‘The Acolyte’ Composer Reacts To Fan-Backlash: “Our show is honoring the things that are important about Star Wars”

‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ premiered 3 weeks ago, and even before its premiere the show was quite controversial with its premise, and some statements that cast members and creators gave to the public. Soon after its premiere, the show turned out to be a classic example of both review-bombing and review-boosting. Critics gave it unreasonable high scores while fans gave it unreasonable low scores.

Currently, the show has 85% on Rotten Tomatoes when it comes to critics score and a 14% audience score, the decreasing streaming numbers certainly prove that it’s not all about review-bombing.

Since the show generated a lot of backlash, some cast members already started responding to show criticism and personal attacks. No matter what you think about the show and someone’s acting abilities it’s never okay to personally attack people because of a corporate Disney product. The reactions ranged from memes and jokes to death threats to Wookiepedia editors due to changing Mundi’s birthdate following the premiere of episode 4.

Star of the show Amandla Stenberg recently released a song titled “Discourse” to shed light on racist attacks she has been receiving since the show started airing. One of the writers of the show, Claire Kiechel locked down her social media profiles after she attempted to reason with fans who were attacking her over Kelnacca’s death and the inclusion of pronouns in the show.

Now ‘The Acolyte’ composer Michael Abels chimed in as well. The composer is definitely glad to see that there are people extremely passionate about Star Wars, but can’t understand that they would latch onto something so insignificant like Mundi’s age.

I have been reading, and I’m going to continue reading, because it’s really important for me to know about the reaction. Jordan Peele movies have a huge fan base, and people dissect every aspect of the trailers when they come out. It’s remarkable. Also, not everybody likes Jordan Peele movies, and they have a lot to say about that. So, that’s not new to me.

What is new is the level of passion about this. I have been a Star Wars fan all my life, but not compared to some people. I really am a newbie compared to some people and how deeply they’re into it, and I have a very mixed reaction. I do love that people are so passionate about it and feel like it’s so personal to them; what Star Wars means to them. I would be a composer without Star Wars, but my life is forever blessed because of the music from Star Wars, and that’s really personal to me. I have to respect that other people have other things about Star Wars that are as personal to them as the music is to me.

I can’t say that I agree with some of the things that they choose to be passionate about, like the age of characters. I don’t think that’s quite as important to me as the things I care about. It’s just not what makes Star Wars to me. But I think that our show is honoring the things that are important about Star Wars for a lot of people, and I love that the show is reaching those people who can appreciate what we’ve done for Star Wars.

The issue with Star Wars fandom is far more complicated than simply sending a good message and including Jedi & Sith. There are decades of canon built up (and headcanon, unfortunately) and some fans took offense to some canon changes more than any other woke attribute that the show so far (failed) demonstrated.

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