00:00Yes, yes!
00:29Truly in life, you reap what you sow.
00:31And if what you sow happens to be a $180 million vanity project made by a feminist activist
00:37promoted way beyond her abilities, with practically no experience, only a vague understanding
00:43of the subject matter, and even less talent for actual storytelling, starring a blank
00:47faced charisma vacuum with all the acting talent of a comatose Steven Seagal, and incorporating
00:53some of the most cringe inducing scenes ever committed to film, then well, what you reap
00:58will be a big ol' dose of cancellation, my friends.
01:01Honestly, I don't know who's going to be more disappointed by all this, the dozen
01:05or so activists masquerading as Star Wars fans, for whom this show was basically a thousand
01:10wet dreams all congealed together into one sticky mass, or the hundreds of content creators
01:18that have made an absolute fortune out of this show over the past couple of months.
01:22Either way, the news that The Acolyte wasn't going to get renewed for a second season was
01:26both a surprise and a long expected confirmation for me, because honestly, did anyone really
01:32think that Disney were going to throw another couple of hundred million dollars away on
01:35a show that was about as well received as Australia's self-appointed breakdancing
01:39champion?
01:40They're dumb for sure, but there comes a point where simple financial reality has to
01:44take priority over THE MESSAGE, and that's exactly where The Acolyte has landed.
01:51The more surprising aspect of all this was the public admission of the show's cancellation.
01:56See, Lucasfilm's normal strategy with big new projects that either fail spectacularly
02:00or never even get made in the first place is just to not talk about them anymore and
02:04hope that people forget they even existed.
02:07That way they don't have to answer any awkward questions about their horrendous mismanagement
02:11of one of the biggest brands in entertainment.
02:14So the fact that they were forced to straight up tell everyone that The Acolyte was so bad
02:17it was definitively getting cancelled is a pretty strong indicator that they know how
02:22much everyone fucking hated this show.
02:25And damn man, it's got to be a bitter pill for Kathleen Kennedy to swallow.
02:28As much as characters like Rey and Ahsoka helped to satisfy her activist cravings for
02:33a little while, they were only ever going to be compromise solutions that failed to
02:37go as far as she wanted.
02:39The Acolyte on the other hand represented her ultimate vision for Star Wars.
02:43Female focused, female led and female directed.
02:47And funnily enough, it was rejected by absolutely everyone.
02:51It was a rejection not just of the show itself, not just the terrible characters and the awful
02:55writing, but of everything that modern Lucasfilm aspires to be.
02:59And this is where the blame game begins, because when a show as big and progressive as The
03:04Acolyte crashes and burns, a convenient scapegoat must be found.
03:08Pretty soon you'll be seeing all kinds of weapons grade cope from the legacy news media
03:12that Star Wars fans were just too dumb and bigoted to understand the sheer majesty of
03:17The Acolyte, or that the show was an innocent victim of review bombing, or even that YouTubers
03:23were somehow to blame for it all.
03:25Here's the thing, we don't make the news, we just comment and occasionally laugh at
03:29it.
03:30The cold harsh truth is that the mythical, modern audience that Lucasfilm have been chasing
03:34for 10 years now simply doesn't exist, never has existed and never will exist.
03:40The people who shout most loudly about it on social media don't actually care about
03:44shows like The Acolyte and won't even bother to watch it.
03:48All they care about is what it represents, the message it puts across, and I'm afraid
03:52that doesn't translate into money for your studio.
03:55The reality here is that Disney gambled and lost big time on this one, and the fact that
04:00they've very publicly killed this project, coupled with rumours of a major course correction
04:04at Marvel, suggests that they might just have gotten tired of losing.
04:09Either way, I think the next few months are going to be very interesting.
04:13Anyway, that's all I've got for today.
04:16Go away now.
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