There are worse things than The Acolyte. Ahsoka and Obi-wan Kenobi, for example. The first two episodes premiered on Disney+ last night. I went in, like most people, I'm sure, with low expectations but I was genuinely hoping to be pleasantly surprised. The show does have more of a basic sense of competence that I felt was lacking in Ahsoka and Obi-wan, and I was gratified to see that folks behind the scenes were at least taking this seriously. I'm not mentioning Andor I guess because I don't think it's fair to compare (though I guess I just did). You can compare productions based on competence and motivation but the kind of genius at work in Andor is luck. Even great filmmakers, working at the height of their powers, can produce stinkers. Acolyte is just fine so far.
I'll tell you what I liked first. I liked Osha working on that Trade Federation ship. It was cool seeing the Trade Federation out of the context of The Phantom Menace. Mostly the performances were fine. Lee Jung-jae doesn't always seem like he understands the words he's speaking and I wouldn't have cast him in a speaking role unless he were speaking Korean. But he does have a real warmth to him and charisma with Amandla Stenberg.
Stenberg has the challenge of playing two roles, the twins Osha and Mae, and I think she does a good job. I suppose I'm not alone in suspecting Mae is a Force projection like what Luke did at the end of The Last Jedi. I think Mae really did die and Osha is subconsciously committing the crimes like Margot Kidder in Brian DePalma's Sisters. In that movie, a woman whose conjoined twin died some years earlier is periodically possessed by that dead twin's persona, who commits murders. Based on my experience with college lit academics, I think the split in Acolyte was intended as a metaphor for people who code switch between being loyal subjects and instinctively rebelling against the system. Of course, since it seems obvious, and these people hate their plots being predicted more than anything, there's a good chance they're reworking the remaining episodes now. But how would an actual living, breathing Mae be more interesting? If they asked me, I'd recommend lying in the bed they made.
As the mystery unfolded in the first couple episodes, I found myself imagining what the show's release would have been like if it hadn't been a Star Wars series. It's a sci-fi universe in which some members of a magical order are being murdered. A former disciple is implicated but then it seems she has a good alibi. It seems like a pilot that wouldn't have gotten picked up for series. It lacks some essential spark.
Showrunner Leslye Headland wrote the first episode while the rest, as usual for a Disney+ series, were assigned to young, inexperienced writers without Wikipedia entries (there is one other writer with a Wikipedia entry, Jocelyn Bioh, whose previous credits are all stage plays except for contributions to a Hulu series called Tiny Beautiful Things).
The second episode is written by Jason Micallef and Charmaine DeGrate. Mae sets her sights on killing a Jedi Master called Torbin who seems to be surrounded by an impenetrable Force field. Does his beard look fake to anyone else?
The fight choreography wasn't bad. There was an obvious Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon influence emphasised by the rapid drums in the score. I liked how Mae used a cloud of dust to escape in the second episode.
The Acolyte is available on Disney+.
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