The Unravelling of Star Wars: The Acolyte and Fan Backlash
“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away.” Those words meant a lot to Star Wars fans. The outcome used to create joy, and millions of box office revenue and streaming content for days on end. What makes Kathleen Kennedy, not George Lucas’s, Star Wars so unassumingly bad is two things. The lore itself is challenged by the Acolyte’s Lesbian Jedi birth powers. Another is the utter disrespect towards its fans reactions, as the fans have the right to dislike the Acolyte any way they want.
The Acolyte isn’t a show I have particularly watched or even been interested in resubscribing to Disney Plus streaming services. But fans are what make a series or legacy thrive. Fan service printed money for years in toy sales, novels, and video games. But this might be the final nail in the coffin for Star Wars.
But one site, IGN, has also proved that if anyone can suckle the teet of corporate America, it’s IGN. “There’s something innately exciting that the Acolyte brings us into an unforeseen era of Star Wars” as it’s “100 years before the rise of the Empire” and “tail end of the high Republic period, featured in recent books and comics.” There’s no mention of Skywalker or Palpatine. “Feels more TV than Star Wars ever had losing much of its epic visual quality” is budget tv series that doesn’t commit to any grand visual scale, thus dooming Star Wars back into the innards of the Sarlak pit. It’s insulting to hear IGN say “Leslie Hedland is a big Star Wars fan” because it’s almost like hearing a badly written script by Leslie Hedland’s office assistant who wants IGN to like it, but it’s worse when IGN itself can’t even defend it, entirely. Both the Mandolorian and Andor feel “inherently Star Wars” and the Acolyte is “entirely too small” because it lacks the visual and grand scale that every Star Wars felt, growing up, watching it, dazzled, now reminding myself why DUNE was and always be better.
.
What makes Disney’s “Star Wars The Acolyte” far less entertaining is the ham string budget that makes old school Star Trek seem infinitely more entertaining. Youtuber SnarkyJay’s “The Acolyte Episode 3 is THE END OF STAR WARS” describes episode 3 “as absolutely atrocious” but “was curious as to what was wrong with it.” “A furthest departure from any STAR WARS DNA” as it is “in name only.” “An unnamed pile of space junk.” The backstory is “of witches and sea grade horror movies” who lead a “witches coven” as they have “redefined the force.” To which it ends with the coven destroyed by fire.
.
Cringe is the word Snarkyjay keeps repeating, exasperating with, “dogshit.” As of June 24th, 2024, with over 336,000 views on SnarkyJays youtube video prove my suspicions correct. But this also leads us into another point.
What makes Star Wars predictably entertaining is that there was no age or gender barrier now or then. Women are now openly Star Wars fans, but men of a certain demo, Generation X and Boomers, were mostly male dominated. It’s amazing that women like SnarkyJay are part of the club because men never rejected women from the fandom. But back in the May 25th 1977, when Star Wars premiered, it was uncool to like Science Fiction, and men who did like it, or who even dared show off their pride, was akin to collecting Nazi memorabilia.
According to Archcast’s youtube video “The Acolyte is Successful Gatekeeping in Action – The Woke are Noticing that Star Wars is Over” stated that Star Wars was a very “small niche for which you were bullied for. You didn’t become popular and said ‘hey, I’m a fan of Star Wars’. No you got take out behind the school building and beaten. That is why this is the male’s franchise. They were here first, they popularized, they created it, they do indeed own it.”
.
To me, this rings true. And women especially saw “Star Wars” as uncool, nerdy, and definitely not attractive. But men definitely carried their hobby into a billion dollar franchise with women beside them, despite what the status quo said.
And men never hated women for liking science fiction, because it was like a cheat code. To find women who loved science fiction, fantasy, was akin to horse whispering. It was akin to hearing the wind in their chest, and being able to smile knowing that they weren’t alone.
But today, there is no barrier against women being fans of Star Wars, as many female streamers can and openly speak out for men who paved the way for the series they now enjoy. Men are not misogynistic because women like their hobbies, but women, like Kathleen Kennedy and Leslie Hedland, want to control a series that don’t pay the proper respect to the founders or the fans. And that’s why so many fans have just given up on Star Wars, and if any still do watch, huffing high on nostalgia bait, and serving their overlord, Disney Studios, praying to God it will come back. But it won’t.
No matter what IGN or SnarkyJay say, sharing the same viewpoints but in different terminology, is commonly agreed. The Acolyte is a disappointment. To lead us off into a humorous note: What was once a billion dollar franchise now looks worse than a Buck Rodgers rerun on crack, and somehow, nobody would be ashamed if Star Wars went to a galaxy far far away and never came back. Unless created in a lesbian space bubble and a new series can bring back the magic like Leslie Hedlands “business relationship” with Harvey Weinstein.
You never know.