To no one’s surprise members of the access media are blaming fans for ruining Star Wars despite agenda-driven pushes to change shows and multiple marketing campaigns maligning audiences.
(R): Osha (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
The latest attack on fans comes from Lyvie Scott in an article at Inverse titled “The Acolyte Isn’t Ruining Star Wars — You Are.”
A screenshot of an Inverse article titled “The Acolyte Isn’t Ruining Star Wars — You Are”
In the article, Scott declares that The Acolyte is “one of the best additions to that galaxy far away in a long time, embracing decades of nostalgia while also thinking critically on the franchise’s legacy.”
She then adds, “It also might be the most diverse Star Wars story yet — and while that’s definitely a boon for marginalized fans, it’s made The Acolyte the target of a vocal splinter of the fandom.
(L-R): Olega Padawan (Ed Kear), Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett), Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae), Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) and Osha (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
From there, she makes it clear who she’s disparaging in the article, “Whether you know them as the Fandom Menace or a cluster of blue checkmark users on Twitter, it’s impossible to escape their orbit. The same folks that review-bombed diverse swings like Marvel’s Eternals and the Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power have now set their sights on The Acolyte.
(L-R, front row): Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett), Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) and Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
READ: Leslye Headland Confirms ‘The Acolyte’ Is The “Gayest Star Wars,” And Claims That R2-D2 Is A Lesbian
The threshold for supposedly unacceptable behavior even reaches the point of defending the set design as part of a protected class when Scott writes, “Comments on set design and screenwriting have turned into misogynistic microaggressions against Headland; even critiques on the series have been weaponized by its haters.”
After making all of these accusations, she then declares that the true culprit behind this criticism of Star Wars is male entitlement. She says, “The origins of this toxicity aren’t difficult to figure out. At the end of the day, it boils down to entitlement: many male fans feel like they own the franchise, and are determined to safeguard it from anyone that could challenge that ownership. That makes it hard for disparate groups to coexist, and it’s even harder for any non-white, non-male creatives hoping to tell stories within the franchise.”
Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
George Lucas takes a decidedly different tone about who is to blame for the changes in Star Wars. During an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, Lucas said, “I was the one who really knew what Star Wars was … who actually knew this world, because there’s a lot to it. The Force, for example, nobody understood the Force.”
He added, “When they started other ones after I sold the company, a lot of the ideas that were in [the original] sort of got lost. But that’s the way it is. You give it up, you give it up.”
George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson on the red carpet at Cannes via AFP News Agency YouTube
READ: George Lucas Blasts Disney For Not Understanding Star Wars And The Force
He made similar comments in 2020, saying, “I kind of lost control of Star Wars, so it’s going off in a different path than what I intended.”
He added, “But the first six [Star Wars films] are very much mine and my philosophy. And I think that philosophy sort of, goes beyond any particular time, because it’s based on history, it’s based on philosophy, it’s based on a lot of things.”
Audiences are indeed abandoning the show. Minutes watched data from analytics firm Luminate indicates that the two-episode premiere of The Acolyte was only viewed for 210 million minutes between May 31 and June 6th. Both episodes combined had a total runtime of 73 minutes and 55 seconds.
In comparison, Ahsoka, which also had a two-episode premiere garnered 829 million minutes viewed according to data tracking company Nielsen for the week of August 21 through the 27th of 2023.
Nielsen “Overall” Streaming Ratings for the week of August 21 to August 27, 2023
Even The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere, which was a single episode premiere that came out on March 1st, brought in 823 million minutes. That was down from The Mandalorian Season 2 premiere, which racked up 1.030 billion minutes when it premiered in October 2020.
Clearly, viewership across the board is down for Star Wars.
(L-R): Jedi Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Mae (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Not only are people abandoning the franchise and series en masse, but they are seemingly making their displeasure known as they leave.
The Acolyte has the worst audience score of any Star Wars property on Rotten Tomatoes. It currently sits at 26%. The average score is a 1.8 out of 5.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
Interestingly, IMDb not only shows people are abandoning the show, but that they don’t like it either. The first episode of the series has over 8,400 reviews while the second episode saw the total number of reviews drop to 7,500.
The show’s IMDb score sits at 4.3 out of 10. However, the unweighted mean is 3.7. The plurality of reviews are 1 out of 10.
Star Wars: The Acolyte IMDb review scores
What do you make of this attack by the access media on Star Wars fans?
There’s simply no talking sense to these people.
Anyone who brings up “microaggressions” has already lost the argument.
How is Inverse still in business?
Is the capstone class for every journalism degree now 401: the fine art of disingenuity?
[…] jako gówno? Przeprasza i stara się cokolwiek wyjaśnić czy zmienić? Absolutnie. Zaczyna się oskarżanie fanów. Brawo! Mam pytanie: jeśli nie dla widzów i fanów, to dla kogo to jest […]