There was a time when a new Star Wars spin-off would have been greeted with outpourings of hype and anticipation. Those days are sadly long over, and fans burned my misfires such as Ewan McGregor’s stuttering Obi-Wan Kenobi and the dreadful JJ Abrams/Rian Johnson prequel trilogy will approach The Acolyte (Disney +, Wednesday) with caution rather than enthusiasm. Could this finally be the Jedi jamboree we’ve been looking for?
The answer is a big, honking “maybe”. The Acolyte was created by Lesley Headland, a showrunner on Netflix’s New York-set time travel dramedy Russian Doll. That series was a delightful Mobius strip, brimming with wry wit and mind-bending twists. The Acolyte is something else entirely – an earnest but not wholly successful attempt to introduce a kung-fu action movie sensibility to Star Wars.
Think of it as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Jedi – a galaxy-hopping, high-kicking romp that has good intentions but which does not always land its punches and which ultimately inhabits a state of gilded mediocrity (the budget for the eight-part season is estimated at north of $180 million).
Kicking off with an elaborate fight scene involving a Jedi Knight and a masked assassin, The Acolyte is fast-paced and crammed with superhuman feats of martial arts. But the script lark sparks and the big mystery supposedly threaded through the show (according to Headland) turns out to be a predictable game of joining the dots.
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Along with the “Wuxia” genre (the over-the-top Far East milieu epitomised by Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), the big influence on The Acolyte is dystopian classic The Matrix, down to the casting of Carrie-Anne Moss (the once and future Trinity) as Jedi big-wig Indara. Hold on to your lightsabers, though – aren’t the Jedi all dead? Not in the timeline of The Acolyte, which takes place in the glory days of the Old Republic – long before unspeakable forces leeched all the fun out of Star Wars.
But enough about Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. In the halcyon epoch during which The Acolyte is set, the lightsaber-wielding order reigns unchallenged. Or at least it would if a renegade Force user named Mae (Amandla Stenberg) wasn’t zipping around the galaxy bumping off individual knights (starting with Indara in that opening powwow).
What does Mae have against the Jedi? And if she isn’t a member of the order, how can she use the Jedi’s mystical abilities to fight in a heightened style Headland has dubbed “Force-fu”? The answer lies in the shared childhood trauma of Mae and her twin sister Osha (also played by the versatile Stenberg).
They grew up in singular circumstances on a renegade world far from the Jedi – until a tragedy tore them apart (Headland, who is estranged from her sister, says she drew on her family history). Back in the present day, we learn that Osha has walked away from her old life as a trainee Jedi and is earning a crust repairing space-cruisers. At least she is until she is mistaken for her murderous twin and her old master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) tracks her down.
The past decade have been a disorienting blur for Star Wars fans. There have been highs (Tony Gilroy’s gritty, grounded Andor) and lows (anything involving the aforementioned JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson). The Acolyte is something new – an ambitious if ultimately unsuccessful attempt to bring action movie pizazz to Star Wars. It isn’t terrible – but nothing about it ranks above average. Decades after the original George Lucas movies, Star Wars has unlocked a new Jedi mind trick: the power of mediocrity.
