#at this point a smaller project with a $20 budget made in someone’s basement is a better long term investment

[poebrey]

I’m tired of seeing all these caveats on The Acolyte saying that the writing could’ve been better or it wasn’t as good like there’s a need to preemptively defend criticism of it when saying it deserved to get renewed. It was just as good or bad as most of the other star wars live action, none of which in terms of either quality (everything except Andor) or performance has surpassed The Mandalorian.

The Acolyte had a good first season, set the stage for a new direction, was able to build word of mouth and attract new audiences, and by the end of the season was going viral in a way that only Obi-Wan managed to do by bringing in a second legacy character (Anakin). This is now the 4th production including the sequel series that received a targeted hate campaign, by which I’m placing strong emphasis on the words targeted and campaign because both Ahsoka and TBOBF received large amounts of racist abuse.

Star Wars is a stagnant media property, coming off of a widely-panned sequel series (which managed to achieve the rare feat of alienating both the racist and misogynistic parts of the fanbase and just about everyone else in refusing to properly develop the new leads as it re-tooled itself to appease the former.) Just about every actor of color in a leading role has been subject to widespread racial abuse, it frequently undermines its own initiative to focus on female characters, and in refusing to stand by its own IP it’s destroying any long-term plan to revitalize the fanbase before it even gets off the ground, the High Republic era now having years of investment and buildup cast aside.

When all of the following media projects fail because no one has faith in them after how they handled their previous projects (looking at the upcoming Rey-centric Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy led film) its going to once again be blamed on ‘bad quality, bad production, whatever the racist dog whistle of the season is like the current “wokeism” etc.’ and not an inherent refusal of a company to stand by its own work. This is Star Wars, no one, not even the biggest fans of the prequel films were coming out of theatres thinking this was Oscar-winning high art. What made it work is George Lucas’ refusal to give in to criticism and fundamentally change his own creation, for better or worse, whether it be bad CGI and Jar Jar Binks, or making an annoying little kid named Ani the central protagonist of the first film in decades. That same attitude stood by giving Anakin a padawan named Ahsoka. It should be ushering in a new era of Star Wars, instead half the audience is convinced Lucasfilm hates its own IP.