On Oct. 30, 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion and, with it, “Star Wars.” Since then, Disney’s stewardship of a property George Lucas himself often failed to steward wisely has descended into farce.
There is an old joke that the proof time travel is not real is because George Lucas did not die after the release of “Return of the Jedi” in 1983. Lucas went on to continually re-edit his famous movies in ways that left fans cold. Then, he made the prequels and introduced characters like Jar Jar Binks and bad dialogue. Selling to Disney seemed like a blessing. Now the fans are ready for Disney to surrender the properties back. Lucas may have made us suffer with Jar Jar, but Disney has foisted “The Acolyte” on us.
Currently, the latest “Star Wars” offering, available for streaming on Disney Plus, is rated by the audience at 14% on the film review site Rotten Tomatoes. That is far less than even the widely hated “Star Wars Holiday Special” from 1978, which gets a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Much has been made about the woke, highly progressive plot of intersectional lesbian witches starring a nonbinary and gay cast directed by a lesbian director. Forget all of that. In the first episode, a fire broke out on the wing of a spaceship in space. There are basic rules to science fiction, including sound allowed in the vacuum of space and going faster than the speed of light. Every science fiction show takes liberties with those sorts of plot devices. But a fire spreading in space has, until now, been too absurd even for the most absurd science fiction plots.
Fire is, in fact, a problem. In the third episode of the series, a cave burned down. The cave was made of stone. So, too, were the steel bridges that also caught fire and burned. Given the pervasive wokeness of the show, one might be left to conclude the stone and steel identified as wood.
Plot points are embarrassing. Over the course of three episodes, the audience is led to believe one character, due to be killed, is on an uncharted planet in a dense and unexplored forest. The good guys and bad guys all arrive in the fourth episode to search for the character and find him already dead in about 15 minutes. So much for that plot point.
Then there is the dialogue. One of the intersectional lesbian witches who is able to have a child via the Force declared that the Force is not a power to be wielded but a thread that binds everyone. Not five minutes later, the same lady declares use of the Force is about power and who gets to use it.
Of course, that then leads to the woke nonsense that takes one out of a galaxy far, far away and a story that happened a long time ago and places us all into a gender studies class with language conjured five minutes ago. The lead character sees a furry creature heretofore unknown in the Star Wars universe. She asks a Jedi what the character is. The character is named “Bazil.” The lead character responds, “Is he, or they, with us?”
Woke intersectional progressivism is the logic of an insane asylum and the bad writing and woke craziness intersected right at that line. The female lead could not believe an animal could be female. The creature had to be either masculine or nonbinary. It is always the woke women of the West who write women out of the plot.
“The Acolyte” is a terrible show. I am not a stickler for canon in series. Writers should be able to take reasonable liberties with materials to draw in new audiences. But respect is also necessary. The woke progressives who have captured “Star Wars” show the source material no respect and treat the existing audience with disdain. Instead of creating something new, they can only deconstruct a joyless, boring, poorly acted farce. Bob Iger, please do something.