Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Except the Jedi weren't shown as evil, rather misguided and arrogant. Pre-Disney canon says that the pre-Empire Jedi had become over-zealous in their role about collecting force sensitive children and this had driven many smaller force religions into extinction or hiding. Check.
The Jedi had become corrupted by their political role, arrogant and complacent. Yoda says this. Palpatine says this. And is part of the reason their connection to the living force had waned. And why Qui-Gon was seen as a rogue operator by the Jedi. Check.
But even so every Jedi in the Acolyte is trying to do what they think is right. Note the fight is partially caused by the more militant witch choosing to mind control a Jedi, when Sol is only there because he thinks the girls are in danger. The Jedi are not shown as evil, they are shown as good people convinced of their correctness. Which is exactly the arrogance Yoda speaks of.
Now was the show good? Not really, creaky dialog and odd story beats. But was it bad because it suddenly retconned pre-Empire Jedi to have been evil? No, because it showed them in the light, we keep being told they were. The fall of the Jedi was set as soon as they became part of the political sphere in the Republic.
That is the tragedy of the Jedi. And that no-one remembers that, is the tragedy of the Acolyte.
The writer had issues with dialog, and some of the acting was ropey, but they clearly paid a lot of attention to pre-prequel EU material. From cortosis to the Corporate Sector, to yes the Jedi Order basically deciding they should be the only force game in town. What was shown of the Jedi is exactly what we have ben told. Good people in a systemically corrupt institution, that over centuries began to blind even people with access to super-powers.
Yoda, too late realizes this when confronting Palpatine, that he couldn't win, that the Jedi were doomed to lose from long before his own birth. That they had been blinded not by the Dark Side, but by their own hubris. And this is the wisest of the Jedi, who already thought the Jedi were getting too arrogant (as he notes in Ep 2.) This is why he becomes a broken figure in the original trilogy. Why it takes Obi-Wan to convince him.
To address this let me look to The Last Jedi for a bit - what happens to Luke isn't unreasonable but nobody wants to see it. It's contra the vibes people want to see, and the constructions they've had in their head.
Some of the subtext in the prequel trilogy is that the Jedi were blind idiots, but most people just paper that over with uhhh Sith force powers? and then get on enjoying the black and white story, which is what Star Wars is "supposed" to be. It takes a lot of mature writing to make Andor work despite the deviation from that.
It (including the Acolyte) is fundamentally not what people want to see in Star Wars, and it's not done well enough to make up for that.
The other piece is the dripping wokeness. How many white males are in the show? How are they portrayed?
How good the show is exists in a conversation that's driven by decisions of the other Star Wars properties in the last ten years (including public commentary but the creators), not independent of them.
Once you start looking at this stuff with a critical eye it's hard to stop and the wheels are pretty much off.
Obi-wan is relatively inoffensive if you aren't already mad at Star Wars, and is incredibly bad if you are.
That's a large portion of my criticism.
As a specific example: being annoyed and judgmental at Star Wars turns "lets transport this suspected murderer in an unsecured way" from "eesh writers didnt really think about that huh" to "oh god not another attempt at portraying the Jedi as total fucking inbred morons."
But what this shows is that it's the exact opposite problem surely? People were complaining that Disney ruined the Jedi by making them evil and stupid. But the truth you are claiming is that the audience is just not able (or willing) to absorb the kind of nuance which says actually the Jedi (as acknowledged by themselves and other external sources) were kind of stupid, arrogant assholes at the systemic level. Even as much as most of them, were good people at heart. That is fundamentally part of the story Lucas wanted to tell. That is what Star Wars is "supposed" to be.
It's fine that people want to paper over that nuance, if they don't find it enjoyable. But that is a different complaint than, this is all new stuff made up by Disney. Especially when they heap scorn on the creators on not being "real" Star Wars fans, when as you say they themselves have just decided to Flanderize the Jedi in their heads and ignore all the set up. Complaining about wokeness or bad writing and acting is one thing (and to be clear the Acolyte has significant problems in places there, in my opinion. Child actors are tough, but the young version of the twin's were simply not capable of carrying the story beats they were weighed down with.) But it is just ironic that much of what they are complaining about is literally what the story of the fall of the Jedi order is about, while they are complaining that real Star Wars fans know the Jedi are omni-competent good guys while complaining that Rey was boring because she was an omni-competent good guy.
And that is what is slightly annoying me, because as a Star Wars fan, I would like to see more stories about that. Where the Jedi are not simply perfect do gooders. So now the chances of getting some more stories which explore the contradictions in the Jedi philosophy and the interesting bits of Star Wars lore is probably dead in the water.
C'est la vie I suppose. Maybe I'll start up my old Star Wars D6 campaign using the old West End Games rules and set it in the era prior to the Empire, and give the Jedi characters some complex moral topics to wrestle with.
Politics aside, genre fiction exists to scratch a certain sort of itch. Why Batman Can’t Kill People is a very, very good essay that I recommend, and I'll shamelessly steal bits:
In short, you can't keep asking questions like 'can the Light side of the force be immoral under some belief systems?' or, 'isn't an organised, militarised group of warrior monk cultists going to end up with some pretty dubious practices?' without ruining the thing that makes original Star Wars fans enjoy it. It can work occasionally in one-offs or side material, but if you do it too much in the main shows you're going to lose the fans even if your storytelling is impeccable, because you're not telling the stories people want to hear.
The above is a lesson I think about a lot because I had to wean myself out of the 'but it would be so interesting if you took X aspect of the genre seriously' writing mindset and realise that even if there were potential there, it would remove the aspect of the genre that made me want to write stories in the first place. It's especially a problem for the professional authors / scriptwriters / directors / critics, who spend far more time in their chosen medium than their average audience member, and therefore find their tastes diverging. The professionals demand originality, complexity and subversion because they're sick of the same old thing. And at some point somebody has to remind them that they're being self-indulgent and neglecting the interests of the people they're supposed to be working for (employers/audience).
Getting back to politics, KOTOR II did morally-nuanced discussions of the Force and nobody was particularly upset. Even the first game shows a variety of Jedi with some not-especially-admirable traits. Those games, and the prequels, were interesting precisely because up until then the Jedi has been pretty clear-cut good guys. People get upset now because:
But isn't that just the point? The original depiction and backstory of the Jedi Order was that they were flawed, arrogant and compromised their ideals in service to politics. That directly led to them neglecting the will of the Force, having their abilities clouded and weakened and led to their fall. It isn't a deconstruction to show that. KOTOR II is a great example. But in the vast majority of media the Jedi are depicted as always being unambiguously good and competent. That surely is then the deconstruction? Or perhaps Flanderization, that they serve the Light side of the force so therefore they must be all good, all competent.
I think 2 is more likely. That now people see it as enemy action (and perhaps it is!) and therefore instinctively side against it, even when arguably it is in fact being portrayed accurately.
To be fair, I do think this particular problem starts with the prequel trilogy. The order of Jedi Knights worked best as background mythology. Before the days of Jar Jar and Young Anakin, they were hazy and a bit nondescript. I think that worked perfectly for the kind of mythic tale the OT was trying to weave. Going back and filling in details did some irreversible damage to the universe's structural integrity, but it was at least offset by the spice of variety: new aliens, new planets, new factions, etc. The playground widened up enough where I think many fans could ignore the mess Lucas made with the core story and play with the toys of their own choosing.
Nu Star Wars instead often seems like its doubling down on the parts few people liked to begin with while offering little else in compensation.
tESB and RotJ, actually, started the "the old Jedi were good-hearted but were not all-wise" theme.
Yoda, ESB:
Yoda, RotJ:
Luke and Obi-Wan, RotJ:
Obi-Wan and Yoda are specifically portrayed as wrongly inflexible regarding the temptations of the Dark Side and the possibility of redemption from it. Luke does enter a Dark Side rage, but it does not forever dominate his destiny. Anakin does still have good in him, and Luke does not have to kill him to defeat the Emperor. Obi-Wan and Yoda are the stale thesis, which invited the comically-evil antithesis of the Emperor and Vader, and Luke represents the new, vibrant synthesis (his new lightsaber in RotJ is green, neither the cold blue of Obi-Wan and pre-fall Anakin nor the dangerous red of Darth Vader - the only three lightsabers that had been shown up to that point - but something new and alive).
Do note that this makes prequel and sequel aspersions cast on the Jedi different in implication. Showing the Jedi of the Old Republic being flawed supports the dialectic in the original trilogy; these are the mistakes that caused them to be supplanted by an antithesis. I haven't watched the sequels, but any aspersions they cast on Luke's Jedi in the New Republic undercut that dialectic; if the synthesis is bad, what was the point of the exercise? It is important that Luke's new Jedi are not the same as the old Jedi.
More options
Context Copy link
There definitely is a disconnect, where we are told (and Lucas says!) the Jedi are good and moral and wise, and then shows them or implies them doing things which should render that judgement clearly flawed. Even back in the old RPG before the prequels the (Lucas approved) Jedi sections talk about how the Jedi would test and take force sensitive children, and that most parents saw this as an honor, but the ones that didn't had no choice. And how even alien species who had their own unique connection to the force were studied willingly or not by the Jedi, which is why there were so few extant Force cults because many of them went into hiding or died out.
The only option that seems to reconcile the two is that individual Jedi were good, but they were essentially operating within a system that had taken and raised them as children, taught them what was good and bad and was connected to a deeply corrupt Galactic Republic and so their viewpoint was very attached to this.
Yoda in the Revenge of the Sith novelization indicates he realizes this at the end, that the Jedi had become too entwined with the Republic, and too unbending rather than learning and evolving given they had become a galactic organization. And that Qui-Gon was probably right all along about listening to the living force.
It is perhaps to be expected that if you are writing a story about an order of wise enlightened space-knights who can see the future who at one point get wiped out, you are going to have to have these wise people holding the idiot ball at some stages of the story. They basically have to have been deeply flawed and blind for the plot to work. At the same time as being great role models for the last of them to want to take up the mantle again.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't have anything to add here except I love it whenever somebody links to Shamus' blog. Really good stuff if you're a fan of vidya but also like reading walls of SSC or adjacent material.
I kinda stopped checking it once one of his kids took over after his passing. The content really wasn't as interesting and failed to meet Shamus' level of quality. And when I last did, his steadfast 'No Politics' rule had appeared to have been hollowed out entirely for the usual reasons. I was also really dismayed by what looked to me like his kid publicly throwing his corpse under the bus and painting him as some kind of raging anti-feminist behind the scenes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
At this point the majority of the total high budget content-hours are about this, despite the fact that the majority of the years and cultural influence are not. It's all over the Disney content.
I think what you're saying is a misread of the Lucas era (although if you quotes from him in that time frame please pass along*). It's clearly not a part of the original trilogy. The prequel trilogy, some of the text has it with stuff like this:
"OBI-WAN: But he still has much to learn, Master. His abilities have made him... well, arrogant. YODA: Yes, yes. It's a flaw more and more common among Jedi. Too sure of themselves they are. Even the older, more experienced ones."
But that's not really a lot.
Per an /r/StarWars thread on the matter:
"Fans have projected an awful, awful lot onto Lucas's intentions for the Jedi. His intentions were to show them get outmaneouvered and trapped by Palpatine. You can reasonably argue that he presented them as complacent and too comfortable.
Yoda observes that many of the 'older, more experienced' Jedi are becoming arrogant, but not in a way that suggests this is massively damning or concerning. It's the kind of observation which a wise, elderly leader whose job is to be mindful would note. Their arrogance plays out in the films where they take gambles which don't pay off in ROTS - but this is very human and mild overconfidence and arrogance.
But Lucas absolutely, 100% neither wanted to make them, nor accidentally made them out to be, a cult of emotion-denying warmongers who kidnap children and whom the Force wants culled for the sake of its balance - which is what an awful lot of people on this board seem to believe."
This contrasts with what has been produced by Kathleen Kennedy - her writing team is clearly ULTRA woke and political. It's not shocking that they are interested in portraying a white male presenting hierarchal organization as ineffective or preferably evil. It's also BORING at this point given these people rule most of media and everything they've put out in the last 10 years has this ideology all over it.
Playing them straight (pun intended) would be novel and interesting at this point.
*I don't know what he is saying now, but that is going to be tightly wrapped up in the contradictory interviews he has put out in the Disney era.
Really? I think most of it still shows the Jedi as much less flawed than they should be. What Lucas said or intended and what he actually showed, wrote and licensed are very different things. Even prior to the Disney take-over. I stand by my argument that a lot of the people criticizing the shows for being woke transfer that energy onto other elements of the show that are arguably exactly as they should be way before Disney ever got involved.
If you think the lead characters being black and asian or the lesbian witches vs Jedi is a woke overreach and this impacted the quality of the show, I think that is understandable. But I think a lot of people then want to criticize everything about the show through the same lens. Especially people who weren't around during the heyday of the expanded universe before the prequels where for example Palpatine gets resurrected and corrupts Luke. And that wasn't anything to do with white men bad or whatever.
In the end I would rate the Acolyte as 6/10. Lovely choreographed saber fights, recanonization of cortosis, the Corporate Sector (Han Solo at Star's End was one of the first Star Wars books I read all the way back in 79.), an interesting look at how even good guys can do the wrong thing for the right reason. Some sub-par acting (especially the child actress), some creaky dialog and a little too much fan service without pay off (Darth Plagueis and Yoda). Though at least Plagueis feeds into the Legends idea that he directly or indirectly created Anakin using dark sorceries gathered in secret.
I absolutely agree and that's part of my argument, sorry if that wasn't clear.
One of the things that is happening here is that you absolutely get a pass when you providing fun escapist entertainment. Lots of trash (or perhaps less judgmentally pulp) suffers in one dimension or another or has inconsistencies. Star Wars is burdened by meaning something in a lot of people's minds (which makes what it is "supposed" to be somewhat sticky, occasional to its detriment) and it's also moved away from just being fun escapist fiction and some of that is the politics which have been injected into it with avowed intentionality, part of it is the "okay but lets subvert" and other adjacent attitudes.
They decided to play a different game and now they are being judged by different rules. A taut political thriller demands more internal inconsistency than a Roland Emmerich film.
Parallel to this - once you've pissed someone off they aren't going to cut you a lot of slack. There's an entire genre online criticism that is essentially calling out woke entertainment on stuff that would have been fine in a generic Hollywood action script in the 90s. I can see how some would want to paint this as unfair, but frankly stuff written by people who hate you is going to be judged by a higher standard and I'm not sure that's wrong, especially with the way a lot of this involves people who hate their fans reaching for a replacement audience that doesn't exist.
To sum, it's not that it is bad so much as what it represents makes it bad. Woke themes that could be forgivable are another ongoing attack on me. Meaning it gets exactly zero slack.
It is also a deliberate lack of course correction which means that even though it's probably in the same ball park as the other recent SW shows it's worse for it. If someone keeps slapping you in the face and you keep telling them not to it doesn't matter if it's all the same strength, at some point you go ENOUGH. For me this one was the first one I didn't watch (with the last two being relegated to being watched at 1.5-2 speed).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link