I'm glad to see someone review this show seriously and not just with the kind of visceral contempt that the review bombing gives us. I was never going to watch The Acolyte - I have never really liked Star Wars enough and the only show in this entire world I think has any creative merit was Andor - but I knew the moment the review bombing began that it had become another one of those shows where the misogynistic fanboy narrative of the net demanding that anything changes to something precious makes it horrible not just for them but for anyone else would prevail.

What I truly hate about this culture is that it makes people like you and me's job as critics so much unnecessarily harder. I may have used this example in other articles but the moment Brie Larson was introduced as Captain Marvel, she was either reviled by the internet as wokeness incarnate and deified by the other half for adding diversity where it was needed. Reviwing the film on its own merits was impossible. I saw Captain Marvel and disliked it immensely - but because it was a mediocre film with bad acting and a weak storyline, not because I felt somme childhood icon had been modernized for some kind of DEI hire. Can't a franchise just suck on its own merits not because some section of the internet thinks its diverse?

And speaking for myself, looking at so many of the actors I think: what a waste! Did Amandla Stenberg, Manny Jacinto, Rebecca Henderson and David Harewood REALLY want to be in a project like this? Seriously, what is the appeal of a movie frnachise that ran out of things to say forty years ago (and if I'm being honest, never had anything that interesting to say then, shoot me) that so many great actors want desperately to be part of it? I have yet to see a single Star Wars movie or show in the last twenty years where the most interesting thing about it (again accpeting Andor) isn't the technical aspects? I did everything in my power to watch The Mandalorian and find it interesting. By the fourth episode I didn't want to go near it again.

I feel strongest about this then all the other franchises. I can find merit in Star Trek and some of the comic book franchises. I've NEVER been able to find something of value in Star Wars. It has been traveling on its own nostalgia for forty years, on extraordinary technical aspects and some of the most insipid and unspeakable dialouge that I'm always astonished the characxter says with a straight face. I prefer the endless purple prose of the X-Files to the kind of 'writing' we get from these series. Every time I hear such and such a show is 'ruiniing' Star Wars I seriously want to say 'ruin what!" Seriously is there something I'm not seeing that seemingly everyone else in the world is? You actually seem to have a head on your shoulders. I need to know if there's something that i'm not getting. I'm trying my hardest but I can't.