Mini Series The Acolyte 1.04 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I loved Andor but I don't like what it did to the fans. I loved Book Of Boba Fett I loved Mandalorian season three I Loved Ahsoka I loved The Bad Batch and I love The Acolyte so far and most of the fans on here love the Acolyte so far with little nitpicks here or there that's normal!

 

Maybe they could have had Mae captured by the Jedi after attempting to kill Kalnacca, then the big bad shows up behind Osha. He goes to strike her down and Mae Force pulls Sol’s lightsaber into her hand and blocks the bad guy’s attack.

It would’ve been an awesome and shocking moment where you’re cheering for Mae saving her sister’s life and switching sides.
Instead they had her randomly change her mind with that dude while sitting in the forest.

The seeds were planted but the execution was poor.

 

Mae's turn doesn't work for a number of reasons. Episode 3 killed all the momentum that Episode 2's "revelation" created about Mae and Osha finding out about each other. We just go into a full-on flashback episode, without any pretext - just like that. It makes very little sense structurally and it ruined the flow. Episode 3 was meant to delve deeper into Osha and Mae's past and relationship, so that her turn in Ep. 4 would work, but that episode established that Mae was an evil psychopath, who was willing to burn her twin sister alive, so that the Jedi wouldn't take her. So all that "My loyalty is to Osha" stuff, her not wanting to kill the Jedi anymore, her willing to give herself up to them - it all just came straight out of nowhere. It doesn't work. It does not follow from the previous episodes. It would have worked better if Episode 3 was incorporated into this episode, in-between them walking around from point A to point B, showing that Mae was actively thinking about Osha, thus informing her eventual turn - kinda like LOST had flashbacks to the past that are relevant to this particular episode at hand. And it would have been better if Mae was not such an evil brat from the get-go, so that I could feel some empathy towards her, and not after she was established as a psychopath murderer, and gets turned on writer's whim without any proper setup.

 

I prefer the ending we got

 

Agreed completely. But I don’t think that’s what we would be getting with a Kelnacca vs. Zippermam scene.

You don’t like that Andor precipitated a demand for quality from the fans, you mean. As annoying as some of them can be (especially me), I think that raising the standard is unequivocally a good thing.

 

What makes you think Zippermam is female?

 

For me it’s an aesthetic preference. The volume sets, IMO, typically seem to be more sparse than an ‘active’ set, with the focus on extended perspective and light source. Whereas, typically, a more conventional set will have more set dressing and things in the foreground to fill the frame. In terms of their overall effect, both have their pros and cons of course… and the perfect world is to mix and match and use both appropriately… and with The Acolyte specifically, it looks like (more often than not) they are using actual sets with blue/green screen extensions rather than the volume (is my educated assumption)… but hey, I like seeing the old style practical sets… even when (as I mentioned in my previous post) it’s obvious it’s a set. That’s nostalgia for yer.

Ultimately it’s a bit like comparing puppet Yoda to digital. One can look more tangible and ‘in the room’ than the other, but whilst at the same time looking less ‘real’ and having less life. It’s that preference, or not, for realism over hype-realism (or visa versa) . So often one has to take it on a case by case basis.

Lucas was interested in the extension of reality to create different worlds and to immerse audiences in them. Using digital technology (for better or worse) was absolutely a natural and progressive extension of Lucas’ filmmaking philosophies and approach generally IMO. I don’t think he got less interested in making things ‘tangible’ or ‘real’, because Lucas was way already beyond that when he made ANH… and this progressed throughout the OT and into the PT.

 

They always do like throwing a twist of “oh the he was actually a she” it’s honestly to be expected.

 

Perhaps. He certainly was far more successful at "extending reality" in his OT years when green screen was less of an option. Just my opinion. Nothing against the PT. I like the PT. But the OT felt tangible. Way more tangible.

 

Well I don't know about how one terms 'successful' (?), but seems to me that Lucas has literally changed the way the big budget action films have been made... firstly via the OT and then the PT. If influence and the shaping of cinema is 'success', then Lucas is hugely successful... albeit contentious in part... but one has to remember that once, even the use of sound and then colour in cinema, were considered contentious at the time. The progress of cinema often meets resistance.

In terms of how one perceives the use of technology to build stories/worlds, again I think Lucas was entirely consistent. For example, he could have chosen for a more conventional way to depict how the Death Star in ANH was destroyed e.g. it could have been a ground based/set based battle a la The Guns of Navarone, with the rebels having to board the Death Star and plant explosives, but instead Lucas specifically chose to have it be a space battle (which is 90% visual effects). Same goes for Yoda... that could have just been an actor in a costume, but he chose to realise him by puppetry and then digital effects. So when we talk about 'believability' and 'realism', it's largely subjective. What makes something more 'real', for me, is my immersion in the story... and that's usually via the characters, plot and world building. It's why animation can resonate in our reality just as much as live action... and Star Wars has always (and mostly successfully) blurred the lines between the practical and the visual illusion.

 

To me, it’s not so much tangibility as it is…naturalism, or a sense of reality. A poorly lit and shot set or puppet can look super tangible, but also super fake. You can visit many a haunted house to absorb that point. That’s why I was, and still am, so thrilled about The Volume. It brings the “not there” elements of a scene directly into the scene, and it does so in-camera and with all the natural light these crazy screens can offer. And you can set-dress to your heart’s content in front of the screen, and then extend the sets digitally onto the screen. When used well, I find it much more pleasing that green screen on a studio lot.

For Star Wars, that is. I look for naturalism and the weird and wonderful in Star Wars. All together. But it needs to feel real. On the other hand, I fully embrace the set-ness of many a…German expressionist film, or what have you.

 

I will add to your post that you also probably chose a great shot with the Volume and a great shot without the Volume.

I personally find all shots with the Volume great. They look far more natural to me than the cheap sets with the bad lighting and the combinations of those with CGI. Which is the majority of how the Acolyte looks.

 

I think we need both. Not that action is the issue (also it wasn’t great past the initial two episodes), but that all those Jedi go down without a fight … is kinda strange. A Sith comes in and a Jedi says: „Aaaaah, I did a bad thing, I deserve it!“

Character-building was absent in this Episode of course. Which is strange if it is a twenty-something minutes Episode. You could have added five minutes of dialogue easily.

Well. These guys must have slaughtered the Witches. Or turned to cannibalism. Nothing else justifies their behavior at this point.

 

i love how this group of immensely powerful jedi let a little cute furry rodent lead the way

 

Yes! Best thing about the episode.

 

The look of this episode was the least of my complaints, my immersion was maintained, more than it would be for the average frontier junk settlement.

 

The end of the episode would have been cooler if the trailers didn’t spoil it.

 

Right so...she killed Indara with a knife in front on f witnesses and convinced Torbin to kill himself with poison but if she can get a Jedi to attack her with a lightsaber and Mae is unarmed this is somehow going to make the Jedi look bad? I think the person that killed two Jedi would would be the one that looks bad.

 

Killing a defenseless opponent has led to the dark side during the saga. Perhaps they’re trying to corrupt the Jedi. Make them turn to rte dark side so that the Order crumbles, or is weakened from within. It’s not just an image thing.

 

Is it 100% unambiguous that Mae has to kill a Jedi without Mae using a weapon, and not "kill a Jedi without a weapon" as in an unarmed Jedi? Right?

BTW, is it possible that the challenge could mean to get a Jedi to quit, to give in to despair, to leave the order, to maybe even go Dark Side? All that talk about "killing the dream?" I guess the earlier Jedi's suicide would have perhaps qualified, if not for Mae supplying the poison?

A reach, granted -- you'd have to assume this is something Mae has questioned her master about, or at least questioned Qimir about, so the answer being that "technical" seems unlikely.

 

It's clear to me now that Mae has killed a Jedi (Kelnacca) without using a weapon by threatening to turn herself and her master into said Jedi Kelnacca, and thus triggering the killing of Kelnacca by her master. So she passes that test. But...if that's the case, and I suspect it is, the way it played out is too misleading. Because Mae looks surprised to see that Kelnacca is dead. That's, IMO, a cheap trick.

 

Re: the bold part, couldn't agree more and pretty just said the same thing in the Mae thread. The show portrayed Mae as an emotionally imbalanced kid who apparently had a history of harming creatures and who stated that she wanted to kill Osha rather than letting her leave with the Jedi and all of that is REALLY hard to square with the adult Mae who wants to stop killing Jedi when she learns that Osha is alive.

I think it would be more consistent if Mae was angry to learn that Osha was still alive. It would be more consistent with crazy Mae's character if she tried to kill adult Osha, still blaming her for the destruction of the coven. Instead we've got this weird mush of motivations. Mae is killing the Jedi because she blames them for the seeming death of her sister Osha who she herself said she was going to kill? Wha?

 

They've purposely worded it to be misconstrued IMO... as it can be interpreted either way, and I think Mae said as much in the last episode... Indara is such a naughty Sith

I think it's just general misdirection. Mae seemed much more attached to Osha, as a kid, than Osha was to Mae... so it stands to reason than Mae has been mostly motivated by the seeming absence of her sister. Osha on the other hand is actually much more emotionally detached. She'll make for a good Sith when she turns (if indeed that's the intention of the Sith Master).

 

RE: the bold part I won't be surprise if that's what they're going for but all of that seems nonsensical to me. So the Master is going to be all, "When you refused to kill Kelnacca you forced me to stab Kelnacca to death with my lightsaber so from a certain point of view you DID kill a Jedi without using a weapon. Congratulations on passing the test, which is not a test but a lesson. I know that you just abandoned your journey to the darkside but since you forced me to kill Kelnacca I'm promoting you to darkside henchmen, or something...it's not really clear what you were going to get out of this!"