“The Acolyte”, Star Wars latest production, has wrought the familiar reaction. Fans have generally complained about “changes to canon”, and the portrayal of the Jedi as less than perfect. These have been conflated the bad-faith hate-filled review-bombing of the show1. The reflex has been to disqualify both of these reactions, as if they were equal, refuse to engage, and not reflect.
A distinction must be drawn between the bad-faith agitators and the fans that simply have not thought about the material at any depth. While, extending any compassion to the former is foolish but doing so to the latter can give yourself some freedom and undermine the hatred2.
The Star Wars original trilogy is, at its core, very simple. All that you need to know is explained on the opening scroll. The very first one (A New Hope) establishes the Empire as evil, the Death Star as its ultimate weapon, the rebellion as righteous and Leia as its embodiment3. Everything after that follows the black and white framing with no room for thought. The original trilogy does not ask you anything, requires no thought, no abstraction, no interpretation. The evil guys do cartoonish evil things and the good guys win in the end. Simple.
As the myth grew, such a simplistic world view became insufficient. Not only would it be boring, it would require a lot of mental gymnastics. For the sequels, how to explain that the good guys did not create an utopian society. They won! They are good! How could they fail?
Similar problems arise, for explaining the rise of the Empire from the Republic. How could the Jedi fail to protect democracy? To George Lucas’s credit, the prequels tackled those questions. Was it great writing? No, but he did try. Suddenly, the material goes from a first grade understanding of good and evil to a nuanced worldview that most people are not capable of comprehending4. How does someone that can’t (or won’t) understand the shifts react? They become dogmatic. Every word in the OT must be true. Every concept becomes immutable. Here lies the problem for the franchise. What portion of your fan base adheres fervently to these dogmas? Are there simply too many of them to justify challenging them?
These questions were upfront during the sequel trilogy. After The Last Jedi box office was almost half of the previous movie, the powers that be decided that there were too many people being alienated. The last episode (Rise of the Skywalker) gutted any nuance in favor of “cool” action. It was the truest movie to the simple Star Wars ethos since the original trilogy. The movie ended up making even less money than TLJ5.
Every new installment, every new addition brings up the same questions. In the last few years, the franchise pivoted to TV series. Its most watched and profitable series is The Mandalorian which has next to no plot but a cute Baby Yoda. On the other hand, Andor is critically acclaimed but had disappointing viewership6. Andor is complex and well written. It still has the Empire doing cartoonish evil things but tries to humanize multiple individuals in its bureaucracy. Its climax is a prison break by its cynical hero.
It’s been almost 50 years since A New Hope7. The material that challenges its original concepts vastly outnumbers it. Why, then, so many cling to their own created dogmas? The answer lies on expectations. What do you want from this franchise? Entertainment? Deep philosophical questions? Space booms? Metaphors for our reality? Contrast that with Disney’s expectations. Billions of dollars in profits. Which version brings Disney’s objective more reliably? What about the creators? Do they want to cash some checks or do they want to make the most interesting story in this universe? Is there a balance here?
Beyond what should be done, lies what can be done. What “non subversive” material can be made to appease the people that yearn for a simple Star Wars? There are many interesting stories to be told by questioning the dogmas. Stories that show good guys winning over cartoonish evil guys are very few.
Let’s consider when to set these stories. You cannot really make this material after the original trilogy as I pointed out above. In the past, you have a long period of peace with a dominant Jedi Order. What is interesting about supernatural cops beating the shit out of powerless people? Do you contradict the idea that there was utopian peace in this time? (That is The Acolyte btw). You have to go even further back to a period before the republic and the establishment of the Jedi Order. Those stories are thousands of years before any recognizable characters, the technology should be vastly different, etc. The heroic rise of the Jedi would just be a ragtag band of rebels folks beating an organized military force. Sounds familiar? A focus on their religious belief could be interesting in this context. However, that is not what the dogmatic fan wants. Those dogmas would have to be debated before being settled. That would be enough to alienate them and leave the rest of the public with an uninteresting plot.
Is it impossible to please the dogmatic viewers? No. The answer, however, is remaking the original trilogy. Make it shiny with better effects, but the same characters. Vader does not even have a face! Before you refute the idea out of hand, consider the route animated movies have gone. Just now, we have Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4. Pixar executives are disavowing their latest catalog in the favor of “universal stories” and sequels8. A more direct comparison, is the Harry Potter universe that is getting a remake in 20269. The other movies in that universe failed, not because of the material but because of J.K. Rowling but I digress.
The reality is that low effort entertainment is what people expect. In Star Wars – and with other Science Fiction properties – deviation of that expectation manifests in religious fervor for the source material. It is no coincidence, fans refer to the mass of “true” information as canon. The creation of an in- and an out- group reinforces the impulse to protect the purity of the material. Once it becomes a sociological phenomenon, the group behaves just like any other. It will drift further and further towards extremism. It will incorporate the ideas of other in-groups that these fans are part of. Eventually, its new adepts will have no love for the material but will uphold all the dogmas since it agrees with their worldview.10
The dogmatic fan is not deserving of contempt. The bad-faith actors in their mists are. The dogmatic fan has a lack of education, curiosity or time to ponder deeper questions. You could break them, kill the dream of pure, simple black and white reality. What would that accomplish, though? Reduce even more the quality of the entertainment options? There is no need to embrace their worldview either. A modicum of empathy goes a long way. The objective must be to keep them from joining the bad-faith actors in their hatred and push for more and better entertainment options.
- https://screenrant.com/star-wars-the-acolyte-rotten-tomatoes-metacritic-review-bombed/ ↩︎
- Shouldn’t the people that feel that these stories aren’t for them be the ones disavowing the hateful groups? Yes. Is that reasonable? No. It’s an unfortunate reality but a group that is already incapable or unwilling to engage with the material will not engage with any controversy relating to it. ↩︎
- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Opening_crawl ↩︎
- Due to a lack of education and time rather than malevolence. ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Wars_films#:~:text=The%20combined%20box%20office%20revenue,were%20nominated%20for%20Academy%20Awards. ↩︎
- https://time.com/6234534/andor-best-star-wars-show/ ↩︎
- Released in 1977 ↩︎
- https://time.com/6986308/inside-out-2-peter-docter-interview/ ↩︎
- https://deadline.com/2024/05/harry-potter-tv-series-max-release-date-cast-1235323284/ ↩︎
- The racists and homophones are not the majority of fans (or of dogmatic fans) but they have a large crowd of supporters that will bash anything that includes non-white, non-straight peoples. Thus their hateful message has disproportionate reach, impact and coverage. ↩︎
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