“Star Wars” is in a strange place. In many ways, December of 2019 forever altered the course of “Star Wars” as a franchise. With the simultaneous release of Jon Favreau’s “The Mandalorian” Disney+ streaming series and J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” one era of “Star Wars” came to a close as another began. “The Rise of Skywalker” was met with confusion, disdain, and disappointing box office results, while “The Mandalorian” became the feather in the cap of Disney’s newly launched streaming service.
This led to Disney and Lucasfilm ultimately shifting away from theatrical films and instead decided to make “Star Wars” a television streaming specialty, debuting numerous television shows on the streaming platform in the years that followed. The results have been decidedly mixed. While some of the Disney+ “Star Wars” shows have been genuine artistic achievements (such as “Andor” and “The Bad Batch”), others have been painfully dull and uninspired (like “The Book of Boba Fett”).
It is into this environment that Leslye Headland’s “The Acolyte” is born. A new “Star Wars” series streaming on Disney+, the show is a marked departure from anything “Star Wars” has done before, set a full century prior to the films, and is all the better for it. With its two-episode premiere, “The Acolyte” makes a grand opening statement that cements itself as a fascinating new entry into the world of “Star Wars.”
Titled “Lost/Found” and “Revenge/Justice” respectively, everything from the episode titles to the font of the title card, to the central narrative mystery, to the visual language of the show itself is immediately steeped in a very Star Wars-centric theme: duality. And fittingly, this duo of episodes does a great job showcasing the range and diversity that exists within “The Acolyte.” While the core narrative centers on a mystery of dire impending stakes, in which a mysteriously well-trained Force assassin is systematically targeting and killing various Jedi, the series is certainly not hesitant about embracing the more brutal elements that come with it. However, it’s also a show positively permeating with joy.
Showrunner Leslye Headland, previously known for her work on films such as “Sleeping with Other People” and the highly-acclaimed Netflix series “Russian Doll,” has brought the sum total of her own artistic ambitions and creative instincts to these first two episodes of “The Acolyte” in palpable ways. Edited by Miikka Leskinen, both “Lost/Found” and “Revenge/Justice” move at a clip, but are able to bask in the resonance of each respective beat without cutting them short. This results in a show that just flows, each beat escalating naturally, and the cuts of the edit itself going to great lengths to preserve momentum, movement, and generate associative meaning in a manner that is highly reminiscent of George Lucas’ own work.
Beyond this robust sense of propulsive energy, Headland also brings with her a meticulous and delicate eye for everything within the frame. Here, she and cinematographer Chris Teague have crafted the most cohesive and satisfying visual palette for “Star Wars” television this side of “Andor,” which is aided by the absolutely incredible production design by Kevin Jenkins and Sophie Becher. This time-period within the “Star Wars” galaxy has been explored so beautifully in literary works of the High Republic storyline previously, with some truly awe-inspiring artwork to boot, and Headland and her team have done an incredible job of preserving the aesthetics of those works and Lucas’ own Prequel Trilogy, while very much making it a work that stands on its own two feet.
Even something as tangential as the bright bursts of color within the interior of the ships is so vibrant, so different, and so unique from anything else in Star Wars. Similarly, Headland, Teague, Leskinen, and second unit director/choreographer Christopher Cowan have gone to great lengths to craft setpieces within “The Acolyte” that feel both quintessentially Star Wars and blisteringly new. In this way, “The Acolyte” takes some of the core influences of Star Wars, namely Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films, and runs even further with them. The opening of “Lost/Found” feels like a bona fide grand opening statement, in which Headland and her entire team throw down the gauntlet and deliver an incendiary action sequence to kick things off. The hits are massively impactful, the staging is inventive and ever-escalating, and the editing is superb, all of which works in tandem with Michael Abels’ pounding percussive score to really deliver the goods.
“The Acolyte” also features a large cast of characters, all of whom it is able to firmly establish and entrench audiences with in these opening episodes. For so many streaming shows (certain Star Wars ones very much included) it is blindingly obvious that the show is dragging things out as long as it can to fill up a mandated episode count, but “The Acolyte” feels refreshing and boisterous in its certainty. It clearly has a lot of ground it is looking to cover and moves confidently to get to it in these episodes without ever losing track of the emotional grounding of its characters. Every actor does a great job in these first two episodes, but it is truly Amandla Stenberg who seems poised to steal the entire show. Without spoiling the full extent of it, in keeping with the series’ core theme of duality, Stenberg gets to sink her teeth into a performance that spans the spectrum of Star Wars morality in deeply fascinating ways, and she soars in selling every single frame she’s in. Exemplary stuff, and it makes one very eager to see how she and her role will progress as the series goes on.
Overall, these first two episodes of “The Acolyte” do a stellar job of setting the stage for what is to come in monumental and satisfying fashion. For so long now, Star Wars has been trapped on the small screen, both literally and metaphorically, with creators behind the wheel who seem much less interested in actively engaging with the themes and ideologies of Lucas’ galaxy and are instead content to simply revisit the same old planets, the same old characters, and the same old conflicts time and time again. But Leslye Headland’s “The Acolyte” is a return to form in more ways than one, delivering a series which feels cinematic in scale and is devoted entirely to exploring corners of the Star Wars galaxy we’ve never seen before. It’s bold, it’s unique, and it’s thrilling.
RGM GRADE
(B+)
