3 months ago
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Soooo, who’s watching Disney+’s newest Star Wars series, The Acolyte? We are! I didn’t do much prep going into it and have found myself really liking it so far. The Acolyte, which is set around 100 years before the Skywalker saga begins in The Phantom Menace, follows a Jedi Master and former Padawan investigating a series of crimes that will “pit [him] against a figure from his past.” It’s been heavily implied that this series was going to show the beginning of the end of the Jedi Order and the rise of the Dark Side. I was really intrigued by the premise when it was first announced, and I know I wasn’t the only one. The Acolyte also had the highest opening day viewers for a Disney+ show so far this year.
Of course, right on cue, the whiny fanboys are at it again. They screamed and cried before the series even debuted, taking issue with its creator, Leslye Headland, who also happened to create one of the best shows of the last decade, Russian Doll. According to these crybabies, Headland, who is married to actress Rebecca Henderson (Russian Doll’s Lizzy), has set out to ruin Star Wars by making it “woke” and pushing an LGBTQ+ agenda. As Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy told the NY Times, “Because of the fan base being so male dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal.” These so-called fans are so emotional that they’ve orchestrated a campaign to review bomb The Acolyte on Rotten Tomatoes.
In spite of a favorable response from critics, The Acolyte is currently being review-bombed on sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The Disney era of Star Wars has hardly been an uncontroversial one, with the fandom dividing in the aftermath of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Those divisions remain to this day, as has been proven with The Acolyte. Showrunner Leslye Headland has proved especially controversial, and there’s been a vocal backlash against the Star Wars TV show from certain parts of the fandom.
This has continued with the release of The Acolyte premiere on Disney+. At time of writing, The Acolyte has an audience score of just 32 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, while the show has a user score of 4.1 on Metacritic. Looking at the actual reviews, there’s evidence of a review bombing campaign; many appear to be AI-generated, consisting only of basic plot synopses. A surprising number of half-star reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are from brand-new accounts, another indicator of a review-bombing campaign.
The Star Wars fandom has always been a divided and divisive one, but it’s become worse over the last few years, with a portion objecting to what they perceive as “wokeness” in the Disney era. This even resulted in a South Park parody of Star Wars, declaring that everything was the fault of Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy. The Acolyte is headed by a lesbian showrunner, and stars female and Asian leads, meaning it was always going to be controversial with this part of the fandom.
The campaign against The Acolyte has hardly been in good faith, with many quotes pulled out of context on social media. When star Dafne Keen discussed the ambition to produce fight choreography as good as that of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, it was seen as an insult to the prequels rather than proof of how highly they were held by the creative team. Kennedy and Headland addressed The Acolyte backlash ahead of their show’s release, calling out what they perceive as racism and sexism.
It’s important to note there are probably genuine criticisms amid the review bombing, drowned out by the campaign. Some critics have called out pacing and dialogue problems, and those could well pose a problem to members of the audience as well, resulting in negative reviews. Ironically, the review bombing campaign means real dissatisfaction is impossible to evaluate, while those who loved The Acolyte wind up on the defensive. It’s a self-defeating strategy, because it makes it easier to tune out any criticism as part of the campaign.
This is why it’s stupid to put so much weight and copy into what user-led review sites like Rotten Tomatoes say. It’s just another way for the worst people in any fandom to game the system. And neither Disney nor The Acolyte’s cast and crew should have to go on the “defensive” at all. Why on earth would the cast and crew waste their breath on bots and racist incels? We get it, they don’t like women, POC, LGBTQ, or anyone who actually wants to bring the Star Wars series forward as actors and showrunners. They’re so threatened that people who aren’t “them” are also into Star Wars, and refuse to believe that they always have been.
Anyway, F them. I’m still so mad at how terribly they treated Kelly Marie Tran, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley and at how awful The Rise of Skywalker was thanks to these jackasses. Star Wars isn’t some cult nerd property. These POSes don’t own it and the franchise certainly doesn’t need their sorry selves. Rotten Tomatoes needs to come up with a credible verification system that makes coordinated attacks like this tougher to pull off.
