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Ultimately I tried to finish Acolyte, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. It's such an ass plot (I swear to god the guy playing Qimr knew it too, he just warned us too late) and it's somehow manages to be told in a way that makes it worse.
I'll just put my rant in spoilers so everyone can skip it at their leisure.
Spoiler:
I feel like somewhere, there is a fan cut of the Acolyte that manages to make the entire story no longer than 3 hours at the most, and it would still be a mediocre movie. The plot is so thin. I look back at the 7 episodes I did finish and wonder how on earth they needed 8 episodes to tell the story until I realized the time warp.
The time warp.
I complained about it in the first two episodes, but the time warp doesn't stop there. For a show built like people have super advanced teleportation technology, it's amazing you never see anyone actually using it. They just appear places in ways that don't make any sense. This show exists in a time warp where people appear wherever they need to be for the set piece to happen or the sweeping vista. Why? feth you that's why and feth the budget (no wonder this show was so ungodly expensive, it's so outright wasteful)! Mae's on forest planet now and Osha is on Coruscant, but don't worry, Osha will gather a party of red shirts and get to forest planet and arrive at point B on the map at the same time Mae does even though that makes absolutely no fething sense given Mae's head start (with time for Sol to rehash an argument with green lady he already had to boot). Same way Osha and Sexy Ass, the most unimpressively managed plot twist since Palpatine being evil, manage to get to a ship and go to a whole other planet all in the time it takes Mae and Sol to hobble back to his ship and a few hours will pass for them which is all the time it takes for the green skin girl to gather up a whole other party of probably red shirts and go to forest planet and then no doubt arrive on yet another plent entirely, all in the time it takes about fifteen minutes of dialogue to happen for everyone else.
You know, if this show wasn't so damn sloppy, lazy, and incompetently shot, you could cut a lot of utterly meaningless and not worthwhile content from it, save money, and at least salvaged some semblance of the story in a fraction of the time.
This is what happens when you write something with absolutely no respect for continuity. The plot explodes because you're shooting vistas on location and set pieces you never needed in the first place (and that aren't even that good to begin with). It won't fix that Mae and Osha are the blandest pair of characters in this franchise since the High Republic introduced a whole gaggle of them, but at least you'd cut out the waste and focus more on the only parts of this show that were probably worth anything; Sol and Qimr. I have to give it to Qimr. Qimr probably could have carried a show or movie entirely on his own given the chance but fat chance of that happening now. Sol was good until the plot twist that he genocided an entire tribe of people because he became unfathomably obsessed with a pre-adolescent girl a few minutes after meeting her was just so blindingly stupid I didn't care anymore. My head canon is settled. Sol was a pedophile. The Jedi are evil. Palpatine was right all along.
There are shows that are cancelled before their time, shows I never cared about and don't care were cancelled, and then there's the Acolyte, which I think is just generally a waste of a program for everyone and could have been written off and never aired to save money on taxes and it would have been a better timeline.
/rant
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2025/06/13 21:06:02
Agree completely. The Acolyte was utter garbage, even worse than the Kenobi show or Book of Boba.
My armies (re-counted and updated on 11/7/24, including modeled wargear options):
Dark Angels: ~16000 Astra Militarum: ~1200 | Imperial Knights: ~2300 | Leagues of Votann: ~1300 | Tyranids: ~3400 | Stormcast Eternals: ~5000 | Kruleboyz: ~3500 | Lumineth Realm-Lords: ~700
Check out my P&M Blogs: ZergSmasher's P&M Blog | Imperial Knights blog | Board Games blog | Total models painted in 2024: 40 | Total models painted in 2025: 23 | Current main painting project: Tomb Kings
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Will also chime in and say the The Acolyte was complete ass. Had something that could’ve been somewhat interesting, but it was a complete and total failure.
Easily the worst of Disney Star Wars.
"Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning." - The Emperor, from The Outcast Dead.
"Tell your gods we are coming for them, and that their realms will burn as ours did." -Thostos Bladestorm
ZergSmasher wrote: Agree completely. The Acolyte was utter garbage, even worse than the Kenobi show or Book of Boba.
Wait. Kenobi is bad too? That's what I was leaning towards until Skeleton Crew was brought to my attention.
Yeeeep, despite what some of the Disney fanatics might tell you on this forum, Kenobi is mediocre at best and incredibly cartoonish (in a bad way) and borderline canon-breaking at worst. It really wastes Ewan McGregor's return to his role in Obi-Wan and tries to shoe horn in a bunch of random stuff that can't affect the timeline of what happens before a New Hope but basically has Obi Wan interact with a bunch of people he really shouldn't be in contact with (e.g. Leia & Vader). It also doesn't help that the execution for a lot of scenes are incredibly amateur (look up the Leia chase scene for Obi Wan and you'll see a bunch of memed videos of how dumb it is that full grown bounty hunters can't chase down a 8 year old little girl in basically an open area and you can also see the Looney Tunes esque attempt of Obi Wan smuggling Leia in his undercoat). Obi Wan himself, despite being the titular character, gets sidelined for a new character who wastes a bunch of time on a nonsensical revenge plot. A lot of the memes of the Disney era where being stabbed in the chest/abdomen is only apparently only lethal if you're a Qui-Gon got largely started from this show since there's a bunch of terrible fakeout deaths based around that.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
nels1031 wrote: Will also chime in and say the The Acolyte was complete ass. Had something that could’ve been somewhat interesting, but it was a complete and total failure.
Easily the worst of Disney Star Wars.
Only Disney Star Wars could make the concept of a lesbian space coven of witches both incredibly boring and cringey.
But I guess that's due to the power of not one, nor two bad writers, but the power of maaaaaaannnnny.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/06/14 06:16:53
ZergSmasher wrote: Agree completely. The Acolyte was utter garbage, even worse than the Kenobi show or Book of Boba.
I've maybe softened on Kenobi. It wasn't good, but it wasn't atrocious, and definitely not offensively bad.
Boba is still bad, but at least Boba edges close to 'WTF is this lol' bad. Mostly in the first five episodes.
Also, just as an aside because I rewatched it recently, anyone ever laugh out loud in Attack of the Clones when Mace Windu asks if the Kaminoans are involved in the plot to assassinate Senator Amidala, and Obi-Wan says 'no master there's no motive' and then no one, ever, ever ever ever, points out 'except for the massive clone army they've been making at great expense ostensibly for the republic which is kind of oddly well timed for the current army appropriations bill in the senate which Senator Amidala opposes, which is actually super weird and kind of extremely suspicious now that I think about it.'
I still really really hate how poorly handled the whole 'plot to destroy the Jedi' was because I never don't find more reasons how it just makes the Jedi and everyone else look insanely stupid that they were never suspicious about how the Clone Army came into existence in the first place despite all the warning signs that something wasn't right being blindingly obvious from the get go. Clone Wars just piled on too, with the late confirmation that Dooku commissioned the army but then ABSOLUTELY NO ONE EVER followed up on that wondering if maybe they should be concerned the leader of massive war was also the one who commissioned the army that they've been fighting the war with.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/06/14 11:28:26
I still really really hate how poorly handled the whole 'plot to destroy the Jedi' was because I never don't find more reasons how it just makes the Jedi and everyone else look insanely stupid that they were never suspicious about how the Clone Army came into existence in the first place despite all the warning signs that something was right being blindingly obvious from the get go.
While the sequels were not 'good' the hate for them just puzzles me when the prequels are RIGHT THERE as evidence that George Lucas really was not the guy to keep this story going.
They set up a cool and interesting universe, but as movies... WTF did I just watch?
As for Boba and Obi, I just tried to remember how they ended and have no idea. And I know I watched both.
I think there was a big monster in Boba? The Young Leia girl in Obi was good, I remember that.
Honestly if I had to rank the worst movies in order;
Spoiler:
Rise of Skywalker, the absolute fething worst Star Was movie. It's so stupidly bad. I guess Abrams 'tried.'
Attack of the Clones, while I know many people rank it more highly than Phantom Menace, Attack of Clones has an utterly nonsensical plot with multiple plot holes and several plot tumors. More than any other film in the franchise imo. Plus it's just cringy for half the film because Lucas' idea of romance is bizare. I much prefer the Seals are Good alternate timeline, where Anakin wows Padme with his juvenile understanding of philosophy and she's clearly only into him because she respects his weird passion.
The Last Jedi, either goes here or over there. IDK man. I get what the director was aiming for, in some ways it's not the worst movie in the franchise and in other ways it's just god awful.
The Phantom Menace, is bad but at least it's an okay movie. I guess. If you squint really hard and ignore the childish stupidity of so many parts of the plot. Decent set pieces at least. The whole plots a mess but there pieces here that on their own are likeable like the pod race, Maul and the music, etc.
The Last Jedi either goes right here, or back there. IDK man. this movie is even more uneven than Phantom Menace with parts I can appreciate and parts that are outright offensively bad. It's a fething mess of a movie.
Revenge of the Sith, the closest of the prequels to being a good move, and IDK maybe it's so okay its average. At least it's somewhat coherent in plot for the most aprt it's just told really badly and botches the parts that should have been the highly of the movie imo. Except for Order 66. That scene is actually okay. It's just everything before and after that that's kind of blarg.
The Force Awakens, about as good as Revenge of the Sith imes, at the least. Good parts. bad parts. Some fun parts. Some cringe parts. Mostly I think this movie suffers from the dumbass plot of Rise of Skywalker making it retroactively worse (gee, sure is conviently coincidental they found Palpatine's grand daughter on some desert plant where no one was looking for her, or anyone who might have been watching over her, just utterly random here she is and there's the Millennium Falcon too which will randomly bump into Han just in time. You know it's kind of weird how this entire movie runs on contrived coincidences. I changed my mind.
Revenge of the Sith is better than the Force Awakens. Move it here.
But honestly, at the end of the day, I still see all of these as mostly bad movies. Star Wars is kind 3 for 9 on main entries because only 3 of them are actually, unquestioningly, legitimately good films. The other 6 are degrees of bad no matter how we cut them.
Rogue One's still great though. Shame Disney's first baller was the only one.
Also, for anyone who has never seen them;
This whole series of videos is quite hilarious. I'm usually dismissve of anything produced with AI, but the dialogue is too clever for AI I think, so the writer just used AI voices but the dialogue and the gags the writer puts into this saga of Anakin's overwrought Jedi Thesis and everyone's frustration with him is quite funny. Mace is the best character for his 'I'm so sick of being the only sane man in this franchise' demeanor. Oh, the brilliance of having Dooku in these videos just come right out and tell everyone what's happening with complete 100% honesty only for no one to believe him is brilliant commentary on the prequels where even a sideways glance at Dooku's direction should have been enough for an intelligent being to figure out 'the plot to destroy the Jedi' if they just used their thinking cap a little bit.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2025/06/14 11:53:27
Seals are Good is the best thing that came out of the Prequels.
After Clone Wars I and II of course.
Automatically Appended Next Post: In tribute to my Crimson Firehawk project I watched four whole minutes of Young Jedi Adventures, escaping before my brain ejected out my ear.
I will just say I can see why their stuff is on clearance.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/06/14 12:53:31
While the sequels were not 'good' the hate for them just puzzles me when the prequels are RIGHT THERE as evidence that George Lucas really was not the guy to keep this story going.
Why are you puzzled over this?
There's the prequels - degrees of not good to bad,
Then there's the sequels - just increasing degrees of not just "Worse than the Prequels", but worse than themselves.
I dislike the prequels. I hate the sequels.
This whole series of videos is quite hilarious. I'm usually dismissve of anything produced with AI, but the dialogue is too clever for AI I think, so the writer just used AI voices but the dialogue and the gags the writer puts into this saga of Anakin's overwrought Jedi Thesis and everyone's frustration with him is quite funny. Mace is the best character for his 'I'm so sick of being the only sane man in this franchise' demeanor. Oh, the brilliance of having Dooku in these videos just come right out and tell everyone what's happening with complete 100% honesty only for no one to believe him is brilliant commentary on the prequels where even a sideways glance at Dooku's direction should have been enough for an intelligent being to figure out 'the plot to destroy the Jedi' if they just used their thinking cap a little bit.
Seals are good definitely has a philosophy degree or has read philosophy. The episode of Anakin and Padme talking about Anakin's view of what makes a good government is basically a stream of philisopher name puns, with their particular philosophical views matching up to their human counterpart.
And there are just so many brilliant foreshadowing lines, like jedi apparently having a reputation for leaping out of windows and a law even being written that any jedi dying as a result of such being automatically classed as suicide.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/06/14 21:39:02
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
ZergSmasher wrote: Agree completely. The Acolyte was utter garbage, even worse than the Kenobi show or Book of Boba.
Wait. Kenobi is bad too? That's what I was leaning towards until Skeleton Crew was brought to my attention.
I enjoyed Kenobi. Yes, it's not perfect, but if you're not holding Disney to a higher standard than the prequels or RotJ, it fits right in. It was definitely better than Book of Boba Fett, which was good for the Dances with Tuskens flashbacks but otherwise just boring.
Acolyte likewise is not perfect, but was at least an attempt to show something new, and has some spectacular lightsaber fights, if you're into that sort of thing.
Neither is quite what anyone hoped. Both are clearly film scripts stretched to accommodate a serial story telling, and so have some pretty naff filler.
There is still enjoyable stuff in amongst the padding guff. They’re certainly, at worst, merely average.
If you want a recommendation for objectively crap telly?
Reality TV
Scripted Reality TV (where the concept, subjects or production staff aren’t interesting enough on their own)
Sports
Friends (a single joke! Over 10 years! And it wasn’t a funny joke to begin with!)
And so on and so forth.
Disappointing (and they are) isn’t the same as Crap.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/06/14 22:53:55
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I still really really hate how poorly handled the whole 'plot to destroy the Jedi' was because I never don't find more reasons how it just makes the Jedi and everyone else look insanely stupid that they were never suspicious about how the Clone Army came into existence in the first place despite all the warning signs that something was right being blindingly obvious from the get go.
While the sequels were not 'good' the hate for them just puzzles me when the prequels are RIGHT THERE as evidence that George Lucas really was not the guy to keep this story going.
They set up a cool and interesting universe, but as movies... WTF did I just watch?
As for Boba and Obi, I just tried to remember how they ended and have no idea. And I know I watched both.
I think there was a big monster in Boba? The Young Leia girl in Obi was good, I remember that.
Bobba Fett leaves the big fight to his allies to run home and ride back on his personal mount, a Rancor. He sits on top of it, fully exposed and vulnerable even though he has a jet pack, while fighting giant droids while his Rancor King Kongs its way around the town he is trying to own/run as a criminal emperor while refusing to do any crime.
Look, other Starwars things are bad. SW is honestly like 50/50 on good to bad if not worse. But Book of Bobba Fett is by far the worst thing in starwars. It's SWs Secret Invasion.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/06/15 00:14:27
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
Lance845 wrote: He sits on top of it, fully exposed and vulnerable even though he has a jet pack, ...
Not to mention the starship with the whopping big cannons and seismic charges parked right beside the Rancor pen...
I suspect Boba draws the line at dropping seismic charges in the middle of a densely populated city...
But Book of Bobba Fett is by far the worst thing in starwars.
The Holiday Special exists.
And this is important to remember, there is even more of a steaming turd than The Acolyte, Book of Boba, Kenobi, or any other Star Wars media you consider bad. Way back in 1978, they were already making bad spinoffs of Star Wars. It's not a new thing.
My armies (re-counted and updated on 11/7/24, including modeled wargear options):
Dark Angels: ~16000 Astra Militarum: ~1200 | Imperial Knights: ~2300 | Leagues of Votann: ~1300 | Tyranids: ~3400 | Stormcast Eternals: ~5000 | Kruleboyz: ~3500 | Lumineth Realm-Lords: ~700
Check out my P&M Blogs: ZergSmasher's P&M Blog | Imperial Knights blog | Board Games blog | Total models painted in 2024: 40 | Total models painted in 2025: 23 | Current main painting project: Tomb Kings
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: You need your bumps felt. With a patented, Grotsnik Corp Bump Feelerer 9,000.
The Grotsnik Corp Bump Feelerer 9,000. It only looks like several bricks crudely gaffer taped to a cricket bat.
Grotsnik Corp. Sorry, No Refunds.
Bobba Fett leaves the big fight to his allies to run home and ride back on his personal mount, a Rancor. He sits on top of it, fully exposed and vulnerable even though he has a jet pack, while fighting giant droids while his Rancor King Kongs its way around the town he is trying to own/run as a criminal emperor while refusing to do any crime.
Look, other Starwars things are bad. SW is honestly like 50/50 on good to bad if not worse. But Book of Bobba Fett is by far the worst thing in starwars. It's SWs Secret Invasion.
That's not even the worst part of that fight. You've got a group of allies pinned down by snipers on rooftops and two guys with jetpacks and pistols who solve the problem by.... walking out in the open and tanking fire until they snipe the snipers with pistols. It's such an obvious setup to showcase their unique skillset and they go for the version that removes any sense of danger from the fight at all.
It's actually a highlight of the show. I am by no means a hater. Last Jedi is on my good side of Star Wars or at least I put it under lost potential. Boba though is just an actual mess. I think it might actually be worse than Acolyte, though both are a mess that I can only assume made some degree of sense as a film script at one point.
I think Kenobi by comparison suffers more from the lost potential. What's there is good, but having these actors back together again raises expectations to the point where something that is probably a B- comes across as disappointing. This is also clearly a dragged out film script though they pad it better than Boba and assuming it was part of the same content strategy, I think is technically better than Solo.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/06/16 14:22:29
You mean the Ewok movies? The Ewok Adventure and The Battle for Endor? They’re fun if you like older Star Wars. For people who love the prequels and sequels, I think they might be a bit dated. Personally I’d rate them above the prequels and sequels.
Yeah, those two. They are on Disney+ too.
I finished Andor and I tended to watch three episodes at a time. That worked really well, as the show seemed to be broken down into groups of three episodes per arc. After the Ghorman arc, I had to take a breather. There were too many times when things hit too close to home in the show. Reminded me a bit of the first two or three episodes of the new Daredevil in that sense.
My biggest take-away, was to go pull out me WEG Star Wars rulebook and start thinking about writing a short RPG campaign.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/06/16 14:25:45
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I'd contend that at this point, The Holiday Special has become classical bad to the point that it's enjoyable to see how bad it is.
In a way the Prequels can be like that now too, especially Prequel memes half of which run on the hammy half-assed doesn't making fething sense dialogue from the movies. Others are based on stupid acting moments, reactions, etc etc. The entire Seals are Good saga is an example of it really, taking bad stupid things from the Prequels and making them funny through reinvention.
Maybe the Acolyte will get there some day.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/06/16 23:22:12
I expect it will. As happened with the Prequels, the current crop of Star Wars kids will grow up and find that 'new' Star Wars isn't as good as the Star Wars they remember, and then they'll go back and discover that the Star Wars they remember also isn't actually as good as they remember. And the cycle will begin anew.
Lance845 wrote: But Book of Bobba Fett is by far the worst thing in starwars.
The Holiday Special exists.
I concede this point. The holiday special is worse.
Having seen them both…not really. They’re both bad in hilarious ways, but the Holiday Special has the weird animated segment and coked out Carrie Fisher where Boba has the silliest swoop gang in the galaxy. The Holiday Special is much shorter, though, so it wins.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Prequels benefit from The Clone Wars doing some seriously heavy lifting.
Doesn’t make the films much better, but it’s made the era really interesting,
A lot of Star Wars' appeal is the world building the feeling that YOU could be there and the Prequels really got that right since YOU could not only be a smuggler or a fighter pilot but also a Jedi or a Clone Trooper and best of all the bad guy were all disposable droids.
Star Trek as well. Fantasy life me has little interest in meeting Captains Kirk and Picard, but Fantasy Life me has a lot of interest in being Captain of the Miranda-Class USS Tiananmen NCC-1989.
Hogswarts, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, all of these are great ideas to dangle for an audience.
I never had any noteworthy problems with the prequels. I really liked that they fleshed out the setting and still rewatch them fairly frequently because that appeal has not waned. Sure, they have a bunch of issues, but not so much that they got in the way of doing what I wanted them to do. And at this point Clone Wars and memes did their part to make the dodgy bits more enjoyable to me.
I would have very much liked for The Acolyte to feel the same, but there I found the craftsmanship so poor that it got too much in the way of the interesting bits. I'm not one to claim the prequel trilogy is a high bar to clear and I enjoyed Book of Boba with the exception of the finale. I'm not hard to please. But The Acolyte and Kenobi had no trouble failing short regardless.
Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone?
The Phantom Menace wasted a lot of time. It introduced stuff like Midichlorians and Irritating Anakin and Jar Jar Binks which deeply annoyed audiences.
Midichlorians have since been rationalised in other media to be an indicator of force sensitivity, and not the cause thereof.
Attack of the Clones was an improvement, but took a big chunk out the mystique of Boba Fett. It also introduced and then ignored the mystery of Sifo Dyas.
Revenge of the Sith is my favourite of the lot. But because TPM wasted so much time, Anakin’s fall felt forced.
Then the Clone Wars arrived. Despite more than a few duff episodes, it did so much back filling and heavy lifting it elevated the prequels, especially in the later series which delved into how the Jedi Order had been corrupted by the war, turning Peace Keepers into Generals. It also showed Palpatine commandeering ever more power and authority, such as taking over the banking clans.
And so his overall plan, with the crescendo being that scene in Revenge of the Sith felt more organic, and more deserved. Not just some loon declaring himself Emperor “because there is a war on you know”.
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My biggest issue with the prequels is the rapid fire rate in which they introduce some interesting bad guys and then dispose of them immediately. The only bad guy to stick around is Duku who looks like an old dentist.
Darth Maul should have been present in all 3 films. Grevous is too good of a character design to get thrown away in a single fight scene where he does almost nothing.
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
The prequels had the issue that they had no head-room. They had 3 films and no (at the time) idea that TV series and such could come along. So they had 3 films to squish everything into and then it hits A New Hope. So yeah everything feels on speed-up and they can't let any characters get too established unless they are going to appear in A New Hope - everyone else has to die off or vanish fairly fast.
JarJar is perhaps one of the few who survives, but who just vanishes into nothing in the story.
~16000 Astra Militarum: 
~1200 | Imperial Knights: 
~2300 | Leagues of Votann: 
~1300 | Tyranids: 
~3400 | Stormcast Eternals: 
~5000 | Kruleboyz: 
~3500 | Lumineth Realm-Lords: 
~700
