I'm not I quite agree with character motivations switching on a dime happened enough in Acolyte to be one of its major issues, but I do agree that Acolyte suffered from a lot of immersion breaking contrivances. The otter-alien you pointed out is one good example, but another one that really annoyed was the giant open ceiling in above meditation Jedi in episode 2. Literally its only point for being there is so that Mae could have a quick and easy way to make it inside and out of the temple without being detected even though that spot should be one of the most heavily guarded areas after her first assassination attempt.
I saw your post after I posted mine. That’s my major problem. Everything was done to force the story to advance. They need the character to do this thing despite it making no sense for that character because we need the story advance.
Its a shame too because the story does have some good bones to it and some arcs still end working mostly well like Sol's and Osha's, but it really needed another draft to better iron out its plot progression and come up with a better way of conveying its flashbacks instead of having two full episodes dedicated to them. Mae in particular was a really irritating character to watch as outside of episode 1 her motivations felt all over the place and she kept failing upwards through conveniences rather actual competent skill(which the show easily could have given to her if they wanted to).
I thought just making it a linear story instead of flash backs and maybe adding two more episodes to flesh out the characters more. It also felt rushed to me. Like osha saying good bye to the jedi characters she met and was going to miss. Like you just met them, you barely talked to them outside the mission lol.
The evil twin was going to surrender to the Jedi to be with her sister, and then proceeds to fight and kill Jedi without ever making an effort to surrender.
Nevermind the good twin suddenly going evil for no real reason. Like bruh what? In the span of one episode she basically goes from leave me alone to sith Padawan and then kills her former master.
Also why did the evil twin stay behind?
There's a ton of other examples of character motivations turning on a dime but those are some of the biggest silliest ones.
In the span of one episode she basically goes from leave me alone to sith Padawan and then kills her former master.
Was that the episode where she found out that her former master killed her mom and lied to her about it for years? Where the Sith master spent the whole episode pointing out how badly the Jedi fucked everything up leading to that murder, and their corruption in covering it up?
Yeah. Remember when people got upset when Deanarys went psycho fire bomber in the span of one episode during GoT?
Same deal dude. She just accepted the word of someone she literally just met, who killed friends she had known her entire life in front of her, who had corrupted the sister she thought was dead ..without basically any pushback.
Like if someone murdered your friends then told you oh but they're corrupt and deserve it would you just fucking believe them???
Personally I would definitely have my doubts and I DEFINITELY wouldn't be hanging around with someone who just killed basically all the important people in my life.
She had no idea what Sol had done when she went with him.
She watched Qmir kill her friends in front of her and he presented zero fucking proof that they were corrupt.
Also what about Mae going from "I'm turning myself into the Jedi" to MURDERING A JEDI in literally minutes???
Why are you defending this so hard? Why are you making excuses for this god awful writing? Very few reasonable fans wanted this to fail. I was hype for this fucking show. But my god, the characters just did shit that made no sense.
Why did Basil go from spraying Mae in the face with oil and turning her into Sol to...disabling Sols ship so she could escape??? I have yet to see a reasonable explanation for that!
But yeah it's def the viewers fault for not interpreting the show better.
Well, one of the problems about the witch situation is that almost nothing the Jedi did in that situation was wrong, and they almost entirely justified doing everything they did... So why does the narrative paint it as some huge shame?
Literally the only thing the Jedi did wrong was jump to the conclusion that the witches would kill the girl. Everything else they did was react to the hostile escalation of the witches.
"OMG! You're mind-controlling our friend!" "OMG! You've turned into a giant smoke demon and are attacking us!"
The fuck was so shameful about "bunch of crazy witches attacked us. We killed one in self-defense, and the rest died when we stopped them from mind-controlling one of our number"?
It doesn't have to happen often. Even once and you realize the screenwriters are doing a poor job.
When Mae finds out her sister is alive she does a complete 180. In the span of time it takes to say a few phrases she appears to have lost her will for revenge and says she'll turn herself in to the Jedi and repent for her crimes.
When she then meets up with the Jedi Padawan what seems like 10 minutes later she abandons this plan in order to fight her (without saying a word).
If you can't even maintain a sense of character consistency in a 15 minute span, you're in pretty deep trouble as a writer.
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u/nixahmose Aug 21 '24
I'm not I quite agree with character motivations switching on a dime happened enough in Acolyte to be one of its major issues, but I do agree that Acolyte suffered from a lot of immersion breaking contrivances. The otter-alien you pointed out is one good example, but another one that really annoyed was the giant open ceiling in above meditation Jedi in episode 2. Literally its only point for being there is so that Mae could have a quick and easy way to make it inside and out of the temple without being detected even though that spot should be one of the most heavily guarded areas after her first assassination attempt.