ENTERTAINMENT
Why is ‘The Acolyte’ getting so many bad reviews online?
The ‘review bombing’ for the Star Wars project has seen a huge disparity in the ratings for the new show.
Don’t mess with the Star Wars fans. Those most loyal to the franchise have, for a long time and throughout various galaxies, been divided and divisive on various projects and plot lines within the fantasy world.
However, the mumblings coming from Forbidden Planet stores the world over has, with the release of ‘The Acolyte’, been registering slightly higher on the richter scale than what we, on the outside, are used to.
But why? What’s wrong with ‘The Acolyte’? Don’t lightsabers and space lasers cut the mustard anymore?
Why ‘The Acolyte’ is getting so many bad reviews online...
Those cool cats at Rotten Tomatoes, the people who sit on their sofas and review films for a website, have The Acolyte sitting high with their ‘critics’, racking up a very impressive approval rating of 93% after debuting its first two episodes on Disney+.
Yet, when it comes to the audience score (the bottom feeders), the number sits down in the doldrums, at 31%. Such a stark contrast between Star Wars troops can’t be like a middle-class person in a bow tie and a combover telling you to like a piece of abstract art: if Star Wars is good, it’s good.
It turns out that the show has fallen victim of ‘review bombing’. According to CBR, review bombing is “the process of intentionally dragging down a movie or TV show’s audience score by posting multiple reviews with the lowest rating possible, oftentimes from trolls who haven’t actually seen it”.
Why is ‘The Acolyte’ getting review bombed?
Great question. The series, which is set a century before the events of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, had “already observed attacks levelled against the show and showrunner Leslye Headland ahead of its premiere”, say CBR.
The reason behind the hate? Well, it seems that the disgust at the show can be, shockingly but not surprisingly,
attributed to how the male-heavy fan base of Star Wars react negatively “against the projects that come from female creators, or focus on female characters.”
The Acolyte is streaming on Disney+. And, here’s a great idea: if you want to rate the show, how about watching it first?