad acting, and bad writing. Fools who claim everything is subjective and "every idea is a good idea" are the reason we get shit TV and movies like the Acolyte and Kenobi.
Tell us more about what you think is shit TV and Movies. You only enjoy objectively good media, so there is no downside to sharing.
I am also interested in the media that are objectively excellent
I didn't like this show, but I want a second season so that I could like it. It's obvious that the one season wasn't meant to be considered in isolation.
There's plenty of examples of shows that didn't have a great first season that, given the chance, really found their footing later on.
They had filler in an 8 episode season, they could have spent some time on a coherent first season.
I feel like the show would’ve been better if it was 6 episodes or less. The main issue I had with it was pacing. It was clearly a story you could tell in fewer episodes but they stretched it out to 8. Like one episode was literally the same as the other, just from a different character’s perspective. That can work in certain cases, but it didn’t for the show because it already had pacing issues in the first place.
I wanted it to work because of its place in the timeline, before everything else and provide more history.
Oh no...
The power of one.
Should’ve been a movie
I never even saw it. In fact i never even heard of it till right now. I stopped watching Disney Star Wars stuff after season 2 of the mandalorian. They were pumping out WAY too much content which made the quality of everything sink. After there were multiple shows running concurrently none of it seemed special anymore
Rate of content creation and quality aren't related.
Yes they are. There's simple realities of labor that mean, for example, a particularly talented set design team can't push out 40 hours of work a day.
It's a worrying sign. Disney should have more of a backbone against trolls.
