Unfireable.

Kennedy can't say, "I want you to write a Leslye Headland Star Wars story," and, "I was blown away by the first four episodes that have been completed," and then fire her without admitting that the whole thing was a turd monster and terrible idea. Since it would be her turd monster and terrible idea, that's not happening.

They also put their necks out early by blaming criticism on review bombing and racists/homophobes/misogynists/bigots in the fanbase. They can't fire her after they spent weeks saying, "It's not her ****show, it's you being an ***hole," because it's a huge insult to the audience.

We'll get stonewalling, some BS about how it performed really well based on internal data that no one has access to, and a second season to wrap things up and save face.

Well that's a shame. I'll say though, outside of Andor and earlier Mando, most Disney SW stuff has just been kind of unwatchable for me. Tried to watch, not usually great or awful, just boring. Leslye has made something I find intriguing in how bad and campy it is.

jeffk said:

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I thought one of the main positives was that this series wasn't going to be Skywalker adjacent. Did I make that up?

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I think the prevailing commentary was that you didn't have to be familiar with any other Star Wars media going in to it. Which was still kind of a lie since the only relevancy this series has at all is it's link to Palpatine and Anakin's dialogue in Episode 3.

What pisses me off the more and more I think about it, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but Disney buys out Lucasfilm then immediately says "everything that came before this, other than movies, is no longer canon". And at least based on multiple comments on Texags a lot of that stuff was cool. But then Disney immediately proceeds to make absolute turds like this the new canon.

And I'm by no means a Star Wars fan boy. But man, Disney and Kathleen Kennedy are really ****ing up one of the greatest fantasy universes created by man. Combined with Amazon ****ing up the MiddleEarth universe this is really just plain sad what commercialism is doing to our storytelling.

It isn't commercialism, but you're right.

Can anyone explain why Osha only agreed to be trained if he let Mae go?

Did I miss something cause that part made no sense to me.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Can anyone explain why Osha only agreed to be trained if he let Mae go?

Did I miss something cause that part made no sense to me.

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How else were we going to get both characters into season 2?

Cliff.Booth said:

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It isn't commercialism, but you're right.

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We know you think the biggest problem is DEI, woke, etc.

But truthfully I think that's secondary to commercialism - their need to pump out a product on a regular basis so the consumer keeps that Disney+ subscription, keeps buying those spin-off products, and they can sell ad buys throughout the year and not just when a movie comes out. Their focus is on mass production of stories rather than the quality of the story.

Slow down, take time to properly flesh a decade-long gameplan for the whole Star Wars universe and find the right people to tell it. Does DEI hiring policies/focus cloud their judgement? Sure. Obviously. But while you think its the driving reason for their problems I think its just a compounding factor. I personally wouldn't give a hoot if their stories contained intergalactic lesbian co-mothers as long as the story being told was coherent, intelligent, and compelling.

I agree with most of that, but I think an entity with the money and resources of Disney LF is capable of production at volume and quality if they prioritized and considered their audiences. It would take having someone in charge who just wanted to bring along as many of the old school fans as possible while also appealing to younger people. It's all possible, and we could have been enjoying amazing films and shows, which is why I find what we've been given pretty frustrating.

Cliff.Booth said:

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I agree with most of that, but I think an entity with the money and resources of Disney LF is capable of production at volume and quality if they prioritized and considered their audiences. It would take having someone in charge who just wanted to bring along as many of the old school fans as possible while also appealing to younger people. It's all possible, and we could have been enjoying amazing films and shows, which is why I find what we've been given pretty frustrating.

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To the point of "bringing along the old fans" I've thought about that part alot as I've watched these various Disney+ shows. I honestly think with franchises like Star Wars and Tolkien's Middle Earth, and those may be the only two franchises this applies to, the fans really do own them.

The number one goal of anyone at the helm of these franchises should be "how do we stay true to the world/mythology that the fans have loved so much all of these years." New nooks and crannies of those worlds can be explored of course. That's what fans crave!

But at no time should the idea of subverting expectations or long-held beliefs be a goal. You want to turn Star Wars on its head and create whole new expectations? Great, go ahead - just do that by creating your own new fantasy world instead of using Star Wars to indulge your personal whims.

It can be done. Just look at Firefly. That was a great show and held such promise of a rich, non-Star Wars, space fantasy.

****ing exactly. That's spot on, FL.

Just tell compelling stories in the star wars universe. It isnt that hard.

Not everything needs to tie into the OT. The universe is huge and the EU has a ton of good stories to mine.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Unfireable.

Kennedy can't say, "I want you to write a Leslye Headland Star Wars story," and, "I was blown away by the first four episodes that have been completed," and then fire her without admitting that the whole thing was a turd monster and terrible idea. Since it would be her turd monster and terrible idea, that's not happening.

They also put their necks out early by blaming criticism on review bombing and racists/homophobes/misogynists/bigots in the fanbase. They can't fire her after they spent weeks saying, "It's not her ****show, it's you being an ***hole," because it's a huge insult to the audience.

We'll get stonewalling, some BS about how it performed really well based on internal data that no one has access to, and a second season to wrap things up and save face.

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Well, that DID happen though.

So honest question:

The Jedi are all raised as infants, right?

So why does Sol have such an heavy accent? No one else seems to, even the aliens

Osha in The Acolyte vs. Anakin/Vader in Revenge of the Sith using the force choke. This was her at her angriest. She can't act. pic.twitter.com/HfSmylLdI6

— Lily* (@300mirrors) July 17, 2024

The reason this series sucks and bombed is really easily explained.

It's kind of DEI. Overall poor quality has to be a big factor as well.

But it's the same reason that Disney MCU (post End Game), and Disney SW, and other productions/properties are failing or underperforming (see Furiosa).

It's right in front of your nose, it's basic human nature. biology. science. It's not that difficult to see what Hollywood is doing so wrong and costing them so much money.

It really isn't.

I've noticed more and more that a certain group of people have been increasingly referring to anything that prominently features or is made by minorities as "DEI," and in the process correlating minorities with a lack of quality. Which is starting to get reeeaaalllly close to being code for "this thing sucks because it doesn't prominently feature/isn't prominently made by white men."

To be clear, that's NOT what I'm saying you're doing here, but also... what, exactly, do you mean? You say it's "easily" explained, but I've read your post three times now and it's not clear at all what you're saying. I of course have an idea, but why not just explain it in a way that leaves no "minorities = bad" gray area?

I just see a lot of complaints on this board about "agendas" and the like, and while I understand the complaints (and even agree with them at times), what I don't see are practical solutions being suggested by those complaining. Should these types of things not feature black female leads? Should Furiosa not have been made? Should Headlund not have been given the opportunity, even though plenty of other blockbuster novices have succeeded where she failed?

If it's not that difficult, what's the solution to whatever it is you're arguing? I'm genuinely asking.

The complaints aren't about having female or minority leads/show runners/writers/producers/etc. The complaints are about pandering and having female and minority leads/show runners/writers/producers/etc just for the sake of doing it. You only think they're approaching some arbitrary dangerous line because of your own biases and the, "Every show/movie has to have a straight white male lead or it's woke bull****," strawman you can't let go of.

The easy answer is don't hire idiots like Leslye Headland and give them $180 million to make a hot steaming pile of crap just because they're lgbt and want to write a show around DEI hires. She was given this opportunity for all the wrong reasons, and that's why we got a ****show where working in pronouns, a song routine, and making sure the cast and writers were as lgbt and minority as possible took priority over coherent writing and a halfway decent storyline. This wasn't made to be a Star Wars story, it was made to be a DEI exhibition cloaked in Star Wars to get people to watch.

Leslye Headland was given this opportunity because she made a massive hit show for Netflix, because she clearly knows her Star Wars lore, and likely because she gave a damn good pitch.

No different than how Gareth Edwards, Colin Trevorrow, Patty Jenkins, the Russo Brothers, Michael Bay, Doug Liman, the Wachowskis, Bryce Dallas Hoard, etc were all given similar opportunities, based on similar success super early in their careers, which led to their respective invites to play in the big leagues.

A point I've made countless times now.

Headlund wasn't given this opportunity "for all the wrong reasons" and "because they're lgbt." That's fever dream nonsense you're clinging to simply because she's a lesbian who happened to whiff at this particular effort.

Inarguably, she EARNED the opportunity to try, no matter how desperately you want the opposite to be true. In fact, the industry was lining up to work with her BECAUSE of her early success, BECAUSE of how beloved Russian Doll was. That's an undeniable fact.

Also, The Acolyte didn't fail because of "DEI" or "pronouns" or whatever crap some of you keep going on about. Rather, it failed because…

A) blockbuster storytelling clearly isn't Headlund's forte, just like it isn't for any number of straight white dudes who also failed when given a similar opportunity.

B) Lucasfilm's current development process is crap.

In other words, Headlund didn't fail because she's a lesbian with an agenda or whatever. She failed because her skillset doesn't gel with blockbuster storytelling (something that is sometimes impossible to know until given the opportunity), while Lucasfilm's ineptness/stodginess didn't do her any favors either.

Yes, things like Headlund casting her wife in a terribly written role she was unsuited for didn't help. But, by and large, making the show as "minority as possible" wasn't what did it in. Rather, it was ill-conceived from the jump, on a core level, for reasons that have nothing to do with "woke."

It simply wasn't an inherently "woke" story.

It was just a poorly written one.

BenTheGoodAg said:

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DrEvazanPhD said:

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So honest question:

The Jedi are all raised as infants, right?

So why does Sol have such an heavy accent? No one else seems to, even the aliens

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Not even Yoda? I've always wondered this about him.

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Syntax and order, strange they were, but heavily accented, they were not

Autism

So Palpatine killed Plagueis so he would stop telling him the story of The Acolyte.






(Stolen comment.)

Not enough of the blame for the Star Wars failures goes to the Lucasfilm Story Group and the core creative group.

For example, the witches which was one of the weakest elements of this show was blessed and created by Dave Filoni.

https://epicstream.com/article/the-acolyte-showrunner-dave-filoni-role-making-series

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lucasfilm_Story_Group

The story group has really failed Lucasfilm in guiding the new universe, either by providing bad ideas or failing to work with the creatives brought in.

I'm slowly getting on board with TCTTS. I personally loved Filoni so much for the animated world and some of the early creative decisions, and I've been a complete fan boy of his. But the deeper we get into this **** - the more the story failure has to be attached to him.