In my opinion, there is a HUUUUUGE difference in animation and live action. So far, Filoni hasn't quite made the necessary adjustment. You watch those last few minutes of the final Clone Wars episode, and you feel pretty impacted, even though there is zero dialogue going on. You can't do that in live action, and I think Filoni hasn't quite figured that out, yet. So, in that regard, I agree with TC.

He needs to be consulted, for sure. Maybe not driving the idea train. He is the one that brought Darth Maul back from being cut in half, after all

The past few days I've seen a number of grown men reach a level of pathetic I didn't know was possible...

Imagine expending this amount of effort on something you actually liked. Better to be Mayor of Bitchville I guess… pic.twitter.com/r20ORyFSGD

— Jordan Maison (@JordanMaison) June 21, 2024

This 60-year-old man is throwing a tantrum so dramatic and public, he made fliers. https://t.co/CaRVKlYWFA

— Lon Harris (@Lons) June 21, 2024

You have some really weird Twitter follows.

Uuuuuuuggghhh…
I'm trying s o…SO hard to be optimistic, and dammit these people are just making it almost impossible. The pacing is just so weird, like, you're telling me the Jedi are only a few minutes behind Mae/Qimri, and they left Coruscant roughly the same time that those two were landing on Khofar? And we try to have a serious conversation between Osha and Yord, but we just barely know him at all.

It's like they're trying to create impactful moments without having put in the work to create the foundation that makes the moment impactful. They are just BARELY making 8 episodes, and while inflation is a *****, come on. They are not getting their money's worth out of this. The episodes need to be longer, or we need more than 8. But the things they're trying to set up (and I think there are some potentially good ideas they could go with) need more time to mature before you drop a "big reveal."

I suspect we will see the tree bugs play a bigger role in the next episode. And the ***hole who decided that the episode needed to end like that, just as something was finally happening, can get ****** with an SOS pad in his ***.

The fact that this is airing at the same as as HOTD is just making the glaring difference in quality all the more apparent. I'm sure it was no accident by Max.

And if it was a Disney+ decision... oof.

I watched the deep fake Qui-Gon reaction, and when Darth Smiles showed up he said "all these Jedi have to die....or one of my closest friends lied to me about the Sith returning."

fig96 said:

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And as others have noted Headland has shown that she has chops as a writer and director, gotta wonder what the other factors might be.

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I haven't seen her previous work, I don't think. Dolls looks kind of dumb. How poorly Acolyte is written, shot, directed, acted etc would have me wonder if her hand was held and she was helped by more talented people on previous projects. This one seems to expose what exactly she is capable of. What I don't really understand is, pretend you're Leslye and you watch this nearing its completion. You have to be either straight up blind to poor production or maybe hoping the entertainment media and Disney brigade are going to majorly block for you to think work of the quality is OK to be released under your name. Otherwise, if she were concerned about how this show reflects upon her skills as a director, if Disney LF production really is at fault as some of you claim, early on she really should have walked away and said, no, this isn't matching what I'm capable of creating. Make it make sense.

It's a problem of tunnel vision and missing the forest for the trees.

Here's a common scenario I've run into in creative group projects that I think illustrates the problem: The group gets an assignment to do some creative project with a bunch of different technical requirements or objectives. They meet to discuss ideas and how to meet the requirements, and there's one member who's really passionate about a particular subject or idea and is desperate to include it. The group says, "Ok, but we need to meet all of these objectives, too," and they reassure the group that it'll totally happen. As work progresses, this person tries to dominate the work with their pet idea and focuses all of their time and energy on developing it instead of meeting the basic requirements of the project as a whole. Eventually, it's turned in and their idea is front and center in their portion, but the basic requirements they were responsible for were poorly or incompletely met. The project itself is graded poorly, and that person can't understand why their idea wasn't better received.

Now imagine that person is directing a show and wholly responsible for meeting all of the technical requirements of making a show good: dialogue, plot, storytelling, cinematography, costumes, etc. They're so caught up in their pet project and their self-perceived brilliance that they vastly overestimate the quality of their end product. They've got tunnel vision and are blind to everything else, and they're often so focused on unimportant details of their pet idea that they lose sight of the bigger picture (or have no time for it). That's where Headland is seemingly at, and that's why you don't hire activist writers/directors.

Cliff.Booth said:

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fig96 said:

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And as others have noted Headland has shown that she has chops as a writer and director, gotta wonder what the other factors might be.

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I haven't seen her previous work, I don't think. Dolls looks like of dumb. How poorly Acolyte is written, shot, directed, acted etc would have me wonder if her hand was held and she was helped by more talented people on previous projects. This one seems to expose what exactly she is capable of. What I don't really understand is, pretend you're Leslye and you watch this nearing its completion. You have to be either straight up blind to poor production or maybe hoping the entertainment media and Disney brigade are going to majorly block for you to think work of the quality is OK to be released under your name. Otherwise, if she were concerned about how this show reflects upon her skills as a director, if Disney LF production really is at fault as some of you claim, early on she really should have walked away and said, no, this isn't matching what I'm capable of creating. Make it make sense.

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I bet if you could somehow take a survey of people watching the show that have NOT gone online to look at reviews or tweets or anything, it would probably have favorable reviews.

It's been a long week... pic.twitter.com/puSdrNTMbV

— Bryan Ward (@bryaneward) June 21, 2024

PatAg said:

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I bet if you could somehow take a survey of people watching the show that have NOT gone online to look at reviews or tweets or anything, it would probably have favorable reviews.

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I bet you're wrong. I didn't watch any reviews or other online content prior to the show. I had no expectations one way or the other. It's boring at times and cringey at others. I just don't think it's a well written show.

What.
The.
****.

He started to blame it on budget, and then settled on it would have changed the feel of the episode.

Well, that might have been a good thing

Cliff.Booth said:

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Wow. Somebody was pocketing from the till if that is true. If you make a show with a Wookie Jedi, then you put it to work.

I think sometime in the future, after the show is done, I bet you see stories come out from cast and crew about dysfunction behind the scenes.

I just read that the showrunner stated this episode and the next were written as one episode, and that for some unspecified reason Disney + made them split it into two.
So that's why it feels like an oddly timed cliff hanger at the end and a very short episode, versus close to an hour longer one.
And that they cut the Wookie - "Sith" fight, because it was better for the flow of this episode.

Which I feel more inclined to believe this, considering Disney execs track record.

People are losing their minds over a throwaway line.

Imagine going back to 1977, when Alec Guinness utters the line that he's never owned a droid and looks at R2D2 in utter confusion. In hindsight he's either lying, been mind wiped or, wait for it, George Lucas didn't think it through when TPM came out.

I like the lying option. Because then it's easy to explain ALL the inconsistencies. Just say "Jedi are lying deceitful dogs"

Mathguy64 said:

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People are losing their minds over a throwaway line.

Imagine going back to 1977, when Alec Guinness utters the line that he's never owned a droid and looks at R2D2 in utter confusion. In hindsight he's either lying, been mind wiped or, wait for it, George Lucas didn't think it through when TPM came out.

I like the lying option. Because then it's easy to explain ALL the inconsistencies. Just say "Jedi are lying deceitful dogs"

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Exactly. All of the OT movies, and absolutely all of the PT, had cheesy dialogue, incomprehensible decisionmaking by characters, and inconsistencies between movies. But somehow only now is it a problem. Do I think Disney/Lucasfilm has fumbled the ball with the Rey trilogy and Disney+ shows? Of course.

But let's admit what all of the Youtube/Tiktok commentators are - a cottage industry dedicated to overly dramatic complaining about the Entertainment industry in return for views/clicks that they hope to monetize. None of them are truly as sincere about the fate of Star Wars as they pretend to be in their videos. All of the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair over Star Wars, etc. is manufactured by these Youtube/Tiktok posters to grab the attention of people rushing to view online "opinions" following each episode. They know the majority of the people watching their videos want to see not just criticism but outrage, not discussion of the plot but ranting about how the failings of a TV show is somehow a microcosm of the ills plaguing society today. These online "commentators" are simply entertainers themselves in their own way, and entertainers always have and always will give their audience what it wants.

Stated it right after watching this weeks episode but not doing more with the only Wookiee Jedi ever has to be one of the biggest mistakes/over-sites.

Killing him offscreen was like, let's really make our fanbase angry.

LB12Diamond said:

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Stated it right after watching this weeks episode but not doing more with the only Wookiee Jedi ever has to be one of the biggest mistakes/over-sites.

Killing him offscreen was like, let's really make our fanbase angry.

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At least they didn't do something like bring into back Luke, Han, and Leia and then completely waste them….oh wait.

Part of the disparity is that that's those are kind of hallmarks of moviemaking in the era, and people generally watch them for what they are. Modern movies and shows have come a long way, so the expectations are much higher.

ANH's budget was also the equivalent of only about $60 million today and made leaps and bounds in special effects. So it was the equivalent of $30 million an hour of film versus $45 million an hour for the Acolyte. With all of the current resources and the refinement within the industry over the last 45 years, it's really difficult to accept something as an equal without a lot more polish.

fig96 said:

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Cliff.Booth said:

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It was 22m per ep a page or two back, the costs just keep skyrocketing…

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$180 million was the estimated budget for the entire series, so yeah $22 million an episode. Seems ridiculous considering they're just over half an hour. Andor was just under $21 million an episode and they were 10-15 minutes longer. Kenobi had a budget of only $15 million per episode and had longer runtimes.

The notion that they had budget constraints that forced them to cut that sequence and deliver the 20 minutes of nothingness that they did seems laughable and suggests a lot of mismanagement.