Culture Racists Are Review Bombing Black-led Star Wars Series 'The Acolyte' Despite High Ratings From Real Critics

https://www.theroot.com/heres-how-racists-and-sexists-are-hating-on-black-led-s-1851546739

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The Star Wars fandom continues to embarrass itself. The latest series in the franchise, “The Acolyte,” has fallen victim to yet another review-bombing campaign from the audience — an unfortunate practice that’s often rooted in racism and misogyny.

The prequel series, which stars Amandla Stenberg, earned glowing reviews from critics, currently sitting at 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The series has also been a ratings hit for Disney +, standing as the largest debut for the streamer so far this year.

Yet, despite its warm reception, the show is still not immune to some of the harshest parts of the Star Wars fanbase, as it currently sits at a shocking 15 percent audience score.

For years now, certain projects in the franchise have been review bombed, with hundreds of audience reviews on sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes pouring in and affecting their overall scores. Dedicated audiences feel a right to these stories, and unfortunately, sectors of these fandoms have some serious racial, misogynistic, and often homophobic biases they operate with when engaging in this content.

Stenberg opened up about some of this when speaking to GQ UK earlier this month. “There is a specific kind of ‘Star Wars’ fan that’s very vocal on the internet...they’ve called our show ‘The Woke-alyte’ a fair amount – which I’m like, ‘OK, what about it?’”

Some of the backlash from fans also came from a clip of Stenberg that started to circulate as the series premiered. As Forbes points out, an interview clip from years ago where Stenberg talked about “making white people cry” while promoting her film “The Hate U Give,” was reshared by thousands, completely taken out of its context and used as a way to criticize the actress and a perceived “woke agenda” from Lucasfilm.

Again, this is not a new move in the Star Wars fandom playbook. Stars like John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and, as The Root reported, Obi-Wan star Moses Ingram faced relentless attacks and even racial threats from the fans. God forbid the Star Wars franchise represents more than just the white leads of the original series. With a Black and queer lead like Stenberg, scores of fans are finally seeing themselves in this beloved, fantasy world.

Luckily for Stenberg it seems she is focusing on the love she is receiving from other viewers, specifically the Black fans and content creators. “There’s also a significant sect of Black creators and Black ‘Star Wars’ fans on TikTok who are being vocal about…the pushback that we’ve received and where it comes from,” she also told GQ.

“And those folks make me so deeply happy, and those are the folks that I’m so grateful to, and I want to send as much recognition and love and gratitude towards them because they keep us grounded.”

 

[AnsemSoD1]

The same "critics" who assured us that Girl Ghostbusters was hilarious, and that some movie about gay niggers was the most important thing made in the last decade?


Unintentional hilarity. - Yes, I would completely believe that the literal scores of gayniggers who actually like Star Wars are overjoyed at seeing themselves represented this way.

Hey, I'll assure you cracker that this was peak.

 

[Staticness]

I can't help but notice they always go to blaming the fans instead of stopping to self-reflect. If a massive crowd is saying "this is a shitty product", maybe the product is shitty, I dunno.

 

[generic sauce]

Seethe cope and dial 8

 

[Absolutego]

Prior to the 2020s, the only actual flop was Solo, each sequel made enough money that while TLJ dropped off hard and TRoSW outright underperformed compared to the VII/VIII, it still was profitable. Now the merch sold horribly, that was a flop, but the movies (Aside for Solo) made bank.

Since the pandemic it's been a money hole on all fronts.

I'm actually not so sure they were in the black even with with each sequel/Rogue One making at least $1 billion each. Remember they were $4 billion in the hole to start with acquiring the studio from Lucas, the parks lost like $2 billion between them IIRC, and taking the usual marketing=production budget rule at its face, the first 5 films cost $2.5 billion to make/market. And 3 of those 5 had media-worthy extensive reshoots.
I remember doing the napkin math at a bar with some friends, right before the pandemic, and after we assumed the moichendising and the box office not equaling Disney's actual take home effectively canceled each other out, our conclusion was that if they were in the black at that point, it was because The Mandalorian was a huge hit.
And that's probably still the case, just expand The Mandalorian into the overall Favreau/Filoni tv shows.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Also "real critics"? Even if they aren't shills, you don't have to have years of college education in how to be a pretentious (wannabe) intellectual to judge a media.

That headline reminds me of that seemingly fanatical reverence journos seem to have for "the experts" when it comes to "global warming" "climate change" and the coof.

 

[The Last Stand]

I haven't even heard of this.

 

[ZazietheBeast]

So that makes everyone else racist. I guess Hugo Boss uniforms as well as white sheets are gonna be in vogue next year.

 

[frozen_runner]

See how that works, Hollywood? Now what have we learned?

"To give yourself a job for life as a hero to the downtrodden, all you have to do is provoke your enemies for long enough."

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Real critics don't exist

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

Nice high school newspaper headline, jesus christ.

 

[frozen_runner]

Real critics don't exist

Sure they do. They're hanging out with all the real journalists

 

[Curzon Dax-sama]

>"Real" critics
You mean "shills", journoscum. Please, face the wall now.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

"Wrongthinkers Are Review Bombing SJW-led Star Wars Series 'The Acolyte' Despite High Ratings From SJWs"

There. Fixed to remove wannabe commie doublespeak.

Review bombing is so prevalent, does anyone even care about the reviews apart from those easily triggered by hurt feelings? I still recall the former owners of Trans LifeLine encouraging negative review bombing of a vehicle repair shop in response to allegations of transphobia that likely never existed. I guess this is another example of, "It's okay only when we do it. Anything else is evil wrongthink."

To touch on what @William Murderface said, the word "racist" gets flung around so much it's lost its original meaning. If (practically) everyone is racist, than nobody really is in the end.

I can't help but notice they always go to blaming the fans instead of stopping to self-reflect. If a massive crowd is saying "this is a shitty product", maybe the product is shitty, I dunno.

Today, nobody wants to admit to making a questionable or bad decision because it's seen as a sign of weakness and it invites harsh criticism - some justified and some admittedly not. Meaningful self-reflection is good, but it's pointless when the Disney execs have confirmation bias and think any SW content they release is the greatest thing ever despite low levels of support whether its viewership, ticket sales, or merchandise sales. It's one thing to support your product and another to be so blindly devoted to ignore the truth.

It also reminds me of the expression, "If one person thinks you're an asshole, maybe they're the asshole. If everyone things you're an asshole, maybe you are the asshole." As long as Disney continues to fully embrace identity politics and make them a prominent feature in their content, though, their products will continue to be shitty.

And that's the sad thing. The original trilogy - despite its valid criticisms - had true diversity of cast, characters, and world building that was organic and not forced/imposed. Efforts to artificially impose it rarely work as intended. Everything we see released today comes off a low-effort carbon copied cookie-cutter style production that lacks any sort of character or substance.

 

[Death of an Ego]

Obligatory "people still give a shit about star wars"? This is the root, so it's obvious why they are angrier than usual. Some lame star wars faggotry starring a black lead is getting shade thrown on it because people are getting tired of every single mainstream production having to have whatever the woke dictate be foremost in acting and the (lol) story. Is it a good story? I wouldn't know, because I'm one of those people too fatigued by preachy psuedo and outright racist bullshit against my race to give a fuck about their product, or what I would really just call an end result. Sometimes I really wish I could start the seed in the minds of a group with fuck you money to fund a docudrama series that tells the actual story of the slave trade, not the fantasy so many stupid niggers and poseur shitlib cunts halfass believe and push for dopamine inducing social media asspats and latte funding culture war shitpieces like this one.

 

[The best and greatest]

I can't help but notice they always go to blaming the fans instead of stopping to self-reflect. If a massive crowd is saying "this is a shitty product", maybe the product is shitty, I dunno.

Its also funny because their ivory tower mentality is completely at odds with the entire idea of pop culture; as in culture derived from what is popular with the people as opposed to elitist curatorship of the arts...

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

So has anyone here seen The Acolyte? I want to be an informed racist here

the average wookieepedia visitor probably knows and understands more about star wars than "real critics" lol

Omg the article for Darth Vader alone is as long as War and Peace

 

[LaxerBRO]

With a Black and queer lead like Stenberg, scores of fans are finally seeing themselves in this beloved, fantasy world

---

TJD

 

[WonderWino]

currently sitting at 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes

The same rotten tomatoes famous for getting paid for positive reviews, just like every other major review site. If anything this article is raising red flags for 'critics' having been paid for positive reviews while everyone else who saw it is rightfully calling it out for the trash it was

That said, clearly all the other accusations they were throwing at people for not liking it weren't working, so as usual they resort to accusing everyone who doesn't like their trash of being racist

They simply cannot accept that they produced trash that nobody likes or wanted. Its one of the ways you can tell the people making these series and films are fanatics pushing an agenda. They believe they're right so anyone who doesn't agree must be in the wrong and some kind of evil bigot

 

[FrancineCansMcGee]

The Star Wars fandom continues to embarrass itself.

The fandom should not feel anything, shame or pride or otherwise, unless the audience reviews are representative of the views of the fanbase. But there is no reason to believe that based on an unscientific self-selected internet poll. But if the audience reviews are an accurate reflection of the views of the Star Wars fandom, then any professional critic who didn't make, "This show is going to be massively rejected by the intended audience for the following reasons..." the centerpiece of their review is a waste of media space. If it's true, that is the biggest story for any professional critic to discuss here. People turn to critics to let them know how viewers are likely to feel about a product before they watch it. A critic who can't deliver that is not fit to be a critic.

 

[Clusterfuckk2]

I guess the consumers will decide if it’s a good movie when they fail to go and see it. Pretty much like every other Disney movies in the last 10 years. At that point what the fuck does it matter if some bug hive living paid shill tells me it’s so much better starring a nigger.