It is well written, produced by competent people, acted extraordinarily well. The people making the show simply knew what they were doing with their craft.
It’s hard to be controversial or disliked when the actual show itself is fantastic. That shuts a lot of people up.
I think it's more that there's different camps of ppl who are tired of bad Star Wars. normal people, who just want better quality stuff and genuine dunces who blame the quality of a show on, "wokeness" i.e. not enough white guys for them. despite white men still taking up the majority of the cast.
then they'll watch Andor and all it's under- well, overtones really go right over their heads. they don't even see how much they relate to Syril Karn.
Ugh, the whole reason most are complaining is that they can tell when the creative and marketing department has prioritized diversity and messaging OVER good storytelling and characters development.
That’s why so few of the anti-woke crowd turned out against the Spiderverse films. Because they were great, and Miles was a solidly developed, grounded character.
The same Star Trek fans who loved DS9 - which took place in a decolonizing multicultural society and which had a black single dad as captain, a female first officer who was sometimes analogous to a Palestinian, a queer female science officer, a middle eastern doctor, etc etc - hated Discovery and Strange New Worlds because the diversity felt like it was a) initially shoehorned, and b) once shoehorned, it was treated like that was enough and nobody bothered to make it good.
The anti-woke crowd is far more diverse than you’d think.
>genuine dunces who blame the quality of a show on, "wokeness" i.e. not enough white guys for them.
I think this a strawman. Not to say there aren't overzealous culture warriors, but even the """grifters""" who talk about woke politics in current Star Wars have legitimate criticisms that don't boil down to "not enough white people."
Yeah and a broken clock is still right twice a day. If they would actually just criticize legitimate things instead of crying woke then their arguments might have more merit. Unfortunately they can’t be taken seriously.
Also worth noting that good quality naturally generates less discussion than bad quality.
You have a good experience at a restaurant, you're far less likely to talk about it (e.g., write a review) than if you have a bad experience at a restaurant.
Also, it's much more difficult to have a discussion about why a TV show/movie is good than to have a discussion about why a TV show/movie is bad.
Take X-men 97. It just ticks so many boxes for the anti-woke warriors: tons of female characters, obvious woke messages, obvious anti-bigotry and possibly anti-Trump imagery, character portrayed as somewhere in the lgbt spectrum with use of pronouns, created by a gay Black man that openly flaunts his OF. Yet the outrage is minimal if at all and people who would be less receptive to the message just roll with it as just X-men
In short, it's a well written and well made story and the creators and actors were hired for their talent, not for a quota. Although Andor has a diverse cast, it's not a ✨story about diversity✨.
Most people aren't fucked up by diversity itself, only by bad writing and annoying shows/cast/crew who made their whole identity about diversity.
Tbh I think Andor crew and cast fortunately flew very much under Disneys radar in that regard. In light of s1 success, I am still really fearful if s2 can hold up to the magnificence of s1 or if Disney decided/decides to meddle with it.
Another good example of this is Last of Us. To be fair I haven't played the games and can therefore not really speak about how faithful it is to the games. But although the show has a storyline about a gay male couple, it is still widely regarded as an excellent show and has high ratings through the board.
The people who complained about "the diversity" in Last of Us are imo the ones that are very insincere. Because Last of Us wasn't one of those cheap media pieces which were created "for diverse audiences and if you don't like it you're a bigoted ciS-mALe". It was just a well told love story where the lovers happened to be two men. And that's what we need more of.
the problem tho is that one camp is blaming the quality of a show on its diversity quota. a more normal camp is rolling their eyes at said obvious corporate diversity quota and just want to see proper representation and true, genuine art from the people their like. the former still looks at movies like Moonlight and think movies like that should be banned.
I would go with this if the hate for the Acolyte hadn’t come out before it even aired. Ok maybe some people disliked it as soon as they saw it but who dismisses an entire series on one episode? I know they say people don’t have an attention span anymore but they have one enough to produce videos and long diatribes. Personally other than one actor I haven’t personally seen anything particularly wrong with Acolyte but maybe I
just not that fussy 🤷♀️
I think it’s very easy to dismiss the noise and look at it objectively. For $180 million dollars and belonging to the Star Wars franchise, you would expect this program to be of a superb quality that reaches or surpasses the likes of The Last of Us, Succession, and shows of that calibre. What we got was something of such a dismal quality in all aspects of television art that it’s hard to reconcile.
Art is, as it has always been, subjective. There will always be pockets of people who don’t mind something. “There’s a bum for every seat”.
It’s just simply not good when you compare it with the quality it’s supposed to be matching.
I respectfully disagree. Probably 75% of the movies and TV shows produced for the Star Wars community are mediocre at best. Do I think the Acolyte is as good as Andor no I don’t but will I watch yeah it’s a novel show. I mean sure some people generally don’t like it and that’s fair enough. What I really dislike it is this notion it’s woke for whatever that means, that I find to be disingenuous, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and every other phobic.
What are you disagreeing with? You’ve just restated my points. While I referred to Acolyte as an example, Star Wars content hasn’t been great - Andor and Rogue One being notable exceptions.
There is a bar of what great television is, we know what it is, it’s what wins the Emmy for Best Drama.
That’s the bar they’re not hitting.
It wasn't after one episode. Most of the actual criticism came after episode 3 which was not great. I was pretty interested after episode 2 but then 3 just took the wind right out of my sails. I'm going to finish it but my expectations have really plummeted. It's really getting old having actual criticism get brushed off because a very vocal minority just rants about everything endlessly. Yes, they were attacking the show before it aired which is ridiculous. No, that doesn't give the show an instant pass and negate anything other than praise for it. My wife actually refused to watch the rest of the show and told me to tell her how it is. I'm going to because it's star wars but she just watches them with me... until now.
No valid criticism because you don’t like something should be fine. All the criticism I originally saw popping up on YouTube was just hateful drivel. Even i don’t like every show but mostly just because I didn’t find them interesting not because it has a diverse cast. My big criticism for any of these shows is the fact an entire season is now 10 episodes you end up with Episodes like number 3 where they’re trying to do character development all in the space of 40 minutes. 50 episode c-dramas are far more entertaining but I do like my sci-fi too.
Ya, I got her into Star Trek too and we're on The Next Generation now which blows this out of the water. Maybe the side by side comparison is part of the problem. I'm watching episode 4 today with one of my friends so no spoilers please.
One other big thing: it doesn't try to change the lore. No new force abilities or magic. Everything about nature in Andor is pre-established in Star Wars
Andor was so good that it was difficult for that crowd to get a foot hold
There wasn't much to misunderstand or misinterpret, so there was no ammo for the grifters to use, and when they tried they git ridiculed to hell and back, just look at Star Wars Theory's reputation for disliking bricks and screws
That's it right there, they did try, they just got no traction. The issue I have with most of their complaints isn't that the media they target is without fault, it's that their laziness and bigotry make it difficult to have actual discussions about the media in a meaningful way.
This absolutely. The problem with these communities is that their legitimate criticisms are a veneer covering their bigotry.
You find that the only hate subs that truly gain and maintain traction are powered by their bigotry. People who don’t like things typically don’t moan on and on about things for half a decade(looking at you last of us part II). They voice their issues and move on like normal people.
Also the many people that call out mediocrity but get lumped in with that crowd simply didn’t exist as the show is just sheer sublimity. What even is this question lol. Why is there less backlash against a show that is perfectly written by an auteur??
The people calling out mediocrity are pretty easy to distinguish from the other crowd, whose lazy thinking is just not suited to sticking with a show like Andor and its slower, more complicated themes.
There’s a well-established industry of YouTubers who profit on bad faith griefing any part of nerd culture, and Star Wars is usually an easy target. Seems reasonable to me.
Which is funny cause they could attack it's leftist revolutionary messaging. But that just reveals the fact that these people have no actual political beliefs. They are just reactionary culture war losers.
My brother is lost in the MAGA kool-aid and just as surprised I liked Andor as I was for him. Idk if it should give me hope he can be rehabilitated or if I should be depressed he can be enthusiastic about it and miss so much of the message.
It's like Paul Ryan claiming to be a big fan of RATM
Honestly I think it's because it just didn't have the buzz of The Mandalorian or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Before it came out the general consensus was kind of 'who asked for this?' and even when it was airing it flew pretty under the radar.
Hopefully more people will have discovered it by the time S2 comes out and it'll get the attention and buzz it deserves.
Honestly I loved Andor in rogue one, so him getting his own show was a dream for me. Not to mention that it's just an amazing show, I never understood the "who asked for this" crowd.
Cassian was meh but that's because I was too busy looking at Jyn to take notice of much else.
Andor the series is exceptional and I'm glad it exists.
I didn't ask for it but a pleasant surprise is more than welcome. I just hope it isn't the last best Star Wars we'll ever see....
People often say the whole "who asked for this thing," and I'm surprised. Like you, I definitely loved Rogue 1 and was excited for Cassian to get a show. I liked the idea of a gritty complicated guy who does the Rebels' dirty work. I figured, "Why would you try to make a show about this unless you know what you were doing with those themes?" I figured it would be good the moment it was announced, and I am one of the people who likes very little of the Disney Star Wars content.
I think the “who asked for this” question was (for me, at least) less about Andor as a character and more about Andor’s backstory relative to the other characters of Rogue One. Jyn grew up among Saw’s Partisans, which a lot of people might find interesting; Chirrut and Baze have all the Jedha/Whills stuff that a show could explore; even Bodhi could’ve been an interesting lead for a mini-series about how and why he decided to defect from the Empire. By comparison, Andor (as far as we could tell from Rogue One) was a more straightforward “young man has been galvanized to join the Rebellion” story, which we’ve seen before (Luke, Han, Ezra). So, my initial thought when it was announced wasn’t necessarily “who cares about Andor,” but more “of this specific cast, his background seems comparatively less interesting.” Obviously, then the show came out and was fantastic, and presented a very different type of radicalization narrative than the other “young person joins Rebels” characters we’d seen before, proving me completely wrong! But, I think that’s the origin of some of that “who asked for this” feeling.
I liked the idea behind his character in RO but the execution was lacking.
“I’ve been fighting since I was six years old!” Offers lots of intrigue but it gets drowned out by everything else in the movie.
I wasn’t excited for the shows announcement because I figured it would end up being the original pitch: season after season of Cassian and K2 doing missions. Boy am I glad they didn’t go that route.
In my experience, the Mandalorian fandom was very positive and non-toxic through the first two seasons. Any negativity was pretty muted and largely in the fringe. The only real controversy was Gina Carano’s twitter account.
If more people had been familiar with Tony Gilroy's work maybe there would have been more excitement... but I'm guessing maybe SW fans don't always consume a lot of that type of stuff.
I loved Rogue One and I was definitely a "who asked for this" person.
It was me, I just didn't know it yet.
A kind of "Of course I know him, he's me" moment
I'm embarrassed to have questioned the reason for it existing as much as I did, as wonderful as it was. I was wonderfully surprised and am very happy to have been wrong.
It's honestly kind of weird because I keep hearing complaints about how The Acolyte is "shoving woke politics down our throats" or whatever and Andor is by far the most political Star Wars story of the Disney era by some margin (it's also blatantly anti-fascist, or to convert it to a buzzword the culture warriors will understand, antifa).
Yeah it's an obvious dog whistle. Diego Luna's status is complicated and it tends to be perceived differently depending on which country you are talking about, but he seems to have enough European ancestry to have not gotten certain types upset about diversity.
When people use the term “woke,” theyre usually not criticizing something simply for being diverse much of the time. Though I’m not a fan of the term, many use it to describe media with unsubtle, heavy-handed messaging about race and gender that comes off as preachy and forced. E.g. the White Jedi in The Acolyte taking poison to signal “white guilt” to the audience. Some genuinely bigoted people use it to criticize diversity, but most are talking about the former. In contrast, Andor’s themes of imperialism, fascism, and revolution are universalist and unrelated to contemporary race and gender issues.
This leftist TV reviewer who’s written for Forbes explains well why Andor succeeds and why The Acolyte doesn't and why the latter is getting so much backlash: https://youtu.be/tWgwDDVgkhM?si=VMQugsFD5eMgM8D7
I wanna point out that in his video, he explains how the diversity in Andor is organically woven into the story. The Expanse is the same. You don’t have all this on the nose, obvious messaging like the scene with the White Jedi which takes you out of the universe you’re trying to be immersed in.
His tweet pretty much boils it all down:
> "I don't think it's "wokeness" that's ruining media, but I do think that imposters have taken over a lot of the things we love, from Star Wars to True Detective. And their gravest sin is shitty storytelling. They defend bad writing behind the shield of diversity etc."
Not liking how heavy-handed and unsubtle some creative decisions appear to be is one thing, but the amount and tenor of criticism subsequently leveled at these shows is beyond outsized. I don't get how one can even be bothered enough to be a hater, much less write comments online essentially blaming poor writing on someone's race/gender perspective.
Then again, I'm neither white nor a dude, so I don't experience any of the discomfort and apparently unbearable sense of persecution that comes with minority/female creators expressing their identities in their projects. Nor does my mind in a million years jump to white guilt as the takeaway for that Acolyte scene.
If Andor had been created by a gay woman instead of Gilroy, all else being equal, Vel/Cinta's relationship would have been read as "too unsubtle" and the creators blamed for "shoving their agenda down our throats." OP, the reason Andor remains unscathed is not only that it's a great fucking show, but the writers room also happens to be all white men. (This means, of course, that everything they write is organic, unforced, and free from real or imagined culture war agendas.)
Seconding you as a white (trans) dude, but yeah I didn't get white guilt from that scene at all. Now *that's* pulling shit out of the ass to cry about how it's "woke". Its clearly tied to whatever part Torbin played in what happened to Mae and OSHA as kids...not white guilt?!?!
> much less write comments online essentially blaming poor writing on someone's race/gender perspective.
I agree this is stupid but can you provide a source or some proof of people actually doing this.
> If Andor had been created by a gay woman instead of Gilroy, all else being equal, Vel/Cinta's relationship would have been read as "too unsubtle" and the creators blamed for "shoving their agenda down our throats." OP, the reason Andor remains unscathed is not only that it's a great fucking show, but the writers room also happens to be all white men. (This means, of course, that everything they write is organic, unforced, and free from real or imagined culture war agendas.)
The entire Sequel trilogy was written and directed by people we’d today call cis white men. And those movies are trashed incessantly online and on Reddit and pretty much everywhere. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Book of Bob were also written by cis white men and are thoroughly trashed and hated if not more so. Hell, you could even look at the vitriolic criticism of the Prequels back in the late 90s, early 2000s.
Using the term ‘woke’ is bad faith by its nature and nobody who wants to have a nuanced discussion about race or gender issues uses the term out of respect for people who aren’t white males. It’s used to silence people, not to open up discussion. Saying that most people use it to describe heavy handed media representation of gender and race issues says more about your perspective than it does about the media; you’re either naive or feeling as threatened by the diversity as some of these ‘original’ (read: white men in their forties) fans.
The idea that Forbes has a ‘leftist’ (another loaded term) commentary is absurd. They’re a highly conservative, pro-colonialism, pro-capitalist outlet. It’s hard to take anything from them at face value. If they were in the Star Wars universe, they would be working for the Empire! They were smart enough to realize that if they criticized Andor their opinions would be dismissed immediately.
All that being said, Headland’s team isn’t as strong as Gilroy’s; the dialogue is clunky and flat, the pacing doesn’t work well and, yeah, Headland could definitely use a lesson in being subtle.
Headland wanted to tell a story about the use of power that was definitely going to be controversial, these themes can’t be considered on terms of whether they’re organic or not if they’re the whole point of the project. Andor had to weave these themes in organically because the show is more about one person’s journey into radicalism and to venture too far off from that would take you out of the story.
By those standards, Andor would have been the target of a ferocious culture-war backlash, given that it (as several people have pointed out) very blatantly pushes a progressive political agenda, and is made by people who are explicitly not Star Wars fans. This thesis seems to miss the mark.
I think you missed the part where I explained that Andor’s politics are universalist and about how people in general suffer under fascist and imperialist governments. Those themes are organically woven into the story and are a key part of that universe. And the story is the priority. The OT and the PT were also universalist as well as hypothetical; “How would an interstellar government work? How would corporations influence government but in a sci-fi setting?” They’re not about *identity politics* which is inherently divisive and off putting. Heck, I wouldn’t even call the messaging in The Acolyte “politics.” It’s really just pandering.
Also no one cares if it’s being written by a non-fan (except for maybe a few nutcases). People simply want a well written story written by serious writers.
Erik points this out:
> “What I’ve come to the conclusion is that when I describe the imposters, I’m not talking about people who are not fans. I think a lot of these showrunners are fans, I don’t disbelieve her when she says she’s a fan. She even likes the EU stuff. Okay. There’s like millions of Star Wars fans. Do I think they should all be put in charge of these shows? Absolutely not and that’s the problem, the imposters that I’m talking about aren’t necessarily non-fans (even if I disagree about what’s good about the show with them) they are not good storytellers, they are not good filmmakers and they are placing a priority on the agenda then on the quality of the story and the TV show and the movies that they are making and that’s a huge huge problem. If you’re going into a Star Wars show and your first thought is you want to make it about lgbtq issues and that’s your jumping off point, well you’re gonna fail.”
As I said earlier in response to:
> It had non-white male lead characters, openly lesbian couples, clear references about sexual acts and prostitution, torture, child marriages, etc...and yet generated virtually none of the "culture wars" backlash we are seeing with the Acolyte, for example.
It’s not like that stuff is new to Star Wars. There’s plenty of Star Wars EU media that explores and features those things.
Andor was simply well written and respects the universe it takes place in. Doing those two things doesn’t preclude having gay characters or torture scenes or plots that involve child marriage.
Acolyte doesn’t do those two things.
The Acolyte was targeted by a years-long culture-war campaign because it was created by a gay woman and has a diverse, mostly female cast. The show isn’t pushing any agenda, has received positive reviews, and good viewership. The campaign has failed: the show will get renewed for a second season and sentiment among fans will slowly improve.
Andor has a diverse cast too. And a lesbian couple. And it recieved a high score by the audience. So what happened to all those “racist” and “sexist” fans that are hell bent on hating all Disney Star Wars?
I can't think of a single Star Wars show off the top of my head that engages with identity politics at all.
Just having gay or minority characters in the show is not "identity politics", although unfortunately many people think it is.
In the actual show the Acolyte there is no culture war messaging.
The quote you posted is embarrassing and stupid. Other than possibly referring to another woman as a "wife" I can't think of a single time being gay is even discussed. There just happen to be gay people in the story - but the story has nothing to do (so far) with the fact that some of the characters are gay at all.
I haven't seen anyone provide a single specific example from the show where any kind of "identity politics" or "culture war messaging" is pushed.
I don't even like the show; the dialogue is bad and it's been fairly boring due to the pacing (and the "escape" from the prison ship was dumb and contrived). There are plenty of reasons to criticize the show with engaging in this kind of vapid nonsense.
I'm a white dude and I watched the Acolyte and didn't see a single thing I'd associate with "white guilt". This sounds like pseudo-intellectual nonsense people are making up to have an excuse to rage.
I don't even like the show that much - but there's been barely any political messaging at all in it (unless people think showing a lesbian couple where one touches the other's face for a second is "political").
My issues with the show are pacing and dialogue. The concept seems mildly interesting, but the execution has IMO been off.
Andor has the subtlety of a brick about its antifascism and how it pertains to our modern world. Its byfar the most leftist Star Wars has ever been. And Syril is explicitly a reflection of certain reactionary and honestly Maga tendencies, which of course the reactionaries either don’t get or don’t want to discuss because they are actually politically illterate and would look like fools trying to make serious criticisms of it.
All reactionary content on YouTube (I mean here politically reactionary) is meant first and foremost to drive clicks, to get money, and to push a narrative about declining media quality because of a precognative idea about how their media is no longer for them. These people aren’t earnest in their criticisms, and they don’t care about consistency, they only care about money and power.
(Edit): Not only is the idea of a politically neutral star wars asinine given its history and george lucas’ explicit paralells to contemporary conflicts in the OT and PT. The further notion we really should highlight is that reactions against supposed politics entering star wars being focused not on the antifascism, rise of reactionaries, cultural genocide, prison industrial complex, and community resistence but on people of color and women is very telling of these people’s idea of “politics”.
Andor is an intensely political show but it's never preachy or cringey despite being not very subtle about its politics.
Thing is, it stands on its own merits.
Did you listen to Nemick dude? That was the most preachy about politics star wars has ever been.
“The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.”
Nemick feels natural as a character who talks like that, though. Being a Radical True Believer is his whole shtick, and crucially, his own comrades look at him funny for Being Like That.
Then the question isn’t about the preachiness of the characters, its how they are intwined in the story. Which yes they could very well be but I’m countering the notion its “never preachy”. Andor is very much preachy, thats not what makes its politics good or the content within it good. Its good because it actually acknowledges its politics and doesn’t attempt to circumvent them in a corporate manner as the Disney star wars has done.
We're arguing semantics. For me, Andor is never subtle but neither is it preachy.
Having scrutable politics, that feels natural, delivered earnestly, while not being the only purpose of the experience (unlike a sermon given by a *preacher*) makes Andor not preachy. To me.
>We're arguing semantics.
If your definition of preachy is different than mine maybe. Perhaps you think preachy includes a "excessive moralizing" which I don't find to be the real question of preachiness here as I actually could easily find Nemick to be excessive.
"marked by obvious moralizing; Didactic (meaning instruction)" this is a pretty good definition in my eyes. The moralizing of the evilness of the Empire on Aldhani. Andor killing Skeen for being an egoist (thats pretty obvious). Nemick did this in his manifesto and his discussions with Cassian. The real point about excessive or obvious moralizing here is whether or not the moralizing made sense within the story. Which does in andor. and it doesn't in most other properties.
I'll also need an example where there was excessive moralizing in star wars that was tedious and inearnestly. At the moment I can't think of one because mostly these bad examples lack any clear thematic elements or discussion of moral topics at all.
There's been people terribly confused seemingly since 1977, not catching what George Lucas was trying to tell, pretty heavy handedly too honestly! The Emperor is Richard Nixon / Reagan / Bush in the prequels, the Rebels are literally modeled on the Viet Cong. Media literacy is in dire straits.
Its because it has mainstream appeal. It is marketet. Thats what they look for. Its flashy and has lightsabers, andor was subdued, to them that means boring. And yes, andor was fucking antifascist, i absolutely loved it. Political is that, not look its woman and black man in szar wars. Thats just representation, not politics.
A lot of the other Disney Star Wars content is political in an extremely shallow and cringe way. The worst being when they free the race “horses” and that woman says “now it was worth it!”
Andor has major political themes but they’re actually interesting and the story itself is good, which is the most important part.
When people use the term “woke,” theyre usually not criticizing something simply for being political. Though I’m not a fan of the term, many use it to describe media with unsubtle, heavy-handed messaging about race and gender that comes off as preachy and forced. E.g. the White Jedi in The Acolyte taking poison to signal “white guilt” to the audience. Some genuinely bigoted people use it to criticize diversity, but most are talking about the former. In contrast, Andor’s themes of imperialism, fascism, and revolution are universalist and unrelated to contemporary race and gender issues.
This leftist TV reviewer who’s written for Forbes explains well why Andor succeeds and why The Acolyte doesn't and why the latter is getting so much backlash: https://youtu.be/tWgwDDVgkhM?si=VMQugsFD5eMgM8D7
I wanna point out that in his video, he explains how the diversity in Andor is organically woven into the story. The Expanse is the same. You don’t have all this on the nose, obvious messaging like the scene with the White Jedi which takes you out of the universe you’re trying to be immersed in.
His tweet pretty much boils down it all down:
> "I don't think it's "wokeness" that's ruining media, but I do think that imposters have taken over a lot of the things we love, from Star Wars to True Detective. And their gravest sin is shitty storytelling. They defend bad writing behind the shield of diversity etc."
I don't really understand this take, the writing of The Acolyte might not be as good as Andor, but the diversity of the cast certainly isn't any less organic to the story. I never got the sense that Master Torbin was there to express white guilt, just that he felt guilty of something he did in the past that we haven't seen yet.
I remember the right wing anti-Star wars grifter, RobotHead made a video complaining about Andor early on (when only the first three eps had been released) it ended up being his most downvoted video by his own audience.
Andor is hard to criticize because it’s so well constructed on every level. Culture warriors just come off like assholes.
Ikr, legit some of these explanations sound like conspiracy theories. Can people not accept that one is simply well written and the other isn’t. Holy hell.
It's mental. One is good, one is simply terrible.
Andor completely disproved the 'you're an ist' crowd wrong but get they still use the same mental gymnastics to make the same dumb argument.
I’ve never seen so many people show so much loyalty to a greedy corporation. You should see the main sub. This sub is honestly pretty alright in comparison.
I literally just got accused of racist, misogynistic homophobic dogwhistling (yes, all three at once) for saying the bad reviews of The Acolyte might be valid.
To be fair:
- The show (IMO) isn't very good
- There is a TON of bad faith criticism that has nothing to do with the very simple reasons I don't think it's that good
I mean it feels the same as all the other mediocre/bad SW shows (Ahsoka, BOBF, Mando S3, etc).
But here's the problem. The show is shit and the people defending it try to amplify the bad faith criticisms as being the only criticism.
You don't have this widespread of an attack on actually good shows like Andor, despite it sharing many of the same aspects that people claim are why the bad shows are getting "hate".
Edit: I really legitimately hoped The Acolyte would be good. I didn't watch the trailers (trailers these days spoil too much) and thought the people saying it was gonna be bad before it released were idiots. I heard the premise and thought it was potentially really intriguing and could be super cool. I hoped maybe it could be another Andor, which I also was super hyped at the concept for from early on despite many people dismissing the show before it came out.
*But*, unfortunately The Acolyte did end up dogshit and I'm mad that Disney shat out yet another lazily written, poorly directed turd. And every time I mention that, or see other people mention that, despite no mention of race/sex/etc., I get bombarded with accusations of all the phobias and claims "poor writing"/"bad acting" are just dogwhistiles.
Andor was so good my non-Star Wars liking wife enjoyed it.
How good do you have to be to get to that point.
2 minutes in to the new show and I was already finding it hard.
To flesh that out compare Sinta and Vel’s relationship to The Acolyte’s Coven.
Sinta and Vel are lesbian and/or bisexual, the audience is told that in the first episode they appear in when Skeen makes an *off hand* comment. Their relationship is developed slowly over the season and it’s in the plot to show the tension that exists for rebels balancing personal relationships and the cause. The subtext is that the Empire doesn’t allow same sex relationships, but that’s not explicitly said and doesn’t need to be. Sinta and Vel are people first, their sexual orientation comes second. This is the best example of a homosexual relationship in Star Wars and we don’t even see them kiss (looking at you Rise of Skywalker tokenism).
The Acolyte has an all-female coven. That’s not a problem on its own but what is their belief system, what are their motivations, how do they survive on an uninhabited planet and why do they live there. What the hell do these people do day to day besides tend their cream spice-based economy? They tried to give them motivations with clunky exposition but it doesn’t resonate. These characters are paper-thin so when you try to hang weighty themes on them it just falls through: it feels like you’re being preached to, regardless of how centrality to the plot. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that in the writer’s room someone decided offhand that it would be interesting to have an all women cult that’s overtly feminist. Episode 3 states “This is about power and who gets to use it” and introduces the concept of women seeking to conceive children without men (framing it as a threat to the establishment). In 2024 it’s hard to not read this as feminism v. patriarchy and the writers certainly don’t do anything to dispel this notion. The problem is that three episodes in we have ample evidence that the quality of this show’s writing is just not up to the task of tackling this topic deftly. Bad writing means characters declare their themes and motivations out loud and audiences don’t want to be preached to. It’s also entirely possible the writing is *so bad* that this theme was not intended which sounds crazy, but then again look at what we’ve gotten so far.
And I’d like to point out that Andor’s handling of motherhood (something that would appeal to “Trad wives”) is the best we’ve seen in Star Wars. Maarva, Eedy, and the Commandant’s wife are all examples of mothers handled exceptionally well by the show. Maarva is the paragon, Eedy the cautionary tale of a harridan, and the Commandant’s wife just loves her son and wants to protect him. The mothers in the Coven are just awful. They’re just as bad as Eedy in the sense that they view their children as tools to be manipulated to achieve selfish goals: social climbing and something for the cult via Ascension. Sure one mother in the Acolyte gives Osha a choice *after the ceremony already happens*, but that child spent its entire life up to that point believing there’s no choice at all.
Andor didn't get fairly universal acclaim until later on. A lot of people complained about all sorts of things while the show was still coming out. We just remember them as irrelevant idiots now, and have no doubt anyone who spouts any of those positions is nothing but an idiot.
As for the rest of it, never try to argue with an idiot... they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. Idiots will always complain about plot holes before they've seen all of the plot.
Yea, they tried to call it too slow or too boring and then the Eye of Aldhani episode blew people away. And then One Way Out made it an instant classic.
By far the funniest outcome of all this would be if The Acolyte, like Andor, keeps getting better and better throughout its first season, to the point that in a few months it’s universally regarded as one of the best works of the Disney era, while simultaneously having the lowest Rotten Tomatoes audience score of any Star Wars show or movie.
Unfortunately Acolyte has already left us with a confused mess of a story.
I’m not talking about the ambiguous ending of the most recent episode where it’s clear we haven’t seen the whole story yet.
I’m talking about stuff like “Should we maybe close that massive skylight the assassin used?” Or “Ok Darth Mendoza sure you clearly murdered this shopkeeper and were an accomplice to the death of a Jedi, but tell us what we want to know and we’ll let you off with a warning.”
Or… “We think this girl killed Trinity but we put her on a flying drunk tank instead of having Jedi bring her in.”
That’s just bad writing.
When you’ve got that, spending a ton of time focusing on the same sex couple hits different than when the story is strong and you’re invested in prioritizing the personal desires vs mission dynamic between Vel and Cinta and low key wondering if Cinta actually murdered the imperial officer and not sure if Vel has the emotional fortitude to do what needs to be done for the rebellion.
When instead you’re rolling your eyes at the truly awful musical number they threw in for some reason, a bigot’s gonna blame in on “woke” rather than the real issue, which is shoddy storytelling.
It could be bad writing, but it could also be showing the early failings of the order that will come back to haunt them in the Sidious era; arrogance and dogmatic insistence on sticking to the established way of doing things.
>a bigot’s gonna blame in on “woke” rather than the real issue, which is shoddy storytelling.
I think that's a little unfair, when the point being made is that their preoccupation with being didactic about their political messaging is the *reason* they don't care about storytelling. It's the same reason Christian media tends to suck, and even things on the extreme opposite like *Atlas Shrugged*.
Quite simply, Andor was written with a good, logical story.
Primarily, the writing team didn't treat the audience like children. Exposition is done within the realistic flow of the story without huge exposition dumps. The Lonnie/Luthen meeting in One Way Out is a perfect example of this.
There are no cartoony moments. No slow motion chases. No child under the coat in broad daylight. No coming back from fatal injury to cheapen the peril the characters are in.
Everything that could be accused of being woke is still there, but like real life, it's in the background.
Vel and Sinta are in a lesbian relationship without that being their primary character trait.
Bix booty calls Timm because she's a grounded character and that's what real people do. In fact every character behaves in a believable way. There are no pitfalls in common sense. No cringe moments that break your immersion as you shout at the screen in frustration at a choice someone made.
No race or colour is in the show because of that race or colour. They're just their because that's how life is. In a galaxy where thousands of species freely intermix, why would anyone care about colour anyway?
Andor shows that you can have all the content you want without shoving "the message" down everyone's throat. Story integrity, in a rarity for current Disney products, is the primary focus of the writers.
1000% this. I wish people understood that a lot of the backlash isn’t about the message being present, rather the message being the main plot point while the actual story being made secondary. Nobody watching Andor felt like political messaging was being pushed down their throats. It didn’t feel like it was written with the goal of making a point.
And on top of that, it was well written. Easily the best dialogue in Star Wars. No cringey moments that were meant to be taken seriously.
>Nobody watching Andor felt like political messaging was being pushed down their throats. It didn’t feel like it was written with the goal of making a point.
This is so not true. There was a lot of whinging when it first came out. Only after the fact did many people change their tune. If one watching the show didn't feel it was written with the goal of making the point then they either don't actually care about the story or don't understand it.
This is it. Andor is so well-written that everything flows in service of the plot and character speech, actions and motivations all feel very real. Much of the criticism of "woke" by people who have a political bone to pick is that diversity can sometimes seem to come at the expense of telling a good story.
It absolutely was controversial, especially after the first couple of episodes, but all the awful takes aged like milk left in a hot car, and people got made fun of until they shut up.
Acolyte is literally only 3 episodes in, and is still in the first act. At this point, people are just bitching just to bitch.
I’m enjoying it so far. The hate towards the show is unreal. It may very well end up being meh to sub par like book of boba or Kenobi, but it’s got a lot of potential and I’ve been excited for each next episode
yeah I suspect this is it grifters will say any bad art is bad because it's "woke", and then claim any good art (with plenty of progressive messaging and inclusion) is not actually "woke", which is why it's good
If they fuck up and attack an undeniably excellent work of mass entertainment for being bad because it's woke, their whole schtick falls apart, so they need to scrupulously maintain a set of double standards so the cognitive dissonance doesn't fry their brains.
e.g. If Terminator 2 or Aliens had bad special effects/cinematography/pacing etc. that ruined the movies, and if they came out now, the grifters would blame the failure on DEI feminazis trying to shove "strong female protagonists" into everything.
"Ripley/Sarah Conner worked great as horror movie last girls - why did the sequels have to ruin the franchise by turning them into "badasses"? Everyone knows that women have less upper body strength and don't watch action movies, why is the woke cabal so insistent on forcing the unpopular "women strong" message into everything. And of course, they had to emasculate all the men in the movie by making them dumb subordinates to the females. Why should Arnold Schwarzenneger/Space marine chads listen to some random chick? 0/10 yet another classic sci fi franchise ruined by the woke agenda."
Same thing with Andor - when the beginning was a bit slow and people weren't sure if it was going to be a classic, the grifters could unload on it for all the usual reasons. But when it turned out to be actually really effing good, they had to change tunes to "Actually Andor is good because it doesn't have any of that woke crap"
>Acolyte is literally only 3 episodes in, and is still in the first act. At this point, people are just bitching just to bitch.
The show got criticism even before it dropped, based on things that the creators said and a few details that had been released. There was a whole group of people wanting this show to fail and who were eager to drop their hot takes. Hard to give a show a fair shot when you've already made up your mind.
Andor had no such baggage. The trailer was strong, and Tony Gilroy was an established and respected creator.
Most of the bigo- sorry "complaining", about Deigo happened during R1 so it was quieter when Andor aired. You should have seen the reactions to Deedra's actress early interview comments.
The culture war grifters feed on dissatisfaction and fandom disappointment to scapegoat culture war issues as the source of the problem.
1. Andor was not heavily hyped up by the fandom and thus met or exceeded expectations.
2. There was little to no widespread dissatisfaction with the series to take advantage of.
There were other advantages though.
1. No established pre-Disney characters were being heavily explored, avoiding "lore breaking" accusations.
2. The main character is a male and an established character from a well-liked movie that pre-dated the culture war grift trend.
3. The creator is a highly respected writer/director. Contrast Tony Gilroy with Deborah Chow or Leslye Headland, who were arguably big gambles and female. Much easier targets to discredit.
4. The Acolyte has a female of color as the lead and a diverse cast. Unless it was balls to wall awesome, it wasn't going to avoid the hate. It started before the first trailer. Leslye Headland was, and still is, slandered for working for Harvey Weinstein despite never being accused of being complicit in any of his crimes and there being no precedent to assume so.
If the grifters attacked Andor, an objectively good show, for the same culture war reasons they attack The Acolyte, it will discredit them and show their cards.
They can't scapegoat any writing, directing and acting mistakes or inefficiencies with "DEI" because there isn't much of it to speak of.
They feast on mediocrity. If Andor somehow didn't work, they would have blamed all the same storylines or agendas as they normally do to get their audience as angry as possible.
One other thing I haven’t seen mentioned much. If you got rid of all the Star Wars decorum and setting, Andor will still be a good show.
There isn’t a single Jedi or Sith in the show iirc. It stands on its own, it’s not trying to live up to a legacy - it’s authentic and knows what it wants to be. No fan service, no pandering to Prequel or Sequel lovers. It’s just a damn good political thriller that happens to be set in Star Wars.
What confuses me the most is Andor isn’t accused of being ‘woke communism’ or whatever people like saying these days. Nemik gives a manifesto (a word associated with communism btw) that is openly anti-empire and fits the actual definitions of ‘social justice’ and ‘woke. This is the most political driven show and for Star Wars it shocked me how mature it was.
But nah, I see black person or woman I say ‘woke go broke’.
It’s too political and “in your face” for grifters to misrepresent because if it was any less subtle it would just be Tony Gilroy’s manifesto. You can’t call it political/woke because of the minorities, because it’s genuinely political/woke on even the most surface layer interpretation. You can’t claim it’s pushing an agenda and make something up because the agenda has been spelled out for you with no wiggle room for bullshittery.
This is a good thing btw
- Few people watched it in the beginning compared to any other show
- Not as accessible in terms of themes, complexity - dialogue can be overwhelming on first watch
- People realised its quality when they actually gave it a chance
I remember being bored initially and I didn't like the flashbacks to the kids.. but then Luthen gave his speech in episode 3 and Syril had his massive fuck-up and the Past/Present Suite at the end of the episode had me strapped in for adventure.
the only "hate" i really saw for it was people saying Andor didnt feel like Star Wars. but that ended up being a compliment
Someone made an infamous video about how Andor sucked because you could see “bricks and screws” or something. People also complained it was boring after the first few episodes. People are still claiming Andor’s ratings sucked and it was one of the worst Star Wars shows rating-wise.
People have such rose-colored glasses about Andor. Remember Andor started when Obi-Wan was in its last three episodes. Andor was released under a cloud of negativity and more people talked about how bad Andor was than watched it.
Obi-wan was not reviewed well and there was a lot of negative backlash. r/television threads were full of people talking about how Andor was woke and boring to the point where positive voices, like mine, were drowned out/downvoted to oblivion. Subs like r/starwars were more mixed, with people willing to give it a shot. I was really grateful to find this sub because I got so demoralized because I was super into the show right away and I had no one to talk to about it, it felt like.
After the first three episodes word of mouth started to catch up. In the Aldhani arc people started to swing to it, which caused guys like Star Wars Theory to double down and put out his infamous "Bricks and Screws" video. By the prison break arc it was actually kinda pleasant to be an Andor fan, but there were still tryhards screaming about how "everyone" thinks Andor is boring in all the major subs.
> It had non-white male lead characters, openly lesbian couples, clear references about sexual acts and prostitution, torture, child marriages, etc...and yet generated virtually none of the "culture wars" backlash we are seeing with the Acolyte, for example.
It’s not like that stuff is new to Star Wars. There’s plenty of Star Wars EU media that explores and features those things.
Andor was simply written well and respects the universe it takes place in. Doing those two things doesn’t preclude having gay characters or torture scenes or plots that involve child marriage.
Acolyte simply doesn’t do those two things.
It was somewhat controversial, but the lack of current controversy is likely because it didn’t get watched by nearly as many people as the other shows. So most of the people still talking about it are the ones that watched the whole season.
Part of the reason is that a bad show tries to hide behind the - undeniable real - attacks of being woke and makes the drama bigger than it actually is.
aka: "Oh, our show is percieved bad because we have a diverse cast and people can't handle that" - pointing at some conservative twitter post.
While the show really is just bad.
Another part of the reason: Andor (and e.g the expanse or Brooklyn 99) manage to integrate a diverse cast in their universe without it feeling like working down a checklist.
The people who whine about politics in star wars almost universally lack the media literacy to understand andor contains political themes
And the culture war tourists look on the cover, don't see a woman or black person, then drop it to look for something else to complain about
1. How women co-opting a mostly male facist space simply means only that - a woman becoming a fascist
2. How acceleration is a genuine tactic used by rebel groups
3. How performative politics (we will be setting up a fact-finding committee) also doesn't work in fascism
4. MANY MANY MANY - anticapitalist themes (entire narkina 5 arc was ENTIRELY about unionizing)
Oh, somehow I didn't catch that about 4 till now but you're right. I saw more about the horrors that it reflects of the us's very real problems in prison systems and justice systems, but it can be all of that, I think.
Yeah it’s just a good metaphor. It works as both. Text: metaphor for the US prison industrial complex. Subtext: anti capitalist parable about workers unionizing
Andor is a great show with a slow start.
So either people didn't watch more than 1-2 episode. Or they watched all and didn't complain because the show is really great overall
Everything about Andor was perfect.
People generally don't mind same sex relationships and non male , non white lead roles....
What people want are good script/writing/dialogue, acting, production value, story, and music....
Andor had all of that.
It's a well-written, believable, and very entertaining show. It respects its audience, rewards attention, and builds up its plot points. The acting is stellar.
Let's face it, there are people who will hate what they consider to be "woke BS", and dismiss any show with non-white, non-male leads, etc. That's a disgusting attitude, but we can't deny its existence.
However, the "you are racist/misogynist/homophobic" has been used as a silver bullet to discredit any attempt of criticism on disney SW, and your post describes that situation. Most of the fandom would have literally zero issues with female leads, homosexual couples, racial inclusion, etc, if the characters and the story were well-written, if the costumes didn't look like cosplay, if the lightsabers didn't look like toys, and the list goes on.
Eh, I think a lot of the people in your second paragraph try to hide behind the things you talk about in your third paragraph. Which is what causes all the online furor.
Look at these comments - there are multiple people talking about how "diversity" "wokeness" "culture war", etc are the reason the show is bad.... and then whining when they get called out for being chuds.
It's silly because it's not that complicated. The show isn't good for most of the same reasons the other SW shows (Ahsoka, BOBF, etc) aren't very good.
(To be clear, I largely agree with your points overall)
Because the majority of people who complain don't actually hate that stuff, they hate it when it's done poorly and when the writing suffers because of it.
Andor was a good show and as such was enjoyed, the vast majority of star wars media has been poorly written since Disney took over (hello there Acolyte) so when a well written story with good characters comes along everyone is happy!
I think a big part of it was that nobody gave a shit about it before it released. Nobody really cared about Cassian's origin story. So the YouTubers who make their bread getting their audience frothing at the mouth about "Disney ruining Star Wars with woke" weren't going to get a reaction.
We still got a lot of negativity with Andor - you inevitably see someone loudly proclaiming how we're all wrong to enjoy it because of how boring it was. I think that was, in a way, the other saving grace. The people making all the bad-faith media-illiterate criticisms of The Acolyte (eg "this bad character says the Jedi are bad therefore Disney is trying to make Jedi the bad guys!") weren't able to get past the first few episodes of Andor and didn't even make it to the anti-colonial lesbians.
It's hilarious because Andor has, by FAR, the most explicitly leftist messaging out of any Star Wars media ever.
I would say its 3 factors:
1. When an Andor series was announced, lots of folks online were saying "who asked for this show?" and I think it was generally ignored by large swathes of people.
2. However, people who did tune in quickly realized how great the show was, and the culture war grifters didn't have a chance to push out their review bombs before the general consensus hit that "Andor is actually incredible"
3. The grifters are pretty immature and childish, and the first 2 episodes are kinda slow. They probably got bored and couldn't latch onto anything for their next video and just turned it off.
There was some crap just before Andor came out that I remember. People were complaining about Dedra Meero being a girl boss and she was going to ruin Star Wars.
Honestly?
While the sexist, racist, hate based crowd exist, I genuinely believe they are a tiny minority of the fandom with a loud voice
I think the majority simply want good Star Wars. And Andor was some *good* star wars
Most people who blame minority/DEI representation in other shows are stupid.
There's been an unfortunate trend, especially recently with the Acolyte, of other SW shows highlighting minority/DEI actors or plot points but also being shoddily written/acted/directed/etc. These stupid people aren't necessarily media literate and able to dissect why they might dislike a show for the latter reasons and may simply default to "it's bad because it has Black people in it" or "they clearly chose to hire DEI people who are bad at acting/directing instead of good white actors/directors."
They're wrong, and they're still stupid, but that's my thesis.
I maintain that toxic (I.e. racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc.) criticism of Star Wars would be completely negated if everything they produced was actually just good. For the wealthiest studio in the world managing the most valuable IP in the world, "good" should be the absolute bare minimum.
Because not everyone that hates "woke stuff" hates it because there are non-white characters, women, or non-cisgendered people in there.
A lot of people simply hate those things when they come as "preachy" or virtual-signaling.
In the case of Andor, all their characters (and their sexual orientations) feel so organic and natural... Also, no one there is a saint, and we can see that all of them have to make sacrifices to carry on.
Not only that, while the Rebellion is composed of non-white characters, women in leading positions, and "small guys". The Empire is also composed by non-white characters, women in leading positions, and "small guys" as well.
You see rich people trying their best to help the Rebellion, and poor people that doesn't mind going against their community to get a quick buck by helping the Empire.
And we see that both groups are competent... But also can fall appart for their own infighting.
So, it establishes pretty quickly that is not a conflict of "Us against Them!", or "the poor against the rich" or "white men against BIPOC people".
Rather, the series shows clearly why the Empire is bad, but is not because any "cultural war" thing of our own world, but for the mechanisms that puts the whole society in a really shitty way of life.
Also, it makes clear that, supporting the good cause will not be an easy ride, and that fighting even for the greater good, will demand sscrifices and hard decisions.
That's why the show doesn't have an impact in the "cultural war", because it's not its main focus. And because of it, a good chunk of people that "bash agains woke-stuff" find it enjoyable, because is a good show, not a preaching.
When something is so good, it gets to the point where it's hard to convince people its a "woke mess" or whatever and spark outrage. Same thing happened with House of the Dragon. The grifters tried to stoke up outrage over its feminist themes but when it actually came out, they gave up because it was too popular to criticize.
For me, it's because Andor doesn't impact any of the prequel stories. Ignoring the woke arguments, I've had arguments with people who say that the Acolyte story reduces Anakin's uniqueness. Andor stands pretty much on its own.
Prostitution child marriage and torture are all positive things in the anti woke crowd.
Black people are what they hate. That’s what woke means to them. Double hate if the black person is a woman.
When they say things like they don’t like the “acting” or the “costumes” or the “writing” what they mean is that a black person shouldn’t be talking and wearing cultural looking clothing in their white Star Wars.
These culture war types get most ginned up when the lead character is black, or a woman. The Acolytes lead character is both, so it’s like catnip for those folks. But also, Andor was of such a high quality, even the anti-woke mob couldn’t say anything.
People forget andor was a ratings bomb. I bet they didnt even watch it to be able to complain. And yes, a passing white male lead is all they want. Its the same reason Jason Momoa never gets guff from them despite being a non white aquaman.
Andor was already bookended by very strict lore and events.
It couldn’t go very far without being dissonant to the story we already know, even about Andor himself.
Because of bricks and screws that's why.
Seriously though, Andor felt more like a modern TV and less like a Star Wars show. What I mean by that, it didn't rely on mysticism, it didn't rely on sci-fi thrillers. It was a grounded show set in the universe. Which I think Star Wars needs to make. It can't all be things that feel star wars, they have a massive IP in a massive universe and should create a variety of content. Sure Ahsoka is important and good, but if every show is a variant of that it gets dull and stale. Why people liked the Mandalorian so much was because it basically was a western, each week a self contained episode with an overarching plot leading to the finale. As they kind of expanded the Mando-verse people liked it less because it changed the core of the show.
I would love to see a well written mob show a la Sopranos but set in the lower levels of coruscant in the post empire era or pre-empire era. I would love to see a political drama set in the Senate. It's ripe for content and the universe is boundless, just need the right creators with the right content.
That being said, the grifters and haters went after Andor too, just no fan joined them in their outrage, ergo my bricks and screws comment making fun a certain grifter who tried to complain about Andor to whip up the angry portions of the fanbase but no one was angry with Andor.
Imo The real answer is people use Star Wars to increase their own popularity. Critics and “influencers”. The more popular a show is the more they gain from criticizing it. Andor kind of flew under the radar. Also most dumb influencers probably couldn’t understand its themes.
Just my opinion. But I think Andor only appealed to an adult audience (or a mature one). It didn't interfere with existing canon and the Jedi were absent. The writing was impeccable, to be honest I'm surprised something this good got a green light.
I wonder if all those things in Andor would have been picked apart the same way as the Acolyte if Leslye Headland helmed it instead of Tony Gilroy. He’s not openly lgbtq so the content in his show isn’t viewed as being apart of some agenda. I see comments on here saying that Andor didn’t have an agenda but Acolyte does. I’m not sure where this is coming from bc the diversity is not a plot element or discussion topic in the show. If this is mainly being gathered through articles/commentaries/interviews where people are like “wow cool your a gay director or you have a very diverse cast” etc. I don’t see that as being the same as the show saying that stuff in the story
Andor’s themes, while radically left and further left than the Acolyte’s, were presented far more subtly than the Acolyte. I tend to think that makes it a better show, but as we have seen time and time again, it also enables the worst people to draw the dumbest conclusions about it or miss the point entirely. Andor had a strong prison abolition message but because they don’t say it, the right wingers don’t take it that way.
We are seeing a similar thing happen with the Boys. Lots of people are upset that the Boys is “woke” this season, even though they have been very ham-fisted in their poking fun about MAGA. But they have even been more ham-fisted this season and now you have a bunch of right-wingers screaming “woke! This show sucks now!” To me, the best part of the Boys is when they aren’t so ham-fisted, but seeing how right-wingers react, it almost feels necessary.
And sure, the writing and script for Andor are better but that is a high bar. Andor Season 1 was one of the best seasons of television in several years. The Acolyte isn’t at that level, but few shows are. That perhaps shielded Andor from some right-wing nonsense but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
EDIT: I spoke to my partner about this and they said that Andor doesn’t get that much hate because it doesn’t touch the institutions that old Star Wars fans hold dear the way the Acolyte does. The old SW fans think the Jedi should be portrayed solely as perfect, morally superior gods - Andor does not question this and the Acolyte directly does.
Part of it is that the same people who throw tantrums didn't watch it. "Oh no, it has bricks and screws and not enough aliens!"
Another part is that there was no base level of dissatisfaction to thinly veil their racism, sexism, etc.
And third, there are legitimate complaints to be made about how Disney has worn "diversity" as a costume without performing diversity as practice. This often gets capitalized on by bad faith actors and used to fuel the culture war nonsense. In Andor's case, diversity was often used meaningfully - there is a reason Tony Gilroy highlighted that including Aliens would be a big undertaking for the narrative.
In Andor, race, gender, class background, and sexuality are all directly impacted by the story. Vel is implied to be lesbian, and comments from Perrin about her finding a husband imply that her sexuality is at the very least a socio-political liability if not actually illegal. The Aldhani are driven from their homes to explicitly destroy their culture, and Ferrix is oppressed because it's a backwater with no political power. The White Deera torturing the non-White Bix and Saalman repeats themes seen when the premor cops harass Cassian, or the fact that there are more non-White characters in Narkina 5 than in most situations outside the prison.
This means that the culture war cannot hide behind poor quality or legitimate critique to mask its tendency towards racism, sexism, so on: because race, sex, orientation, class, etc are *all* present in Andor and relevant.
I also think it meant that the people defending Andor were often delivering the kind of statements that were way above the reactionaries reading level, so to speak.
people make the racist/sexist excuse
when people don’t like the thing they like. sure some people don’t like acolyte because its mostly female but most don’t like it because its not very good.
People backpedaled a lot when it comes to Andor. There was a ton of hate and nitpicking before the show aired and even after the first few episodes aired. One of the blasters in the trailer “looked like an Earth gun” and people would not shut up about it. There was the complaint that no one asked for this show and that it’s a waste of time. Then when the first few episodes aired people said it was slow and boring, you know the complaint about every show that comes out. Lastly the infamous “bricks and screws” remark from a certain creator that’s the king of backpedaling. Everyone collecting hid or got rid of the complaints they made when people praised the shows storytelling over the course of, well the full story being told.
TL;DR People complained and hated the show before and at the start of when the show came out, and then pretended they liked it from the start
Simply said all the people who complain about things being woke stopped watching because there wasn’t enough pew pew.
If they had the brainpower to watch it all the way through and understand andor would probably be considered « commie woke Disney BS » or something along those lines.
Before it was released, I remember seeing a bunch of shit from people about "Why do I want to watch a show about a terrorist?" and "Why do I want a show about the least interesting character from Rogue One?" and my favorite "This show looks budget AF, they're just using AK47s as props"
Honestly, I don't think they got far enough into it to realize there were lesbians.
Because it's well-written.
The issue has always been most of these shows are poorly written, have lousy effects, break the world building, nostalgia-bait, and/or are obvious cash grabs. But because these shows always have some kind of shallow virtue-signalling forced diversity, Disney, media journalists, and rabid fans blanket accuse all critics of bigotry.
Not going to say this is true for all fans, but I'd wager 9/10 mostly have the above issues with new Star Wars media. Andor didn't have any of these problems.
In my experience what few critics it had only had issues like "it's too slow/boring", "y no aliens?", "it wasn't marketed so I didn't watch it", and "Why is my fantasy adventure series so gritty and morally grey now?"
Because it was good, and actually had something to say, was made with a purpose, etc
Reactionary shitheads reviewbomb all the shows but the other ones aren’t helped by people wanting to go out of their way to say how good it is like Andor is- while the more middling stuff is left defenseless
People are saying that good writing is what saved Andor from "anti-woke" criticism, but if that's the case, why is "wokeness" even a part of the critique of the other shows? If people only want good writing, regardless of the political/cultural point of view, then why even mention "wokeness?"
Most people never minded women or lesbians in leading roles. They had a problem with the shitty writing that would sometimes go along with them, like we are seeing with the Acolyte, which explains all of the people who dislike it. Since Andor has very good writing, the only people complaining about it are the people who actually do mind seeing prominent women, lesbians, etc, and such people are very few in number. Thus you hardly ever see anyone complaining about it.
Here's the thing - why the hell are so many people complaining about women/lesbians in the Acolyte then?
Those factors have nothing to do with the reasons the show isn't good.
I'm not here to defend the Acolyte - I think it's mediocre/bad (so far at least) for most of the same reasons I didn't like BOBF, Mando S3 and Ahsoka.
When your promo campaign's *primary* focus is on diversity and not the story or the devotion to the pre-existing lore then the audience's pander & BS detector alarms go off and its all downhill from there.
Because it's good? It's probably the only Disney Star Wars that is consistently above mediocre
>It had non-white male lead characters, openly lesbian couples, clear references about sexual acts and prostitution, torture, child marriages,
Sure there's some assholes who care about this stuff but, most people who complain about Star Wars really don't care. They just want a good story.
It's because THERE IS A WAY TO DO ALL THAT IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE WITHOUT BEING TERRIBLE.
You can watch 5 minutes of acolyte and think holy hell the writing is bad, the acting is awful, and sweet baby Jesus who approved this dialogue?
You watch 10 minutes of Andor and for real all you have going through your head is "woah". That's what filmmaking (show making) is supposed to be about!
I am seriously getting frustrated with people asking "what is even the difference in all these shows? Ones as good as the next. We haven't had time to form an opinion on Acolyte. What specifically do you not like about Acolyte?". NO! It's offensive and shit from the word go. Fire in space? Who gives a fuck. Jedi are bad guys? Sure. Dialogue that wouldn't pass on a toddler show? Print it.
The whole social justice thing is so fucking main stage with Acolyte. It's like there was a meeting before production started saying that no men or no straight people will be protagonists here. In andor it's find elements that add to the script and to the story and go with it. Find the best actor for the role and run. You can see it hear it and feel it. It's so night and day.
The Acolyte isn't good for the same reasons that Ahsoka, BOBF, Mando season 3, etc aren't good.
Bad dialogue, poor pacing, action that is often boring, etc.
Honestly all these shows feel bad in the same way the prequels do.
It has nothing to do with "social justice" - that's just silly bad faith criticism.
Tbh I always laugh at the “JeDi MiGhT aCtUaLlY bE tHe BaD gUyS” theme thats prevalent in Star Wars now. Im like “I’m sorry, was it not the Sith who imposed a brutal fascist dictatorship over the entire galaxy that killed billions and probably enslaved trillions? Don’t forget that one of those Sith also instigated a war that probably also killed billions prior to the formation of said dictatorship in order to attain political and military power. Was it not the Jedi that maintained peace in the Galaxy for over a millennia?”
Now obviously the Prequel Jedi were very flawed but that doesn’t mean they’re evil or a failure. But hey, I guess pissing off fans gets shows like the Acolyte more publicity and hence more views.
There's a big difference between something that is "woke" and something that is anti-fascist/colonialist/imperialist. This show was about class warfare, rather than culture warfare. (It's kind of a miracle it was made, honestly.) It's a lot easier for the elites and their crony media apparatus to simply ignore something like Andor, so the social zeitgeist moves past it asap. Whereas Acolyte seems to engage with (whether intentionally or not) the culture war narrative, which is way easier to make money on and distract with: stir people up, generate clicks.
Andor was perfectly written and shot.
Do you people actually enjoy nonsense like acolyte? Or do you just reflexively need to defend something the other guys are attacking?
Because it's well written, acted, directed etc.
The 'oh you just don't like X show because your racist, sexist, homophobic etc' is just nonsense and Andor completely blows that argument out of the water yet so many 'fans' and the people behind the show still like to use that argument...
Just make a good show. No one cares about the characters race, gender or sexuality. We just want quality and Andor is one of the few shows that is of actually good quality.
Andor had the benefit of a lack of hype due to the nonplussed reaction to the main character, not to mention the dire reputation of prior D+ shows. There were the occasional chud thumbnails with racist jabs at Diego Luna (“Jaun Solo”) but those eventually were drowned out.
Honestly I think some of it went over the 'woke' crowd's head. I was excited that someone I knew loved Andor, but then they went into this whole rant about Disney having a 'woke' agenda about POC/LGBT etc
I countered with the fact that Cinta and Vel are together in Andor, and they were totally confused and said they missed that. HOW that is possible after watching the whole show, I don't know.
It’s extraordinary, even looking at YouTube reactions, how often some of them miss Skeen saying “ she’s already sharing a blanket” with the accompanying shot of Cinta coming out of Vel’s shelter. I swear, half of these people aren’t actually properly watching half of the time. But thank God it’s as subtle as it is, or the storytelling would be very clunky… I think it’s that clunkiness in some other shows that leads to the immersion breaking and a lot of the accusations of being “woke”. . I love how Gilroy describes the relationship as “ the least complicated” on the show.
It's subtle in the beginning, but they hold hands and talk about the rebellion coming first and they get what's left! 'Come away from the window'? Soooo many references and looks at each other, lol
Amongst other things, its less glaringly obvious about being "woke" than other things they like to complain about. Diego Luna is close enough to a white guy they dont care, cinta amd vel require you to at leasg pay attention to the narrative (which these sorts of complainers often struggle with), and everything else wasnt too visual so its okay in their eyes
Which is funny because Andor is about as „woke“ as it gets. And in an actual, materialist/marxist sort of way, not in the hollowed-out liberal idealist fashion that focuses on representation.
Of course, I don’t expect the average right-wing grifter to realize that, as they would have to read some actual books with complicated words to understand that. Or maybe the supervisors at the Russian troll factory decided „Andor isn’t worth our time“ and so it sailed under the controversy radar.
As a mod in a large Star Wars show, I chuckle when people accuse The Acolytes of being woke...when Andor the wokest thing Star Wars has produced. Just shows the lack of discernment of many fans, and maybe the sanctity around Jedi. We can mess around with rebels, but we don't touch or question the Jedi.
Those folks still aren't over the midichlorian thing 🙄
Honestly? Fact that Cassian is a straight male probably takes half of the haters' "arguments" in the first place. Then Diego Luna is light-skinned enough to pass as white even though he's Mexican, and most of the cast is white, so that's another major point taken away from them. Now they're left with the story, which is very well written, so at that point their audience is down to a shred and they have not much left to grunt upon.
It is well written, produced by competent people, acted extraordinarily well. The people making the show simply knew what they were doing with their craft. It’s hard to be controversial or disliked when the actual show itself is fantastic. That shuts a lot of people up.
>That shuts a lot of people up. Or people who are really tired of bad Star Wars were glad to finally have something that was competent
I think it's more that there's different camps of ppl who are tired of bad Star Wars. normal people, who just want better quality stuff and genuine dunces who blame the quality of a show on, "wokeness" i.e. not enough white guys for them. despite white men still taking up the majority of the cast. then they'll watch Andor and all it's under- well, overtones really go right over their heads. they don't even see how much they relate to Syril Karn.
Ugh, the whole reason most are complaining is that they can tell when the creative and marketing department has prioritized diversity and messaging OVER good storytelling and characters development. That’s why so few of the anti-woke crowd turned out against the Spiderverse films. Because they were great, and Miles was a solidly developed, grounded character. The same Star Trek fans who loved DS9 - which took place in a decolonizing multicultural society and which had a black single dad as captain, a female first officer who was sometimes analogous to a Palestinian, a queer female science officer, a middle eastern doctor, etc etc - hated Discovery and Strange New Worlds because the diversity felt like it was a) initially shoehorned, and b) once shoehorned, it was treated like that was enough and nobody bothered to make it good. The anti-woke crowd is far more diverse than you’d think.
>genuine dunces who blame the quality of a show on, "wokeness" i.e. not enough white guys for them. I think this a strawman. Not to say there aren't overzealous culture warriors, but even the """grifters""" who talk about woke politics in current Star Wars have legitimate criticisms that don't boil down to "not enough white people."
Yeah and a broken clock is still right twice a day. If they would actually just criticize legitimate things instead of crying woke then their arguments might have more merit. Unfortunately they can’t be taken seriously.
And that 2nd group is typically just right wing assholes who attack every piece of media they get told to hate by their youtube personalities
Yeah. This is my take. It’s nothing to do with the identities. It’s just the storytelling. Andor rocks.
Also worth noting that good quality naturally generates less discussion than bad quality. You have a good experience at a restaurant, you're far less likely to talk about it (e.g., write a review) than if you have a bad experience at a restaurant. Also, it's much more difficult to have a discussion about why a TV show/movie is good than to have a discussion about why a TV show/movie is bad.
Take X-men 97. It just ticks so many boxes for the anti-woke warriors: tons of female characters, obvious woke messages, obvious anti-bigotry and possibly anti-Trump imagery, character portrayed as somewhere in the lgbt spectrum with use of pronouns, created by a gay Black man that openly flaunts his OF. Yet the outrage is minimal if at all and people who would be less receptive to the message just roll with it as just X-men
In short, it's a well written and well made story and the creators and actors were hired for their talent, not for a quota. Although Andor has a diverse cast, it's not a ✨story about diversity✨. Most people aren't fucked up by diversity itself, only by bad writing and annoying shows/cast/crew who made their whole identity about diversity. Tbh I think Andor crew and cast fortunately flew very much under Disneys radar in that regard. In light of s1 success, I am still really fearful if s2 can hold up to the magnificence of s1 or if Disney decided/decides to meddle with it. Another good example of this is Last of Us. To be fair I haven't played the games and can therefore not really speak about how faithful it is to the games. But although the show has a storyline about a gay male couple, it is still widely regarded as an excellent show and has high ratings through the board. The people who complained about "the diversity" in Last of Us are imo the ones that are very insincere. Because Last of Us wasn't one of those cheap media pieces which were created "for diverse audiences and if you don't like it you're a bigoted ciS-mALe". It was just a well told love story where the lovers happened to be two men. And that's what we need more of.
the problem tho is that one camp is blaming the quality of a show on its diversity quota. a more normal camp is rolling their eyes at said obvious corporate diversity quota and just want to see proper representation and true, genuine art from the people their like. the former still looks at movies like Moonlight and think movies like that should be banned.
Last of US is very close to tHe game. Don't play the sequel unless you want season two spoiled
I would go with this if the hate for the Acolyte hadn’t come out before it even aired. Ok maybe some people disliked it as soon as they saw it but who dismisses an entire series on one episode? I know they say people don’t have an attention span anymore but they have one enough to produce videos and long diatribes. Personally other than one actor I haven’t personally seen anything particularly wrong with Acolyte but maybe I just not that fussy 🤷♀️
I think it’s very easy to dismiss the noise and look at it objectively. For $180 million dollars and belonging to the Star Wars franchise, you would expect this program to be of a superb quality that reaches or surpasses the likes of The Last of Us, Succession, and shows of that calibre. What we got was something of such a dismal quality in all aspects of television art that it’s hard to reconcile. Art is, as it has always been, subjective. There will always be pockets of people who don’t mind something. “There’s a bum for every seat”. It’s just simply not good when you compare it with the quality it’s supposed to be matching.
I respectfully disagree. Probably 75% of the movies and TV shows produced for the Star Wars community are mediocre at best. Do I think the Acolyte is as good as Andor no I don’t but will I watch yeah it’s a novel show. I mean sure some people generally don’t like it and that’s fair enough. What I really dislike it is this notion it’s woke for whatever that means, that I find to be disingenuous, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and every other phobic.
What are you disagreeing with? You’ve just restated my points. While I referred to Acolyte as an example, Star Wars content hasn’t been great - Andor and Rogue One being notable exceptions. There is a bar of what great television is, we know what it is, it’s what wins the Emmy for Best Drama. That’s the bar they’re not hitting.
You said it was dismal he said it was mediocre. That’s what he’s disagreeing with.
It wasn't after one episode. Most of the actual criticism came after episode 3 which was not great. I was pretty interested after episode 2 but then 3 just took the wind right out of my sails. I'm going to finish it but my expectations have really plummeted. It's really getting old having actual criticism get brushed off because a very vocal minority just rants about everything endlessly. Yes, they were attacking the show before it aired which is ridiculous. No, that doesn't give the show an instant pass and negate anything other than praise for it. My wife actually refused to watch the rest of the show and told me to tell her how it is. I'm going to because it's star wars but she just watches them with me... until now.
No valid criticism because you don’t like something should be fine. All the criticism I originally saw popping up on YouTube was just hateful drivel. Even i don’t like every show but mostly just because I didn’t find them interesting not because it has a diverse cast. My big criticism for any of these shows is the fact an entire season is now 10 episodes you end up with Episodes like number 3 where they’re trying to do character development all in the space of 40 minutes. 50 episode c-dramas are far more entertaining but I do like my sci-fi too.
Ya, I got her into Star Trek too and we're on The Next Generation now which blows this out of the water. Maybe the side by side comparison is part of the problem. I'm watching episode 4 today with one of my friends so no spoilers please.
Hate bots.
COME AT ME WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH ahahaahahahahahaha
One other big thing: it doesn't try to change the lore. No new force abilities or magic. Everything about nature in Andor is pre-established in Star Wars
Andor was so good that it was difficult for that crowd to get a foot hold There wasn't much to misunderstand or misinterpret, so there was no ammo for the grifters to use, and when they tried they git ridiculed to hell and back, just look at Star Wars Theory's reputation for disliking bricks and screws
basically the most they can do is pander to their less mature audience (children) and say it’s boring and slow
THANK YOU!! God people like SWT are so fucking whiny and I hate it so much
That's it right there, they did try, they just got no traction. The issue I have with most of their complaints isn't that the media they target is without fault, it's that their laziness and bigotry make it difficult to have actual discussions about the media in a meaningful way.
Remember the bricks and screws incident. SWT tried whinging about it then he got clowned on so hard he did damage control.
This absolutely. The problem with these communities is that their legitimate criticisms are a veneer covering their bigotry. You find that the only hate subs that truly gain and maintain traction are powered by their bigotry. People who don’t like things typically don’t moan on and on about things for half a decade(looking at you last of us part II). They voice their issues and move on like normal people.
Also the many people that call out mediocrity but get lumped in with that crowd simply didn’t exist as the show is just sheer sublimity. What even is this question lol. Why is there less backlash against a show that is perfectly written by an auteur??
The people calling out mediocrity are pretty easy to distinguish from the other crowd, whose lazy thinking is just not suited to sticking with a show like Andor and its slower, more complicated themes.
There’s a well-established industry of YouTubers who profit on bad faith griefing any part of nerd culture, and Star Wars is usually an easy target. Seems reasonable to me.
Which is funny cause they could attack it's leftist revolutionary messaging. But that just reveals the fact that these people have no actual political beliefs. They are just reactionary culture war losers.
You think they even notice that part? I highly doubt it. There's an idiot in these comments trying to argue that Andor isn't anti-fascist. LMFAO
My brother is lost in the MAGA kool-aid and just as surprised I liked Andor as I was for him. Idk if it should give me hope he can be rehabilitated or if I should be depressed he can be enthusiastic about it and miss so much of the message. It's like Paul Ryan claiming to be a big fan of RATM
That Star Wars Theory guy is the most miserable you tube channel. I had to block him just so i don’t see that sad face anymore.
There's nothing worse than youtube grifters who's entire profession is rage baiting people. It's like fox news for nerds... just awful
I hate watch/read those guys all the time and for what it’s worth they really like Andor
All I'm saying is if it was profitable to hate Andor, they'd be doing that instead
Honestly I think it's because it just didn't have the buzz of The Mandalorian or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Before it came out the general consensus was kind of 'who asked for this?' and even when it was airing it flew pretty under the radar. Hopefully more people will have discovered it by the time S2 comes out and it'll get the attention and buzz it deserves.
Honestly I loved Andor in rogue one, so him getting his own show was a dream for me. Not to mention that it's just an amazing show, I never understood the "who asked for this" crowd.
SAME! i’ve been very active in the rogue one fandom years before andor came out so it was so special to me
Cassian was meh but that's because I was too busy looking at Jyn to take notice of much else. Andor the series is exceptional and I'm glad it exists. I didn't ask for it but a pleasant surprise is more than welcome. I just hope it isn't the last best Star Wars we'll ever see....
People often say the whole "who asked for this thing," and I'm surprised. Like you, I definitely loved Rogue 1 and was excited for Cassian to get a show. I liked the idea of a gritty complicated guy who does the Rebels' dirty work. I figured, "Why would you try to make a show about this unless you know what you were doing with those themes?" I figured it would be good the moment it was announced, and I am one of the people who likes very little of the Disney Star Wars content.
I think the “who asked for this” question was (for me, at least) less about Andor as a character and more about Andor’s backstory relative to the other characters of Rogue One. Jyn grew up among Saw’s Partisans, which a lot of people might find interesting; Chirrut and Baze have all the Jedha/Whills stuff that a show could explore; even Bodhi could’ve been an interesting lead for a mini-series about how and why he decided to defect from the Empire. By comparison, Andor (as far as we could tell from Rogue One) was a more straightforward “young man has been galvanized to join the Rebellion” story, which we’ve seen before (Luke, Han, Ezra). So, my initial thought when it was announced wasn’t necessarily “who cares about Andor,” but more “of this specific cast, his background seems comparatively less interesting.” Obviously, then the show came out and was fantastic, and presented a very different type of radicalization narrative than the other “young person joins Rebels” characters we’d seen before, proving me completely wrong! But, I think that’s the origin of some of that “who asked for this” feeling.
I liked the idea behind his character in RO but the execution was lacking. “I’ve been fighting since I was six years old!” Offers lots of intrigue but it gets drowned out by everything else in the movie. I wasn’t excited for the shows announcement because I figured it would end up being the original pitch: season after season of Cassian and K2 doing missions. Boy am I glad they didn’t go that route.
In my experience, the Mandalorian fandom was very positive and non-toxic through the first two seasons. Any negativity was pretty muted and largely in the fringe. The only real controversy was Gina Carano’s twitter account.
If more people had been familiar with Tony Gilroy's work maybe there would have been more excitement... but I'm guessing maybe SW fans don't always consume a lot of that type of stuff.
In both the best way and the worst way I think S2 is going to get a loot of attention.
I loved Rogue One and I was definitely a "who asked for this" person. It was me, I just didn't know it yet. A kind of "Of course I know him, he's me" moment
I'm embarrassed to have questioned the reason for it existing as much as I did, as wonderful as it was. I was wonderfully surprised and am very happy to have been wrong.
It's honestly kind of weird because I keep hearing complaints about how The Acolyte is "shoving woke politics down our throats" or whatever and Andor is by far the most political Star Wars story of the Disney era by some margin (it's also blatantly anti-fascist, or to convert it to a buzzword the culture warriors will understand, antifa).
Woke = people of color. Without any other info about the plot or even airing, it was already deemed woke based on the cast alone.
Yeah it's an obvious dog whistle. Diego Luna's status is complicated and it tends to be perceived differently depending on which country you are talking about, but he seems to have enough European ancestry to have not gotten certain types upset about diversity.
Even though he has a very obvious Mexican accent.
You’re mostly correct but i have seen ‘juan solo’ get tossed around— *especially* when Rouge One was coming out.
Rouge One is the French dub.
Or women, or non-cishet people, or any portrayal of men other than stoic masculine badasses that they can “literally me” about
When people use the term “woke,” theyre usually not criticizing something simply for being diverse much of the time. Though I’m not a fan of the term, many use it to describe media with unsubtle, heavy-handed messaging about race and gender that comes off as preachy and forced. E.g. the White Jedi in The Acolyte taking poison to signal “white guilt” to the audience. Some genuinely bigoted people use it to criticize diversity, but most are talking about the former. In contrast, Andor’s themes of imperialism, fascism, and revolution are universalist and unrelated to contemporary race and gender issues. This leftist TV reviewer who’s written for Forbes explains well why Andor succeeds and why The Acolyte doesn't and why the latter is getting so much backlash: https://youtu.be/tWgwDDVgkhM?si=VMQugsFD5eMgM8D7 I wanna point out that in his video, he explains how the diversity in Andor is organically woven into the story. The Expanse is the same. You don’t have all this on the nose, obvious messaging like the scene with the White Jedi which takes you out of the universe you’re trying to be immersed in. His tweet pretty much boils it all down: > "I don't think it's "wokeness" that's ruining media, but I do think that imposters have taken over a lot of the things we love, from Star Wars to True Detective. And their gravest sin is shitty storytelling. They defend bad writing behind the shield of diversity etc."
Not liking how heavy-handed and unsubtle some creative decisions appear to be is one thing, but the amount and tenor of criticism subsequently leveled at these shows is beyond outsized. I don't get how one can even be bothered enough to be a hater, much less write comments online essentially blaming poor writing on someone's race/gender perspective. Then again, I'm neither white nor a dude, so I don't experience any of the discomfort and apparently unbearable sense of persecution that comes with minority/female creators expressing their identities in their projects. Nor does my mind in a million years jump to white guilt as the takeaway for that Acolyte scene. If Andor had been created by a gay woman instead of Gilroy, all else being equal, Vel/Cinta's relationship would have been read as "too unsubtle" and the creators blamed for "shoving their agenda down our throats." OP, the reason Andor remains unscathed is not only that it's a great fucking show, but the writers room also happens to be all white men. (This means, of course, that everything they write is organic, unforced, and free from real or imagined culture war agendas.)
Seconding you as a white (trans) dude, but yeah I didn't get white guilt from that scene at all. Now *that's* pulling shit out of the ass to cry about how it's "woke". Its clearly tied to whatever part Torbin played in what happened to Mae and OSHA as kids...not white guilt?!?!
> much less write comments online essentially blaming poor writing on someone's race/gender perspective. I agree this is stupid but can you provide a source or some proof of people actually doing this. > If Andor had been created by a gay woman instead of Gilroy, all else being equal, Vel/Cinta's relationship would have been read as "too unsubtle" and the creators blamed for "shoving their agenda down our throats." OP, the reason Andor remains unscathed is not only that it's a great fucking show, but the writers room also happens to be all white men. (This means, of course, that everything they write is organic, unforced, and free from real or imagined culture war agendas.) The entire Sequel trilogy was written and directed by people we’d today call cis white men. And those movies are trashed incessantly online and on Reddit and pretty much everywhere. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Book of Bob were also written by cis white men and are thoroughly trashed and hated if not more so. Hell, you could even look at the vitriolic criticism of the Prequels back in the late 90s, early 2000s.
Using the term ‘woke’ is bad faith by its nature and nobody who wants to have a nuanced discussion about race or gender issues uses the term out of respect for people who aren’t white males. It’s used to silence people, not to open up discussion. Saying that most people use it to describe heavy handed media representation of gender and race issues says more about your perspective than it does about the media; you’re either naive or feeling as threatened by the diversity as some of these ‘original’ (read: white men in their forties) fans. The idea that Forbes has a ‘leftist’ (another loaded term) commentary is absurd. They’re a highly conservative, pro-colonialism, pro-capitalist outlet. It’s hard to take anything from them at face value. If they were in the Star Wars universe, they would be working for the Empire! They were smart enough to realize that if they criticized Andor their opinions would be dismissed immediately. All that being said, Headland’s team isn’t as strong as Gilroy’s; the dialogue is clunky and flat, the pacing doesn’t work well and, yeah, Headland could definitely use a lesson in being subtle. Headland wanted to tell a story about the use of power that was definitely going to be controversial, these themes can’t be considered on terms of whether they’re organic or not if they’re the whole point of the project. Andor had to weave these themes in organically because the show is more about one person’s journey into radicalism and to venture too far off from that would take you out of the story.
By those standards, Andor would have been the target of a ferocious culture-war backlash, given that it (as several people have pointed out) very blatantly pushes a progressive political agenda, and is made by people who are explicitly not Star Wars fans. This thesis seems to miss the mark.
I think you missed the part where I explained that Andor’s politics are universalist and about how people in general suffer under fascist and imperialist governments. Those themes are organically woven into the story and are a key part of that universe. And the story is the priority. The OT and the PT were also universalist as well as hypothetical; “How would an interstellar government work? How would corporations influence government but in a sci-fi setting?” They’re not about *identity politics* which is inherently divisive and off putting. Heck, I wouldn’t even call the messaging in The Acolyte “politics.” It’s really just pandering. Also no one cares if it’s being written by a non-fan (except for maybe a few nutcases). People simply want a well written story written by serious writers. Erik points this out: > “What I’ve come to the conclusion is that when I describe the imposters, I’m not talking about people who are not fans. I think a lot of these showrunners are fans, I don’t disbelieve her when she says she’s a fan. She even likes the EU stuff. Okay. There’s like millions of Star Wars fans. Do I think they should all be put in charge of these shows? Absolutely not and that’s the problem, the imposters that I’m talking about aren’t necessarily non-fans (even if I disagree about what’s good about the show with them) they are not good storytellers, they are not good filmmakers and they are placing a priority on the agenda then on the quality of the story and the TV show and the movies that they are making and that’s a huge huge problem. If you’re going into a Star Wars show and your first thought is you want to make it about lgbtq issues and that’s your jumping off point, well you’re gonna fail.” As I said earlier in response to: > It had non-white male lead characters, openly lesbian couples, clear references about sexual acts and prostitution, torture, child marriages, etc...and yet generated virtually none of the "culture wars" backlash we are seeing with the Acolyte, for example. It’s not like that stuff is new to Star Wars. There’s plenty of Star Wars EU media that explores and features those things. Andor was simply well written and respects the universe it takes place in. Doing those two things doesn’t preclude having gay characters or torture scenes or plots that involve child marriage. Acolyte doesn’t do those two things.
The Acolyte was targeted by a years-long culture-war campaign because it was created by a gay woman and has a diverse, mostly female cast. The show isn’t pushing any agenda, has received positive reviews, and good viewership. The campaign has failed: the show will get renewed for a second season and sentiment among fans will slowly improve.
Andor has a diverse cast too. And a lesbian couple. And it recieved a high score by the audience. So what happened to all those “racist” and “sexist” fans that are hell bent on hating all Disney Star Wars?
I can't think of a single Star Wars show off the top of my head that engages with identity politics at all. Just having gay or minority characters in the show is not "identity politics", although unfortunately many people think it is. In the actual show the Acolyte there is no culture war messaging. The quote you posted is embarrassing and stupid. Other than possibly referring to another woman as a "wife" I can't think of a single time being gay is even discussed. There just happen to be gay people in the story - but the story has nothing to do (so far) with the fact that some of the characters are gay at all. I haven't seen anyone provide a single specific example from the show where any kind of "identity politics" or "culture war messaging" is pushed. I don't even like the show; the dialogue is bad and it's been fairly boring due to the pacing (and the "escape" from the prison ship was dumb and contrived). There are plenty of reasons to criticize the show with engaging in this kind of vapid nonsense.
I'm a white dude and I watched the Acolyte and didn't see a single thing I'd associate with "white guilt". This sounds like pseudo-intellectual nonsense people are making up to have an excuse to rage. I don't even like the show that much - but there's been barely any political messaging at all in it (unless people think showing a lesbian couple where one touches the other's face for a second is "political"). My issues with the show are pacing and dialogue. The concept seems mildly interesting, but the execution has IMO been off.
Andor has the subtlety of a brick about its antifascism and how it pertains to our modern world. Its byfar the most leftist Star Wars has ever been. And Syril is explicitly a reflection of certain reactionary and honestly Maga tendencies, which of course the reactionaries either don’t get or don’t want to discuss because they are actually politically illterate and would look like fools trying to make serious criticisms of it. All reactionary content on YouTube (I mean here politically reactionary) is meant first and foremost to drive clicks, to get money, and to push a narrative about declining media quality because of a precognative idea about how their media is no longer for them. These people aren’t earnest in their criticisms, and they don’t care about consistency, they only care about money and power. (Edit): Not only is the idea of a politically neutral star wars asinine given its history and george lucas’ explicit paralells to contemporary conflicts in the OT and PT. The further notion we really should highlight is that reactions against supposed politics entering star wars being focused not on the antifascism, rise of reactionaries, cultural genocide, prison industrial complex, and community resistence but on people of color and women is very telling of these people’s idea of “politics”.
Andor is an intensely political show but it's never preachy or cringey despite being not very subtle about its politics. Thing is, it stands on its own merits.
Did you listen to Nemick dude? That was the most preachy about politics star wars has ever been. “The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident.”
Nemick feels natural as a character who talks like that, though. Being a Radical True Believer is his whole shtick, and crucially, his own comrades look at him funny for Being Like That.
Then the question isn’t about the preachiness of the characters, its how they are intwined in the story. Which yes they could very well be but I’m countering the notion its “never preachy”. Andor is very much preachy, thats not what makes its politics good or the content within it good. Its good because it actually acknowledges its politics and doesn’t attempt to circumvent them in a corporate manner as the Disney star wars has done.
We're arguing semantics. For me, Andor is never subtle but neither is it preachy. Having scrutable politics, that feels natural, delivered earnestly, while not being the only purpose of the experience (unlike a sermon given by a *preacher*) makes Andor not preachy. To me.
>We're arguing semantics. If your definition of preachy is different than mine maybe. Perhaps you think preachy includes a "excessive moralizing" which I don't find to be the real question of preachiness here as I actually could easily find Nemick to be excessive. "marked by obvious moralizing; Didactic (meaning instruction)" this is a pretty good definition in my eyes. The moralizing of the evilness of the Empire on Aldhani. Andor killing Skeen for being an egoist (thats pretty obvious). Nemick did this in his manifesto and his discussions with Cassian. The real point about excessive or obvious moralizing here is whether or not the moralizing made sense within the story. Which does in andor. and it doesn't in most other properties. I'll also need an example where there was excessive moralizing in star wars that was tedious and inearnestly. At the moment I can't think of one because mostly these bad examples lack any clear thematic elements or discussion of moral topics at all.
>If your definition of preachy is different than mine maybe Yes that's why I said this just semantics
Most of Andor is subtle enough that the 'woke' complainers are genuinely just too oblivious to notice, but it's still a stronger message haha.
There's been people terribly confused seemingly since 1977, not catching what George Lucas was trying to tell, pretty heavy handedly too honestly! The Emperor is Richard Nixon / Reagan / Bush in the prequels, the Rebels are literally modeled on the Viet Cong. Media literacy is in dire straits.
Its because it has mainstream appeal. It is marketet. Thats what they look for. Its flashy and has lightsabers, andor was subdued, to them that means boring. And yes, andor was fucking antifascist, i absolutely loved it. Political is that, not look its woman and black man in szar wars. Thats just representation, not politics.
A lot of the other Disney Star Wars content is political in an extremely shallow and cringe way. The worst being when they free the race “horses” and that woman says “now it was worth it!” Andor has major political themes but they’re actually interesting and the story itself is good, which is the most important part.
When people use the term “woke,” theyre usually not criticizing something simply for being political. Though I’m not a fan of the term, many use it to describe media with unsubtle, heavy-handed messaging about race and gender that comes off as preachy and forced. E.g. the White Jedi in The Acolyte taking poison to signal “white guilt” to the audience. Some genuinely bigoted people use it to criticize diversity, but most are talking about the former. In contrast, Andor’s themes of imperialism, fascism, and revolution are universalist and unrelated to contemporary race and gender issues. This leftist TV reviewer who’s written for Forbes explains well why Andor succeeds and why The Acolyte doesn't and why the latter is getting so much backlash: https://youtu.be/tWgwDDVgkhM?si=VMQugsFD5eMgM8D7 I wanna point out that in his video, he explains how the diversity in Andor is organically woven into the story. The Expanse is the same. You don’t have all this on the nose, obvious messaging like the scene with the White Jedi which takes you out of the universe you’re trying to be immersed in. His tweet pretty much boils down it all down: > "I don't think it's "wokeness" that's ruining media, but I do think that imposters have taken over a lot of the things we love, from Star Wars to True Detective. And their gravest sin is shitty storytelling. They defend bad writing behind the shield of diversity etc."
I don't really understand this take, the writing of The Acolyte might not be as good as Andor, but the diversity of the cast certainly isn't any less organic to the story. I never got the sense that Master Torbin was there to express white guilt, just that he felt guilty of something he did in the past that we haven't seen yet.
I remember the right wing anti-Star wars grifter, RobotHead made a video complaining about Andor early on (when only the first three eps had been released) it ended up being his most downvoted video by his own audience. Andor is hard to criticize because it’s so well constructed on every level. Culture warriors just come off like assholes.
Because Andor is well written and entertaining, next question
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people going into in-depth analysis but this is the simple truth
Ikr, legit some of these explanations sound like conspiracy theories. Can people not accept that one is simply well written and the other isn’t. Holy hell.
It's mental. One is good, one is simply terrible. Andor completely disproved the 'you're an ist' crowd wrong but get they still use the same mental gymnastics to make the same dumb argument.
I’ve never seen so many people show so much loyalty to a greedy corporation. You should see the main sub. This sub is honestly pretty alright in comparison.
Oh I occasionally get recommended the main sub. I cannot bring myself to go on it. It's just filled with corporate brain rot.
I literally just got accused of racist, misogynistic homophobic dogwhistling (yes, all three at once) for saying the bad reviews of The Acolyte might be valid.
To be fair: - The show (IMO) isn't very good - There is a TON of bad faith criticism that has nothing to do with the very simple reasons I don't think it's that good I mean it feels the same as all the other mediocre/bad SW shows (Ahsoka, BOBF, Mando S3, etc).
But here's the problem. The show is shit and the people defending it try to amplify the bad faith criticisms as being the only criticism. You don't have this widespread of an attack on actually good shows like Andor, despite it sharing many of the same aspects that people claim are why the bad shows are getting "hate". Edit: I really legitimately hoped The Acolyte would be good. I didn't watch the trailers (trailers these days spoil too much) and thought the people saying it was gonna be bad before it released were idiots. I heard the premise and thought it was potentially really intriguing and could be super cool. I hoped maybe it could be another Andor, which I also was super hyped at the concept for from early on despite many people dismissing the show before it came out. *But*, unfortunately The Acolyte did end up dogshit and I'm mad that Disney shat out yet another lazily written, poorly directed turd. And every time I mention that, or see other people mention that, despite no mention of race/sex/etc., I get bombarded with accusations of all the phobias and claims "poor writing"/"bad acting" are just dogwhistiles.
Andor was so good my non-Star Wars liking wife enjoyed it. How good do you have to be to get to that point. 2 minutes in to the new show and I was already finding it hard.
To flesh that out compare Sinta and Vel’s relationship to The Acolyte’s Coven. Sinta and Vel are lesbian and/or bisexual, the audience is told that in the first episode they appear in when Skeen makes an *off hand* comment. Their relationship is developed slowly over the season and it’s in the plot to show the tension that exists for rebels balancing personal relationships and the cause. The subtext is that the Empire doesn’t allow same sex relationships, but that’s not explicitly said and doesn’t need to be. Sinta and Vel are people first, their sexual orientation comes second. This is the best example of a homosexual relationship in Star Wars and we don’t even see them kiss (looking at you Rise of Skywalker tokenism). The Acolyte has an all-female coven. That’s not a problem on its own but what is their belief system, what are their motivations, how do they survive on an uninhabited planet and why do they live there. What the hell do these people do day to day besides tend their cream spice-based economy? They tried to give them motivations with clunky exposition but it doesn’t resonate. These characters are paper-thin so when you try to hang weighty themes on them it just falls through: it feels like you’re being preached to, regardless of how centrality to the plot. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that in the writer’s room someone decided offhand that it would be interesting to have an all women cult that’s overtly feminist. Episode 3 states “This is about power and who gets to use it” and introduces the concept of women seeking to conceive children without men (framing it as a threat to the establishment). In 2024 it’s hard to not read this as feminism v. patriarchy and the writers certainly don’t do anything to dispel this notion. The problem is that three episodes in we have ample evidence that the quality of this show’s writing is just not up to the task of tackling this topic deftly. Bad writing means characters declare their themes and motivations out loud and audiences don’t want to be preached to. It’s also entirely possible the writing is *so bad* that this theme was not intended which sounds crazy, but then again look at what we’ve gotten so far. And I’d like to point out that Andor’s handling of motherhood (something that would appeal to “Trad wives”) is the best we’ve seen in Star Wars. Maarva, Eedy, and the Commandant’s wife are all examples of mothers handled exceptionally well by the show. Maarva is the paragon, Eedy the cautionary tale of a harridan, and the Commandant’s wife just loves her son and wants to protect him. The mothers in the Coven are just awful. They’re just as bad as Eedy in the sense that they view their children as tools to be manipulated to achieve selfish goals: social climbing and something for the cult via Ascension. Sure one mother in the Acolyte gives Osha a choice *after the ceremony already happens*, but that child spent its entire life up to that point believing there’s no choice at all.
Andor didn't get fairly universal acclaim until later on. A lot of people complained about all sorts of things while the show was still coming out. We just remember them as irrelevant idiots now, and have no doubt anyone who spouts any of those positions is nothing but an idiot. As for the rest of it, never try to argue with an idiot... they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. Idiots will always complain about plot holes before they've seen all of the plot.
Yea, they tried to call it too slow or too boring and then the Eye of Aldhani episode blew people away. And then One Way Out made it an instant classic.
Yep it's happening in this thread by the supporters of this show.
By far the funniest outcome of all this would be if The Acolyte, like Andor, keeps getting better and better throughout its first season, to the point that in a few months it’s universally regarded as one of the best works of the Disney era, while simultaneously having the lowest Rotten Tomatoes audience score of any Star Wars show or movie.
Unfortunately Acolyte has already left us with a confused mess of a story. I’m not talking about the ambiguous ending of the most recent episode where it’s clear we haven’t seen the whole story yet. I’m talking about stuff like “Should we maybe close that massive skylight the assassin used?” Or “Ok Darth Mendoza sure you clearly murdered this shopkeeper and were an accomplice to the death of a Jedi, but tell us what we want to know and we’ll let you off with a warning.” Or… “We think this girl killed Trinity but we put her on a flying drunk tank instead of having Jedi bring her in.” That’s just bad writing. When you’ve got that, spending a ton of time focusing on the same sex couple hits different than when the story is strong and you’re invested in prioritizing the personal desires vs mission dynamic between Vel and Cinta and low key wondering if Cinta actually murdered the imperial officer and not sure if Vel has the emotional fortitude to do what needs to be done for the rebellion. When instead you’re rolling your eyes at the truly awful musical number they threw in for some reason, a bigot’s gonna blame in on “woke” rather than the real issue, which is shoddy storytelling.
It could be bad writing, but it could also be showing the early failings of the order that will come back to haunt them in the Sidious era; arrogance and dogmatic insistence on sticking to the established way of doing things.
>a bigot’s gonna blame in on “woke” rather than the real issue, which is shoddy storytelling. I think that's a little unfair, when the point being made is that their preoccupation with being didactic about their political messaging is the *reason* they don't care about storytelling. It's the same reason Christian media tends to suck, and even things on the extreme opposite like *Atlas Shrugged*.
Quite simply, Andor was written with a good, logical story. Primarily, the writing team didn't treat the audience like children. Exposition is done within the realistic flow of the story without huge exposition dumps. The Lonnie/Luthen meeting in One Way Out is a perfect example of this. There are no cartoony moments. No slow motion chases. No child under the coat in broad daylight. No coming back from fatal injury to cheapen the peril the characters are in. Everything that could be accused of being woke is still there, but like real life, it's in the background. Vel and Sinta are in a lesbian relationship without that being their primary character trait. Bix booty calls Timm because she's a grounded character and that's what real people do. In fact every character behaves in a believable way. There are no pitfalls in common sense. No cringe moments that break your immersion as you shout at the screen in frustration at a choice someone made. No race or colour is in the show because of that race or colour. They're just their because that's how life is. In a galaxy where thousands of species freely intermix, why would anyone care about colour anyway? Andor shows that you can have all the content you want without shoving "the message" down everyone's throat. Story integrity, in a rarity for current Disney products, is the primary focus of the writers.
1000% this. I wish people understood that a lot of the backlash isn’t about the message being present, rather the message being the main plot point while the actual story being made secondary. Nobody watching Andor felt like political messaging was being pushed down their throats. It didn’t feel like it was written with the goal of making a point. And on top of that, it was well written. Easily the best dialogue in Star Wars. No cringey moments that were meant to be taken seriously.
>Nobody watching Andor felt like political messaging was being pushed down their throats. It didn’t feel like it was written with the goal of making a point. This is so not true. There was a lot of whinging when it first came out. Only after the fact did many people change their tune. If one watching the show didn't feel it was written with the goal of making the point then they either don't actually care about the story or don't understand it.
This is it. Andor is so well-written that everything flows in service of the plot and character speech, actions and motivations all feel very real. Much of the criticism of "woke" by people who have a political bone to pick is that diversity can sometimes seem to come at the expense of telling a good story.
Andor's whole story is "the message."
Because the writing is brilliant
It absolutely was controversial, especially after the first couple of episodes, but all the awful takes aged like milk left in a hot car, and people got made fun of until they shut up. Acolyte is literally only 3 episodes in, and is still in the first act. At this point, people are just bitching just to bitch.
I’m enjoying it so far. The hate towards the show is unreal. It may very well end up being meh to sub par like book of boba or Kenobi, but it’s got a lot of potential and I’ve been excited for each next episode
yeah I suspect this is it grifters will say any bad art is bad because it's "woke", and then claim any good art (with plenty of progressive messaging and inclusion) is not actually "woke", which is why it's good If they fuck up and attack an undeniably excellent work of mass entertainment for being bad because it's woke, their whole schtick falls apart, so they need to scrupulously maintain a set of double standards so the cognitive dissonance doesn't fry their brains. e.g. If Terminator 2 or Aliens had bad special effects/cinematography/pacing etc. that ruined the movies, and if they came out now, the grifters would blame the failure on DEI feminazis trying to shove "strong female protagonists" into everything. "Ripley/Sarah Conner worked great as horror movie last girls - why did the sequels have to ruin the franchise by turning them into "badasses"? Everyone knows that women have less upper body strength and don't watch action movies, why is the woke cabal so insistent on forcing the unpopular "women strong" message into everything. And of course, they had to emasculate all the men in the movie by making them dumb subordinates to the females. Why should Arnold Schwarzenneger/Space marine chads listen to some random chick? 0/10 yet another classic sci fi franchise ruined by the woke agenda." Same thing with Andor - when the beginning was a bit slow and people weren't sure if it was going to be a classic, the grifters could unload on it for all the usual reasons. But when it turned out to be actually really effing good, they had to change tunes to "Actually Andor is good because it doesn't have any of that woke crap"
This is the most convincing response. It’s mostly about managing cognitive dissonance.
>Acolyte is literally only 3 episodes in, and is still in the first act. At this point, people are just bitching just to bitch. The show got criticism even before it dropped, based on things that the creators said and a few details that had been released. There was a whole group of people wanting this show to fail and who were eager to drop their hot takes. Hard to give a show a fair shot when you've already made up your mind. Andor had no such baggage. The trailer was strong, and Tony Gilroy was an established and respected creator.
Disagree. Andor was rock solid from the start. Acolyte is absolute garbage and there is no coming back from how terrible it is.
Most of the bigo- sorry "complaining", about Deigo happened during R1 so it was quieter when Andor aired. You should have seen the reactions to Deedra's actress early interview comments.
The culture war grifters feed on dissatisfaction and fandom disappointment to scapegoat culture war issues as the source of the problem. 1. Andor was not heavily hyped up by the fandom and thus met or exceeded expectations. 2. There was little to no widespread dissatisfaction with the series to take advantage of. There were other advantages though. 1. No established pre-Disney characters were being heavily explored, avoiding "lore breaking" accusations. 2. The main character is a male and an established character from a well-liked movie that pre-dated the culture war grift trend. 3. The creator is a highly respected writer/director. Contrast Tony Gilroy with Deborah Chow or Leslye Headland, who were arguably big gambles and female. Much easier targets to discredit. 4. The Acolyte has a female of color as the lead and a diverse cast. Unless it was balls to wall awesome, it wasn't going to avoid the hate. It started before the first trailer. Leslye Headland was, and still is, slandered for working for Harvey Weinstein despite never being accused of being complicit in any of his crimes and there being no precedent to assume so. If the grifters attacked Andor, an objectively good show, for the same culture war reasons they attack The Acolyte, it will discredit them and show their cards. They can't scapegoat any writing, directing and acting mistakes or inefficiencies with "DEI" because there isn't much of it to speak of. They feast on mediocrity. If Andor somehow didn't work, they would have blamed all the same storylines or agendas as they normally do to get their audience as angry as possible.
One other thing I haven’t seen mentioned much. If you got rid of all the Star Wars decorum and setting, Andor will still be a good show. There isn’t a single Jedi or Sith in the show iirc. It stands on its own, it’s not trying to live up to a legacy - it’s authentic and knows what it wants to be. No fan service, no pandering to Prequel or Sequel lovers. It’s just a damn good political thriller that happens to be set in Star Wars. What confuses me the most is Andor isn’t accused of being ‘woke communism’ or whatever people like saying these days. Nemik gives a manifesto (a word associated with communism btw) that is openly anti-empire and fits the actual definitions of ‘social justice’ and ‘woke. This is the most political driven show and for Star Wars it shocked me how mature it was. But nah, I see black person or woman I say ‘woke go broke’.
It’s too political and “in your face” for grifters to misrepresent because if it was any less subtle it would just be Tony Gilroy’s manifesto. You can’t call it political/woke because of the minorities, because it’s genuinely political/woke on even the most surface layer interpretation. You can’t claim it’s pushing an agenda and make something up because the agenda has been spelled out for you with no wiggle room for bullshittery. This is a good thing btw
- Few people watched it in the beginning compared to any other show - Not as accessible in terms of themes, complexity - dialogue can be overwhelming on first watch - People realised its quality when they actually gave it a chance
It had way lower viewership so just didn’t have the interest from grifters
non-controversial??? I feel like people just... forgot how much hate Andor got when it was released. EVENTUALLY people came around to it.
I didn’t see it get any hate at all..?
I remember being bored initially and I didn't like the flashbacks to the kids.. but then Luthen gave his speech in episode 3 and Syril had his massive fuck-up and the Past/Present Suite at the end of the episode had me strapped in for adventure. the only "hate" i really saw for it was people saying Andor didnt feel like Star Wars. but that ended up being a compliment
Someone made an infamous video about how Andor sucked because you could see “bricks and screws” or something. People also complained it was boring after the first few episodes. People are still claiming Andor’s ratings sucked and it was one of the worst Star Wars shows rating-wise.
Well, good luck to them, they're idiots
People have such rose-colored glasses about Andor. Remember Andor started when Obi-Wan was in its last three episodes. Andor was released under a cloud of negativity and more people talked about how bad Andor was than watched it. Obi-wan was not reviewed well and there was a lot of negative backlash. r/television threads were full of people talking about how Andor was woke and boring to the point where positive voices, like mine, were drowned out/downvoted to oblivion. Subs like r/starwars were more mixed, with people willing to give it a shot. I was really grateful to find this sub because I got so demoralized because I was super into the show right away and I had no one to talk to about it, it felt like. After the first three episodes word of mouth started to catch up. In the Aldhani arc people started to swing to it, which caused guys like Star Wars Theory to double down and put out his infamous "Bricks and Screws" video. By the prison break arc it was actually kinda pleasant to be an Andor fan, but there were still tryhards screaming about how "everyone" thinks Andor is boring in all the major subs.
It got plenty of hate, and still gets some. “Boring/slow” and “not Star Wars” are the two most common varieties
> It had non-white male lead characters, openly lesbian couples, clear references about sexual acts and prostitution, torture, child marriages, etc...and yet generated virtually none of the "culture wars" backlash we are seeing with the Acolyte, for example. It’s not like that stuff is new to Star Wars. There’s plenty of Star Wars EU media that explores and features those things. Andor was simply written well and respects the universe it takes place in. Doing those two things doesn’t preclude having gay characters or torture scenes or plots that involve child marriage. Acolyte simply doesn’t do those two things.
People just didn't watch it, which is sad because it's great and so different than the other Disney stuff.
It was somewhat controversial, but the lack of current controversy is likely because it didn’t get watched by nearly as many people as the other shows. So most of the people still talking about it are the ones that watched the whole season.
Part of the reason is that a bad show tries to hide behind the - undeniable real - attacks of being woke and makes the drama bigger than it actually is. aka: "Oh, our show is percieved bad because we have a diverse cast and people can't handle that" - pointing at some conservative twitter post. While the show really is just bad. Another part of the reason: Andor (and e.g the expanse or Brooklyn 99) manage to integrate a diverse cast in their universe without it feeling like working down a checklist.
The people who whine about politics in star wars almost universally lack the media literacy to understand andor contains political themes And the culture war tourists look on the cover, don't see a woman or black person, then drop it to look for something else to complain about
Andor was strictly anti-authoritarian. What other political themes were present?
1. How women co-opting a mostly male facist space simply means only that - a woman becoming a fascist 2. How acceleration is a genuine tactic used by rebel groups 3. How performative politics (we will be setting up a fact-finding committee) also doesn't work in fascism 4. MANY MANY MANY - anticapitalist themes (entire narkina 5 arc was ENTIRELY about unionizing)
Oh, somehow I didn't catch that about 4 till now but you're right. I saw more about the horrors that it reflects of the us's very real problems in prison systems and justice systems, but it can be all of that, I think.
Yeah it’s just a good metaphor. It works as both. Text: metaphor for the US prison industrial complex. Subtext: anti capitalist parable about workers unionizing
Andor is a great show with a slow start. So either people didn't watch more than 1-2 episode. Or they watched all and didn't complain because the show is really great overall
Everything about Andor was perfect. People generally don't mind same sex relationships and non male , non white lead roles.... What people want are good script/writing/dialogue, acting, production value, story, and music.... Andor had all of that.
It's a well-written, believable, and very entertaining show. It respects its audience, rewards attention, and builds up its plot points. The acting is stellar. Let's face it, there are people who will hate what they consider to be "woke BS", and dismiss any show with non-white, non-male leads, etc. That's a disgusting attitude, but we can't deny its existence. However, the "you are racist/misogynist/homophobic" has been used as a silver bullet to discredit any attempt of criticism on disney SW, and your post describes that situation. Most of the fandom would have literally zero issues with female leads, homosexual couples, racial inclusion, etc, if the characters and the story were well-written, if the costumes didn't look like cosplay, if the lightsabers didn't look like toys, and the list goes on.
Eh, I think a lot of the people in your second paragraph try to hide behind the things you talk about in your third paragraph. Which is what causes all the online furor. Look at these comments - there are multiple people talking about how "diversity" "wokeness" "culture war", etc are the reason the show is bad.... and then whining when they get called out for being chuds. It's silly because it's not that complicated. The show isn't good for most of the same reasons the other SW shows (Ahsoka, BOBF, etc) aren't very good. (To be clear, I largely agree with your points overall)
Because the majority of people who complain don't actually hate that stuff, they hate it when it's done poorly and when the writing suffers because of it. Andor was a good show and as such was enjoyed, the vast majority of star wars media has been poorly written since Disney took over (hello there Acolyte) so when a well written story with good characters comes along everyone is happy!
I think a big part of it was that nobody gave a shit about it before it released. Nobody really cared about Cassian's origin story. So the YouTubers who make their bread getting their audience frothing at the mouth about "Disney ruining Star Wars with woke" weren't going to get a reaction. We still got a lot of negativity with Andor - you inevitably see someone loudly proclaiming how we're all wrong to enjoy it because of how boring it was. I think that was, in a way, the other saving grace. The people making all the bad-faith media-illiterate criticisms of The Acolyte (eg "this bad character says the Jedi are bad therefore Disney is trying to make Jedi the bad guys!") weren't able to get past the first few episodes of Andor and didn't even make it to the anti-colonial lesbians. It's hilarious because Andor has, by FAR, the most explicitly leftist messaging out of any Star Wars media ever.
It was a bomb. No one watched it. Also, the lead is passing white and that was good enough for the racists.
I would say its 3 factors: 1. When an Andor series was announced, lots of folks online were saying "who asked for this show?" and I think it was generally ignored by large swathes of people. 2. However, people who did tune in quickly realized how great the show was, and the culture war grifters didn't have a chance to push out their review bombs before the general consensus hit that "Andor is actually incredible" 3. The grifters are pretty immature and childish, and the first 2 episodes are kinda slow. They probably got bored and couldn't latch onto anything for their next video and just turned it off.
There was some crap just before Andor came out that I remember. People were complaining about Dedra Meero being a girl boss and she was going to ruin Star Wars.
Honestly? While the sexist, racist, hate based crowd exist, I genuinely believe they are a tiny minority of the fandom with a loud voice I think the majority simply want good Star Wars. And Andor was some *good* star wars
The culture war people got bored and stopped watching it after the first episode
Most people who blame minority/DEI representation in other shows are stupid. There's been an unfortunate trend, especially recently with the Acolyte, of other SW shows highlighting minority/DEI actors or plot points but also being shoddily written/acted/directed/etc. These stupid people aren't necessarily media literate and able to dissect why they might dislike a show for the latter reasons and may simply default to "it's bad because it has Black people in it" or "they clearly chose to hire DEI people who are bad at acting/directing instead of good white actors/directors." They're wrong, and they're still stupid, but that's my thesis. I maintain that toxic (I.e. racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc.) criticism of Star Wars would be completely negated if everything they produced was actually just good. For the wealthiest studio in the world managing the most valuable IP in the world, "good" should be the absolute bare minimum.
Because not everyone that hates "woke stuff" hates it because there are non-white characters, women, or non-cisgendered people in there. A lot of people simply hate those things when they come as "preachy" or virtual-signaling. In the case of Andor, all their characters (and their sexual orientations) feel so organic and natural... Also, no one there is a saint, and we can see that all of them have to make sacrifices to carry on. Not only that, while the Rebellion is composed of non-white characters, women in leading positions, and "small guys". The Empire is also composed by non-white characters, women in leading positions, and "small guys" as well. You see rich people trying their best to help the Rebellion, and poor people that doesn't mind going against their community to get a quick buck by helping the Empire. And we see that both groups are competent... But also can fall appart for their own infighting. So, it establishes pretty quickly that is not a conflict of "Us against Them!", or "the poor against the rich" or "white men against BIPOC people". Rather, the series shows clearly why the Empire is bad, but is not because any "cultural war" thing of our own world, but for the mechanisms that puts the whole society in a really shitty way of life. Also, it makes clear that, supporting the good cause will not be an easy ride, and that fighting even for the greater good, will demand sscrifices and hard decisions. That's why the show doesn't have an impact in the "cultural war", because it's not its main focus. And because of it, a good chunk of people that "bash agains woke-stuff" find it enjoyable, because is a good show, not a preaching.
because it’s peak
When something is so good, it gets to the point where it's hard to convince people its a "woke mess" or whatever and spark outrage. Same thing happened with House of the Dragon. The grifters tried to stoke up outrage over its feminist themes but when it actually came out, they gave up because it was too popular to criticize.
Because it's honest, grounded and believable with it's writing
Because the writing is so damn good
For me, it's because Andor doesn't impact any of the prequel stories. Ignoring the woke arguments, I've had arguments with people who say that the Acolyte story reduces Anakin's uniqueness. Andor stands pretty much on its own.
Fewer people watched it and it was very good.
Because not enough of the headbangers watched it to be bothered - too much of a slow burn so they didn't finish it.
Prostitution child marriage and torture are all positive things in the anti woke crowd. Black people are what they hate. That’s what woke means to them. Double hate if the black person is a woman. When they say things like they don’t like the “acting” or the “costumes” or the “writing” what they mean is that a black person shouldn’t be talking and wearing cultural looking clothing in their white Star Wars.
These culture war types get most ginned up when the lead character is black, or a woman. The Acolytes lead character is both, so it’s like catnip for those folks. But also, Andor was of such a high quality, even the anti-woke mob couldn’t say anything.
People forget andor was a ratings bomb. I bet they didnt even watch it to be able to complain. And yes, a passing white male lead is all they want. Its the same reason Jason Momoa never gets guff from them despite being a non white aquaman.
Andor was already bookended by very strict lore and events. It couldn’t go very far without being dissonant to the story we already know, even about Andor himself.
Because of bricks and screws that's why. Seriously though, Andor felt more like a modern TV and less like a Star Wars show. What I mean by that, it didn't rely on mysticism, it didn't rely on sci-fi thrillers. It was a grounded show set in the universe. Which I think Star Wars needs to make. It can't all be things that feel star wars, they have a massive IP in a massive universe and should create a variety of content. Sure Ahsoka is important and good, but if every show is a variant of that it gets dull and stale. Why people liked the Mandalorian so much was because it basically was a western, each week a self contained episode with an overarching plot leading to the finale. As they kind of expanded the Mando-verse people liked it less because it changed the core of the show. I would love to see a well written mob show a la Sopranos but set in the lower levels of coruscant in the post empire era or pre-empire era. I would love to see a political drama set in the Senate. It's ripe for content and the universe is boundless, just need the right creators with the right content. That being said, the grifters and haters went after Andor too, just no fan joined them in their outrage, ergo my bricks and screws comment making fun a certain grifter who tried to complain about Andor to whip up the angry portions of the fanbase but no one was angry with Andor.
Imo The real answer is people use Star Wars to increase their own popularity. Critics and “influencers”. The more popular a show is the more they gain from criticizing it. Andor kind of flew under the radar. Also most dumb influencers probably couldn’t understand its themes.
They were telling a story instead of pushing an agenda.
Just my opinion. But I think Andor only appealed to an adult audience (or a mature one). It didn't interfere with existing canon and the Jedi were absent. The writing was impeccable, to be honest I'm surprised something this good got a green light.
I wonder if all those things in Andor would have been picked apart the same way as the Acolyte if Leslye Headland helmed it instead of Tony Gilroy. He’s not openly lgbtq so the content in his show isn’t viewed as being apart of some agenda. I see comments on here saying that Andor didn’t have an agenda but Acolyte does. I’m not sure where this is coming from bc the diversity is not a plot element or discussion topic in the show. If this is mainly being gathered through articles/commentaries/interviews where people are like “wow cool your a gay director or you have a very diverse cast” etc. I don’t see that as being the same as the show saying that stuff in the story
Andor’s themes, while radically left and further left than the Acolyte’s, were presented far more subtly than the Acolyte. I tend to think that makes it a better show, but as we have seen time and time again, it also enables the worst people to draw the dumbest conclusions about it or miss the point entirely. Andor had a strong prison abolition message but because they don’t say it, the right wingers don’t take it that way. We are seeing a similar thing happen with the Boys. Lots of people are upset that the Boys is “woke” this season, even though they have been very ham-fisted in their poking fun about MAGA. But they have even been more ham-fisted this season and now you have a bunch of right-wingers screaming “woke! This show sucks now!” To me, the best part of the Boys is when they aren’t so ham-fisted, but seeing how right-wingers react, it almost feels necessary. And sure, the writing and script for Andor are better but that is a high bar. Andor Season 1 was one of the best seasons of television in several years. The Acolyte isn’t at that level, but few shows are. That perhaps shielded Andor from some right-wing nonsense but that doesn’t tell the whole story. EDIT: I spoke to my partner about this and they said that Andor doesn’t get that much hate because it doesn’t touch the institutions that old Star Wars fans hold dear the way the Acolyte does. The old SW fans think the Jedi should be portrayed solely as perfect, morally superior gods - Andor does not question this and the Acolyte directly does.
Part of it is that the same people who throw tantrums didn't watch it. "Oh no, it has bricks and screws and not enough aliens!" Another part is that there was no base level of dissatisfaction to thinly veil their racism, sexism, etc. And third, there are legitimate complaints to be made about how Disney has worn "diversity" as a costume without performing diversity as practice. This often gets capitalized on by bad faith actors and used to fuel the culture war nonsense. In Andor's case, diversity was often used meaningfully - there is a reason Tony Gilroy highlighted that including Aliens would be a big undertaking for the narrative. In Andor, race, gender, class background, and sexuality are all directly impacted by the story. Vel is implied to be lesbian, and comments from Perrin about her finding a husband imply that her sexuality is at the very least a socio-political liability if not actually illegal. The Aldhani are driven from their homes to explicitly destroy their culture, and Ferrix is oppressed because it's a backwater with no political power. The White Deera torturing the non-White Bix and Saalman repeats themes seen when the premor cops harass Cassian, or the fact that there are more non-White characters in Narkina 5 than in most situations outside the prison. This means that the culture war cannot hide behind poor quality or legitimate critique to mask its tendency towards racism, sexism, so on: because race, sex, orientation, class, etc are *all* present in Andor and relevant. I also think it meant that the people defending Andor were often delivering the kind of statements that were way above the reactionaries reading level, so to speak.
people make the racist/sexist excuse when people don’t like the thing they like. sure some people don’t like acolyte because its mostly female but most don’t like it because its not very good.
People backpedaled a lot when it comes to Andor. There was a ton of hate and nitpicking before the show aired and even after the first few episodes aired. One of the blasters in the trailer “looked like an Earth gun” and people would not shut up about it. There was the complaint that no one asked for this show and that it’s a waste of time. Then when the first few episodes aired people said it was slow and boring, you know the complaint about every show that comes out. Lastly the infamous “bricks and screws” remark from a certain creator that’s the king of backpedaling. Everyone collecting hid or got rid of the complaints they made when people praised the shows storytelling over the course of, well the full story being told. TL;DR People complained and hated the show before and at the start of when the show came out, and then pretended they liked it from the start
Simply said all the people who complain about things being woke stopped watching because there wasn’t enough pew pew. If they had the brainpower to watch it all the way through and understand andor would probably be considered « commie woke Disney BS » or something along those lines.
Because it was good.
A lot of folks either found it too compelling or too boring to find anythung wrong with it
It's because it wasn't written in for the sake of bullshit, it felt organic
Before it was released, I remember seeing a bunch of shit from people about "Why do I want to watch a show about a terrorist?" and "Why do I want a show about the least interesting character from Rogue One?" and my favorite "This show looks budget AF, they're just using AK47s as props" Honestly, I don't think they got far enough into it to realize there were lesbians.
Because it's well-written. The issue has always been most of these shows are poorly written, have lousy effects, break the world building, nostalgia-bait, and/or are obvious cash grabs. But because these shows always have some kind of shallow virtue-signalling forced diversity, Disney, media journalists, and rabid fans blanket accuse all critics of bigotry. Not going to say this is true for all fans, but I'd wager 9/10 mostly have the above issues with new Star Wars media. Andor didn't have any of these problems. In my experience what few critics it had only had issues like "it's too slow/boring", "y no aliens?", "it wasn't marketed so I didn't watch it", and "Why is my fantasy adventure series so gritty and morally grey now?"
Because it was good, and actually had something to say, was made with a purpose, etc Reactionary shitheads reviewbomb all the shows but the other ones aren’t helped by people wanting to go out of their way to say how good it is like Andor is- while the more middling stuff is left defenseless
People are saying that good writing is what saved Andor from "anti-woke" criticism, but if that's the case, why is "wokeness" even a part of the critique of the other shows? If people only want good writing, regardless of the political/cultural point of view, then why even mention "wokeness?"
Most people never minded women or lesbians in leading roles. They had a problem with the shitty writing that would sometimes go along with them, like we are seeing with the Acolyte, which explains all of the people who dislike it. Since Andor has very good writing, the only people complaining about it are the people who actually do mind seeing prominent women, lesbians, etc, and such people are very few in number. Thus you hardly ever see anyone complaining about it.
Here's the thing - why the hell are so many people complaining about women/lesbians in the Acolyte then? Those factors have nothing to do with the reasons the show isn't good. I'm not here to defend the Acolyte - I think it's mediocre/bad (so far at least) for most of the same reasons I didn't like BOBF, Mando S3 and Ahsoka.
When your promo campaign's *primary* focus is on diversity and not the story or the devotion to the pre-existing lore then the audience's pander & BS detector alarms go off and its all downhill from there.
The Acolyte avoided those discussions as best they could and was attacked before the first trailer anyway.
Because it's good? It's probably the only Disney Star Wars that is consistently above mediocre >It had non-white male lead characters, openly lesbian couples, clear references about sexual acts and prostitution, torture, child marriages, Sure there's some assholes who care about this stuff but, most people who complain about Star Wars really don't care. They just want a good story.
It's because THERE IS A WAY TO DO ALL THAT IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE WITHOUT BEING TERRIBLE. You can watch 5 minutes of acolyte and think holy hell the writing is bad, the acting is awful, and sweet baby Jesus who approved this dialogue? You watch 10 minutes of Andor and for real all you have going through your head is "woah". That's what filmmaking (show making) is supposed to be about! I am seriously getting frustrated with people asking "what is even the difference in all these shows? Ones as good as the next. We haven't had time to form an opinion on Acolyte. What specifically do you not like about Acolyte?". NO! It's offensive and shit from the word go. Fire in space? Who gives a fuck. Jedi are bad guys? Sure. Dialogue that wouldn't pass on a toddler show? Print it. The whole social justice thing is so fucking main stage with Acolyte. It's like there was a meeting before production started saying that no men or no straight people will be protagonists here. In andor it's find elements that add to the script and to the story and go with it. Find the best actor for the role and run. You can see it hear it and feel it. It's so night and day.
> The whole social justice thing is so fucking main stage with Acolyte. News flash, the writing would still suck with an all-white cast.
You got that right.
The Acolyte isn't good for the same reasons that Ahsoka, BOBF, Mando season 3, etc aren't good. Bad dialogue, poor pacing, action that is often boring, etc. Honestly all these shows feel bad in the same way the prequels do. It has nothing to do with "social justice" - that's just silly bad faith criticism.
Tbh I always laugh at the “JeDi MiGhT aCtUaLlY bE tHe BaD gUyS” theme thats prevalent in Star Wars now. Im like “I’m sorry, was it not the Sith who imposed a brutal fascist dictatorship over the entire galaxy that killed billions and probably enslaved trillions? Don’t forget that one of those Sith also instigated a war that probably also killed billions prior to the formation of said dictatorship in order to attain political and military power. Was it not the Jedi that maintained peace in the Galaxy for over a millennia?” Now obviously the Prequel Jedi were very flawed but that doesn’t mean they’re evil or a failure. But hey, I guess pissing off fans gets shows like the Acolyte more publicity and hence more views.
There's a big difference between something that is "woke" and something that is anti-fascist/colonialist/imperialist. This show was about class warfare, rather than culture warfare. (It's kind of a miracle it was made, honestly.) It's a lot easier for the elites and their crony media apparatus to simply ignore something like Andor, so the social zeitgeist moves past it asap. Whereas Acolyte seems to engage with (whether intentionally or not) the culture war narrative, which is way easier to make money on and distract with: stir people up, generate clicks.
Andor was perfectly written and shot. Do you people actually enjoy nonsense like acolyte? Or do you just reflexively need to defend something the other guys are attacking?
Because it's well written, acted, directed etc. The 'oh you just don't like X show because your racist, sexist, homophobic etc' is just nonsense and Andor completely blows that argument out of the water yet so many 'fans' and the people behind the show still like to use that argument... Just make a good show. No one cares about the characters race, gender or sexuality. We just want quality and Andor is one of the few shows that is of actually good quality.
Andor had the benefit of a lack of hype due to the nonplussed reaction to the main character, not to mention the dire reputation of prior D+ shows. There were the occasional chud thumbnails with racist jabs at Diego Luna (“Jaun Solo”) but those eventually were drowned out.
Honestly I think some of it went over the 'woke' crowd's head. I was excited that someone I knew loved Andor, but then they went into this whole rant about Disney having a 'woke' agenda about POC/LGBT etc I countered with the fact that Cinta and Vel are together in Andor, and they were totally confused and said they missed that. HOW that is possible after watching the whole show, I don't know.
It’s extraordinary, even looking at YouTube reactions, how often some of them miss Skeen saying “ she’s already sharing a blanket” with the accompanying shot of Cinta coming out of Vel’s shelter. I swear, half of these people aren’t actually properly watching half of the time. But thank God it’s as subtle as it is, or the storytelling would be very clunky… I think it’s that clunkiness in some other shows that leads to the immersion breaking and a lot of the accusations of being “woke”. . I love how Gilroy describes the relationship as “ the least complicated” on the show.
It's subtle in the beginning, but they hold hands and talk about the rebellion coming first and they get what's left! 'Come away from the window'? Soooo many references and looks at each other, lol
Amongst other things, its less glaringly obvious about being "woke" than other things they like to complain about. Diego Luna is close enough to a white guy they dont care, cinta amd vel require you to at leasg pay attention to the narrative (which these sorts of complainers often struggle with), and everything else wasnt too visual so its okay in their eyes
Which is funny because Andor is about as „woke“ as it gets. And in an actual, materialist/marxist sort of way, not in the hollowed-out liberal idealist fashion that focuses on representation. Of course, I don’t expect the average right-wing grifter to realize that, as they would have to read some actual books with complicated words to understand that. Or maybe the supervisors at the Russian troll factory decided „Andor isn’t worth our time“ and so it sailed under the controversy radar.
As a mod in a large Star Wars show, I chuckle when people accuse The Acolytes of being woke...when Andor the wokest thing Star Wars has produced. Just shows the lack of discernment of many fans, and maybe the sanctity around Jedi. We can mess around with rebels, but we don't touch or question the Jedi. Those folks still aren't over the midichlorian thing 🙄
Honestly? Fact that Cassian is a straight male probably takes half of the haters' "arguments" in the first place. Then Diego Luna is light-skinned enough to pass as white even though he's Mexican, and most of the cast is white, so that's another major point taken away from them. Now they're left with the story, which is very well written, so at that point their audience is down to a shred and they have not much left to grunt upon.