Choice (The Acolyte - S01E07) - Live Action Series

Discuss the latest Chapter! (Discussion)

Good girl, get mad! SPOILERS.

Remember, this cost $180 million...

What did I just watch? Before the series was released Headland talked about how Rashomon was a major inspiration for the series. I am sad to report that Headland not only does not understand Star Wars, she does not understand Rashomon either. You see, in Rashomon we get very different versions of an event, each told by a different person, a bandit, a woodcutter, the wife etc. What The Acolyte does in episode 7 is not to tell a different version of an event, no, it merely tells the complete version of an event. The point of Rashomon is that each narrator is unreliable and wants to be seen in the best light possible, Rashomon is not about ever showing the one true version of events, it's up to the viewer to decide what may have happened and in the end it does not matter anymore, because the fact that a man wants to take on a poor orphaned baby is a glimmer of hope in a cruel world. This episode now is, and I kid you not, the exact same episode as the flashback story from a few weeks ago - but with all the missing bits now filled in. Leslye Headland, you are a hack and I truly wonder why you even have work in Hollywood.

Koril wants Mae to be angry... what a good mother she is!

Some people tried to give Headland the benefit of the doubt... the "true" story may reveal how Sol mind-wiped Osha or manipulated her, all these theories amount to nothing, because The Acolyte is literally "What you see is what you get". There are no trap doors, no clever twists. Nothing. All the things that happened in the flashback episode before are still happening here. So yes, Mae is a psychopath, wants to kill her sister and starts a fire, only difference now: she acts all surprised when the book she sets on fire starts burning. Who wrote this??????? The castle made of stone once again inexplicably burns down in minutes. The only new things we learn relate to the Jedi... although, they are not Jedi here. Headland fails at even a most basic level to understand what Jedi are, they are at best Headland Jedi, thus, for the purpose of this review I will refer to Jedi as "Hedi". Because this is a fever dream, it would even give fan fiction a bad name.

Head space witch #1 turns into smoke for no reason... and Sol feels attacked and stabs her. Bye bye!

Ok, so what new things do we learn from this rehash of episode 3? The Hedi are on this planet to research and examine a vergence in the Force, they literally gather moss and walk around with metal detectors to do that, I kid you not, I included a screenshot as proof! How they know about it... not explained. They just know. Also, how Headland borrows concepts from other movies and then makes them irrelevant and mundane is more than just annoying. Now vergences are a dime a dozen, they happen every time! This is how you trivialize Anakin Skywalker and the prequels. A job well done, Headland! Anyway. We learn that Torbin is homesick, like REALLY homesick, please remember that detail, because it will be important soon. Sol meanwhile finds out that there are people on this planet. You know the rest since you have all seen it previously. We see how lesbian head witch #1 enters Torbin's mind and this results in another super weird and cringe scene, where space witch #1 comes on to Torbin in a weird sexually suggestive manner and tells him she would do ANYTHING if he just asks... and poor little Torbin just wants to be at home on Coruscant, because he is really, really, REALLY homesick ... and thus she breaks his defenses and takes him over. What. The. FUUUUUUUUUU..................

Some will certainly clap and bark now

What else... for no reason, since none is necessary, Sol feels Osha is destined to become his padawan, just like that. You see, he has no padawan yet and Indara kind of teased him (more like lectured) him about it previously. So he really wants a padawan and he immediately feels a connection to Osha. Because the plot requires it. Indara contacts the High Council (off screen, no Yoda) and in true High Council fashion they say "no". The kids are too old, they are to remain with the family. But, wait for it... when Torbin asks if this means they can at least go home now Indara says no and says they still need to examine things. And since Torbin is REALLY homesick he arrives at the genius conclusion that if he races to the space witch castle in his speeder and gets the girls it means they can all go home, because, in case you missed it, he is REALLY, REALLY homesick. And I am not making any of this up. This is literally what happens!

The power of none....

Sol races after him (the speeder scene looks worse than what we had in Return of the Jedi) . Indara and the Wookiee take the spaceship. Sol and Torbin arrive at the castle, climb the walls, meet head witch #1 and #2 and Koril is really, really angry, she previously told Mae to "get mad", so yes, Koril instigated Mae to do something really stupid. What a great mother she is! The other witches have their bows and arrows aimed at the Hedi. Koril is about to lose it when head witch #1 turns into smoke for no reason. Sol assumes she is attacking and stabs the smoke with his lightsaber. Head witch #1 dies on the spot, but not before saying she would have let Osha go... why not say so before to prevent any of this? Who wrote this again? Koril is out of her mind now and also turns into smoke and wisps away  and it is implied that she survived, she is nowhere to be seen after that. Is she Smilo Ren's secret master?    

The Hedi are about to engage in a fist fight with each other... yeah...

Torbin casually deflects all the arrows shot at him. Meanwhile Indara arrives (must be a very slow spaceship), but she can't land easily, the Wookiee is to jump out. But the witches have assembled in their chamber and now collectively mind control the Wookiee and we get a fight scene which is ok, but serves no real purpose. Eventually Indara arrives and manages to snap the Wookiee out of the spell... and for some unknown reason the second Indara cuts the WIFI connection to the Wookiee all the witches die. All at once. What? WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Whatever, I do no not even want to know.

You know the rest, the only other thing we are shown is how Indara and Sol enter into an argument and she throws accusations at him, because Sol was desperate to have a padawan of his own. They are about to enter into an actual fist fight (!!!!!!!!!), but Torbin snaps them out of it. And then Indara tells everyone that they will lie to the High Council and tell them that Mae burned the castle down (which is true), that all the witches died because of that and that they managed to rescue the one child. WHAT. THE. FFFFFFFUUUUUCCCCCCC.......

And then credits roll... but it's not over yet. For some inexplicable reason they chose to play a current era R&B pop song in the credits, sung by some US R&B singer. What. The. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...what even is this anymore? Contemporary pop songs by current era R&B artists in Star Wars now? Really? REALLY? And Kennedy nodded and clapped? And before anyone dares to bring up The Holiday Special and its questionable music choices... SHUT UP! We talk proper 180 million Star Wars here made by Lucasfilm, not some tv network.

This is the absolute nadir of Star Wars. What has happened to a once great franchise, a beloved space fairytale, a story Lucas wrote to teach kids some basic spirituality, among other things? Headland Star Wars has turned into a weird sexually charged nonsense story. We get a female main character who is seduced by someone who is a literal serial killer, murderer and psychopath who killed various of her friends not even 12 hours earlier, in the grand tradition of The Last Jedi where we first saw this happen, when Rey felt sympathy for space Heinrich Himmler (the one who organized the holocaust). What is this?

Why did the Wookiee go into exile and why did Torbin commit suicide? For WHAT? This episode aims to reveal it all and we only see nonsense. The entire "I am so homesick" angle is so nonsensical that words escape me. But what is it that Torbin actually did???? He never even killed anyone! And the Wookiee was mind controlled and had literally nothing to do with any of the events. Not even remotely. Only Sol killed a witch, but the stupid idiot witch decided it's super ok to turn into some smoke monster in front of his eyes. What was he supposed to think? Especially with all the other witches aiming bows and arrows at them and Koril being a true psychopathic bitch?

Literally nothing makes sense! Not only Mae and Osha make no sense as characters, all the Hedi (remember, those are NOT actual Jedi!) make no sense either. Why is Indara such a shady bitch? Why is Sol obsessed with Osha that he has to have her as a padawan? I do not want to enter the inane grooming debate, but does Headland not see how super creepy that all is? Why is Torbin SO homesick, to the point he steals a speeder, races to the castle, to steal the kids or so so they can all fly home? Who does that? Who writes this nonsense? And the Wookiee is once again a non-character. He literally does nothing. Nothing of his own volition. And he never even kills anyone or does anything that would justify his self-imposed exile, and Torbin's vow of silence and suicide is equally silly and nonsensical.

Leslye Headland is the worst that could happen to Star Wars. The only positive thing is that hardly anyone is watching this dreck. But this could seriously ruin Star Wars for a lot of people if they watched it. Nothing makes sense. Headland lacks even super basic understanding of the Jedi and Star Wars. She just steals ideas from other movies and adds lesbian space witches and comes up wth a perverted version of the Jedi. Hedi, who are bitches, weirdos, liars, fight each other and are desperate for little children (as their padawan, not in a sexual manner), at least it comes across like that (and I hate to say this because the Disney grooming debate is beyond idiotic). They are not Jedi. And... for someone who talked at length about how Rashomon was an inspiration Headland lacks a basic understanding of even that.

Also, what is the structure of this show? We get basically the same episode as before all over again, right before the end, killing all and any momentum from the previous episode, but now with added bits. Episode 3 was entirely redundant. Episode 7 should have been episode 3, as simple as that. Since this is NOT Rashomon and we do NOT get wildly conflicting versions of the same event, just the complete version it literally makes no sense now why they ever showed the incomplete version before. Was this Headland's pathetic attempt at a mystery box? When the mystery is... Torbin is really, really, REALLY homesick, Indara is a first class bitch who resorts to lies and deception and Sol REALLY wants Osha as his padawan like a thirsty Catholic priest who has cast an eye on that cute choir boy????

This is the single worst piece of Star Wars ever. Worse than The Holiday Special, because the Holiday Special at least had heart and good intentions... this has nothing, it's empty vapid nonsense. It not only has no heart, it has no soul, it's a twisted, distorted fan fic version of Star Wars from the mind of a person who clearly has some unresolved personal issues. Headland readily admitted in interviews that this series is a reflection of her own troubled relationship with her sister. Kathleen Kennedy and Dave Filoni also failed at a most fundamental level. One, because she hired Headland and funded her travesty, the other because he had to greenlight all the scripts and nodded his head each and every time. And now we are here... vergences are a dime a dozen, Mae's and Oshas's midichlorian count is "super high", Anakin is just a common occurrence now. And Headland has the gall to try to connect this all to The Phantom Menace and to imply the High Council was unwilling to take on Anakin because that other vergence from only a few decades prior turned out not so well. I refuse to consider any of this canonical. This is bad tumblr fan fiction. Also, with only one episode to go... what is this travesty even about? We wasted TWO episodes on a flashback that tells the same story. We did not see present day Sol and Mae or Smilo Ren at all in this. The last episode next week will be super rushed, like anything else in this show. But at least it will finally be over. We can only hope Star Wars will not take too much damage from this. I seriously question if I want to keep invested in all this after this nuclear disaster. If Disney does not course correct very, very soon I may decide it's time to jump ship and to wait until new people are in charge. And to think the Rey movie could be just more of the same...

Do not watch this episode. Ever. I mean it. Minus infinity holocrons!