The Acolyte Review Boosting
The Acolyte Review Boosting
I'm sure we all know about the low audience scores given to The Acolyte. Rotten Tomatoes was sitting down at 14% since around the third episode, and was that low up until at least the last episode. Now that it's nearly a week out from the season finale, I figured I'd take another look.
The Rotten Tomatoes score has gone up to 17% and other review platforms have gone up a bit also.
So I decided to read through a few of the recent ones. Here are two examples:
The showrunners accuse fans of "review bombing" but are apparently just fine with artificial review boosting. I saw a bunch of these double reviews and nearly every single one talked about things like diversity, a "fresh take", production values, etc, all in that typical bland corporate-speech type of language.
Whereas the negative reviews are detailed and specific without ever getting into racism, bigotry, sexism, or other things fans are often accused of. If you read through the negative reviews they are often well thought out criticisms of the story itself and the quality of acting.
I just wanted to bring this fake review boosting to the community's attention. If you enjoyed the show, that's awesome. But it's dishonest to dilute honest and fair criticisms of a show.
While shady behavior to manipulate reviews is not okay, I'm hesitant to engage with the discussion. The reason being that jumping down into this topic results in unproductive slapfights where everyone calls everyone else shills/trolls/whatever. Bringing that discussion to this community changes the tone from talking about Star Wars, to talking about people who are talking about people who are talking about Star Wars.
There should be a space on the Internet to enjoy Star Wars, and to discuss and critique Star Wars content itself without being sidetracked by talking about how other people have wrong opinions.
E-celebs whip up mobs of idiots. Corporations whip up mobs of idiots. I just don't know if that's something we really need to put a magnifying glass on here. This topic is something I've been thinking about for a while now.
I agree that engaging is for the most part non-productive. It's like trying to explain gravity to a flat earther. I just want people to be aware of the manipulation.
I'd prefer people ignore the noise. Star Wars fandom is always on the precipice of exploding into another fan on fan knifefight with the smallest provocation. I had hoped to have a space where people talk about what they enjoy, rather than fight over review scores and Twitter nonsense. But I am hesitant as well to strike down the discussion that people want to engage in.
There should be a space on the Internet to enjoy Star Wars, and to discuss and critique Star Wars content itself without being sidetracked by talking about how other people have wrong opinions.
Absolutely agree.
My favourite thing about lemmy, compared to the other place, is how with much smaller communities the discussions are much less vitriolic and antagonistic.
I've missed being able to have discussions about star wars based on media and literary analysis, instead of "the main character is a woman and thus BAD".
I mean, I had the whole "She's got a twin sister whose doing it" thing pegged from the moment we saw the 'good' sister working as a mechanic in illegal jobs or whatever.
I had shroom-guy pegged for being the Sith Master from the moment he warned her that "he would know"... or whatever that conversation was in the apothecary.
I joked about it because, that'd be too obvious, right? Nope.
The only thing going for the show is that it has some decent wushu glowbat combat. That's about it.
I watched it. I enjoyed it in the same way that I enjoyed a lot of shitty scifi or fantasy- it was 'okay', it filled the silence; but it wasn't something I was going to make a night out of.
Yeah, agreed, it's like 6.5/10. Nothing amazing, but not actively bad.
I’m guessing that the score started low because the people that were going to be unhappy no matter what were the first ones to run to the website to leave bad reviews. I’m guessing most people that did enjoy it just moved on with their lives & wont bother to leave a review anywhere.
So like everything else in life?
Disney just needs to pump more money into Andor, but something tells me it's Antifascist themes caused some commotion behind closed doors, so they're trying to capture the same revenue with more tame attempts like Acolyte. It's not working.
At some point it is all just going to have diminishing returns and it always was, as soon as Disney acquired it. They'd like to make it a franchise in the pattern of Marvel, cranking out new TV and movies every few months for reliable cashflow. There is no way to pursue this model and have consistently good output.
ffs this, please.
I liked The Acolyte. It was not at the level of Andor or The Mandalorian, though it was dramatically better than The Book of Boba Fett. It was a solid enjoyable show and I particularly enjoyed how it expanded the canon universe by giving some love and attention to non-Jedi Force traditions (the Sith and the witches). Anecdotally that's broadly what I hear from the Star Wars fans I know in real life too.
The attention people give to online 'fan' review scores always baffles me. Everyone knows these are meaningless. It's a sad reality that most high-profile shows in our genre with prominent women, non-white and/or LGBT+ leads get review-bombed to death - we all know this. And I expect all shows will get review-boosted, because why on earth wouldn't you do this if you were in charge of the marketing operation when it's practically free marketing? So the 'fan' scores on Rotten Tomatoes etc are just the balance of a meaningless positive number against a meaningless negative number.
It's ok to be outraged by "sad reality", OP doesn't have to just accept it.
It's a sad reality that most high-profile shows in our genre with prominent women, non-white and/or LGBT+ leads get review-bombed to death - we all know this.
Edit: ok, yes. I missed the part that said "genre"
I see you bought into the propaganda.
I'm sorry, were you under the impression that RuPaul's Drag Race belongs to the sci-fi and fantasy genre...?
The reason I specified our genre is that sci-fi and fantasy audiences skew whiter and maler than the general public, and a vocal minority of online sci-fi and fantasy fans (who are deeply unrepresentative of the wider fanbases) make it their business to be vocally abusive about any online content that they consider not to be white and male enough for their liking.
Acolyte was way better than Book of Boba Fett and better than Ahsoka. It’s a 6/10 show or something like that. Pretty unremarkable. I feel like it was aimed at a younger demographic. Loved seeing lots of expanded universe stuff being brought into canon, like the witches and non-Jedi/non-Sith Force traditions. I liked the 60s/70s aesthetics. Always nice to see the other side of the Jedi, too. Willing to bet at least 50% of the reviewers online never watched it. Basing your opinions from online review scores is unfortunately now a total waste of time.
Acolyte was way better than Book of Boba Fett and better than Ahsoka. It’s a 6/10 show or something like that.
Boba Fett was pretty bad, and Ahsoka was decent. It definitely had major problems, but the aspects of Ahsoka herself were pretty spot on and for her character.
The Acolyte is hands down one of the worst shows I've seen. I feel bad for Manny Jacinto because he actually killed it. And Daphny Keen was awesome too. Her saber battle was well done.
But the story was just awful.
Willing to bet at least 50% of the reviewers online never watched it.
I read through a LOT of the reviews. I hadn't seen a single one that was overly generic, and all of them had a genuine and valid point.
Only a few of the positive ones seemed genuine, the rest sounded like they went through a corporate marketing team.
I guess you and I have a different interpretation of the story, because I felt it was pretty fun. A bit predictable, but a refreshing change from the usual star wars fare. 1/10 reviews that say “the story makes no sense” are, imo, displaying either bad faith or a relatively low media literacy.
It’s not for everyone, and that’s fine. But it’s a culture war thing now, and not being judged on its own merits by most people. You are not immune to propaganda.
Better than Ahsoka? Some fight and the season finale are better but overall? Ahsoka for me has more engaging episodes and likeable characters and better acting overall. Ahsoka is 6.5/10, Acolyte 5/10 for me.
Ahsoka would have been completely forgettable if it didn’t use characters we already cared about, imo. Personally I felt it wasn’t very good, but of course you’re entitled to your own opinion
Permanently Deleted
Disney really is just disgracing themselves further with this 😔
Every accusation is an admission.....
Wonderful, you have bribed critics reviews, and botted audience score
I always like to appreciate the strong aspects of every piece of media. In my view acolyte has not much of them but… no really I have a hard time to say what was good. But who am I to say what others can enjoy or not?
I enjoyed attack of the clones and tpm as a kid and those are some of the most dubious pieces of sw media. I’d probably enjoy all of them if I was younger but my taste changed to now where I only fully enjoy original trilogy basically 4k77 to 83. I would gladly get rid of ewoks for Wookiees though
I guess Rotten Tomatoes was a good idea at first but the system just gets abused now.
I just can't get my head into the mindset of fans who orchestrate review bombings. You're entitled to your opinion but seriously, what your doing is a waste of time. Does seeing a low percentage score on a website make you happy?
it's dishonest to dilute honest and fair criticisms of a show.
Both the ones getting paid for review boosting and also the ones who are, for some particular reason, blindly following the new Star Wars bad except Andor trend.
At least the first group is explicitly getting paid. I can't make any case for the second group - they could try growing a piece of criticism on their own, but it's likely that they are youngsters trying to fit in. They don't get paid either, so why do they even waste their time?
I've mentioned this in another comment, but out of curiosity I've read through a whole lot of the comments and reviews. The vast majority of positive reviews are bland "as a long time star wars fan the diversity of this show is great" types of language. Whereas the majority of the negative reviews were unique and valid criticisms with no racism, sexism, bigotry, or anything like that and were all worded uniquely.
Psh. There are groups of chronically online losers operating out of different discord servers working to control the narrative on the Acolyte. There are groups that do this for video games and there are groups that do this for politics, like the conservatives that control r/Canada on Reddit.
If you are outraged by either side of the manipulation then you have been sucked into the culture war nonsense yourself. You should take a step back and question why this is important to you.