The Acolyte’s Star and Showrunner Insult Star Wars Fans, to Nobody’s Shock
This one has been around for a couple of days, but it took me a while to figure out what I thought about it because it seems so weird and random. The Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte has now premiered, and by all accounts (which doesn’t include mine because I’m not watching it, so I have no account; if I want to see badass twins getting revenge, I’ll watch Double Impact again), it ain’t great. But a few days before the premiere debuted on Disney+, The Wrap interviewed showrunner and creator Leslye Headland and star Amandla Stenberg, and the clip making the rounds is all about how gay The Acolyte is. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is:
https://twitter.com/TheWrap/status/1798118535987876159
It took me a while to process this because my initial reaction was that it was just annoying people goofing around about gay stuff (and doing interpretive dance, for some reason), and while it’s maybe not the brightest thing to do when trying to sell a high-budget TV show – “high-budget” as in $22.5 million per episode – to mass audiences, it’s not a big deal, and certainly no different than what we’ve come to expect from the “there’s no good and evil in Star Wars” crew. However, what’s more important than Headland and Stenberg saying their show is gay is that the interviewer is the one who brought this up, immediately called fans bigots who hate gay people, and kept egging them on for more. Take this in tandem with Kathleen Kennedy admitting the Star Wars audience is “male dominated” before saying that’s what makes them attack women and one of the other lead actors getting an important moment in the original trilogy wrong. All of this says to me that Lucasfilm and its media “allies” are expressing their contempt for Star Wars fans. Leslye Headland doesn’t think R2-D2 is a lesbian, but she’s happy to say it to piss you off, just as the interviewer gleefully elicits the comment from her.
That’s also why Amandla Stenberg says that “nerds are gay;” she’s mocking the people she hates. Stenberg is another reason why I hesitated on this one. A video of her saying something about white people made the rounds at the same time as this interview, but it was a clip from five or six years ago, and it wasn’t about Star Wars or The Acolyte, so I didn’t think it was relevant, and it was a bit unfair to unearth it. But combined with calling Star Wars fans gay, it does show a pattern of her insulting large swaths of the audience and laughing about it. You can see it here:
https://twitter.com/ClownWorld_/status/1798505679734690055
This is why I don’t think Hollywood will ever change its current trajectory – or, at least, Disney won’t. That the people involved in The Acolyte are allowed to behave this way suggests that Lucasfilm has no real hopes for this show. They’re not stupid; they know it’s not going to succeed and that Star Wars fans will mostly hate it. This is no longer a mission to change the Star Wars fanbase into one more acceptable to Kathleen Kennedy and her cadre of feminist loons; it’s a mission of destruction, tearing down what they failed to transform. Think of the obvious response to them saying The Acolyte is gay; I’m sure it popped into your head the moment you heard it. That’s not a goof on their part; they want you to say it so they can suddenly become the victims. It isn’t their awful show; it’s you, the evil fan who hates everyone different from you. (And during pride month, for the love of Pete!) And they’re getting what they want; the Critical Drinker put it succinctly:
I think I despise every single thing about Star Wars now. Like, there's nothing even remotely worthwhile about this franchise anymore. Its anti-entertainment.
— The Critical Drinker (@TheCriticalDri2) June 5, 2024
He’s far from alone, and Lucasfilm knows that, but they’re fine with it. They’ve long crossed the point of no return; now, they’re just making sure nothing is left and thumbing their nose at the fans they hate as they do. People are making comparisons between this and what’s happening with Doctor Who (partly because of what is reportedly coming in episode 3 of The Acolyte; I’m not watching it, so I read and watched the reports, and I have no doubt this is intentional sabotage), and it makes sense; Russell T. Davies and the team behind that show don’t for one second think their insane, agenda-driven freak show will appeal to anyone outside their offices, but they don’t care. They’re destroying what Jodie Whittaker’s tenure didn’t transform, just like the Rey reinvention in the sequel trilogy and the season 3 bait-and-switch in The Mandalorian didn’t do for Star Wars. This is the raised middle finger as they commit their last acts of defiance. The rub is that these things were already destroyed; they’re just torching the rubble now.
Comments (8)
If what I’ve heard about the next episode is really coming, I think it may very well drop that low.
To be expected. We weren’t crazy, we weren’t unreasonable (though everyone said we were as they labeled us so many terrible things). The world is seeing that we were right the whole time as everything fell apart, and now we’re in this awkward period where people are trying to hold on to their dignity as they realize they’ve been supporting the actual bigots and bad guys all these years. This is a good thing, it’ll just wake more people up as the ratings continue to fall into the dirt.
I’ve seen people defend this thing, though not in any substantive way. You can tell their opinions were set as soon as it was announced.
Aside from people who have to review it, I don’t know why anyone would. Even people who stop to look at car accidents must get bored after four or five in a row.
Amandla Stenberg: “White people crying WAS the goal.”
You mean kinda like how you darkies are all crying over no darkies in Shogun? B – ) And the fact that there never will be B – )
No one else would recover from such comments. Her very identity is indistinguishable from head ladies at BLM.
I fully expect the audience rating to sink to single digits in the next few episodes. There is more privilege here than anyone else has ever had. None of them have neither talent nor appeal and do not belong anywhere near Star Wars, but ultimately, the real weak person in all of this is Bob Iger. No executive worth his salt would be associated with trash like this consistently. Real geeks need to think about Bob Iger, Ari Emanuel, and Larry Fink and how they have not only destroyed entertainment, but actively discriminate against you fans. Again, the show biz vision is a rug-pull.
What has not really been mentioned is all the boys who wanted to be Luke Skywalker can forget about that forever with these vampire squid occupiers in entertainment. Star Wars and Doctor Who have both gone full groomer, where talent doesn’t matter, ratings don’t matter, the free market doesn’t matter, but the only thing that does is the casting couch and what they would call sexuality.