Bookshelf Battle

What a stinkfest, 3.5 readers.

Let’s get this review over with.

If you’re a social media enthusiast like me, then you know there’s a lot of hate afoot for this show. The YouTube reviewers REALLY don’t like it. And honestly, they go way overboard. They’re basically hating hard on the show for attention, though I don’t deny their hate isn’t genuine or that the show hasn’t earned it.

But honestly, sometimes the reviews are a bit much. I watch these reviews and they’re like “OMG! THE ACOLYTE IS A FLAMING HOT DUMPSTER FIRE THAT SMELLS LIKE RAW SEWAGE, HOBO TURDS AND REFRIED MOLDY DOG VOMIT! AVERT YER EYES LEST YE PUKE YER GUTS ODD FROM THE HORRIFYING SIGHT!”

And then I watch it I’m like, well, no, while this show does suck, it doesn’t smell like hobo turds or dog vomit or anything. So its almost as if by going too far overboard, the reviewers do the show a service. When you go in expecting hot poop on a shingle and get served cold snot on a shingle, you’re relieved by the upgrade.

All that said, I give the show a solid C, and for most shows I’d say, eh, if you’ve got the time, feel free to waste it on a C. But when it comes to Star Wars, this brand is so beloved by fans that it really burns our biscuits to see anything produced that isn’t a solid A.

The first problem? Star Wars was very much a product of its time. George Lucas invented special effects that audiences of the late 70s and early 80s had never seen before, so it’s hard to recreate a moviegoing experience when people of that era thought they :::checks notes::: LITERALLY THOUGHT THEY WERE WITNESSING MAGIC COME ALIVE ON SCREEN!!!

Flash forward some 40 years later, and we’ve been CGI-ed up the wazoo. We’ve seen it all and we’re so jaded little surprises us anymore. We expect good writing to go along with our CGI fest, which is a challenge for Star Wars, given that it is a story about space wizards who fight aliens and robots with laser swords and push stuff around with magic. Also difficult is that the property is primarily geared toward children and must be produced with children in mind, yet middle aged and even downright elderly fans will scream like stuck pigs if the stories don’t come with some adult sized depth.

Alright, all those challenges aside, Disney is one of the greatest entertainment companies in the world, right? They got this, right? No. Not as such.

Disney has been pissing Star Wars fans off a lot the past few years. It began with Last Jedi, where Luke was turned from hero into crusty old blue milk drinking depressive head case. It carried on in Season 3 of Mando, which took the great success of the first two seasons and pooped on them by turning the third season into a 70s variety act where any asshole in Hollywood could stop by for a cameo. No, Star Wars fans did not want to see a planet run by Lizzo and Jack Black.

There were other offenses, too numerous to mention. The force being turned into a magic “do it all” button with no rhyme or reason. There used to be rules to the force. Now if some character wants to do anything, the force just does it, and dweeby ass purists like yours truly who live and breathe this shit because we haven’t touched a woman in ages get pissed because if we’re just ignoring rules now, then why bother watching?

And don’t even get me started on the lightsaber stabbings that characters just walk away from…except sometimes they don’t. It’s a freaking sword that burns hotter than lava yet sometimes people survive getting gutted by one (I’m no medical scientist but I’m pretty sure a blade that hot would cauterize your intestines and cause you to fart fire out your asshole but that’s just my theory) but if the character needs to live, that a lightsaber stab is like a scratch that you just walk off.

Don’t even get me double started on all the chicks. I’m all for women in sci-fi but sometimes Disney has cast so many women and so few men that it’s like the only thing the Empire and Rebels can agree on is a hiring freeze on anyone with a weiner.

Don’t even get me triple started on Kenobi and…you know what? This is a Acolyte review, so let’s get to it.

The story is a Jedi semi-police procedural or Law and Order: Star Wars Unit, if you will. If, like me, you assumed that veteran sci-fi actress Carrie Ann Moss of Matrix’s Trinity fame would save this drek, you thought wrong, because her ass gets got in the first five minutes and from there on, the Jedi of the High Republic Era rush to solve the mystery of who killed her character, Master Indara.

Master Sol (Lee Jung-Jae of Squid Game fame) leads a team with Jedis Yord (Charlie Bartlett) and Jecki (Dafne Keen, who you might remember as a young Wolverine protege in 2017’s Logan except she’s all grown up now.)

They investigate and arrest ex-Jedi Osha, at first assuming she committed the crime, but we quickly discover that her long assumed dead twin sister, Mae, is in fact, very much alive. Both sisters are played by Amandla Stenberg.

Mae is on a quest to hunt more Jedi, with the assistance of the red saber wielding, smiley masked “Stranger” and ally Qimir in tow. It’s up to the Jedi to stop Mae from killing their BFFs and unravel the mystery of why Mae wants them all outta the picture.

And honestly, that write up I just presented to you makes it sound way better than it is. I thought about explaining more, but I’ll let you watch it, if you choose to do so. There’s really no wrong answer to the question of if you should. You might like to watch it just to see what all the fuss is about or to critique it or to crap all over it. Some of you might actually like it. Truthfully, there were some parts I actually did enjoy but you know what they say. Every poop has some corn.

For example, characters like Sol, Jecki, and Qimir were pretty fabulous and I would have loved to see them in a better project. All the actors did their best with what they were given, even Amandla Stenberg. IMO she didn’t deserve all the negativity the reviewers gave her. And I believe all the stars will find this to be their breakout role with more roles to come.

I do understand the online criticism. Producer Leslye Headland was pretty vocal in interviews about hiring writers who knew very little about Star Wars and it shows. To Star Wars fans, this is the equivalent of hiring a non-doctor who has never even read a medical text book before to do your spleen surgery. Add to that, Stenberg saying Star Wars fans are gay (pretty sure she was just joking around, guys) and Bartlett confusing Luke with Anakin when it comes to the destroyer of the original Death Star and you had a team that just gave an overall impression that they didn’t really care about the world they were trusted with.

Does it sound silly? Maybe. Until you hire someone to work on your house and they have no idea what a hammer is, don’t know how to work a power drill, openly admit they’ve never fixed a house before….this is your beloved house, you’d get annoyed, wouldn’t you?

So ultimately, you had a team that didn’t know a lot about Star Wars and boy did it ever show. Long established rules and canon are thrown out the window and OK, if you’re not one of those nerds who is going to run to twitter and bitch about where a certain alien has three antennae or four, I get it, but even within the show itself, there’s just a lot of silliness, goofiness, and overall absurdity when it comes to the quality of the writing. Plotholes galore.

What are the problems? Too many to list but ultimately, it descends into a “oppressive cops got it wrong” tale. There are lesbian space witches afoot. They prefer to call the force the thread, a different space culture of force users entirely. The Jedi see them as a cult and fear they are abusing Osha and Mae and they need to be taken away and put under the Jedi order’s protection for their own safety.

Sounds like a really horrible abuse of authority…until the show goes out of its way to make the lesbian space witches do all manner of horrible things such that if you were a Jedi, you might say “eff this lesbian space witches” and whip out your lightsaber and fight them to save the children to.

Of course, and not to give it away but I guess I will, all the “bad things” are misunderstandings and the sights the Jedi saw and thought were horrible weren’t really but, you know, holy shit, if you were in the Jedi’s position and saw what you saw, you can’t really blame them so…ultimately I suppose its all an allegory for allegations of police brutality, because god knows that’s something every single last fan was clamoring to see in a Star Wars show.

I could go on. There are some dumb science mistakes and I know, it’s a show about space wizards but holy shit, just things like a crackling campfire in space. What the fuck. Sorry. I didn’t mean to swear.

I could rant for days but I’ll leave you with this. Imagine there’s a new Sex in the City Movie and all you lady readers who are into that sort of thing go to see it with 3.5 of your gal pals. It opens with Carrie and her friends drinking mimosas at brunch, about to dish the latest hot goss on the men they are seeing when…KABOOM! A fuckin’ tank blows up the side of a bank building and a hundred ninjas pour out. The ninjas run inside and karate kick the guards and steal all the cash bags but are instantly foiled when a renegade team of big swingin’ dick mercenary commandos show up on the scene and what? Where’s Carrie and the girls you ask? Fuck ’em, this is an action movie now, because I wrote it and you gals need to like it, you bigots.

What’s that you say? A female rom com written to appeal to male action enthusiasts is a stupid idea and everyone involved should be fired and made to wear a dunce cap? True. That’s probably why it never happens and yet, for some strange reason, Hollywood absolutely refuses to stop gearing action movies toward women.

Oh well. I suppose the all lady audience for movies about space wizards fighting aliens and robots will show up someday if you give them another 20 years.

STATUS: Not shelf-worthy. I’m tired of all this seemingly endless trend to make the Jedi the bad guy. I get it. You gotta do something different but this isn’t different. They’ve done it a thousand times. We want to root for the Jedi. We don’t want them to be the bad guys.