Star Wars Expanded Universe Thread

[BryceC]

I'd love to have a discussion about the ending of Shogun with people.

Even myself I went from kind of outraged, to thinking about it, to kind of liking it.

I've yet to watch the Acolyte but the way Star Wars and Star Trek "fan" reviews are these days there's absolutely no way to know if something is great or horrible without watching it yourself.

I liked the ending of Shogun immediately, so I'm probably not the one to ask.

I like the Acolyte and I think it's worth watching. I think it would be MUCH better as a binge. The parts that are bad you can kind of zip by and don't have to think about as much if you just roll on to the next one.

Do I think it was a successful show, I mean it depends. They spent a king's ransom for it and it certainly didn't grow the fanbase, that's for sure.

 

[flander1649]

The season was not good and most of the acting was terrible. It was hard to not turn off. I got bored only one episode entertained me.

 

[laminak]

I consider the animated stuff differently if I’m being honest, there is a barrier to entry there for a lot of people that you’re just not going to overcome.

I think you’re underestimating this. None of my real life friends are watching anymore, period. I’d say, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Secret Invasion, and Echo all hurt the brand. I’ve also been pretty invested in the MCU and I’ve not watched anything since Ms. Marvel. Most of my friends were out after Falcon.

Star Wars? Mando was huge, I loved it, but the wind is out of the sails there after Season 3. Boba, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and the Acolyte have all hurt the brand I don’t think it’s debatable. I don’t think any of those shows were successful. Andor was great but basically nobody watched it.

Even if you think they didn’t actively hurt the brands, there is just ZERO juice around these properties. There seems to be almost zero interest in creating another MCU movie or SW Movie.

I think you're overestimating the damage and you're moving goalposts about damage vs success. For example, Solo: A Star Wars Story was a good film, received decent reviews, yet was considered a flop. Was it bad or damaging? Hardly. It didn't do well due to oversaturation (coming out during the sequel trilogy) and fan backlash for hating The Last Jedi. Is your "damage" comment based on maintaining or growing the brand or about quality and faithfulness of the material? The properties I listed, of which you stated were "damaging" were hardly low quality or unfaithful to their brands. All of the shows, with varying degrees of quality, had oversaturated their brands and audiences outside of diehards had fatigue, though.

Honestly the Star Wars sequel trilogy damaged the Star Wars brand more than anything on D+.

Even if you think they didn’t actively hurt the brands, there is just ZERO juice around these properties. There seems to be almost zero interest in creating another MCU movie or SW Movie.

Now this is just silly, considering Wolverine and Deadpool will be out in a few weeks (with significant anticipation), followed by Captain America 4 (with unfortunate low test audience scores) and Fantastic 4 (with anticipation as well). GotG3 was also well-received.

 

[bos]

The season was not good and most of the acting was terrible. It was hard to not turn off. I got bored only one episode entertained me.

There were a couple episodes I 30 second skipped a bunch just to get through the tiresome scenes. I agree with post back, get some new folks to do the second season.

 

[BryceC]

Is your "damage" comment based on maintaining or growing the brand or about quality and faithfulness of the material? The properties I listed, of which you stated were "damaging" were hardly low quality or unfaithful to their brands.

You and I just have differing levels of what I would call quality then and that’s okay. I think most of the shows are quite bad, to the point I’m out on watching them entirely unless I get a good review from somebody I trust.

As far as Deadpool and Wolverine, I guess it’s MCU, but let’s be real it’s two fox characters and a carryover from that. Fantastic 4 doesn’t come out for a year. We’ll see.

 

[bos]

Ha, nailed it.

I chuckled at the Sarlacc pit comment, juvenile.....

 

[Sigmapolis]

This franchise is still goin'?

Wow.

 

[Triggermv]

‘The Acolyte’ Is Dead: ‘Star Wars’ Series Won’t Return for Season 2

Lucasfilm has elected not to continue with the "Star Wars" series "The Acolyte" after its first season.

variety.com

 

[Frak]

‘The Acolyte’ Is Dead: ‘Star Wars’ Series Won’t Return for Season 2

Lucasfilm has elected not to continue with the "Star Wars" series "The Acolyte" after its first season.

variety.com

Doesn’t hurt my feelings at all. I thought it wasn’t very good outside of some good lightsaber fights. They only had a couple of interesting or likeable characters. Sol, Yord and Jecki. The whole thing was predictable and dumb. Like the complete opposite of Andor.

 

[Cyclonsin]

Opening this thread and seeing immediately these posts back-to-back made me chuckle.

 

[HarryClone]

‘The Acolyte’ Is Dead: ‘Star Wars’ Series Won’t Return for Season 2

Lucasfilm has elected not to continue with the "Star Wars" series "The Acolyte" after its first season.

variety.com

With the full season in hindsight, it's clear they used teases in place of quality storytelling as a means to try to get renewed. Especially the Plaguies cameo. It's a shame they didn't hone in on a more compelling story worth continuing... they had some nice ingredients to cook with, but botched the execution.

 

[mramseyISU]

With the full season in hindsight, it's clear they used teases in place of quality storytelling as a means to try to get renewed. Especially the Plaguies cameo. It's a shame they didn't hone in on a more compelling story worth continuing... they had some nice ingredients to cook with, but botched the execution.

I didn't hate the season, generally speaking I've liked all the Star Wars stuff on D+ a lot more than any of the Marvel stuff but yeah this could have been so much better in hindsight.

 

[Bigman38]

It didn't help that it ran while House of the Dragon was on. I was keeping up with both and the gulf in quality was painfully obvious.

 

[Frak]

With the full season in hindsight, it's clear they used teases in place of quality storytelling as a means to try to get renewed. Especially the Plaguies cameo. It's a shame they didn't hone in on a more compelling story worth continuing... they had some nice ingredients to cook with, but botched the execution.

There were some parts that were good for sure. I just didn’t think that they needed the whole vergence in the force thing where the twins were created. Kind of devalues anakin. Also how the twins casually flipped sides was dumb. The witches were dumb and there was no real reason why Sol killed the mother. It’s pretty much that the story didn’t make any sense…that was my biggest problem. Compare that with Andor or the first two seasons of Mando. With those, there is an actual story you can follow. You understand why the characters do what they do and you are invested in what happens to them. The acolyte didn’t do that at all and the only reason I would have watched season 2 is to see what they did with plagues.

 

[HarryClone]

There were some parts that were good for sure. I just didn’t think that they needed the whole vergence in the force thing where the twins were created. Kind of devalues anakin. Also how the twins casually flipped sides was dumb. The witches were dumb and there was no real reason why Sol killed the mother. It’s pretty much that the story didn’t make any sense…that was my biggest problem. Compare that with Andor or the first two seasons of Mando. With those, there is an actual story you can follow. You understand why the characters do what they do and you are invested in what happens to them. The acolyte didn’t do that at all and the only reason I would have watched season 2 is to see what they did with plagues.

Andor and Mando set a high bar for the franchise and did it almost entirely without the space wizards and the force... it's wild to me that the productions with the most access to those parts of the lore (Acolyte, sequel Trilogy, Ahsoka at times) have a hard time getting out of their own way.

 

[cyfan92]

It didn't help that it ran while House of the Dragon was on. I was keeping up with both and the gulf in quality was painfully obvious.

HOTD was must watch as soon as it dropped on MAX.. I also loved season 1 of The Rings of Power and cannot wait for 8/29!!

I found myself getting 2-3 behind on The Acolyte and would only watch it if nothing else was on. The quality of story telling and script between The Acolyte and the other two is like comparing a third grader to a PhD

 

[Gorm]

The power of one...the power of two...the power of bankruptcy!

 

[GBlade]

I really liked the premise of the Acolyte. Getting revenge on the Jedi is a great twist and narrative motive. Both Lee Jung-jae and Manny Jacinto were excellent and brought new characterization to the Light and Dark side. The lightsaber duels of episode 5 I had to watch twice they were so good.

The problems I feel were in the parent-trap narrative. The child actors were just not good enough to carry multiple episodes on their own. Older Mae had a clear motivation, but Osha was just kind of there to make the ending work. The witch coven, convergence, and 80% of the backstory could have been cut and changed nothing.

 

[Frak]

I really liked the premise of the Acolyte. Getting revenge on the Jedi is a great twist and narrative motive. Both Lee Jung-jae and Manny Jacinto were excellent and brought new characterization to the Light and Dark side. The lightsaber duels of episode 5 I had to watch twice they were so good.

The problems I feel were in the parent-trap narrative. The child actors were just not good enough to carry multiple episodes on their own. Older Mae had a clear motivation, but Osha was just kind of there to make the ending work. The witch coven, convergence, and 80% of the backstory could have been cut and changed nothing.

Yeah, honestly there didn’t need to be twins. That would have solved a lot of the problems. Just have one girl that the jedis “stole” that hooks up with the dark side and is out for revenge.

 

[Frak]

Andor and Mando set a high bar for the franchise and did it almost entirely without the space wizards and the force... it's wild to me that the productions with the most access to those parts of the lore (Acolyte, sequel Trilogy, Ahsoka at times) have a hard time getting out of their own way.

I mean, the universe is pretty much limitless as long as you don’t contradict what has been done before. You’d think they’d have thousands of people wanting to write scripts. It’s crazy to me that they green lit this one. Mando and Andor are examples of taking things that were out there and diving into their world.