The Acolyte

To keep the review simple, the characters' behavior and the story they try to tell in these first two episodes feel bland. It feels as if it would be a sketch done by a pre-teen redrawn together by great visual artists.

The show does look and feel great. The environment is well put together as is the CGI.

Events seem to happen somewhat randomly only to forcefully push the story forward or to trigger some sort of emotion without any particular setup or explanation.

The characters feel like they would be part of the Jedi world, but they behave so poorly as trained Jedi masters.

On the other hand, it could be a story about how the Jedi order has been slacking and degrading due to them having taken over the galaxy and being in control for so long at the point in time where the show takes place.

But I doubt they thought so far considering what we've seen in these first two episodes. Let's see the rest of the show.

The acolyte isn't the worst thing thats happened to Star Wars by any means. However, it resembles something that was fan made and written over a weekend. The acting and production is college level at most. You'd think with a budget that was almost double of Ahsoka's they would have been able to come up with something better. I have no clue where the money went to be frank, because it didn't go towards hiring any talent as far as acting goes. Maybe they went with lower level actors/actresses to go all out on the production, but if that was the case they failed. The money 100% didn't go to the writers, they had to of bought this story off Fiver.

Take one of the most exciting and expansive fictional universes with iconic characters and storylines... then just tear it up without respect to its original mythos, lore, etc. That's the path of destruction that Disney has been on, save Andor, Rogue One, and to an extent, the Mandalorian.

It's sad because I'm sure lots of talented professionals worked on this. Tragically, the writing and acting is truly terrible. Special effects are great, but that's not enough to compensate for all its other flaws.

As a fan, I want to give it zero stars. Out of respect for the special effects artists, I'm giving 3.

I love Star Wars. I grew up on the original trilogy. I can remember being so excited when Return of the Jedi previews were aired on TV and even more excited when my family and I were in the theater and the scrawl started. I like the prequel trilogy well enough. And while I did like the Force Awakens, I admit the following movies had their faults. Some pretty big ones, actually. But the acting was always pretty top notch (Anakin Skywalker being the exception).

All that being said, the acting in this series is a failure. I want to acknowledge that Lee Jung-jae was fantastic. He put this show on his shoulders and carried it all the way through this season. The exact opposite can be said for the "star" of the series, Amandla Stenberg. She is quite possibly the worst actress I have ever seen on any screen, big or small. She is not believable in any scene she appears in, regardless of the mood or tone of that scene. She has single-handedly ruined this series for me. And the fact that she has to pull double duty makes it even worse. While the characters she portrays are twins they clearly have different personalities, their lives having taken very different courses. But unfortunately for the viewer, you must interpret that separately from what you see, as Amandla plays both characters the exact same way... poorly. She is near constantly wide eyed for no discernible reason and it looks as though you can see her mind telling her that she is supposed to be expressive, but the expression looks more like constipation rather than anything going within the script.

I was excited and looking forward to a Star Wars series with an African American female leading character to drive the show. I could not have been more disappointed in the result. I'm sure they don't want to recast for a potential second season, but they should strongly consider it.

While the story itself seemed interesting enough and if you're willing to overlook some pretty glaring moments of "why would they do that?" then it's not a horrible entry into the Star Wars canon. But you really have to dig deep to look beyond the atrocious acting out in by Stenberg and a couple other cast members.

I'm just baffled who this series is aimed at? I get that reinvention is a good thing, but the conflicting and contradictory nature of so much of this show seems almost designed to annoy people that like Star Wars. Is the play here that they are trying to alienate the current fan base and instead find a large new audience? I really don't think this can possibly work. It's really starting to feel like just making something people that like Star Wars would actually watch is something they are actively trying to avoid.

It's kind of depressing on so many levels. It's now starting to feel like the brand that Star Wars was is just not what they want Star Wars to be. When I think about the endless stories they could make instead, that would not exclude new audiences and still excite old audiences, it's just bizarre how we end up here. With such a middling show that seems to be made for an imaginary audience.

I guess the good thing about trying to alienate an audience is that eventually all of us feeling disappointment and then writing about, it will just stop caring anymore so there will be less people complaining. Maybe that's what Disney want?