CONTRARY to popular belief, the Jedi Order are not knights in shining armour, and The Acolyte is here to prove it, but not before it clunkily plods through six episodes of robotic dialogue, ill-conceived screenplay and contrived plot twists.
Set roughly 100 years before Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, The Acolyte kicks off after Jedi Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) is confronted and killed by an assassin. A witness to the crime leads the Jedi to arrest Osha (Amandla Stenberg), a former Jedi Padawan-turned-mechanic.
The only problem is the assassin was not Osha but her twin Mae (also Stenberg) who is targeting three other Jedi Masters, including Osha’s former master Sol (Lee Jung-jae). Pulled into the wild goose chase to bring her homicidal sister into custody, Osha is taken on a journey that reveals how her family, a coven of witches, died.
Magic wanes
The word “telegraphed” does not even begin to capture The Acolyte’s story. Scenes move from one to the next, punctuated with action sequences, before it lethargically repeats, burning non-existent character motivations as a fuel source, like watching objects trail past on a factory conveyor belt.
Predictable right down to the identity of Mae’s Sith master, there are no surprises to be found in the latest Disney+ series, let alone the sense of childlike wonderment and exuberance Star Wars is usually known for.
Early episodes are written with an intent to tease the real story behind Osha and Mae’s past, despite how obvious the reveal would eventually be. Actual themes only show up in the final episode such as whether children should have free will and how good and evil is not black and white when it comes to the Jedi Order (and the Sith).
At this point, the season has ended and any attempt to be deeper than the shallow pond it was throughout the previous seven episodes is a pointless undertaking.
There is also the matter with the dialogue. For the most part the acting is fine, even in the third episode with the child actors that play Osha and Mae. It is also impressive that Lee speaks English throughout the series despite it not being his native language. He even demonstrates a deep enough understanding to know which words are important to stress through inflection in his lines.
Where The Acolyte fails its actors and talent is the dialogue and the writing. Extremely stilted, the characters often sound like they are reading words off a teleprompter. No amount of coaching is going to help when the dialogue sounds AI-generated.
Quality action sequences
However, credit where is due, The Acolyte has some good action sequences to break up the monotony of watching the characters talk.
The first fight between Qmir (Manny Jacinto) against Sol and the Jedi that he brings is very good as it mixes the extremely choreographed lightsaber fights from the prequel trilogy with the more vicious, off-the-cuff choreography from the sequel trilogy.
It also firmly demonstrates how a lone Sith could overpower several Jedi back before the former even became a clear, present threat in the Star Wars galaxy.
At the same time, particularly how The Acolyte ends, it is very obvious the show’s bland story simply exists for one reason: to set up a potential second season that focuses on the Sith, which already sounds better than this hot mess.
The Acolyte is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar
