I’m sure we all know about the low audience scores given to The Acolyte. Rotten Tomatoes was sitting down at 14% since around the third episode, and was that low up until at least the last episode. Now that it’s nearly a week out from the season finale, I figured I’d take another look.
The Rotten Tomatoes score has gone up to 17% and other review platforms have gone up a bit also.
So I decided to read through a few of the recent ones. Here are two examples:
The showrunners accuse fans of “review bombing” but are apparently just fine with artificial review boosting. I saw a bunch of these double reviews and nearly every single one talked about things like diversity, a “fresh take”, production values, etc, all in that typical bland corporate-speech type of language.
Whereas the negative reviews are detailed and specific without ever getting into racism, bigotry, sexism, or other things fans are often accused of. If you read through the negative reviews they are often well thought out criticisms of the story itself and the quality of acting.
I just wanted to bring this fake review boosting to the community’s attention. If you enjoyed the show, that’s awesome. But it’s dishonest to dilute honest and fair criticisms of a show.
I liked The Acolyte. It was not at the level of Andor or The Mandalorian, though it was dramatically better than The Book of Boba Fett. It was a solid enjoyable show and I particularly enjoyed how it expanded the canon universe by giving some love and attention to non-Jedi Force traditions (the Sith and the witches). Anecdotally that’s broadly what I hear from the Star Wars fans I know in real life too.
The attention people give to online ‘fan’ review scores always baffles me. Everyone knows these are meaningless. It’s a sad reality that most high-profile shows in our genre with prominent women, non-white and/or LGBT+ leads get review-bombed to death - we all know this. And I expect all shows will get review-boosted, because why on earth wouldn’t you do this if you were in charge of the marketing operation when it’s practically free marketing? So the ‘fan’ scores on Rotten Tomatoes etc are just the balance of a meaningless positive number against a meaningless negative number.
It’s ok to be outraged by “sad reality”, OP doesn’t have to just accept it.
Edit: ok, yes. I missed the part that said “genre”
I see you bought into the propaganda.
I’m sorry, were you under the impression that RuPaul’s Drag Race belongs to the sci-fi and fantasy genre…?
The reason I specified our genre is that sci-fi and fantasy audiences skew whiter and maler than the general public, and a vocal minority of online sci-fi and fantasy fans (who are deeply unrepresentative of the wider fanbases) make it their business to be vocally abusive about any online content that they consider not to be white and male enough for their liking.
Ok, fair. I missed that part of your comment. I guess I really shouldn’t reply first thing in the morning before caffeine.
But I still think it isn’t a valid point. There will always be a minority that doesn’t like something. That’s a facet that exists in every aspect of reality. You could sneeze and someone somewhere will have something negative to say about it.
But the point about the “white and male” audience is irrelevant in my opinion. No one batted an eye when Rogue One came out because the story was solid and the characters well written. I never heard from anyone about the lead being a woman from a negative or positive angle. It just didn’t matter.
Same thing when TFA came out. No one cared that the lead was Daisy Ridley. Some people complained about her “wooden acting” and that the story was just a repeat from the OT, but that’s about it (and I disagree with both points). It was once TLJ came out that people started really complaining (and rightfully) about the story and how bad it was that Disney switched on the backlash machine and started accusing everyone of everything.
And that’s the thing about Disney, they will outright accuse their fans of hating diversity all the while shrinking John Boyega in the Chinese posters to be almost invisible, and putting the mask on Chadwick Boseman’s face in the Black Panther posters also for the Chinese market.
It’s at the point where as soon as Disney accuses fans of something you should immediately look to see what they’re deflecting from. Because Disney is nothing but hypocritical at this point.
I bet the negative reaction is a little more nuanced than “girls bad. Non-white people weird”, and I worry you’re generalizing.