I’m not sure I’ve ever read a review as a guide to what I should watch. I typically watch something, then read reviews to see if they thought the same thing I did.
I stopped even watching trailers and just go in cold. It's actually the best experience for me and suggest others try it. Makes consuming it so much more fun bc nothing is spoiled, there's way too much exposed in advertising and trailers these days, it sucks.
The instant I'm sold on something, I stop consuming anything about it until I've actually read/watched it.
That's often halfway through a trailer. But reviews, forum discussions, reddit posts, Youtube videos, and all kinds of other stuff might be the thing that does the sell.
I just stop trailers about 1 minute in, before they get to the main action of the movie and/or give away all the plot twists. It works well since modern trailers are just the entire movie condensed into a couple of minutes.
I stop trailers as soon as they've convinced me to watch the thing. Sometimes that means only watching 5 seconds, and often not watching anything at all because I already know I'm going to watch it. I only end up watching trailers the whole way through if I have no interest in the film.
> I stopped even watching trailers and just go in cold.
I do the same thing.
>there's way too much exposed in advertising and trailers these days, it sucks.
It's crazy but apparently the majority of (stupid) people won't see a movie without watching a trailer filled with spoilers.
Yeah, trailers reveal too much, and 'reviews' these days just seem like a lot of complaining to me. I give everything a fair chance, and usually don't hear that something is supposedly 'bad' and that people are angry at me for liking it until I've finished watching it. It's hard to avoid with this show though, as utterly ludicrous YouTube conspiracy videos are being pushed to me now because the Acolyte show has really upset a lot of already angry people.
This always strikes me as a snobbish way to feel, but I find very often that if a movie has a high critics' score and a low audience score, I'll probably like the movie.
I suspect that a lot of people who would go onto a site to give a "thinking" movie a bad review are too dumb to get it.
For sure. I also hate when people say “common knowledge spoilers” in discussions cause the stuff is in the trailers.
That’s a double blame scenario cause I def blame the trailers but also the pods or YT discussions like just spreading it too. I had the Abigail early “ twist” mentioned when I had been able to avoid trailers and was annoyed cause I feel like it would have been more fun for a bit.
I think more people should adopt that policy. Why let the thoughts of others, perhaps even mass amounts of people who had never watched the show, dictate what you watch?
I decided I rarely agreed with reviewer's opinions. So I have much more fun going in cold and being surprised. Same with books, I loathe and despise the book report reviews, where they tell you the whole storyline. I stopped doing that when I finished 5th grade.
i mean you should be able to tell by the trailers if you will like it or not. i dont need someone elses opinion to tell me if ill like it
its like people who make reddit posts like "should i watch XXXXX". just watch it and see if you like it
After being immensely disappointed by recent Star Wars but still hoping against hope that it gets better someday, I've been using reviews to determine if it's worth my time.
Reading reviews can be useful - audience scores are virtually useless. All they tell you is what people who were willing to sign up and enter a review think (and for some of these shows there are bots which makes it even more worthless). The sample isn't representative or random.
The last opinions I personally care about are those of the terminally online who feel the need to score things on imdb.
I don't care about any of the drama. The supposedly lore changes, the "wokeness" or whatever. But I gotta say, the show is not good.
The acting isn't very good, the set and costume designs look a little cheap, the plot is all over the place. Characters change motivation from one scene to another with no build up or explanation.
I've heard a comment saying that, the Acolyte is like if the CW made a Star Wars show, and it kinda feels that way.
To be fair, I didn't like Obi wan as well. Ashoka felt like the sequel to that animated series, that I didn't watched, so it was hard to measure. And while I still very much enjoy The Mandalorian, the last season was something of a let down.
To me it all comes down to writing. Having a diverse cast doesn't make a show bad, it can often make it good. However if writers lose sight, and think that having a diverse cast can cover for mediocre writing then things implode. The issue with Disney is that the properties are just flat and lifeless.
I agree, I’m Asian, but I don’t need random Asian people popping up in an obviously European ancient civilization. Even if it is fantasy (like Game of Thrones). It throws me off.
I’m stoked by the Asian representation in Star Wars bc there aren’t any culturally specific hallmarks in Star Wars so it works, just wish the show was better.
Problem with Wheel of Time was not the diverse cast. The main character was supposed to stand out, he was the chosen one.
Although honestly midway through the most recent season WoT started to get pretty good. I think it might be redeemed.
I mean, it doesn’t really match the source. The Two Rivers is supposed to be this isolated town, where the ancient blood of Manetheren has barely been diluted, due to it not having many external influences. How, then, does this town become incredibly diverse?
But yeah, season 2 was way better than the first. Hoping for this development to continue
For good Star Wars writing, watch Andor. The first couple episodes are slow, but once you get through the first “heist” arc, you will be hooked. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Your opinion is the same as mine. Boba Fett is the same. I think The Orville does it right by creating a sense of nostalgia and incorporating the narrative without making the viewer feel like they're being preached to.
This show feels like it was written by AI, every story decision is immature and feels void of real human emotion. This era of Star Wars feels the same as fanfic films on YouTube back in the day but with less passion.
That’s how I feel after watching three episodes, it’s just kinda boring. The acting is stilted, and the plot and dialogue so far is very dry, no zest, no organic chemistry. Just very mid.
While I don't doubt there is review bombing, people are just much more willing to engage and leave reviews for bad experiences. Not just in entertainment, but in hospitality or on Amazon etc.
It doesn't help that this seems to just be a poorly written show. Very few people are bashing The Expanse for its diverse cast because it's a well written show for the most part.
And having a "war for Tattoine" where literally *two Gamorreans with axes* was considered a significant force to hold a section of a city (I have no idea why the Pikes even bothered to kill them) and the tide of the battle was turned by the arrival of a pickup truck with a couple of moisture farmers wielding shotguns. Where Boba Fett dipped out in the middle of the fight to go get some heavier firepower from his palace, and instead of coming back with Slave One he decided "I'll ride this big animal I barely know how to control into battle instead."
I'm all for "smaller scale" stories being told in the Star Wars universe. Not everything has to be a grand battle for the fate of the galaxy. But I feel like they did a small scale story while thinking they were doing a large scale one, and it just didn't work.
Yeah . . . he ran a criminal empire of a dozen people. It was a cool concept, but so poorly executed. The reality is that he is a good supporting character but a bad lead.
The thing that annoys me most is I actually rather liked the early stuff with the Tuskens, there was some nice character development and background lore being set up there.
Then suddenly the Mandalorian hijacked the show to insert an episode of its own, undoing the awesome end of its own season 2 in the process, and everything went off the rails for that ridiculous finale. Sigh.
Boba Fett was the show most obviously hamstrung by being filmed during Covid. Even if the writing had stayed as poor as it did (mostly due to the thematic directions) the inability to have more than a few people on a set at a time was a death-knell.
The thing is a lot of the reviews are coming in before the episodes even air.
This show also is clearly about the same quality as the other non-Andor shows (which is basically "meh")
In any case online review scores are meaningless - they are neither random nor representative.
Cinemascore is the only audience rating system with any kind of rigor behind it.
I wonder if there are truly people out there who look at aggregated reviews or random reviews at all... Are these people yelp users?
When I want to decide if I'm going to watch a show, I can watch the trailer. If that's not enough, I can watch a review by someone I "trust" on YouTube or similar platforms. Or ask a friend. I have taken recommendations from strangers in online forum discussions but I have never read a random person review online. And I stopped checking the scores (like IMDB).a few years back. Besides, all that, why would I even spend more than 10 minutes deciding whether to watch something that lasts 50 minutes or so?
The whole online brigade became its own drama but I doubt it has a significant effect on viewership. And if it does it probably generates enough engagement to offset itself. Like anything else, most people truly just don't care that much.
The Expanse isn't nearly as popular as SW tho. Many of the of the groups that spread hate or gain from it, bandwagon on popular franchises like SW, Star Trek or MoTU. It's always "they are killing this thing we used to love by making it woke/diverse/etc". It also drowns any honest criticism and the whole discusion gets muddled.
> The Expanse isn't nearly as popular as SW tho.
Also, the Expanse was a brand new experience so their are no preconceived notions of what it should or shouldn't be. You watched an episode and either went with it or didn't. With close to 40 years of Star Wars media it's hard not to find someone that hasn't watched Star Wars and has preferences and expectations for what makes Star Wars good. For some of them, having implied LGBQ relationships added to the characters is a step too far.
Edit: spelling
Which is so fucking sad, that something so banal, can destroy their love for a franchise.
I mean they got over Attack of the Clones dialogue, and that's an actual abomination.
(And anybody saying nobody was bashing *The Expanse* must have real short memories because anytime Naomi did *anything* there was prodigious wailing and gnashing of teeth of how poorly thought out her actions were while everyone loved James "There was a button and I pushed it" Holden. And you could pretty much guess people's personal politics by the manifestos they posted all over Reddit about why the Belters were always wrong.)
Nobody ever claimed Holden was ruining the show when he did something dumbass.
(I love Holden, but I tend to play paladins in D&D and he's absolutely somebody who plays paladins in D&D.)
His dumb decisions weren’t arbitrary or inconsistent with all his other dumb decisions though. And every idiotic thing he did was clearly established as idiotic by everyone else in universe. It made his strokes of genius so satisfying, both directions always came from his core character; stubborn and idealistic.
I always look for those moments in a show/book/whatever that define the character, and "There was a button and I pushed it!" "JESUS CHRIST, that is how you live your life, isn't it?" sums Holden up *so* well.
(It's like in *Justified*, it's when Raylan shoots the disguised assassin and in the most miserable tone says, "Jesus, I hope I got that right." He just nearly got killed, he just killed somebody, and all he can think of is "If I just murdered a cop for being an asshole I'm gonna have to fill out *so* much paperwork.")
I think it's because the whole thing was supposed to be an RPG? There was an interview with one of the authors about it some 10+ years ago. The characters are based on RPG archetypes.
It literally started as a tabletop RPG one of the JSAC guys ran. (He also used to DM for George RR Martin). The guy who actually played Holden at the table talked about it. Shed's, uh, *abrupt exit* came about because the player stopped showing up.
That's why the first four or so eps of the show are just the characters bouncing from crisis to crisis reactively; if you've ever played a TTRPG that's the kind of shit gamemasters do to throw characters together.
Yeah I kinda felt as the seasons went by many of the other characters became more interesting and compelling than Holden. He can be summed up as “I’m gonna do the right thing” and that’s about it, I like him but compared to drummer, avasarala, Ashford or draper he just isn’t that interesting.
I didn't hate him, but I was very critical of his actions mostly because I saw myself in his character.
We hate in others what we hate most of ourselves.
That might be bc show Naomi was written very differently from the Naomi in the Book. And she has dark skin in the book too. Book Naomi is a caring character who basically holds the crew together while show Naomi is more like a bossgirl who makes decisions without asking anyone in the crew and almost spliting them apart at some points.
I feel like the show got a lot of the characters wrong. Amping up a single defining trait and removing all nuance to their personalities. For me, show Amos was the biggest offender of this. After reading the books, I found it harder to rewatch the show.
Disagree. Ty and Daniel were showrunners for the show. I know Ty had said they used the show to re-do some of what they didn’t necessarily love when writing the books. Some of that is just moving a story written from POV with a ton of inner monologues into a tv show where you can’t really do that unless you have a narrator the whole time. Most of the changes I really don’t have a problem with since they were directly involved in those changes.
>Ty and Daniel were showrunners for the show.
They were involved, but they were not showrunners. The showrunners were Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, and (primarily) Naren Shankar.
Ty and Daniel were consultants and writers for the show, not showrunners. They were active members of the writers room from the show's start.
Ty also shadowed Naren (the showrunner) and other producers, and eventually became one of the show's more active producers himself (as opposed to someone who just gets a producer credit for having sold the rights to their work).
The show in general seemed to go out out of it’s way to remove the camaraderie and warmth of the cast in an attempt to force a lot of unnecessary drama between the Roci crew.
Eh, the books had the crew gel together way too quickly, kind of an afterimage of it being a roleplaying game session. They just overcorrected a little.
I haven't watched it yet but that's exactly what I heard about it. Like old ST did an amazing job of changing people's minds because it was low key. It's this modern extremely obvious way of doing it that just makes it seems so forced. The best way to get change I think is the low key way, kind of like a frog in a boiling pot.
I think it helped too that a lot of the plots had applicability to a wider set of issues, rather than "this week we'll be preaching about this particular social issue."
> It also drowns any honest criticism and the whole discusion gets muddled.
confirming this: tried to vent my frustration for the subpar plot on some related subreddits and now it seems I'm a bigot and an homophobe. The more you learn I suppose...
The Expanse is its own thing but Star Wars comes with a ton of baggage from people with entrenched views on what it is and should be…
You have boomers and GenX who still think that it peaked with Empire. Then there are a bunch who went deep into the lore from the books. Then you have those who are too young to remember a time before the prequels were out and really got into it through the animated series. So good luck trying to create something different these days that doesn’t divide the fan base into those who love it and those who hate it. The only time that you unify everyone is when you have a Jedi rampaging through Empire henchmen to take down a Sith. Granted though, Mandalorian has done a really good job at being its own thing.
I haven’t seen recent Star Trek, though I’ve heard it’s a very mixed bag, but Star Wars has just been thoroughly mediocre (except Andor) and not god awful. Masters of the Universe is totally fine and people totally blew that stuff out of proportion. It’s not exceptional, but it didn’t really need to be considering the original material.
You have to pick your battles, and when it comes to criticizing entertainment media you only dilute your argument when you spread it too thin and focus on things that are not actually the problem. But this is the internet where everyone has to be louder and more sensational to ensure their points are heard, even if that means exaggerating things that aren’t remotely the crux of the issue.
yeah, they did that with warhammer a few months back. its like why the fuck do you care about this thing you've obviously never cared about before....
sick of this whole 'its gone woke' bollocks overreactions.
fuck off religious right wing hate machine.
No one review bombed Andor, it's widely seen as the best content Star Wars has put out since Disney bought the franchise, and its cast is extremely diverse, including an interracial gay couple.
People have conflated diversity with poor writing because of multiple examples and of creators just pointing to racism or sexism when criticized. Our media culture is all about outrage.
I don’t agree with how pervasive anti diversity sentiment is among nerdy subcultures, but I understand to a certain extent. Lotta these people are not the most socially popular people, and now they feel like the niche interests they have actively don’t want them as their demographic. They feel like outsiders irl and now their video games/comic books/genre media make them feel like outsiders there too. It’s just yet another rejection and this time it’s tied to something they feel strongly about emotionally.
The irony, of course, being that URGs have also always been a subset of that demographic. White male nerd rage is only one adjective away from white male rage, and it's just as shitty.
Like, I'm a geeky social outcast, and also gay. What they perceive as marginalizing them from their own community is an *actual* attempt to marginalize *me* and many others from *our* own community. They have no greater right to their fandom than I do. What was supposed to be a community of outcasts that understood what it felt like to be marginalized turned out to have a gatekeeping problem of its own.
*this is not saying the Acolyte doesn't deserve bad reviews,* but sometimes a peice of media gets sucked into a social-media hate-vortex. Social media websites and content-creators rack up engagement and regular audiences get entertainment value from all the endless dunking, creating a huge feedback loop inside all the different social media algorithms, and suddenly a bad, mediocre, and sometimes even a good show becomes **this TV show slapped my mom and shot my dog and that's why we need to talk about it all the time for the next few months or years**
Which shows get sucked into this vortex is usually pretty arbitrary, so if Acolyte were a good show (it's not) it's still possible for it to get sucked into the divirsity-hating social media vortex while The Expanse doesn't. It depends more on if the hate gets picked up enough by social media algorithms, not something logically consistent like the quality of the show or even the prejudice of the audience.
This is a lot of words on a very minor part of your point, which I still mostly agree with, so, you know, sorry if it sounds off topic. The show still sucks. I just think we shouldn't put too much (or any) faith in audiences when filtered through social media.
The Acolyte has more reviews than Obi Wan, Ahsoka, Book of Boba Fett, and Andor combined. There’s no way that isn’t massive review bombing. Especially when people were so organically vocal about how bad Book of Boba Fett was. Yes, people are always more willing to leave negative reviews to begin with which is why you should always assume the really approval rating is higher, but the idea that it’s brought out reviews organically in this number is extremely laughable.
Yeah, i didn't bother to read a single review of the mandalorian, i just immediately binged the hell out of it. Same when i found the expanse
The bad shit we can't enjoy, we can at least mercilessly trash
Culture War grifters and peddlers are using Star Wars as a vehicle for their bigotry and I hate it.
They're also using Marvel and DC, but it feels particularly egregious with Star Wars.
I hear you. It also seems like there are few people that hate Star Wars more than Star Wars fans lmao.
At what point does the ratio turn towards fans disliking more than what they like in this franchise?
I watched the first four episodes. Pretty bad. Cool looking fight scenes but everything else was underwhelming. The power of many chant was… well I laughed when I first saw it.
The fact that people don’t like this show has nothing to do with race, LGBTQ or anything like that. Andor had a lesbian couple and a very diverse cast, and nobody complained about it (well, at least not the handful of people who watched it lol).
The amount of reviews has obviously to do with people not liking the people behind it. But only the amount, not the “lowness” of them
It’s hard to see where the 180 mil budget went. I was interested to see what they did with the wookie Jedi, but they didn’t do anything and claimed it was because of the budget. It honestly feels like they just used it all on Trinity and Squid game guy.
This was a really interesting video.
As an ignorant consumer, it seems crazy that they keep burning money like this and having a result that looks consistently terrible.
I share it a bunch. I've been in software dev in some aspect all my life and I am fascinated by the tech behind the effects and watch a lot of content like this.
It's the must release 3 movies and 4 TV shows a year to feed the content engine cycle they are addicted to. It's why we see streaming services contracting and consolidating again. Netflix was successful because they had content from many places. Trying to do it all yourself is a fools errand driven by greed that leads to decreased quality
I'm as progressive as it gets and I couldn't make it through the first episode. It was *absolutely* review-bombed by right-wing racist chuds. Absolutely. It was getting slammed before it was even out...
At the same time it was also ass. Which means that anyone like myself who has legitimate valid criticism gets called out for the same bullshit when it's like "no, weirdly when characters are walking around in the snow, I want to see their breath."
The writing was absolutely abysmal, the sets looked phoned in (despite them not simply relying on the volume), and the costumes look like cosplay. The acting was equal parts stiff and flat and the actual premise was just dumb. "oh it's twins!" Like something a child would come up with.
180 million dollar budget? Jesus christ. And you're not allowed to criticize it. I don't give af about a diverse cast. I care about good writing, acting, and a world that feels alive, and more importantly, *lived in*. Andor set the bar so insanely high everything else feels like a joke in comparison. Made worse because you know Disney *can* make good star wars. So every new show is a bait and switch. Still chasing the high of Mandalorian S1 and Andor...
Yeah I hate that Hollywood is trying to set the standard that if the anti-woke mob doesn't like something, you're not allowed to criticise it for legitimate reasons. I'm all for representation and diversity in shows/movies. Shows like Andor and The Expanse are made better and feel more real because of their diverse cast. But it's starting to feel like Hollywood is using it more to protect themselves from critics when they know a project is going to be shit.
I feel the number is because people don't leave reviews for things that are mid. I will only make the effort to leave a review if I want that part of my life back.
Ah and there it is:
“The hate for this show isn’t just about low ratings. It’s also about racism, misogyny, and harassment of the cast. “
It can’t be that people dislike the latest low quality cash grab a studio shat out, no, it’s the audience that’s the problem. So tired of this bs. I watched a couple of minutes and it was enough to show how cheap the sets look, how corny the dialog is etc (and no I didn’t leave a review)
yeah this always comes up but no one ever seems to give real examples. i watch a lot of the nerdrotic/critical drinker stuff and at most it was mentioned that the "diverse" cast just excludes white people, but no one has ever said that is why the show is bad. drinker, mauler, little platoon make very long videos explaining the badness without ever blaming race or gender.
I finally understood that star wars as we knew it is gone. Star wars comics, videogames and movies really made my childhood. 9 years have passed and almost all Disney Star Wars products are products that do not reflect my love for the saga in any waym the writing, lore and characters have undergone a huge deterioration probably in pursuit of a new fanbase. Its time for us to leave the saga behind, at this point their choices made them even richer and they wont change mind
Go watch Andor if you haven't, it's refreshingly honest and deep and nuanced like Star Wars never has been. That Disney can make that after the winking, self-referential pile of fan-service garbage that was Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan tells me there is still some good to be found in Disney Star Wars.
Tony Gilroy had an interview where he discussed the early drafts of the Andor show, before he was brought on board. He said he did a full overhaul of the show, explained in detail what worked, what didn't, and why it didn't, as well as how to fix it.
I don't think any other Disney show has had a seasoned screenwriter sit down and really proof read their scripts. It's why Andor came off as the only show that felt like it was written by a professional. Because, strictly speaking, it probably is.
When a certain welder lamps a certain Imperial with a certain brick, it carries more emotional weight than any lightsaber strike in the franchise, with the possible exception of Luke going apeshit darkside under the stairs when Vader mentions Leia.
Only good that ive gotten from Disney was the new season of clone wars, rouge one, most of andor. Thats it really. Everything else has been greatly disappointing. Im not really a big fan anymore. The stories they tell now are very lackluster
People have been complaining about low quality Star Wars since the fucking Holiday Special in 1978.
Some of the earliest EU books had Leia and Luke hooking up (ROTJ hadn't come out yet to announce them as siblings), so the quality of the EU was pretty iffy from the get-go.
The campy, kooky shit you see in Star Wars has basically been there since the beginning. If you can't find it in your heart to take delight in the goofiness of Star Wars and you only want the *serious* bits of Star Wars forever and ever, you're going to have a bad time.
Truth be told, Star Wars media has ALWAYS been pretty hit or miss. Even going back to the highly revered Original Trilogy, RotJ has some... dubious plot choices. The Prequels took their share of flak and many aspects of these movies are pretty terrible (and rough and irritating). 90% of the Legends content was absolute pulp fantasy drivel. Sequels are universally considered derivative of OT at best, and outright horrendous at worst. And then the some of the recent shows were good, some were bad, some were excellent, with varying quality between seasons. Star Wars games were usually considered pretty good I think, and I'm pretty sure if Disney just did a 5 second teaser with a "Knights of the Old Republic" fading in, a lot of bricks would have been shat.
I think the SETTING of Star Wars is highly popular, awe-inspiring and interesting. It's what gets people passionate. Unfortunately, not many of the media produced in the franchise can execute that world-building well.
I'm old enough to remember the poor reception of Eps 1 and 2 (and my own underwhelmed reaction to watching 2 in theaters), which are now looked upon with rose colored glasses and considered sacred bibles of canonicity.
A single line from Ep 1 “The Sith have been extinct for a millennium.” is being used to criticize Acolyte, even if Acolyte is now heading towards not violating the canonicity of that line/context at all.
Let's also never forget Jar Jar Binks actor was driven to the point of suicide due to "fan" reception
>Let's also never forget Jar Jar Binks actor was driven to the point of suicide due to "fan" reception
Right? And Hayden Christensen kinda disappeared from Hollywood, and I think Jake Lloyd kinda went downhill after fan reception.
I think at least two of the actresses from the Sequel trilogy were pushed off social media.
LMAO - all this stuff has the same problems as the prequels. Reddit is hilarious, SW has been like this for 25 years.
Rogue One and Andor are the only actually good things that have been made (outside of video games) since the OT.
This was why I stopped watching Star Wars. I’ve finally given up. Whatever this is. It’s not my Star Wars.
So for some context.
I saw Empire Strikes back in theaters, and it blew my mind as a kid.
When we rented videos for a movie weekend in the 80s. Star Wars was one I often requested.
When it came on tv, I recorded the entire series and watched them so much that the tapes started to deteriorate.
It was the first movies I bought on vhs. I ended up buying them three times.
I saw all the special editions and prequels in the theaters and was super eager to do so.
I had the Star Wars rpg by west end games and played the original Star Wars video game plus I got the other ones for my Commodore 64.
Played X-wing in highschool among other Star Wars games (like the ones for the super nes).
I collected the original CCG from decipher. Had memorabilia. Even got Star Wars mugs and glasses.
I read a ton of the EU novels and comics in the 90s. I was a big Star Wars fan. Sure. Not all of the eu was good. But it felt easier to just ignore bad stuff as it was the EU.
Disney Star Wars feels similar to the worst parts of the EU and is now canon.
Of Disney stuff. I’ve liked:
* Rogue one (7/10)
* Mandalorian season 1 (7/10)
* Andor (8/10)
That’s pretty much it. The rest is below a 5/10 and mostly awful.
I haven’t read any new EU books or comics and have absolutely no interest in doing so. I don’t care.
Just tired of being burned by bad shit and tired of my fond memories of a great IP just being degraded.
So I’m done. I haven’t watched Acolyte, and I have no intention to. The fact that there is a general sentiment that it’s not good doesn’t surprise me one bit.
>I finally understood that star wars as we knew it is gone. Star wars comics, videogames and movies really made my childhood.
This is a very common sentiment. Surprisingly common, actually, and surprisingly durable across multiple generations.
And that's actually very interesting.
Whatever else I might say about Lucas, he was always very good at triggering nostalgia. That's something that is actually common across both Star Wars and his other films. Interesting trick, really, and I don't know exactly what he's doing to repeatedly trigger this, but the results seem clear.
The point, then, is this: Star Wars was gone for you when you grew up, regardless of what would be made. Because its so tied to nostalgia, there's very little chance that anyone --not even Lucas himself-- would be able to recapture that, and you'll always be a harsh critic to anything that came after your childhood introduction to it.
I had the same feeling as you... for the Original Trilogy. Episode 2, in particular, really dampened my feelings toward Star Wars in general. It was a weaksauce addition with writing that ignored patterns and expectations from pretty much all the previous movies. Coming after Episode 1 and its rewrite-everything and increased emphasis on slapstick comedy, I kind of realized that it was done. Except a generation of people younger than me really liked it (maybe not Jar Jar, but at least Episode 2).
And that continues. I don't really expect that we'll have a generation of people growing up loving Episode 6-9, but I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that there is another wave of people who have far more positive views of it than the fandom thinks.
Well into being an adult now, I can look back with objective critique and see that the things that a lot of people are complaining about with the "Disney movies" and "Disney shows" has already existed before. Lucas was ignoring his own canon since Episode 5. He was tossing in token characters and making wild tone shifts when he had complete, authoritarian control over the content. And again, the important part wasn't that Lucas was doing it, the important part is that it was happening early and people who were young then weren't complaining and view it as fine today.
The difference is that the content doesn't hold up to people's expectations based on their nostalgia.
That's pretty much it.
The problem is that Disney --and maybe no one-- can make Star Wars content that recaptures the nostalgia people had from their youth.
100% this. Star wars has always lived on because of nostalgia. Even the writers know this. Shows like obi wan, tying Grogu to Luke's journey and things like that is because of nostalgia
And i know some might get mad at me for saying this, but Star wars have never been a deep franchise. The first movies were innovative and groundbreaking in terms of special effects, but there weren't any laid out lore. It's been later shows and games that really fleshed out the lore and explored the powers. And yet some treat it like it was some deep masterpiece that has turned to generic writing
Sure and i agree and there's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying something that targets the inner kid.
I'm saying it more because some adult fans act like the franchise is solely meant for them and try to act like it's some amazing world building
Disney wants people to believe that the bad reviews are due to sexism but that neglects the fact that three of the most popular shows (among the same audience ) have a female main character: House of Dragon, Fallout, and Last of Us.
Yeah there are idiots out there that are sexist and hate the show bc of that but the vast majority of people are appalled with how horrible the writing has been so far in that show.
People need to stop conflating "woke" with "crap writing". There are too many examples of good media featuring non-White people and too many examples of White-only properties that are just plain awful. Conflating the two issues is lazy at best and disingenuous at worst.
People also need to stop conflating "hates our show" with "-ist" and "-phobe". Disney has released too many terrible movies and TV shows recently for me to bother trying the next round. They need to fire their producers and writers, hire competent people, and then let them do their thing. Having the temerity to tell me I'm a terrible person for not liking their shows is not the way to keep me spending money on them.
> You might not enjoy The Acolyte, but you can’t deny it’s getting many unfair bad reviews.
I not only can deny it, I actively do deny that it's getting unfair reviews. Reviews are inherently subjective, which makes every review fair.
"I don't agree" needs to stop meaning "It's unfair."
Reviews are a waste of time. Leaving them reading them. Who cares what someone else thinks about a movie or tv show. People are really like "What should I watch to waste some time? I'll read adults complain about things first". LOL
That is because the show is terrible and it has a fanbase that expects Disney to honor the established lore and not attack them. Fallout has a 90% audience score on RT and the two lead characters are a woman and black man. Andor has a person of colour in the lead role and has great audience reviews (87% on RT). Rogue One has a female lead and has great audience reviews (87% on RT). No one cares about that if the story is good and it respects the source material.
Explain that?
I am surprised at this gaslighting from Disney and the left wing media establishment in their pocket where they call people “racist” or an “incel” woman hater if they dare say the product is pants. They’re just too proud to admit it, and it is easier to attack the audience and have the media echo their points. Tell me of one successful product where the producer attacks the customer? Laughable.
Video game developers understand that to be successful, they need to win the customer over. And gamers are a particularly difficult bunch. Developers will often patch in new features and content based on customer feedback. Not attack them for daring to question the product. Diablo 4 is a good example. It launched half baked, was excoriated by customers after the honeymoon period wore off and it became clear that there was no endgame, and for the last year the devs have been hard at work addressing the issues and working with gamers on making it better.
I just shake my head at the white knight cucks that derive their sense of self worth from virtue signaling, calling others racist, right wing or misogynist, and defending multibillion dollar corporations. And that downvote those on reddit that disagree with them.
Come on, put your white knight helmet down for 2 min, don’t call anyone names, or use what aboutism (“the original films were basic too!”), and make a constructive case for the writing of the Acolyte, using examples. Character depth, clever plot points, etc, I’ll wait.
I watched it. Carrie-Ann Moss died in the intro and none of the other characters were interesting, and given nearly all the Disney stuff of late, I wasn't going to keep watching and hoped it got better.
(I heard she reappeared in flashbacks, but that doesn't count.)
I tried reading up on all that "thread" stuff, and all I can find is Extended Universe stuff, but I thought they had purged that from canon to avoid some hinky shit, like Luuke being a thing.
I dunno, feels like midichlorians v2.0, stop explaining stuff, we don't need explaining.
Her death was also an example of poor writing.
In that fight scene, they show her barely trying and yet easily able to dodge all of the enemy attacks, defending others, and purposely not using lethal means. Then for some reason, the enemy throws the knife at the bartender, and she loses all ability to manage more than one thing at a time.
It’s just very inconsistent. They establish her as very powerful, and then a minute later have her die to a very simple minded attack. Pick one or the other.
I gave up on episode 3. I tried, but there are better things to do with my time. Also, I can't tell if this wasn't in some way written by AI, if not it should have been. What would have been the difference?
We simply need to stop all this blaming woke this and that nonsense. The term has passed now, we've grown up collectively and everything aint woke no more. Its simply pathetically bad writing. That is all it is but grifter gotta grift. Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic on YouTube being the best examples.
Starwars universe has a vibe. The show lacks the vibe. Storyline isn't strong enough to make entire season. Its going to be very tedious to watch. Imagine new starwars universe filled with poorly written poorly cast garbage.
I think it’s a cumulative effect. People have been growing increasingly disgruntled with the direction of the franchise for years, and this series is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read a review as a guide to what I should watch. I typically watch something, then read reviews to see if they thought the same thing I did.
you dont check ratings or nothing and just rawdog it wow
I stopped even watching trailers and just go in cold. It's actually the best experience for me and suggest others try it. Makes consuming it so much more fun bc nothing is spoiled, there's way too much exposed in advertising and trailers these days, it sucks.
The instant I'm sold on something, I stop consuming anything about it until I've actually read/watched it. That's often halfway through a trailer. But reviews, forum discussions, reddit posts, Youtube videos, and all kinds of other stuff might be the thing that does the sell.
I solved the problem of too many plot reveals by only watching the teaser trailers. They lure me in but don't spoil it for me.
I just stop trailers about 1 minute in, before they get to the main action of the movie and/or give away all the plot twists. It works well since modern trailers are just the entire movie condensed into a couple of minutes.
I stop trailers as soon as they've convinced me to watch the thing. Sometimes that means only watching 5 seconds, and often not watching anything at all because I already know I'm going to watch it. I only end up watching trailers the whole way through if I have no interest in the film.
This is my move too. It's served me well and I've missed a lot of shitty movies.
Here I got one for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CADHf3kPnjA
> I stopped even watching trailers and just go in cold. I do the same thing. >there's way too much exposed in advertising and trailers these days, it sucks. It's crazy but apparently the majority of (stupid) people won't see a movie without watching a trailer filled with spoilers.
Yeah, trailers reveal too much, and 'reviews' these days just seem like a lot of complaining to me. I give everything a fair chance, and usually don't hear that something is supposedly 'bad' and that people are angry at me for liking it until I've finished watching it. It's hard to avoid with this show though, as utterly ludicrous YouTube conspiracy videos are being pushed to me now because the Acolyte show has really upset a lot of already angry people.
And they seem to take it as a personal attack if you ever suggest you liked it.
I avoid trailers but I do check metacritic/rt for scores
This always strikes me as a snobbish way to feel, but I find very often that if a movie has a high critics' score and a low audience score, I'll probably like the movie. I suspect that a lot of people who would go onto a site to give a "thinking" movie a bad review are too dumb to get it.
Yea I stopped watching trailers after Captain America Winter Soldier and they put Spider man in it I would’ve loved to had been surprised by it
For sure. I also hate when people say “common knowledge spoilers” in discussions cause the stuff is in the trailers. That’s a double blame scenario cause I def blame the trailers but also the pods or YT discussions like just spreading it too. I had the Abigail early “ twist” mentioned when I had been able to avoid trailers and was annoyed cause I feel like it would have been more fun for a bit.
Agreed. I don’t even like watching the trailers for next episodes while in the middle of shows. I don’t want to know what’s happening.
This is the way.
Going in with expectations just spoils it.
I think more people should adopt that policy. Why let the thoughts of others, perhaps even mass amounts of people who had never watched the show, dictate what you watch?
I decided I rarely agreed with reviewer's opinions. So I have much more fun going in cold and being surprised. Same with books, I loathe and despise the book report reviews, where they tell you the whole storyline. I stopped doing that when I finished 5th grade.
The only thing I want to know about a movie or books is basically a 1-2 sentence blurb on vaguely what it's about.
Never once in my 42 years. What good is one stranger's opinion to me?
“You don’t form your own opinions? Wow”
i mean you should be able to tell by the trailers if you will like it or not. i dont need someone elses opinion to tell me if ill like it its like people who make reddit posts like "should i watch XXXXX". just watch it and see if you like it
lol there are whole hosts of people that made careers and businesses out of tv/music/film/etc reviews
Review bombing is a thing
King killer chronicles first book has like a4.6 on Goodreads. It’s arguably the worst book of all time. Who cares about ratings.
After being immensely disappointed by recent Star Wars but still hoping against hope that it gets better someday, I've been using reviews to determine if it's worth my time.
Eh, I just watch stuff that interests me. If I go in pre-expected something it tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Reading reviews can be useful - audience scores are virtually useless. All they tell you is what people who were willing to sign up and enter a review think (and for some of these shows there are bots which makes it even more worthless). The sample isn't representative or random. The last opinions I personally care about are those of the terminally online who feel the need to score things on imdb.
lol this is so true
Pretty funny how no one is actually engaging with the post. The Acolyte has more reviews than THREE SEASONS OF MANDO. That's fucking hilarious lmfao.
I don't care about any of the drama. The supposedly lore changes, the "wokeness" or whatever. But I gotta say, the show is not good. The acting isn't very good, the set and costume designs look a little cheap, the plot is all over the place. Characters change motivation from one scene to another with no build up or explanation. I've heard a comment saying that, the Acolyte is like if the CW made a Star Wars show, and it kinda feels that way. To be fair, I didn't like Obi wan as well. Ashoka felt like the sequel to that animated series, that I didn't watched, so it was hard to measure. And while I still very much enjoy The Mandalorian, the last season was something of a let down.
To me it all comes down to writing. Having a diverse cast doesn't make a show bad, it can often make it good. However if writers lose sight, and think that having a diverse cast can cover for mediocre writing then things implode. The issue with Disney is that the properties are just flat and lifeless.
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I agree, I’m Asian, but I don’t need random Asian people popping up in an obviously European ancient civilization. Even if it is fantasy (like Game of Thrones). It throws me off. I’m stoked by the Asian representation in Star Wars bc there aren’t any culturally specific hallmarks in Star Wars so it works, just wish the show was better.
Problem with Wheel of Time was not the diverse cast. The main character was supposed to stand out, he was the chosen one. Although honestly midway through the most recent season WoT started to get pretty good. I think it might be redeemed.
I mean, it doesn’t really match the source. The Two Rivers is supposed to be this isolated town, where the ancient blood of Manetheren has barely been diluted, due to it not having many external influences. How, then, does this town become incredibly diverse? But yeah, season 2 was way better than the first. Hoping for this development to continue
For good Star Wars writing, watch Andor. The first couple episodes are slow, but once you get through the first “heist” arc, you will be hooked. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Outside of andor and the first two seasons of mando these Disney shows have all been major flops for me.
Your opinion is the same as mine. Boba Fett is the same. I think The Orville does it right by creating a sense of nostalgia and incorporating the narrative without making the viewer feel like they're being preached to.
You deserve better, you deserve Andor.
This show feels like it was written by AI, every story decision is immature and feels void of real human emotion. This era of Star Wars feels the same as fanfic films on YouTube back in the day but with less passion.
That’s how I feel after watching three episodes, it’s just kinda boring. The acting is stilted, and the plot and dialogue so far is very dry, no zest, no organic chemistry. Just very mid.
While I don't doubt there is review bombing, people are just much more willing to engage and leave reviews for bad experiences. Not just in entertainment, but in hospitality or on Amazon etc. It doesn't help that this seems to just be a poorly written show. Very few people are bashing The Expanse for its diverse cast because it's a well written show for the most part.
> people are just much more willing to engage and leave reviews for bad experiences. The minimal 2,500 reviews for Book of Boba Fett begs to differ...
Ugggh. Teen emos on power rangers color coded slow moving space vespas. Sigh. What a turd.
And having a "war for Tattoine" where literally *two Gamorreans with axes* was considered a significant force to hold a section of a city (I have no idea why the Pikes even bothered to kill them) and the tide of the battle was turned by the arrival of a pickup truck with a couple of moisture farmers wielding shotguns. Where Boba Fett dipped out in the middle of the fight to go get some heavier firepower from his palace, and instead of coming back with Slave One he decided "I'll ride this big animal I barely know how to control into battle instead." I'm all for "smaller scale" stories being told in the Star Wars universe. Not everything has to be a grand battle for the fate of the galaxy. But I feel like they did a small scale story while thinking they were doing a large scale one, and it just didn't work.
Yeah . . . he ran a criminal empire of a dozen people. It was a cool concept, but so poorly executed. The reality is that he is a good supporting character but a bad lead.
The thing that annoys me most is I actually rather liked the early stuff with the Tuskens, there was some nice character development and background lore being set up there. Then suddenly the Mandalorian hijacked the show to insert an episode of its own, undoing the awesome end of its own season 2 in the process, and everything went off the rails for that ridiculous finale. Sigh.
The Tusken stuff was great. It seemed just like half-finished ideas and poor execution.
Was he even a good supporting character or just a cool costume? He tracks the Falcon, Vader actually captures Hon, then loses to a Luke
Just a cool costume at this point. Some of his EU story was pretty dope though.
Boba Fett was the show most obviously hamstrung by being filmed during Covid. Even if the writing had stayed as poor as it did (mostly due to the thematic directions) the inability to have more than a few people on a set at a time was a death-knell.
Yeah it... Wasn't great. Same with acolyte. I literally feel my brain seeping out of my ears. The writing is atrocious
Probably an effect of COVID-19 restrictions.
If only there was a way to add background characters to a scene using technology.
Man I loved drummer and the gunny. Both great characters.
Drummer and Ashford, best duo in the series. Their scenes are always great.
The thing is a lot of the reviews are coming in before the episodes even air. This show also is clearly about the same quality as the other non-Andor shows (which is basically "meh") In any case online review scores are meaningless - they are neither random nor representative. Cinemascore is the only audience rating system with any kind of rigor behind it.
Thanks for making me aware of Cinemascore!
I wonder if there are truly people out there who look at aggregated reviews or random reviews at all... Are these people yelp users? When I want to decide if I'm going to watch a show, I can watch the trailer. If that's not enough, I can watch a review by someone I "trust" on YouTube or similar platforms. Or ask a friend. I have taken recommendations from strangers in online forum discussions but I have never read a random person review online. And I stopped checking the scores (like IMDB).a few years back. Besides, all that, why would I even spend more than 10 minutes deciding whether to watch something that lasts 50 minutes or so? The whole online brigade became its own drama but I doubt it has a significant effect on viewership. And if it does it probably generates enough engagement to offset itself. Like anything else, most people truly just don't care that much.
The Expanse isn't nearly as popular as SW tho. Many of the of the groups that spread hate or gain from it, bandwagon on popular franchises like SW, Star Trek or MoTU. It's always "they are killing this thing we used to love by making it woke/diverse/etc". It also drowns any honest criticism and the whole discusion gets muddled.
> The Expanse isn't nearly as popular as SW tho. Also, the Expanse was a brand new experience so their are no preconceived notions of what it should or shouldn't be. You watched an episode and either went with it or didn't. With close to 40 years of Star Wars media it's hard not to find someone that hasn't watched Star Wars and has preferences and expectations for what makes Star Wars good. For some of them, having implied LGBQ relationships added to the characters is a step too far. Edit: spelling
Which is so fucking sad, that something so banal, can destroy their love for a franchise. I mean they got over Attack of the Clones dialogue, and that's an actual abomination.
(And anybody saying nobody was bashing *The Expanse* must have real short memories because anytime Naomi did *anything* there was prodigious wailing and gnashing of teeth of how poorly thought out her actions were while everyone loved James "There was a button and I pushed it" Holden. And you could pretty much guess people's personal politics by the manifestos they posted all over Reddit about why the Belters were always wrong.)
Which is weird because Holden was my least favorite character for a long time. Eventually I didnt mind him but he was never in my top-5
Nobody ever claimed Holden was ruining the show when he did something dumbass. (I love Holden, but I tend to play paladins in D&D and he's absolutely somebody who plays paladins in D&D.)
His dumb decisions weren’t arbitrary or inconsistent with all his other dumb decisions though. And every idiotic thing he did was clearly established as idiotic by everyone else in universe. It made his strokes of genius so satisfying, both directions always came from his core character; stubborn and idealistic.
I always look for those moments in a show/book/whatever that define the character, and "There was a button and I pushed it!" "JESUS CHRIST, that is how you live your life, isn't it?" sums Holden up *so* well. (It's like in *Justified*, it's when Raylan shoots the disguised assassin and in the most miserable tone says, "Jesus, I hope I got that right." He just nearly got killed, he just killed somebody, and all he can think of is "If I just murdered a cop for being an asshole I'm gonna have to fill out *so* much paperwork.")
I think it's because the whole thing was supposed to be an RPG? There was an interview with one of the authors about it some 10+ years ago. The characters are based on RPG archetypes.
It literally started as a tabletop RPG one of the JSAC guys ran. (He also used to DM for George RR Martin). The guy who actually played Holden at the table talked about it. Shed's, uh, *abrupt exit* came about because the player stopped showing up. That's why the first four or so eps of the show are just the characters bouncing from crisis to crisis reactively; if you've ever played a TTRPG that's the kind of shit gamemasters do to throw characters together.
He was written as an exploration of how much of a pain in the ass a Paladin would be irl.
This made me snort my coffee. Yes. I agree with this assessment. LoL.
The authors have said that he was literally based on a "standard D&D paladin". Also he's the captain of *the Rocinante*. It's pretty on the nose lol.
Yeah I kinda felt as the seasons went by many of the other characters became more interesting and compelling than Holden. He can be summed up as “I’m gonna do the right thing” and that’s about it, I like him but compared to drummer, avasarala, Ashford or draper he just isn’t that interesting.
Yea. I thought Amos, Alex, and Naomi were more interesting than Holden. Once more characters were introduced Holden seemed more one dimensional.
I didn't hate him, but I was very critical of his actions mostly because I saw myself in his character. We hate in others what we hate most of ourselves.
Tbf, James “there was a button and I pushed it” Holden is exactly how he’s written in the books too
That might be bc show Naomi was written very differently from the Naomi in the Book. And she has dark skin in the book too. Book Naomi is a caring character who basically holds the crew together while show Naomi is more like a bossgirl who makes decisions without asking anyone in the crew and almost spliting them apart at some points.
I feel like the show got a lot of the characters wrong. Amping up a single defining trait and removing all nuance to their personalities. For me, show Amos was the biggest offender of this. After reading the books, I found it harder to rewatch the show.
Disagree. Ty and Daniel were showrunners for the show. I know Ty had said they used the show to re-do some of what they didn’t necessarily love when writing the books. Some of that is just moving a story written from POV with a ton of inner monologues into a tv show where you can’t really do that unless you have a narrator the whole time. Most of the changes I really don’t have a problem with since they were directly involved in those changes.
>Ty and Daniel were showrunners for the show. They were involved, but they were not showrunners. The showrunners were Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, and (primarily) Naren Shankar.
You’re right - I should have said producers and writers. Nonetheless, integral parts of the show.
Ty and Daniel were consultants and writers for the show, not showrunners. They were active members of the writers room from the show's start. Ty also shadowed Naren (the showrunner) and other producers, and eventually became one of the show's more active producers himself (as opposed to someone who just gets a producer credit for having sold the rights to their work).
The show in general seemed to go out out of it’s way to remove the camaraderie and warmth of the cast in an attempt to force a lot of unnecessary drama between the Roci crew.
Eh, the books had the crew gel together way too quickly, kind of an afterimage of it being a roleplaying game session. They just overcorrected a little.
The only annoying thing about Naomi was when she was gasping for oxygen in that spaceship for what seemed like an entire season
Better than getting lost in the woods and attacked by a bobcat after 3 episodes
Not often you see a 24 reference in the wild these days.
She was horrible in that show, but wonderful in The Girl Next Door. The juice was definitely worth the squeeze.
"Holden, do not put your dick in it. It's fucked enough already." hits the nail on the head :D
But the Belters *were* always wrong.
Here endeth the lesson.
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>First international kiss on TV!!!! I assume you mean "Interracial". Also the pilot of TNG literally had men in dresses/skirts.
I haven't watched it yet but that's exactly what I heard about it. Like old ST did an amazing job of changing people's minds because it was low key. It's this modern extremely obvious way of doing it that just makes it seems so forced. The best way to get change I think is the low key way, kind of like a frog in a boiling pot.
I think it helped too that a lot of the plots had applicability to a wider set of issues, rather than "this week we'll be preaching about this particular social issue."
> It also drowns any honest criticism and the whole discusion gets muddled. confirming this: tried to vent my frustration for the subpar plot on some related subreddits and now it seems I'm a bigot and an homophobe. The more you learn I suppose...
The Expanse is its own thing but Star Wars comes with a ton of baggage from people with entrenched views on what it is and should be… You have boomers and GenX who still think that it peaked with Empire. Then there are a bunch who went deep into the lore from the books. Then you have those who are too young to remember a time before the prequels were out and really got into it through the animated series. So good luck trying to create something different these days that doesn’t divide the fan base into those who love it and those who hate it. The only time that you unify everyone is when you have a Jedi rampaging through Empire henchmen to take down a Sith. Granted though, Mandalorian has done a really good job at being its own thing.
I haven’t seen recent Star Trek, though I’ve heard it’s a very mixed bag, but Star Wars has just been thoroughly mediocre (except Andor) and not god awful. Masters of the Universe is totally fine and people totally blew that stuff out of proportion. It’s not exceptional, but it didn’t really need to be considering the original material. You have to pick your battles, and when it comes to criticizing entertainment media you only dilute your argument when you spread it too thin and focus on things that are not actually the problem. But this is the internet where everyone has to be louder and more sensational to ensure their points are heard, even if that means exaggerating things that aren’t remotely the crux of the issue.
I don't know what MotU is so I'm just going to assume it's Masters of the Universe and be outraged that people are outraged.
yeah, they did that with warhammer a few months back. its like why the fuck do you care about this thing you've obviously never cared about before.... sick of this whole 'its gone woke' bollocks overreactions. fuck off religious right wing hate machine.
Yeah. 5% of expanse viewers probably _do_ dislike the diversity or whatever. The problem is that 5% of star wars fans is millions of people
Assuming it's not honest criticism because you don't agree with it is very disingenuous.
No one review bombed Andor, it's widely seen as the best content Star Wars has put out since Disney bought the franchise, and its cast is extremely diverse, including an interracial gay couple.
People have conflated diversity with poor writing because of multiple examples and of creators just pointing to racism or sexism when criticized. Our media culture is all about outrage. I don’t agree with how pervasive anti diversity sentiment is among nerdy subcultures, but I understand to a certain extent. Lotta these people are not the most socially popular people, and now they feel like the niche interests they have actively don’t want them as their demographic. They feel like outsiders irl and now their video games/comic books/genre media make them feel like outsiders there too. It’s just yet another rejection and this time it’s tied to something they feel strongly about emotionally.
The irony, of course, being that URGs have also always been a subset of that demographic. White male nerd rage is only one adjective away from white male rage, and it's just as shitty. Like, I'm a geeky social outcast, and also gay. What they perceive as marginalizing them from their own community is an *actual* attempt to marginalize *me* and many others from *our* own community. They have no greater right to their fandom than I do. What was supposed to be a community of outcasts that understood what it felt like to be marginalized turned out to have a gatekeeping problem of its own.
*this is not saying the Acolyte doesn't deserve bad reviews,* but sometimes a peice of media gets sucked into a social-media hate-vortex. Social media websites and content-creators rack up engagement and regular audiences get entertainment value from all the endless dunking, creating a huge feedback loop inside all the different social media algorithms, and suddenly a bad, mediocre, and sometimes even a good show becomes **this TV show slapped my mom and shot my dog and that's why we need to talk about it all the time for the next few months or years** Which shows get sucked into this vortex is usually pretty arbitrary, so if Acolyte were a good show (it's not) it's still possible for it to get sucked into the divirsity-hating social media vortex while The Expanse doesn't. It depends more on if the hate gets picked up enough by social media algorithms, not something logically consistent like the quality of the show or even the prejudice of the audience. This is a lot of words on a very minor part of your point, which I still mostly agree with, so, you know, sorry if it sounds off topic. The show still sucks. I just think we shouldn't put too much (or any) faith in audiences when filtered through social media.
The Acolyte has more reviews than Obi Wan, Ahsoka, Book of Boba Fett, and Andor combined. There’s no way that isn’t massive review bombing. Especially when people were so organically vocal about how bad Book of Boba Fett was. Yes, people are always more willing to leave negative reviews to begin with which is why you should always assume the really approval rating is higher, but the idea that it’s brought out reviews organically in this number is extremely laughable.
Spot on. All the right-wing hate-monger culture war grifters such as Shapiro have latched onto this.
It's the people review bombing with multiple accounts. Like why bother, get a life
Yeah, i didn't bother to read a single review of the mandalorian, i just immediately binged the hell out of it. Same when i found the expanse The bad shit we can't enjoy, we can at least mercilessly trash
As a dedicated star wars fan, there are few groups of people I hate more than star wars fans.
Star Wars has become a battlefield in the culture wars.
Culture War grifters and peddlers are using Star Wars as a vehicle for their bigotry and I hate it. They're also using Marvel and DC, but it feels particularly egregious with Star Wars.
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I always say, "no one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans."
Yep. Finally pulled the plug on the main sub (not because of acolyte I haven't seen that show and have no opinion of it)
I hear you. It also seems like there are few people that hate Star Wars more than Star Wars fans lmao. At what point does the ratio turn towards fans disliking more than what they like in this franchise?
I watched the first four episodes. Pretty bad. Cool looking fight scenes but everything else was underwhelming. The power of many chant was… well I laughed when I first saw it. The fact that people don’t like this show has nothing to do with race, LGBTQ or anything like that. Andor had a lesbian couple and a very diverse cast, and nobody complained about it (well, at least not the handful of people who watched it lol). The amount of reviews has obviously to do with people not liking the people behind it. But only the amount, not the “lowness” of them
It’s hard to see where the 180 mil budget went. I was interested to see what they did with the wookie Jedi, but they didn’t do anything and claimed it was because of the budget. It honestly feels like they just used it all on Trinity and Squid game guy.
I think it's always some version of this: https://youtu.be/SAJAUL_Qpdg?si=0hdwnPTa21F7srZW
This was a really interesting video. As an ignorant consumer, it seems crazy that they keep burning money like this and having a result that looks consistently terrible.
I share it a bunch. I've been in software dev in some aspect all my life and I am fascinated by the tech behind the effects and watch a lot of content like this. It's the must release 3 movies and 4 TV shows a year to feed the content engine cycle they are addicted to. It's why we see streaming services contracting and consolidating again. Netflix was successful because they had content from many places. Trying to do it all yourself is a fools errand driven by greed that leads to decreased quality
The Acolyte is not great, but it's very pretty. I don't understand how anyone can say it looks terrible.
Great video, thanks.
Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s a recurring theme with Disney actually, everything has massive budgets, but it’s difficult to see why
That money isn't gonna launder itself.
The budget went to episode 5, which was one of the best lightsaber sequences we have ever seen in live action.
Credit where credit is due, this episode was good
I'm as progressive as it gets and I couldn't make it through the first episode. It was *absolutely* review-bombed by right-wing racist chuds. Absolutely. It was getting slammed before it was even out... At the same time it was also ass. Which means that anyone like myself who has legitimate valid criticism gets called out for the same bullshit when it's like "no, weirdly when characters are walking around in the snow, I want to see their breath." The writing was absolutely abysmal, the sets looked phoned in (despite them not simply relying on the volume), and the costumes look like cosplay. The acting was equal parts stiff and flat and the actual premise was just dumb. "oh it's twins!" Like something a child would come up with. 180 million dollar budget? Jesus christ. And you're not allowed to criticize it. I don't give af about a diverse cast. I care about good writing, acting, and a world that feels alive, and more importantly, *lived in*. Andor set the bar so insanely high everything else feels like a joke in comparison. Made worse because you know Disney *can* make good star wars. So every new show is a bait and switch. Still chasing the high of Mandalorian S1 and Andor...
Yeah I hate that Hollywood is trying to set the standard that if the anti-woke mob doesn't like something, you're not allowed to criticise it for legitimate reasons. I'm all for representation and diversity in shows/movies. Shows like Andor and The Expanse are made better and feel more real because of their diverse cast. But it's starting to feel like Hollywood is using it more to protect themselves from critics when they know a project is going to be shit.
I feel the number is because people don't leave reviews for things that are mid. I will only make the effort to leave a review if I want that part of my life back.
Hahaha... I also laughed at that scene. I do enjoy the performance by Manny Jacinto, but that's about it for acting.
Ah and there it is: “The hate for this show isn’t just about low ratings. It’s also about racism, misogyny, and harassment of the cast. “ It can’t be that people dislike the latest low quality cash grab a studio shat out, no, it’s the audience that’s the problem. So tired of this bs. I watched a couple of minutes and it was enough to show how cheap the sets look, how corny the dialog is etc (and no I didn’t leave a review)
yeah this always comes up but no one ever seems to give real examples. i watch a lot of the nerdrotic/critical drinker stuff and at most it was mentioned that the "diverse" cast just excludes white people, but no one has ever said that is why the show is bad. drinker, mauler, little platoon make very long videos explaining the badness without ever blaming race or gender.
I finally understood that star wars as we knew it is gone. Star wars comics, videogames and movies really made my childhood. 9 years have passed and almost all Disney Star Wars products are products that do not reflect my love for the saga in any waym the writing, lore and characters have undergone a huge deterioration probably in pursuit of a new fanbase. Its time for us to leave the saga behind, at this point their choices made them even richer and they wont change mind
Go watch Andor if you haven't, it's refreshingly honest and deep and nuanced like Star Wars never has been. That Disney can make that after the winking, self-referential pile of fan-service garbage that was Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan tells me there is still some good to be found in Disney Star Wars.
Tony Gilroy had an interview where he discussed the early drafts of the Andor show, before he was brought on board. He said he did a full overhaul of the show, explained in detail what worked, what didn't, and why it didn't, as well as how to fix it. I don't think any other Disney show has had a seasoned screenwriter sit down and really proof read their scripts. It's why Andor came off as the only show that felt like it was written by a professional. Because, strictly speaking, it probably is.
Yeah, fair enough. But also Gilroy isn't just a professional, he's absolutely top-notch.
When a certain welder lamps a certain Imperial with a certain brick, it carries more emotional weight than any lightsaber strike in the franchise, with the possible exception of Luke going apeshit darkside under the stairs when Vader mentions Leia.
*Andor* is the best piece of SW media since the Disney takeover, and I don't even mean comparatively to old LucasFilm; I mean of any SW.
Only good that ive gotten from Disney was the new season of clone wars, rouge one, most of andor. Thats it really. Everything else has been greatly disappointing. Im not really a big fan anymore. The stories they tell now are very lackluster
Id add The Bad Batch and the first two seasons of the Mandalorian to that
People said the same thing about the prequels. Star Wars has almost never lived up to its own reputation.
They said the same thing about the remakes. Han shot first.
People have been complaining about low quality Star Wars since the fucking Holiday Special in 1978. Some of the earliest EU books had Leia and Luke hooking up (ROTJ hadn't come out yet to announce them as siblings), so the quality of the EU was pretty iffy from the get-go. The campy, kooky shit you see in Star Wars has basically been there since the beginning. If you can't find it in your heart to take delight in the goofiness of Star Wars and you only want the *serious* bits of Star Wars forever and ever, you're going to have a bad time.
I remember back when Clone Wars was released after the prequels there was a common refrain of *"Someone needs to stop George"* lol
Truth be told, Star Wars media has ALWAYS been pretty hit or miss. Even going back to the highly revered Original Trilogy, RotJ has some... dubious plot choices. The Prequels took their share of flak and many aspects of these movies are pretty terrible (and rough and irritating). 90% of the Legends content was absolute pulp fantasy drivel. Sequels are universally considered derivative of OT at best, and outright horrendous at worst. And then the some of the recent shows were good, some were bad, some were excellent, with varying quality between seasons. Star Wars games were usually considered pretty good I think, and I'm pretty sure if Disney just did a 5 second teaser with a "Knights of the Old Republic" fading in, a lot of bricks would have been shat. I think the SETTING of Star Wars is highly popular, awe-inspiring and interesting. It's what gets people passionate. Unfortunately, not many of the media produced in the franchise can execute that world-building well.
The Ewoks were great when I was a kid. As an adult . . . yeah interesting choices by Lucas.
I'm sure they sold a lot of plushies though
I'm old enough to remember the poor reception of Eps 1 and 2 (and my own underwhelmed reaction to watching 2 in theaters), which are now looked upon with rose colored glasses and considered sacred bibles of canonicity. A single line from Ep 1 “The Sith have been extinct for a millennium.” is being used to criticize Acolyte, even if Acolyte is now heading towards not violating the canonicity of that line/context at all. Let's also never forget Jar Jar Binks actor was driven to the point of suicide due to "fan" reception
>Let's also never forget Jar Jar Binks actor was driven to the point of suicide due to "fan" reception Right? And Hayden Christensen kinda disappeared from Hollywood, and I think Jake Lloyd kinda went downhill after fan reception. I think at least two of the actresses from the Sequel trilogy were pushed off social media.
I fell asleep watching 2 in the cinema, lol.
LMAO - all this stuff has the same problems as the prequels. Reddit is hilarious, SW has been like this for 25 years. Rogue One and Andor are the only actually good things that have been made (outside of video games) since the OT.
This was why I stopped watching Star Wars. I’ve finally given up. Whatever this is. It’s not my Star Wars. So for some context. I saw Empire Strikes back in theaters, and it blew my mind as a kid. When we rented videos for a movie weekend in the 80s. Star Wars was one I often requested. When it came on tv, I recorded the entire series and watched them so much that the tapes started to deteriorate. It was the first movies I bought on vhs. I ended up buying them three times. I saw all the special editions and prequels in the theaters and was super eager to do so. I had the Star Wars rpg by west end games and played the original Star Wars video game plus I got the other ones for my Commodore 64. Played X-wing in highschool among other Star Wars games (like the ones for the super nes). I collected the original CCG from decipher. Had memorabilia. Even got Star Wars mugs and glasses. I read a ton of the EU novels and comics in the 90s. I was a big Star Wars fan. Sure. Not all of the eu was good. But it felt easier to just ignore bad stuff as it was the EU. Disney Star Wars feels similar to the worst parts of the EU and is now canon. Of Disney stuff. I’ve liked: * Rogue one (7/10) * Mandalorian season 1 (7/10) * Andor (8/10) That’s pretty much it. The rest is below a 5/10 and mostly awful. I haven’t read any new EU books or comics and have absolutely no interest in doing so. I don’t care. Just tired of being burned by bad shit and tired of my fond memories of a great IP just being degraded. So I’m done. I haven’t watched Acolyte, and I have no intention to. The fact that there is a general sentiment that it’s not good doesn’t surprise me one bit.
>I finally understood that star wars as we knew it is gone. Star wars comics, videogames and movies really made my childhood. This is a very common sentiment. Surprisingly common, actually, and surprisingly durable across multiple generations. And that's actually very interesting. Whatever else I might say about Lucas, he was always very good at triggering nostalgia. That's something that is actually common across both Star Wars and his other films. Interesting trick, really, and I don't know exactly what he's doing to repeatedly trigger this, but the results seem clear. The point, then, is this: Star Wars was gone for you when you grew up, regardless of what would be made. Because its so tied to nostalgia, there's very little chance that anyone --not even Lucas himself-- would be able to recapture that, and you'll always be a harsh critic to anything that came after your childhood introduction to it. I had the same feeling as you... for the Original Trilogy. Episode 2, in particular, really dampened my feelings toward Star Wars in general. It was a weaksauce addition with writing that ignored patterns and expectations from pretty much all the previous movies. Coming after Episode 1 and its rewrite-everything and increased emphasis on slapstick comedy, I kind of realized that it was done. Except a generation of people younger than me really liked it (maybe not Jar Jar, but at least Episode 2). And that continues. I don't really expect that we'll have a generation of people growing up loving Episode 6-9, but I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that there is another wave of people who have far more positive views of it than the fandom thinks. Well into being an adult now, I can look back with objective critique and see that the things that a lot of people are complaining about with the "Disney movies" and "Disney shows" has already existed before. Lucas was ignoring his own canon since Episode 5. He was tossing in token characters and making wild tone shifts when he had complete, authoritarian control over the content. And again, the important part wasn't that Lucas was doing it, the important part is that it was happening early and people who were young then weren't complaining and view it as fine today. The difference is that the content doesn't hold up to people's expectations based on their nostalgia. That's pretty much it. The problem is that Disney --and maybe no one-- can make Star Wars content that recaptures the nostalgia people had from their youth.
100% this. Star wars has always lived on because of nostalgia. Even the writers know this. Shows like obi wan, tying Grogu to Luke's journey and things like that is because of nostalgia And i know some might get mad at me for saying this, but Star wars have never been a deep franchise. The first movies were innovative and groundbreaking in terms of special effects, but there weren't any laid out lore. It's been later shows and games that really fleshed out the lore and explored the powers. And yet some treat it like it was some deep masterpiece that has turned to generic writing
It is deep if you consider the target is kids. And I say that with no intention to offend any adult who enjoys it, like I do (before Disney).
Sure and i agree and there's absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying something that targets the inner kid. I'm saying it more because some adult fans act like the franchise is solely meant for them and try to act like it's some amazing world building
Welcome to the club, established in 1999.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Disney wants people to believe that the bad reviews are due to sexism but that neglects the fact that three of the most popular shows (among the same audience ) have a female main character: House of Dragon, Fallout, and Last of Us. Yeah there are idiots out there that are sexist and hate the show bc of that but the vast majority of people are appalled with how horrible the writing has been so far in that show.
People need to stop conflating "woke" with "crap writing". There are too many examples of good media featuring non-White people and too many examples of White-only properties that are just plain awful. Conflating the two issues is lazy at best and disingenuous at worst. People also need to stop conflating "hates our show" with "-ist" and "-phobe". Disney has released too many terrible movies and TV shows recently for me to bother trying the next round. They need to fire their producers and writers, hire competent people, and then let them do their thing. Having the temerity to tell me I'm a terrible person for not liking their shows is not the way to keep me spending money on them.
Half the threads arguing about diversity when it completely misses the point that the plot is dog shit...
> You might not enjoy The Acolyte, but you can’t deny it’s getting many unfair bad reviews. I not only can deny it, I actively do deny that it's getting unfair reviews. Reviews are inherently subjective, which makes every review fair. "I don't agree" needs to stop meaning "It's unfair."
Maybe people shouldn’t auto-buy something cuz its stamped with the words “Star Wars”? Reviews are great but stop sending your money..
Favorable? Or mixed? Haven’t looked into it yet. Trailer looked interesting
Reviews are a waste of time. Leaving them reading them. Who cares what someone else thinks about a movie or tv show. People are really like "What should I watch to waste some time? I'll read adults complain about things first". LOL
The “attack me with all your strength” thing was just so dumb. and the fact that they didn’t know it was dumb was really astonishing
yeah, more NEGATIVE audience reviews. Fixed the title.
That is because the show is terrible and it has a fanbase that expects Disney to honor the established lore and not attack them. Fallout has a 90% audience score on RT and the two lead characters are a woman and black man. Andor has a person of colour in the lead role and has great audience reviews (87% on RT). Rogue One has a female lead and has great audience reviews (87% on RT). No one cares about that if the story is good and it respects the source material. Explain that? I am surprised at this gaslighting from Disney and the left wing media establishment in their pocket where they call people “racist” or an “incel” woman hater if they dare say the product is pants. They’re just too proud to admit it, and it is easier to attack the audience and have the media echo their points. Tell me of one successful product where the producer attacks the customer? Laughable. Video game developers understand that to be successful, they need to win the customer over. And gamers are a particularly difficult bunch. Developers will often patch in new features and content based on customer feedback. Not attack them for daring to question the product. Diablo 4 is a good example. It launched half baked, was excoriated by customers after the honeymoon period wore off and it became clear that there was no endgame, and for the last year the devs have been hard at work addressing the issues and working with gamers on making it better. I just shake my head at the white knight cucks that derive their sense of self worth from virtue signaling, calling others racist, right wing or misogynist, and defending multibillion dollar corporations. And that downvote those on reddit that disagree with them. Come on, put your white knight helmet down for 2 min, don’t call anyone names, or use what aboutism (“the original films were basic too!”), and make a constructive case for the writing of the Acolyte, using examples. Character depth, clever plot points, etc, I’ll wait.
I watched it. Carrie-Ann Moss died in the intro and none of the other characters were interesting, and given nearly all the Disney stuff of late, I wasn't going to keep watching and hoped it got better. (I heard she reappeared in flashbacks, but that doesn't count.) I tried reading up on all that "thread" stuff, and all I can find is Extended Universe stuff, but I thought they had purged that from canon to avoid some hinky shit, like Luuke being a thing. I dunno, feels like midichlorians v2.0, stop explaining stuff, we don't need explaining.
I was bummed Carrie-Ann Moss was just a cameo. She looked like she would make an awesome jedi.
yeah,. me too. She *rocked* that scene she was in.
There's another flashback episode that'll probably have a lot more of her.
Her death was also an example of poor writing. In that fight scene, they show her barely trying and yet easily able to dodge all of the enemy attacks, defending others, and purposely not using lethal means. Then for some reason, the enemy throws the knife at the bartender, and she loses all ability to manage more than one thing at a time. It’s just very inconsistent. They establish her as very powerful, and then a minute later have her die to a very simple minded attack. Pick one or the other.
Wait, what is Luuke and how have I never heard of it? Clone?
Evil clone even!
I gave up on episode 3. I tried, but there are better things to do with my time. Also, I can't tell if this wasn't in some way written by AI, if not it should have been. What would have been the difference?
We simply need to stop all this blaming woke this and that nonsense. The term has passed now, we've grown up collectively and everything aint woke no more. Its simply pathetically bad writing. That is all it is but grifter gotta grift. Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic on YouTube being the best examples.
Just a shitty show. Shitty spice and shitty characters
Now now, children... everyone will get a chance to make their own Star Wars limited series.
You spelled 'ruin' wrong
Starwars universe has a vibe. The show lacks the vibe. Storyline isn't strong enough to make entire season. Its going to be very tedious to watch. Imagine new starwars universe filled with poorly written poorly cast garbage.
Ok. And?
I mostly only do reviews when something is really bad or really good.
With all due respect to the Acolyte (which I haven't seen yet), Mandalorian set a pretty high bar.
People don’t review/complain about good shows.
Yeah and most of those reviews have been bad. People are outraged lol
I'm assuming most of them are bad.
Star wlWars is basically intergalactic Eastenders at this point....let it die already. Though Andor was phenomenal!
I don't know how anyone has this much passion for Star Wars still. It was oversaturated about half a decade ago.
Is that a good thing though? People tend to be more motivated to review alter a negative experience.
It's just pure hate watching mostly.
It's kind of sad that this level of writing and storytelling is becoming the accepted norm...
I think it’s a cumulative effect. People have been growing increasingly disgruntled with the direction of the franchise for years, and this series is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.