Are Male Fans To Blame for ‘The Acolyte’s 14% Score at Rotten Tomatoes? Kathleen Kennedy Certainly Thinks So

The release of ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ was highly controversial, the show was praised by critics and rated as one of the highest-rated shows in the history of Star Wars, but at the same time, it had one of the lowest audience scores. Those weird scores certainly pointed in the direction that bias is going on both sides.

The show was review-bombed as much as it was needlessly praised by critics for things that don’t even make sense, as Forbes’ own Erik Kain pointed out that critics did not approach ‘The Acolyte’ objectively, and it seems that being a critic nowadays requires you to “like the right things” and “dislike the wrong things.”

In any case even before the review-bombing took place (or review-boosting on the opposite side) Kathleen Kennedy was already prepared to talk the public into thinking that something might possibly be wrong with the show. She pointed out that women struggle in Star Wars due to toxic male-dominated spaces and personal attacks. Here’s the full quote:

I think a lot of the women who step into Star Wars struggle with [toxic fandom attacks] a bit more. […] Because of the fan base being so male dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal… Operating within these giant franchises now, with social media and the level of expectation — it’s terrifying.

So, is the recipe for a successful show really to keep the male fans docile with male leads, or is something else at play here? It’s likely something else. You hear all the time how toxic male fans HATE female-led projects, and that’s why they keep flopping and losing millions of dollars. But several cases in the last few years proved this theory to be wrong – fans don’t like mediocre stories, and they don’t like thinly veiled lectures in every aspect of their lives.

‘Andor’ is by far known to be one of the best ‘Star Wars’ shows, currently holding a 96% score at Rotten Tomatoes and an 86% audience score, ‘Andor’ also had plenty of female characters, that were better fleshed out than anything we’ve currently seen in ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte.’

There’s also the recent release of the ‘Fallout’ adaptation. The show is primarily female-led, and yet it’s been quickly lauded as video-game adaptation done right and one of the best adaptations in the history of adaptations. The show currently holds a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score and 89 % Audience score. You can’t blame this one on demographics, since the Fallout franchise has 40 male fans for every single female fan.

‘Furiosa,’ a recently released ‘Mad Max’ spinoff starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, also has quite high ratings both from critics and the audiences. The movie wasn’t as profitable as we would have liked but it’s been received well enough, by….male-dominated fandom.

It’s too early to tell whether ‘The Acolyte’ failed since the show currently released only 3 episodes, but its starting numbers were already much lower than those of ‘Ahsoka’ (one more female-led project with decent scores). Next time, maybe PR personnel should take notes on how ‘Furiosa,’ and ‘Fallout’ franchises approached marketing for their projects, and maybe you shouldn’t alienate your primary demographics for the sake of shifting the blame on them for lackluster writing and mediocre plot points.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!