Culture The Acolyte Isn't Ruining Star Wars - You Are - Lucasfilm's latest series is the franchise's most promising, but fans are too blinded by their hate to see it.

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No one hates Star Wars more than those who claim to be Star Wars fans. Sure, the past few years have given the fandom plenty to critique. The sequels splintered the fanbase beyond recognition, and Lucasfilm’s efforts to expand the galaxy on the small screen have been mixed, at best. And in some cases, criticism is inevitable: not everyone will find something to like in the franchise’s recent output. At a certain point, though, the discourse reaches a fever pitch, and even Lucasfilm’s most promising projects get swept up in the drama.

The Acolyte is not the first Star Wars project to face the brunt of fan backlash, and it likely won’t be the last. But the new live-action series is also one of the best additions to that galaxy far away in a long time, embracing decades of nostalgia while also thinking critically on the franchise’s legacy. It also might be the most diverse Star Wars story yet — and while that’s definitely a boon for marginalized fans, it’s made The Acolyte the target of a vocal splinter of the fandom.
Whether you know them as the Fandom Menace or a cluster of blue checkmark users on Twitter, it’s impossible to escape their orbit. The same folks that review-bombed diverse swings like Marvel’s Eternals and the Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power have now set their sights on The Acolyte. To hear them tell it, the series is the worst thing that’s ever happened to Star Wars, and its showrunner, Leslye Headland, is just as fiendish as Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. To them, The Acolyte’s “woke” agenda is something to be feared. It’s ruining Star Wars; it’s poisoning pop culture itself. It needs to be stopped by any means necessary.

We realize how ridiculous that all sounds, right? God, I hope so. But if not, let’s try this: The Acolyte is not actually “ruining” Star Wars, but the bigoted backlash is definitely ruining the fun for everyone else.
It’s not outright shocking to see something like The Acolyte marred by racist, misogynistic, and even anti-LGBTQ backlash. That Star Wars devotees would share multiple bad-faith treatises about the series on YouTube, or tank its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, is just par the course at this point. This is, after all, the same fandom that launched consistent attacks against actors like John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and Daisy Ridley; the same fandom that were publicly admonished by Ewan McGregor himself when Obi-Wan Kenobi faced similar pushback.

The problem is that nothing has changed. In the 10 years since this vocal minority suddenly cried out against diverse casting and more nuanced storytelling, they’ve yet to actually learn their lesson. Their arguments are bleeding into even the casual discourse surrounding The Acolyte. Comments on set design and screenwriting have turned into misogynistic microaggressions against Headland; even critiques on the series have been weaponized by its haters. There’s no room for nuance when it comes to The Acolyte: you either stand with the series, flaws and all, or you’re irrevocably against it.
The origins of this toxicity aren’t difficult to figure out. At the end of the day, it boils down to entitlement: many male fans feel like they own the franchise, and are determined to safeguard it from anyone that could challenge that ownership. That makes it hard for disparate groups to coexist, and it’s even harder for any non-white, non-male creatives hoping to tell stories within the franchise.

What began as a relatively niche issue has become Lucasfilm’s biggest hurdle moving forward. The Acolyte can weather the storm (after all, it’s been well-received by critics) but what about the fandom, and its relationship to those guiding the franchise now? As the discourse spirals out of control, it’s getting harder to ignore it outright. There’s no easy way out, but something has to change, otherwise, this vocal minority will end up ruining Star Wars for the rest of us.

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Article includes some pictures, presumably from the series, but I'm not certain about local protocol of posting those.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

man I'm not even much of a Star Wars fan but we've gone from the era of "entertainment is meant to entertain. if the creator/director is good enough, it can be elevated into an artform" to "retards whining about how the shitty propaganda isn't working so let's blame the fans".

Entertainment is about representation shitlord, get with the times

 

[Tanner Glass]

Like that Shadows of the Empire N64 vidya?

And the prequels are OK. They expanded the setting without messing with the basic continuity... unlike a certain sequel trilogy.

Shadows of the Empire, Rogue Squadron, Battlefront, Knights of the Old Republic, Republic Commando, X-Wing v Tie Fighter, Jedi Knight/Outcast.

There was like a 10-year period where Lucasarts was slam dunking banger after banger video games from their own studio and licensors - it might legit be the greatest video game studio run of all time.

 

[tehpope]

Whatever happened to "the customer is always right"?

Ahh, how could I forget. It's been supplanted by "if you damn dirty peasants don't think the shit straight from our buttholes takes like chocolate ice cream, then Russian trolls are causing you to misinterpret your own opinion."

There is no customer. Nu Wars is in service of Disney synergy, memberberries, critical marxism, and kathleen kennedy's ego.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Entertainment is about representation shitlord, get with the times

and my wallet represents me by purchasing old sci-fi books instead of goyslop.

 

[Curzon Dax-sama]

Entertainment is about representation shitlord, get with the times

No amount of slop will convince me that tolerating niggers and girldick is a good idea.

 

[Whiskey]

It's not like Paramount is desperately trying to wring the Star Trek franchise to its last penny and we can still go watch the original Star Wars trilogy!
Star Trek is on life support just as much as Star Wars is, maybe they found a higher floor bottoming out because the one cartoon caters well to the Rick and Morty audience but that's essentially it.

Star trek fans just walked away. They didn't rage or cope just left. I still recall the moment it died for me. When they brought out a white Klingon and had him yell make America great again. Then fired him out of a cannon to start a war.

 

[Miriam Margoyles]

yeah
when the prequels came out, the neckbeard manchild audience hated them but little children (like me) loved them, they created a whole new generation of star wars fans. plus there were also a lot of really good star wars video games coming out during that time which helped get these kids more invested.

I never cared about Star Wars really, but goddamn, there were some fucking awesome Star Wars games when I was growing up that I loved - Rogue Squadron, Pod Racer, that destruction derby one - it both saddens and amazes me that there isn't a modern equivalent to any of those. It shouldn't be hard to make a cool, fun, Star Wars video game these days, but for whatever reason, nobody will make one.

 

[Jetpack Himmler]

It's not like Paramount is desperately trying to wring the Star Trek franchise to its last penny and we can still go watch the original Star Wars trilogy!
Star Trek is on life support just as much as Star Wars is, maybe they found a higher floor bottoming out because the one cartoon caters well to the Rick and Morty audience but that's essentially it.

There was a ray of hope with the final season of Star Trek: Picard. It jettisoned the humiliation conga line previous seasons subjected JLP to and brought back the rest of the rest of the TNG cast for one last hurrah while it salvaged some characters from the previous STP seasons (notably Raffi) and introduced new ones Captain Shaw, Jack Crusher II, and Sidney La Forge. What made it stand out from the first two seasons was that S3 show runner, Terry Matalas, was also a Trekkie and wrote it for Trekkies so it was made out of love for the franchise and its history. Little wonder why it energized the fanbase in a way not seen in decades...

...and of course Paramount/Secret Hideout is about to fuck that up with the Starfleet Academy and Section 31 projects no one asked for.

Star Wars was never good, but at least it used to be fun.

George Lucas enjoyed the old film serials like Flash Gordon, which served as the inspiration for the Star Wars universe so it came from a place of love and sincerity. What made SW "good" was that Lucas was also familiar with the works of Joseph Campbell (notably The Hero With a Thousand Faces) that outlined reoccurring themes in myths across the world so he knew how to use that as a solid foundation and substructure to build his universe on. Kathleen Kennedy comes across as driven by envy towards Lucas and Steven Spielberg who are Hollywood icons and I would bet that she believes that they denied her of the credit she "deserves". My impression is that she was competent at the organization of a production, but lacked the creative spark her former bosses had.

Then there is the current generation of screenwriters and producers that are so absorbed in postmodern thought that believes that irony and irreverence makes them intellent. Sprinkle in DEI nonsense and you have an entire industry of egotistical morons that believe that they are the second coming of Lucas/Spielberg/etc. when they are nothing but a pale shadow. None of them are convincing because their work lacks the kind of sincerity that makes me want to suspend my disbelief.

 

[Snekposter]

Lucasfilm's latest series is the franchise's most promising, but fans are too blinded by their hate to see it​

To paraphrase one of the greatest villains of all time: Our hate has made us powerful.

Motherfucker had a unique lightsaber and everything.

"Basic, motherfucker! Do you speak it?"

Someone compared the lead actress to Rick James due to her hair and now I can't unsee it. So I made a thing:

View attachment 6076337

Spoiler: Context

Old man Rick James hair:
View attachment 6076336

Deathsticks are a hell of a drug.

 

[FrancineCansMcGee]

https://www.foxnews.com/media/the-acolyte-creator-jokes-shes-into-it-being-told-disney-show-gayest-star-wars-ever

"This is, I would say, arguably the gayest Star Wars by a considerable margin," reporter Drew Taylor asked Headland, who burst into laughter. "Are you excited about that? Are you embracing that?"

Headland, who was flanked by "The Acolyte" star, Amandla Stenberg, laughed off the question. However, the reporter pressed her again by asking if she was prepared for the LGBTQ themes to be a "talking point."

Stenberg, who identifies as LGBTQ, turned to Headland to explain that this would be asked about "because nerds are gay!"

"No, I don’t think so! Yet people have told me that it’s the gayest Star Wars, and I'm frankly, into it," she replied.

Afterward, Stenberg and Headland continued to joke about gay characters in the fictional science fiction world.

"I think that Star Wars is so gay already. I mean have you seen the [out]fits?" Stenberg joked.

Headland laughed and added, "And are you telling me with a straight face that C-3P0 is straight? I think it’s canon that R2-D2 is a lesbian."

If you gave someone a pop quiz and asked who said, "Nerds are gay! All the Star Wars characters look gay!"

A: A homophobic 12 year old schoolyard bully

B: The makers of Star Wars

...what do we think the average person would guess the answer is?

These are people who swear up and down that you need to give people representation of themselves in their media for it to connect with them...and then go out of their way to say they are representing a small minority of the population. How can you be shocked if it doesn't connect with the majority?

Even if nerds are gay, Star Wars was not a niche property solely marketed to nerds or homosexuals. It was widely appealing, universally recognized mainstream popular culture. Nerds loved it obsessively, but mostly for the same reasons as everyone else liked it too.

Fans really really need to let this die. The only involvement I have with Star Wars is reading Kiwifarms whine threads about it and even that I feel guilty about giving it too much attention. Star Wars is over. Like The Simpsons it is going to end up having more years of low quality than high quality rather than taking the Seinfeld route and going out on top. It's not worth investing money or emotional energy into anymore.

I never cared about Star Wars really, but goddamn, there were some fucking awesome Star Wars games when I was growing up that I loved - Rogue Squadron, Pod Racer, that destruction derby one - it both saddens and amazes me that there isn't a modern equivalent to any of those. It shouldn't be hard to make a cool, fun, Star Wars video game these days, but for whatever reason, nobody will make one.

They will only make games where they can add microtransactions and other garbage to maximally rape your wallet. They miss that the games were also advertisements and life support for the rest of the franchise. In maximizing the profit for each game, they sap the franchise itself of life. Stepping outside of Star Wars, I look at stuff like Diablo 4. In selling cool cosmetics for real money, they make the items you earn just by playing the game lame in comparison. But I wasn't just grinding for gear to have BIG NUMBERS, but also because I wanted to look cool. So fuck this game, if I'm going to spend money on clothes to look cool I will do it in real life. You might rape a few whales for big money for glowy horse armor or whatever, but now I'm not buying any more Diablo games. You've farmed all the fertility out of the soil in one season.

 

[Absolutego]

There was a ray of hope with the final season of Star Trek: Picard. It jettisoned the humiliation conga line previous seasons subjected JLP to and brought back the rest of the rest of the TNG cast for one last hurrah while it salvaged some characters from the previous STP seasons (notably Raffi) and introduced new ones Captain Shaw, Jack Crusher II, and Sidney La Forge. What made it stand out from the first two seasons was that S3 show runner, Terry Matalas, was also a Trekkie and wrote it for Trekkies so it was made out of love for the franchise and its history. Little wonder why it energized the fanbase in a way not seen in decades...

...and of course Paramount/Secret Hideout is about to fuck that up with the Starfleet Academy and Section 31 projects no one asked for.

I'm sorry if season 3 of Picard worked on you, you are just as much an unthinking consoomer as modern Star Wars fans. Jesus Christ, all it takes is getting a few additional hollywood puppets with nothing going for them to dance in front of a camera for you to forget all the nonsense that preceded it. It wasn't even particularly good fan service! If Paramount assembled a literal focus group designed to appeal to 90's Trek fans they probably would've come up with a better script.

 

[isalaide]

Jaina Solo and Mara Jade died for this endless parade of featureless Mary Sue 'diversity' protagonists.

 

[Sonic]

Every time anything bad happens to Star Wars, I feel so happy. I wasted 3 years of my life on a lolbrotarian beta male who had an obsession with this trash. Every time a new, shitty series is released with even more faggots and darkies in the cast than the previous pile of crap, it makes my day because I know somewhere that man child is writhing in pain.

Keep em coming Disney, this one definitely didn't have enough nigger-faggots. I think we need to crank the nigger-faggotry up from a 10 to a 20. If we don't get a second season of Acolyte with a full on tranny-on-tranny "lesbian" butt sex scene I will be so disappointed.

 

[Jetpack Himmler]

I'm sorry if season 3 of Picard worked on you, you are just as much an unthinking consoomer as modern Star Wars fans. Jesus Christ, all it takes is getting a few additional hollywood puppets with nothing going for them to dance in front of a camera for you to forget all the nonsense that preceded it. It wasn't even particularly good fan service! If Paramount assembled a literal focus group designed to appeal to 90's Trek fans they probably would've come up with a better script.

It only worked insofar that I heard good word of mouth and watched YouTube clips, but I wasn't rushing to buy a Paramount+ subscription. I didn't even watch it in its entirety until months later because my mom recorded it. Despite my enjoyment of the final season, I nope-d out once the TNG crew had that last poker game because I had no interest in anything else.

 

[The best and greatest]

The strangest thing about Star Wars is that I actually have a mildly positive opinion of the prequels now that Ive been shown just how bad things can be.
Its like reaching adulthood all over again

 

[Hitman One]

They clearly didn't put enough chicks in it and the ones they did must be insufficiently gay and lame.

 

[William Murderface]

[EDIT: I don't know why, but it cut off half my original post. Let's try it again}

Star Wars was a fairy tale in space. It took those old myths and legends and stories and lore and distilled them down into a familiar story anyone in the world would understand because all of us have those same stories in our backgrounds. A boy with a destiny, a wizard, a princess, an evil tyrant and his henchmen, magic, so on and so forth. Lucas knew how to make that story because, like the above poster mentioned, he read Joseph Campbell and he knew how to make an exciting space opera because he understood where Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers got it right. Lucas knew how to put them all together and hired the right people to make it such an entertaining series and was lucky to live at just the right time to have it be a cultural phenomenon and be able to sell a gajillion toys in the process. Even the prequels, for good or bad, continued that same process. Lucas may have made some mistakes with the PT, but he made some with the OT as well and his biggest mistake may very well have been not having someone who could say "yes George, we can do that, but maybe we shouldn't" over things like Jar Jar.

Disney screwed up right from the beginning of it's ownership by A) not having a roadmap of what it wanted to do with the property and B) putting it in the hands of someone like Abrams who managed to repeat fan favorite scenes but not understanding why they worked in the first place because he didn't understand how to structure his story. There was no hero's journey for Rey to take like Luke and Anakin did. Abrams and KK didn't understand Campbell and didn't understand why Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers worked. They just threw scenes together, made them look great because of the SFX and CGI and called it a day. Instead of learning from the criticisms of the vocal fanbase, they just said anyone who wasn't onboard was a bigot or a Nazi and this Star Wars wasn't for them and then wondered why those fans quit caring about Star Wars.

It's been the same ever since. Even beyond buying a property so Disney could have a boy audience that they turned over to women who immediately said the Force is Female, Disney simply didn't ever try to do anything to keep or bring back those fans who walked beyond insult them and tell them to go away, which they did. Girls didn't care about Star Wars and there was no hero for boys to identify with in Rey or Jyn Erso or Ahsoka or Admiral Dangerhair. Then throw in stuff like KK saying Lucas' Star Wars as the past and her Star Wars is the future so Star Wars Land at Disney World has the new Stormtroopers and Rey but no Vader or Luke or Han to see. Not to mention there really isn't much to see or do there. Then the cruise ship in space that was a complete flop, a series of shows that continually have lower and lower audience numbers and a sequel trilogy that was beyond insipid with a payoff that essentially invalidated both Anakin and Luke's very existences. Basically, Disney killed the golden goose because it didn't know what to do with it right from day one.

It is really a story of complete mismanagement of a property that should have been an ATM for Disney and it shows no sign of getting any better. I suspect in decades to come the entire episode will be taught in MBA programs as a "what not to do" course.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

The most batshit insane fans of nuDisney Star Wars were (and maybe still are?) the "Reylos." Adam Driver's wife legitimately got death threats I think when it came out she was pregnant, or maybe just for existing, as if this would somehow prevent their head canon from happening. Weird how all of that was quietly swept under the rug. Or maybe not so weird, given that it didn't fit the narrative.

And those "batshit insane fans" are always majority women. They aren't there for the story, but for the ships, and when the ships they made up in their heads don't become canon or are overwritten by the actual canon, they go even more insane if possible because they the whole show they were watching is suddenly trash and they hate it.

Women like this are now in charge of most franchises, they are just forced to add some plots in between.

 

[frozen_runner]

Lucas may have made some mistakes with the PT

Like making really bad, dull, lifeless films with scripts that feel like first drafts. Mistakes like that.

But you're right that his biggest mistake was becoming too successful to have people around him who will tell him no.

 

[LurkTrawl]

Set aside for a moment the political messaging bullshit, as well as a lack of competence on set and in writing, and ask yourself the real shit that matters... does fucking anyone like anything that's done as an obviously cynical cash-grab/nostalgia-trap? I think the movies being labeled "Star Wars" hurt them more than it helped them.