Can Star Wars Fatigue Be Blamed for ‘The Acolyte’ Backlash & Divided Fandom?

The most recent release of ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ caused quite a stir in the Star Wars community. The show has been a target of both review-bombing and review-boosting, with critics and fans having vastly different opinions of the show.

The show currently has 85% approval on Rotten Tomatoes by critics and 13% by fans, making the show Rotten. Instances of canon breaking in the show and alleged “woke” propaganda also did not help.

Now there are several reasons why the show has been called bad, a lukewarm story with weird pacing first and foremost. There’s also the issue with the show’s budget, the show did cost $180 million for 8 episodes, and so far has little to show for it. However, you can also make an argument that a show much better than ‘Acolyte’ wouldn’t fare any better due to something that’s been going on for a while, especially when it comes to highly lucrative franchises, associated with Disney.

Superhero fatigue is most often related to the MCU and was given as one of the reasons why the franchise has struggled to turn a profit in the last few years. Plenty of fans however think that superhero fatigue is a myth only and the quality is all there is to it, when the quality improves so will financiers.

Iger himself recently admitted that they were producing too much content in a short span and announced that MCU will be slowly but significantly reducing its output in the coming years. At best, fans can look forward to two shows a year and perhaps 2-3 films.

So is it possible that the fans are a bit sick of Star Wars? It’s highly likely, for a few years now the Galaxy Far Away was visited by major live-action shows and plenty of animated content, both for kids and adults. This year we can look forward to ‘Skeleton Crew’ set to be released in Winter, and there are several movies in development, including Rey’s ‘New Jedi Order,’ and ‘Andor’ season 2.

There’s also the issue of quality when starting a new Star Wars show you’re not exactly sure whether you’re in for a treat like ‘Andor’ was or the show is going to be bad like ‘The Book of Boba Fett,’ which was highly criticized on release.

Things are also starting to feel too interconnected, and fans feel like they need to do “homework” when starting a new show. This is why the first season of The Mandalorian was so well-received—it felt unique. However, as more works intertwine, such as ‘The Bad Batch,’ ‘The Mandalorian,’ and ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ sharing characters, and ‘The Mandalorian’s’ second season connecting with films, ‘The Clone Wars, ‘and ‘Star Wars Battlefront II,’ and ‘Ahsoka’ it’s becoming increasingly challenging to follow.

Luckily, ‘The Acolyte’ doesn’t feel (and can’t) feel connected to anything currently, and fans were not pressured to jump into different projects before watching the latest show.

Franchises like Star Wars and the MCU still retain massive fanbases but are losing their appeal to some due to overindulgence, lack of originality, and more and more effort required to keep up with them. The response to MCU’s Phase Four has been less enthusiastic and phase Five has really started badly, with one the biggest box office bombs in MCU history, raising concerns that Star Wars could face similar challenges.

What do you think about Star Wars fatigue? Let us know in the comments below!

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