Star Wars Acolyte is Good!/The Boys

Welcome back to the channel. I hope you're having a great day. So today I want to talk about something that might be found to be controversial by many of our Star Wars, to many of our Star Wars fans, and that is the Star Wars, Star Wars: The Acolyte I'm coming up with the rating that Star Wars: Acolyte is a good television series. Now, there are a few caveats that need to go along with that, and, uh, the first amongst being, uh, I've only saw 2 episodes, right? So, so I know 2 episodes. I believe there's only going to be 8 So that puts me about 25% through, but so far, um, it looks like a well-done series. Now let me go into a little details about why I believe that to be the case. So first, let's go down memory lane really quick, uh, a little movie called Star Wars Rogue One. Came out several years ago. When Star Wars: Rogue One came out, I did a review and, um, I, you know, I stated that I thought it was one of the best Star Wars films in history. Now, when I said that, many people disagreed with me. They said it was an incomplete film, that it wasn't a very good film, um, and over the years After surviving the, uh, the, uh, the Star Wars sequels, you know, Episode 7, 8, and 9, uh, many people start to move towards, uh, Star Wars Rogue One was one of the best Star Wars films ever created, right? I put it up there right with The Empire Strikes Back. Now, why did I do that? Well, there are some— there are a few reasons why I did that. I had been saying for many years that the Star Wars original series, right, and even going into the prequel series, right, episodes, uh, 1, 2, and 3, that Star Wars needed to grow up, that its base was, uh, people from the '70s, the '80s, and all these people have become middle-aged And that was the core audience still of Star Wars, right? Um, and so those people held on to dear life, right, to the Star Wars franchise no matter what. They, they've been supporting it, right? But as Star Wars didn't grow up, uh, and they did, they want to see a continuation of the series, right? And so, uh, that means progression. And so when you get films like, uh, Star Wars Rogue One, that is still a prequel, but the difference is the mood of Star Wars Rogue One, it felt like a very mature Star Wars, right? Now, uh, anything underlining this, the Skywalker legacy, dynasty, anything related to that, I think kind of suspends many of us, especially us going back to the original Star Wars. It kind of suspends us to that kind of never grow up Star Wars, right? That Peter Pan Star Wars. And that's why I was saying that a lot of it had to do with Uh, those Star Wars properties taking a leap into a more mature Star Wars. Now, even if you look at something like The Acolyte, uh, the opening of the first two episodes, this is like a murder mystery, right? Uh, now it— the first thing I thought about, and many of you all probably won't remember this, this goes back to the 1980s Um, it was a film I believe called The Name of the Rose, right? And it stars Sean Connery and Matthew Broderick, and it's about these monks, right? Interesting enough, you know, the— in the Star Wars world, these are basically like warrior monks, but these were, uh, detectives basically, uh, with the church, right? Monks that were investigating, uh, a series of monks being murdered. Right? So it's almost like Star Wars Acolyte— that was a, that was a great film— but it's almost like Star Wars Acolytes, the creators borrowed from that. They may have seen that film, I don't know, but, um, it took me back to that. And it certainly, it certainly, uh, I certainly like the direction that Star Wars Acolyte was going in, right, with that, right? I thought that was a I thought that was a good idea, basically. So that maturity of that core audience, that diehard audience that never gonna leave Star Wars, that's gonna keep the money rolling in to a certain degree, gonna keep valuing that property probably, you know, for now on to a certain degree, uh, whenever Star Wars grows up and it introduces that nature into it. One second, guys. All right, sorry about the disturbance. Um, but as I was saying, Star Wars Acolyte seems to fit with that more mature, uh, growth of Star Wars that I think many of the original generation was looking for. Now again, keep in mind I'm speaking from only watching the first 2 episodes. Now here's the issue though with Star Wars Acolyte, um, or, or so much so the Rotten Tomatoes score, right? So if we look at the Rotten Tomatoes score The critics gave it 85%, fairly on par with my idea of the series so far. Only again, remember, through the first 2 episodes, right? 85%. Now the average audience score is 13%. Now look at the disparity between those 2 numbers, and here's my issue with this and this entire thing, right? A, a difference that much between— there's one thing when the critics disagree and your average audience disagrees. We know that, and that does happen. The issue though is when these scores are this far apart, 13%, I'm forced to believe it's due to political reasons, right? This isn't just any longer a disagreement between the credit score. This is now something being propelled through some type of political idea, and I— and my problem with that is that when we're reviewing something or we're critically addressing a property, if, if there are elements of that property that are good I think it's a good idea to review it for what it's worth, just the material itself. The problem is I'm thinking now that it's become more of an influence situation where politically motivated people are steering the idea about these properties, right? And we're going to look at a few more. And talk about why exactly I think that is. Okay, taking a look at The Boys. Now, many of us who watch The Boys would agree that The Boys is a pretty darn good series. Again, you see the critic score kind of in agreement with that at 93%. Now, the audience score It's down to 75%. I believe it was a little bit more than that, if I'm not mistaken, it had reached 72%. And, uh, but all in all, these scores are, you know, are pretty much, you know, they're not ridiculous scores. It's not like the Star Wars Acolyte where critics are at 85% and political reasons are driving the score to 13%. With this, political reasons are driving the score to 75%, but even so, in doing that, the show is just still so good that it's hard for them to politically push it any further down. And a lot of this has to do with a recent announcement by the show, the show runners, who said that "If people feel that the show is too woke, don't watch the show." And that kind of rubbed some people the wrong way because many of us who've been paying attention know that the main character of "The Boys," Homelander, some feel he was always kind of this purity of the MAGA movement, Donald Trump, and so on, or far-right politics. And to be fair though, uh, the— I think The Boys was always like that. Like, I don't think there's— there was ever, uh, a season where it wasn't like these big parodies of Homelander in relation to far-right politics. I mean, if you go back a couple of seasons, uh, Homelander was, uh getting along with Nazis. He was involved with a Nazi. You know, he made these little racist tropes and innuendos. And so that's something that was always there. When the show— the showrunners pretty much, I guess, made it definitive that they were kind of on the side of a more liberal view show, I guess that was the straw that broke the camel's back. My issue with that is that I don't think The Boys ever strayed from pretty much what it started as. Now some people are saying now they're getting hit over the head with, you know, with it, with Home, you know, with these parodies of Homelander, the Donald Trump and such and MAGA movement and far-right politics. But I don't know. I think Homelander was always kind of at a level that wouldn't surprise anybody. In other words, I guess the point I'm making, his character was very much in line with this and whatever extremes that the complaints have been about the show. I think it's very much in Homelander's character to be that way. So I don't think at all that that was the reason that the show score dropped. I do think that it was some tipping point politically where it just felt that way. I believe that when you're reviewing something, you should review it just on the material and the character of the show. And, uh, both of these shows, I think, story-wise, acting-wise, are pretty good shows. Again, I, I have to be very careful with The Acolyte because the first few episodes in, but even the plot and the storyline of, of the, uh, of The Acolyte, it, it seems pretty darn good to me. Uh, now as I get further along through the series, I may change my mind about that. It might do become more kiddie to some of the less mature elements, I think, of Star Wars not growing up. And I am me believing that's what the base core audience wants to see, right? If you, if you follow what I'm saying. But all in all, even if you believe that these shows are too woke and that it's destroying these properties And in some sense, uh, with what's been going on with Disney Marvel, I can agree with what some people are saying, but just not in these particular shows. I think the elements of the— of these shows are just— were just pretty good on their own. But I think there was a— there's been a political movement despite the quality of the shows to reduce the show, right, to, to reduce the show down. And I don't think that's fair artistic-wise. I don't think that is very professional artistic-wise. And in these particular cases, uh, I do agree with the critic scores, right? And many times I have agreed with the critic scores, you know. Most of the time I probably do agree with the critic scores. It's probably been less times I disagree with the critic scores to the audience scores. There's only been a few movies where I've went Uh, the critic score is nowhere in relation to the audience score, right? So it's not a natural thing. As we conclude, let me just bring up House of the Dragon and just speak in general about critic scores versus audience scores and where we stand and all that.