Why movies are always a better fit for Star Wars
Star Wars has always been a big-screen spectacle. It lends itself better there, folks come out for it as Star Wars used to be an event. Breaking it down to television doesn't quite work as well aside from Andor. What's worse is The Acolyte's storyline served a movie better.
Two episodes are almost entirely flashbacks of Mae and Osha, one told from their perspective and the other from the Jedi, showing how misunderstandings on both sides led to tragedy. Having two episodes just for that was a bit much when a movie could have spliced them in together and showed the viewpoints in more striking terms.
If anything, the show's theme is outstanding as it shows that Luke was actually right in The Last Jedi when he said that at their height, the Jedi were filled with hypocrisy and hubris. They'd take children away to train and cut them off from their families, they'd play politics and, as seen in the finale, are willing to disgrace the name of one of their most revered Knights just to keep up appearances everything is going great. It's that dedication to a status quo that led to Palpatine eventually destroying them.
It's a fascinating take and touches on what George Lucas himself showed in the movies, that the era of the Jedi was always going to end. They remained stagnant while the Sith evolved. A movie addressing those questions mixed with the action (which was good) would have been compelling. It's too bad we instead had it padded out to eight episodes and a lot of wasted time.
To be fair, it's hardly the only streaming TV show out there that goes way overlong as there are dozens of series that likely would have worked better cutting their episode count in half. Also, a couple of character deaths in Acolyte were more meaningful as we'd gotten to know those characters for a few episodes, so it felt more shocking when they met their demise.
Yet overall, Acolyte fell into the trap of trying to do both too much and too little at the same time. Trimming the fat in content with less padding would have served the show better as perhaps even an episode or two less, it would flow better. It also could have avoided another trap, which is a rather toxic part of fandom that responded worse to a weekly show than to a movie where the whole story is out at once.
This is another issue: the weakness of some of these shows coming out in weekly installments with too much judging on the ongoing tale. Now that The Acolyte is finished, fans can judge the whole storyline and see it worked better than it began. A movie would have answered all that off the bat, while the weekly releases muddled it with too many knee-jerk reactions rather than waiting to see the whole picture.
Disney does seem to go for weekly releases rather than a binge model. That worked for Mandalorian as Baby Yoda wouldn't have taken off as well if the whole first season was available at once. But that also leads to problems of building up too much anticipation that can never fully be satisfying for fans (especially the infamous fickle Star Wars ones). Even making this a Disney+ exclusive film could have been better than a TV series.
The Acolyte may not have been top-tier Star Wars but boasted a message tackling the franchise's themes in a unique way, some good performances and action. But like other Marvel and Star Wars shows, it fell into the trap of trying to expand a story beyond what it needed and ultimately weakened it. Fans just seem to enjoy Star Wars more on the big screen than small and a lesson that Disney could remember for the future.
The Acolyte Season 1 streaming on Disney+.