Do people really hate The Acolyte that much? I've been enjoying it, and I thought most of the reviews I saw when it started were fairly positive.
Is it just more of the usual suspects not liking it for their usual reasons, or people actually being unhappy with the writing, directing, acting, ect.?
I don't hate it but i'm also not a fan.
For me it's a typical Disney product - hyped in some fan circles and when it's released turns out to be nothing really special. It may work on less engaged fans, who don't know much about background lore and just watch the show and the movies for the spectacle.
My reasons why i'm not a fan of this particular show can be summed up with these points in particular:
Carrie-Anne Moss was a stunt casting - one cool fight and that's basically it.
The twins reveal was supposed to be this huge twist and it's just meh - it's not a big leap to think that if one sister is force capable chances are the other is too.
Jedi are arrogant and it'll ultimately lead to their near extinction - that's been established for a loooong time.
All the elements are nothing new or special, the show is completely unoriginal and is just re-treading well worn paths without even trying to take the franchise in a new direction or show us something new.
As much as i liked Jacinto's performance as the Sith in this current episode he does nothing more than the usual corruption technique - zero in on a persons' weak spot, something they are very sensitive about, and twist it slowly to pull up the darker aspects. Sidious did it with Anakin and Dooku, tried it with Luke.
So in the end it's at best a very mediocre show that certainly doesn't deserve the review bombing it obviously receives but it also doesn't warrant more than average ratings and reviews.
It seems to me that Disney just doesn't know what to do with Star Wars. To me it looks like they bought it because of Lightsabers, Jedi and Sith, cool ships / space battles and above all the built in fanbase (that loves the mentioned elements) that developed over decades and should / will consume anything with the Star Wars logo on it.
Sometimes they hit gold with projects like Rogue One, The Mandalorian / Boba Fett and Andor but that's mainly because they got lucky in picking the right people with the right vision and the technical skills to pull it off but otherwise they play it safe and are just repeating things that have been a success in the past but keep forgetting that stagnation is the death of everything and just repeating familiar Star Wars tropes is exciting people less and less - that's at least me but i get the feeling i'm not alone.