Spoilers Star Wars: The Acolyte [Spoilers]

[Belen]

by that logic, then you couldn't introduce anything that is ever new to a franchise without telegraphing it for hundreds of hours.

In the thrawn trilogy cortosis was introduced, as far as I know it was not telegraphed for hundreds of hours. To the people at that time, it was a totally new thing introduced. and some probably thought it was stupid, and some probably thought it was totz kool.

The Jedi know cortosis exists. You only had to add ONE line of dialogue in the show. "Beware, he is armored with cortosis."

Instead, you have youtube video after youtube video trying to "explain" it to everyone who never encountered the EU.

 

[Belen]

could you provide examples? Because if you don't I can't do anything other than go, okay you dont' like this, you think it isn't executed well. And move on.

No.

I do not need you to do anything or fix my opinion. I will refer to what has happened with Hussar later in the thread as a prime example of what happens here. He gives examples, gets dogpiled by folks who need to prove him wrong.

It is not well-executed. There is some solid acting. There are some nice themes; however, the show has the exact same issues that plagued BOBF, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan etc.

The writing is inconsistent. There is no "show, don't tell," and they seem to want to add unexplained fan service. I am sorry but you cannot use video games, animated shows, and EU themes that have never appeared in live action and expect that to make sense to the majority of the audience. Lucasfilm has even complained in the past that a huge portion of the LA audience will refuse to work animated content etc.

For me, I immediately knew it was cortosis for example, but I am a mega SW fan who has consumed pretty much every bit of SW media. For the audience, they could easily have added one line "beware, he is armored with cortosis" as a nod to the audience.

This type of writing disengages many viewers and confuses them.

 

[Rabulias]

It absolutely isn't. They ended up going in circles several times. It just didn't think it was important to show you exactly where on the map everyone was, because it's a TV show, not a videogame or TTRPG.

I did not need to know where everyone was, but it was very "plot convenience playhouse presents" (to borrow a phrase from MST3K) for Qimir to land near Bazil's location. I get that they wanted to get Pip's remains to Bazil. I predict that he will show it to Mae (as Osha) and she will be all "what do I want with that piece of junk?" and Sol will then realize that it's not Osha. But it should have been three scenes:

1. Qimir flying over the forest and dislodging the piece of Pip off his back, but he continues to be carried off screen by the bugs.
2. Bazil making his way through the forest back to the ship and stumbling upon the remains of Pip.
3. Qimir extricating himself from the bugs and landing (in a different part of the forest).

After all, Qimir believed all of the people who had seen him had to die. He lands maybe 60 feet from Bazil, a non-Force user. Bazil's stealth is good, but Qimir could not sense him? It all seemed too much for the sake of scene economy.

 

[Belen]

I did not need to know where everyone was, but it was very "plot convenience playhouse presents" (to borrow a phrase from MST3K) for Qimir to land near Bazil's location. I get that they wanted to get Pip's remains to Bazil. I predict that he will show it to Mae (as Osha) and she will be all "what do I want with that piece of junk?" and Sol will then realize that it's not Osha. But it should have been three scenes:

1. Qimir flying over the forest and dislodging the piece of Pip off his back, but he continues to be carried off screen by the bugs.
2. Bazil making his way through the forest back to the ship and stumbling upon the remains of Pip.
3. Qimir extricating himself from the bugs and landing (in a different part of the forest).

After all, Qimir believed all of the people who had seen him had to die. He lands maybe 60 feet from Bazil, a non-Force user. Bazil's stealth is good, but Qimir could not sense him? It all seemed too much for the sake of scene economy.

Yeah, it is like they are just using "rule of cool" and hand waiving a lot of items.

 

[billd91]

I did not need to know where everyone was, but it was very "plot convenience playhouse presents" (to borrow a phrase from MST3K) for Qimir to land near Bazil's location. I get that they wanted to get Pip's remains to Bazil. I predict that he will show it to Mae (as Osha) and she will be all "what do I want with that piece of junk?" and Sol will then realize that it's not Osha. But it should have been three scenes:

1. Qimir flying over the forest and dislodging the piece of Pip off his back, but he continues to be carried off screen by the bugs.
2. Bazil making his way through the forest back to the ship and stumbling upon the remains of Pip.
3. Qimir extricating himself from the bugs and landing (in a different part of the forest).

After all, Qimir believed all of the people who had seen him had to die. He lands maybe 60 feet from Bazil, a non-Force user. Bazil's stealth is good, but Qimir could not sense him? It all seemed too much for the sake of scene economy.

I can't say I find your arguments any better. Bazil finding Pip after Qimir knocks it off of himself is no less plot convenient than Bazil picking it up near where Qimir lands. And they've already established that Bazil is hard to keep track of even by friendlies he's working with. Is it so hard to imagine he'd be hard to notice by Qimir, particularly after he just fought off a bunch of bugs and might reasonably be suffering a bit of disorientation?
They showed us, not told us, Bazil finding Pip. And they did it parsimoniously with one scene instead of three, something that's usually also a virtue in media storytelling.

 

[MarkB]

I did not need to know where everyone was, but it was very "plot convenience playhouse presents" (to borrow a phrase from MST3K) for Qimir to land near Bazil's location. I get that they wanted to get Pip's remains to Bazil. I predict that he will show it to Mae (as Osha) and she will be all "what do I want with that piece of junk?" and Sol will then realize that it's not Osha. But it should have been three scenes:

1. Qimir flying over the forest and dislodging the piece of Pip off his back, but he continues to be carried off screen by the bugs.
2. Bazil making his way through the forest back to the ship and stumbling upon the remains of Pip.
3. Qimir extricating himself from the bugs and landing (in a different part of the forest).

After all, Qimir believed all of the people who had seen him had to die. He lands maybe 60 feet from Bazil, a non-Force user. Bazil's stealth is good, but Qimir could not sense him? It all seemed too much for the sake of scene economy.

If there's one person who isn't going to be fooled by Mae's new look, it's Bazil. He's a tracker, with excellent scent tracking, and twins or not I doubt that Mae and Osha smell identical.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Jedi know cortosis exists. You only had to add ONE line of dialogue in the show. "Beware, he is armored with cortosis."

Instead, you have youtube video after youtube video trying to "explain" it to everyone who never encountered the EU.

They knew it existed 1000 years ago, and in the Legacy continuity. Even if KotOR where still canon, do you have thousand year old knowledge at your fingertips? They didn’t exactly have chance to consult the Jedi archives!

 

[Zardnaar]

oh, thanks, i tried to look it up and got confused. I have not read the duology. nor the I jedi

You're not missing anything with I Jedi. Thrawn Duology is good.

 

[Zardnaar]

If Qimir turns out to be "self-trained" that would be about the stupidest thing ever. I do not think he will be. But you do not self-train yourself how to build a lightsaber, use rare lightsaber resistant material in your armour, and what the eff a Sith is.

I am late to this because I was a bit occupied this week. Sad that Jecki AND Yord are dead. Manny Jacinto is doing great with what they give him though.

Depends how. Sith holocron or Spirit. Old scrolls not so much. Espicially if he's hadJedi training.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Show, don't tell has been a primary teaching tool in creative writing for decades. I have 2 degrees in it.

He is making a valid point that the writers are being lazy or that Disney is refusing longer episodes/ the editing room floor floor is littered with relevant material.

It may not bother you, which is fine, but it does bother a lot of people as adding small scenes or lines to clean things up would not be that difficult.

I'm confused here.

You advocate for "show don't tell".

Then you specifically demand telling. What?

Further, tons of little explanations that literally only 1 in 10 or fewer members of the audience will ever care about aren't typically an asset to storytelling (even if they are an asset to nerd cred). Realistically, the audience splits here - the kind of nerds who will actually go "HUH" about a lightsaber cutting out will, in literally 80-90% of cases know exactly what cortosis is. The other, much larger portion of the audience won't, but they'll accept what's going on. So we basically have like, a handful people who might be big enough nerds to "need an explanation", but not big enough Star Wars nerds to know what cortosis is. And you're not even one of them!

Stopping for "As you know Jim, cortosis weave shorts out lightsabers" in a truly brutal swordfight would be a hilarious misjudgement of pacing and tone.

To be real, I don't object to dropping stuff in that does explain things where it would fit naturally and takes almost no time, I even praise it. But I don't think there was room for that here.

i simply do not accept the premise that something must be telegraphed in prior material to be introduced into current media. You do. I guess I have to leave this part of the discussion to well established in canon and famous Chocolate v Vanilla case.

Exactly. And what's really funny and dumb here is that if his bracer was something new, no-one would be expecting an explanation for it, nor would they be expecting the Jedi to comment on it.

It's only because we're all nerds who know perfectly well what cortosis is that this is even being discussed.

Maybe they'll explain it in a later episode?

Almost certainly they will. There's nothing inconsistent or flawed or wrong about them not having a discussion of what it is during the middle of deadly and brutal battle. Clearly everyone then still alive in the latter part of the fight knew that he had some way to make lightsabers go out, and I'm not sure they were even entirely clear on what it was. Given how he was aggressively forcing his bracer into the way of the sabers (incredible balls on this guy), I'm not sure what they could even do about it - it's not like they've trained to deal with a material forgotten for a thousand years.

There are also Easter Eggs from Brian Daley's Han Solo Adventures* in The Acolyte.

Agree that this is good, that's some of the only actually-readable stuff from the old EU, which is mostly a disaster zone.