The Fantasy Review‘s opinion: ‘The Acolyte’ Writers Hate Star Wars and They Hate You.
Surprising absolutely no one, Total Film recently revealed that “one of the Disney Plus show’s writers had never seen a Star Wars movie prior to getting the job”. Have these studios learned nothing from previous failures, like Chris Chibnall’s era of Doctor Who?
You might argue that having an outsider perspective on the scripts might help rather than hinder, giving some fresh, new ideas to a studio running out of nostalgia bait to milk for content. However, I would argue that you should stick the inexperienced writers on the new or lesser known shows and let them gain some experience, and maybe watch and study some of the great movies that came before they were born before allowing them onto the writing staff of a major franchise spin-off.
I am not saying you have to be a huge fan of a franchise to work on it, but at least have some respect for the work done before you, and respect the fans. Fans don’t always need what they want, so sure, give us what we need instead of what we want, but only do that with good intentions, rather than this holier-than-thou nonsense we are inundated with.
Now, before I continue, I should make something clear. If you hate The Acolyte and basically all new media because it has lesbians or trans people, or think race swapping kills a story, you are weird and I feel sorry for you. The world has moved on; move with it or fall behind, being left to enjoy only movies brought out before 1990.
What The Acolyte writers have done is create their coven of lesbian witches (not a bad idea if done right), made one character a white bloke and everyone else diverse in some way (again, fine), and then thrown millions of dollars at an under qualified team of writers, producers, etc. I’m sorry guys, but casting decisions don’t make a good story – good writing does. Add some music that actually evokes the emotion of a scene and sets that don’t look like they are reused Star Trek sets from the 60’s, and you’re golden.
The creators of The Acolyte, and several big media outlets are blaming fans rather than looking at these obvious mistakes. Fans don’t like the show because the show is not good. Sure, some idiot is going to complain about the lesbians having kids, but for most of us viewers who happily live in the present day care about only one thing; the quality of the story, and the continuation of something we love.
Change is good and exciting, but these people are making changes that purposefully don’t work within the lore and ignore a rich history of the franchise. If they do this, then it’s not Star Wars anymore, it’s the Kathleen Kennedy Takes a Dump on an Asteroid show, plus magic aliens, and no one is going to pay for Disney+ to watch that shitshow.
