The Acolyte and the Angry Algorithm Destroying Star Wars Discourse

Let’s start with a quick rundown of my feelings towards The Acolyte.

This show is an Andor-like deviation from the typical Star Wars storylines, and introduces a lot of great ideas and it has plenty of potential moving forward in terms of painting the overall picture of the Jedi and the political shenanigans leading up to the events of the original trilogy and beyond. The action scenes are actually quite spectacular, the production value is solid, the acting is also superb, and the possibilities moving forward are endless. I like the concept of heading even further into the past, into the origins of characters merely referenced within the prequel trilogy of Episodes I – III.

The Acolyte however isn’t perfect, and I think the biggest issue is the pacing.

I personally think it would have worked significantly better as a film, at most maybe a two-parter in theaters instead of these extended streaming episodes with padded running times in order to satisfy the streaming quota. If they wanted the streaming show format, then we really should have gotten beefier episodes or a longer season to flesh out the characters a bit more, especially if we’re spending so much time with them. The Acolyte with its first act mysteries and superb action sequences would have been a great 160–180-minute film. As a reminder for those saying the runtime is too long, Avengers: Endgame was three hours.

The music isn’t quite as good as in The Mandalorian and Andor, and it suffers from the “Save it For the Next Season” syndrome where they toss way too many breadcrumbs when certain narratives should have been entirely shelved.  The breadcrumb problem of The Acolyte would have actually been non-existent had they just released all the episodes simultaneously.

Here’s two other problems with The Acolyte of which isn’t the fault of the show.

First off, the marketing was off. This is definitely a show with a more feminine gaze, if you get my drift. Most of the major cast are women, there’s way more shirtless scenes than I expected (those who like their men will not complain here), and most importantly it has strong messages based around sisterhood and family bonds. I feel like the show was marketed improperly as a mystery, when it should have leaned towards the positive femininity of the overall product---which is an absolute rarity within the Star Wars ecosystem. I do think some (not all) of the major criticism could have been bypassed had the commercials and advertisements been more forward and honest with the show’s attempted appeal.

Second off, and most unfortunately, it’s a victim of the extreme rise of right-wing adjacent bickering happening in social media that’s severely harming the entire brand and the fanbase that’s just trying to enjoy the content.

Within my family, I’ve lost one to the rabbit hole of angry right-wing content that thrives off negativity, thrives off fear-mongering, thrives off the “it was better back in the olden days” content that’s appealing to conservatives, fringe right-wingers, and also those who don’t want as much depth in the Star Wars narratives.

This particular Spanish YouTuber that’s trying to claim my family and Latinos nationwide spends 95% of the time making anti-liberal and anti-progressive content and the other 5% crapping on random television shows and movies. His latest target was the trailer for Gladiator II, which is done by the same director and the biggest notable change is the introduction of a new character played by Denzel Washington, based off an actual Roman emperor. People (like the YouTuber) got mad at the use of Jay-Z in the trailer, which would have been a legit criticism except the original film also used modern-day music on their trailers….

…..so what are we really mad at?  

Their hate truly is centered on Denzel, because of his skin color and how the right-wingers once again showcase their disdain for more variety in the blockbuster films, not comprehending the concept of fiction and actual history, as once again a reminder that people from Africa did indeed live within the Roman Empire, and Denzel’s character is based off an actual historical figure.

The strategy is clear, they’ll hook you with exaggerated outrage over the movie, and then you’ll enter their channel and start watching the other videos based around the anti-leftist content. And before you know it, the algorithm is going to feed you more of the same angry slop.

And now my family member still believes that kids are identifying as animals. cool.

Back to the main topic, Star Wars fandom has fallen apart because YouTube and most of social media has transformed rage into an economy.

CinemaSins was the trendsetter, even though ironically their criticism is done for silly humor above everything else, and to this day we have most not quite catching on to the overall joke (so for the record, I don’t hold any ill will towards that channel). Today, modern-day nitpicky content creators will spend hours trashing product because of their disdain towards narrative depth and especially diversity.

The videos end up being significantly longer than the films themselves. I saw one YouTuber literally spend 10+ hours trashing The Force Awakens within 5 movie-length chapters, a film that truly doesn’t need such extensive essays as its obviously a good but safe retelling of A New Hope’s overall mythos with a few mysteries attached.  

The Acolyte was from the very beginning, from the very first trailer, getting crucified online, especially on YouTube. A simple teaser trailer featuring a Black actress playing multiple roles set the internet on red fire, and the show’s reputation on YouTube and other corners of the internet never stood a chance. With every episode, the anger only grew, and mostly for stupid reasons. I’ve seen their complaints, they couldn’t handle the possibilities that emerged from the yet-unsolved mysteries, and they speculated the wildest conclusions, speculated without evidence, and caused annoying and distressing arguments all over the social media map; struggling to properly comprehend that the United States is diverse and therefore the movies and shows should be casted as such.

These basement dwellers see the improved diversity as attacks against the typical white male roles, they see it as an overall attack against their culture, their race, their supposed values. We have YouTubers rallying people to go anti-Disney to support their dumb conservative beliefs, while also seeing other YouTubers becoming overly critical to the point in which they fall into the same category. They viewed the changing and reformatting of easier narratives within classic IPs and classic cinematic series as radicalism; if its not a simple good vs. evil story, then its clearly an attack on America apparently.

The grumpy YouTubers (and to be honest, YouTube itself) have decided to cash in on the recent wave of anti-Disney content by blinding hating the show without any substance, without actual critical thinking. Remember how The Acolyte’s third episode was supposed to “eternally change everything we know about Star Wars”? Never happened, it was an origin story with a few mysteries left unanswered, nothing more.

Even though we’ve had the anti-Star Wars content ever since Rey went toe-to-toe with Kylo Ren, the amount and intensity increased dramatically after the Don’t Say Gay controversy and fallout leading to Disney losing its Reedy Creek and right-wing YouTubers capitalizing on the opportunities of political discourse and tying them to the stuff Disney is producing---whether its Disney+ or the Disney theme parks themselves. We’re still seeing complaints against Splash Mountain closing, and Tiana’s new ride never really has a chance at getting an unbiased view.

What we’re also seeing is more of these fringe YouTuber movie critics copying the bad actors and veering closer and closer towards right-wing, anti-diversity territory, falling into those traps. It has become a black hole, sucking in the crappy content creators that formed it, simple YouTubers turning to the dark side, and the viewers getting absorbed by the anger-crafting algorithm. The content makes them money, which in turn convinces some of these folks that the checks rolling in can’t mean that they’ve fallen into traps that can steer them towards darker thoughts and viewpoints.

They’re being incentivized to produce negativity, and being rewarded for it, and with more time absorbing and distributing such negativity it can lead to never truly seeing the positives in life.

The Acolyte has its problems, but it has become nearly impossible to properly discuss them within social media because a vast majority of people tangled into the discourse are bad actors, fringe nationalists unaccepting the concept of change and diversity, right-wing neckbeards trying to rage-bait people into voting the way they vote, and ridiculous people drinking the political tea about how Disney is trying to radicalize the youngsters into becoming LGBTQ.

Disney more than likely didn’t expect the bitter and angry discourse to hit fever pitch from the trailer alone, and probably didn’t have enough time to course-correct. Disney’s decision to release them slowly, drip-feed the episodes, added to the social media chaos we’re still seeing today. I understand why they did it this way, but I’m sure they’re reconsidering the strategy to just ignore the hate and churn on.

If The Acolyte was a giant epic Star Wars film, the first of its kind since The Rise of Skywalker, it probably could have avoided most of the unnecessary controversies and ridicule. As a film, Star Wars fans, interested moviegoers, and Star Wars beginners could have collectively seen it in theaters on opening weekend and therefore have the discussions immediately instead of having to traverse around the toxicity online to try to find proper conversations and logical takes.

If The Acolyte tossed all the episodes out at the same time, even though the mysteries wouldn’t linger as much, the wild accusations and criticisms would have been mitigated as all the questions could have been answered with just clicking “next episode” instead of blindly speculating and screaming into the right-wing voids.

Social media I will eternally argue remains a net-positive, there are so many advantages to having a strong social media ecosystem, and I feel like the United States can actually mitigate some of the wild and unhinged news stations by having strong internet broadband for all Americans. I’m not here to argue about the poisons of social media, because the ability to connect with others around the world and receive news and history and culture and music through a variety of different sources cannot be taken for granted.

But that being said, the Algorithm is a giant problem in terms of global and domestic politics, and in terms of overall discourse, and I feel like Star Wars has become the biggest IP victim in all of the chaos. Star Trek has never seen this level of discourse, not in their most-controversial moments.

We’re seeing a civil war growing exponentially among the fandom, as bad players are absorbing the fringe critics and transforming the entire conversation of the entire fictional universe into a political issue. Alternative takes on the concept of Jedi, the Force, and the Sith has blurred the line between what criticism is valid and what criticism is just an attempt to radicalize you into rejecting diversity, change, and necessary conversations.

The Acolyte produces a lot of interesting conversations, but they’re being drowned out in all the awful, awful noise of bitter-pilled right-wing media that loses its mind whenever they see minorities on screen. The second season remains just as big a mystery as those developed within the narrative, and we all know once Disney makes that decision the wheels of angry discourse will continue turning.

The solutions to all this will involve politicians trying to force the giant tech companies to better-monitor their algorithms, the way they distribute and accept content. But until then, Disney has to reconsider some of their strategies if they want shows like The Acolyte and whatever else comes from the Star Wars universe to actually stand a proper chance at success without psychotic, fictionalized controversies.

The show and its creative staff deserves significantly better, even if the show isn’t perfect.