Cinepals - THE ACOLYTE Episode 1 & 2 Reaction & Review!

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

In an age of light, a darkness rises. Join Jaby and Achara for their reaction to “The Acolyte” Episodes 1 and 2. Set 100 years before the rise of the Empire, this gripping Star Wars series introduces Osha, a former Jedi apprentice turned meknek—a cosmic grease monkey with secrets to unravel. As sinister forces emerge, respected Jedi Master Lee Jung-jae faces off against a dangerous warrior from his past, Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games & The Hate U Give).   This series also stars Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim), Joonas Suotamo (Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens), Amy Tsang (Velvet Buzzsaw), & Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix, Memento, Fido, Silent Hill: Revelation & Jessica Jones). But beware—the path they tread is shrouded in mystery, and nothing is as it seems. Buckle up for a thrilling ride through the High Republic era, where ancient enigmas collide with galactic intrigue. The Force awaits, and the stakes have never been higher.   You can watch the cut down reaction to this movie (and many others) on our YouTube channel https://www.YouTube.com/@Cinepals and the full length reaction is available on our Patreon page https://www.Patreon.com/JabyKoay   SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS ~CINEPALS~ YouTube: @CinePals Insta: https://instagram.com/TheCinePals Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCinePals   ~ACHARA~ Twitter & Instagram: @Acharakirk YouTube: @Achara  

Senna. We are watching Star Wars Ackleite, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us. Here we go. Steel or laser are no threat to them. But an acolyte, an acolyte kills without a weapon. Anacolite kills the dream. Wow.

I enjoyed that. Like, I'm almost afraid to admit that I I enjoyed it just because there's so much hate surrounding it on the internet. I know, I'm genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed that. I think because I went into it just kind of being like, oh my god, everybody's really hating on it on the internet. So I'll just, whatever. But like it started off with such a bang.

Yeah. Like that first fight scene. Our friend told us about how this show was supposed to be like Wushya inspired. And I was like, I didn't really see a bunch of that in the trailer. But okay. Oh, they saved it. They definitely saved it for the opening. Wow.

pretty strong. Yeah. I'm a little sad that they killed off, you know, Carrie Ann Moss right away. I know. There's, you know, five more episodes, so we'll see what happens. She better come back in, like, a dream or as a ghost or in a flashback or something. Yeah, I mean. How could they do that to her?

It would surprise me if that was it, you know. But who knows? That's the point, perhaps. It's like you bring back someone who's, like, that iconic for that kind of an action sequence. And that's it. That's all you need her for. It's like that draws in the audience. Sure.

The overall quality of this show. show is fine. It's not like, what happens is sometimes there's a sort of campy vibe to the whole thing. And then I realized, well, Star Wars started out as campy so that this actually goes in line with what Star Wars initially was. It's that it's kind of taken these different paths over the years that has gotten more serious. And, you know, whereas her overall vibe is more kind of fun, even though there's a sort of like, who done it, kind of mystery Scooby-Doo thing to the whole thing. Yeah. Honestly, I was a little bit surprised that I was like, it's a twin. But that was like the only feasible way, I thought.

Twins is a recurring theme in Star Wars though. That happens a lot. I mean, some of it was abandoned in terms of the sequel movies that was initially, you know, conceived of. Like, I believe, if I mean, I haven't read the books and it's been so long, but Han and

Leia, I believe we're supposed to have twins. Well, I think that the twin theme, if we want to like dive into that, I think that works so well as a way to represent the force, right? Because of the dual of it. Also Leia and Luke. Yeah, Leia and Luke, obviously. But yeah, I think that

that idea of like we are two halves of one hole, like, you know, but then one goes to the dark side and one goes to, you know, the side of the light. I think it thematically makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I think that's just because we were going into this with such low expectations, I was like, that's actually cool. I actually had a good time.

Yeah. You know? When they were trying to track her down, what's the name of the main character? Because I know her sister's name is May. Yeah, OSHA. OSHA, that's right. So when they were trying to track down OSHA, I was thinking to myself with a little bit of Star Wars logic, I'm like, wouldn't he be able to catch up to her really fast? Because they've established in the Phantom Menace how fast Jedi move when they want to move. Like, like, boom, like they just move quick, right? And she's not in Jedi mode at all. As we could see, she struggled to like...

Yeah, she seems really rusty. So it was like, well, that girl, the girl that we saw in the beginning, take down a Jedi master, she was like sick with it, you know, so acrobatic, she moved so well, had such great command of the force. And then this girl's like, ha, I'm trying so hard just to do something really simple. So, yeah. I mean, well, that definitely speaks with the fact that just her genetically had a lot of, she got the Medi-Clorians, baby. She got the potential.

And the twin sister seems more sick with it. It's going to be interesting to see them have to fight each other at some point. Yeah. Or maybe she can bring her over. Who knows? What's fascinating, though, is because of the music cue and because of the behavior, it's like, I can't tell if there's anyone else who's bad that hasn't yet to reveal themselves. Just because, like, it was literally five seconds before he ran into OSHA.

He's like, no, she did. She's dead, dead. Then he confronts OSHA. O'Sha's like, May, she's alive. I believe you. Like, not even, you know. Like, I see, I was thinking either he's saying that to get her to come with him, but the other part of me goes, no, everything that I feel about this character,

who actually right now might be my favorite character in the show, like I think Master Soul, just he has something about him, like, an empathetic vibe. Yeah, an empathetic vibe. And obviously, like, he's a super great actor, and so he's bringing those years of experience to this, you know, and he just seems like someone who cares deeply about his former Paduan's and so I just don't feel like it would be in his character to lie no and so maybe hearing it from her mouth directly yeah he's like okay I believe the other thing that's possible is that he's got some sort of connection where he can not just with her but just in

general he's able to get to the heart of things and find out information like that like he's an empath or something yeah like he can just kind of and so people's emotions really like science he's just yet updated info he's like oh okay I was wrong why not yeah yeah I really like the fight scene I I thought the fight scene was pretty cool. I thought it was kind of a cheap shot how Carrie Ann Moss died. It's like, come on, we all know what she's about to do. Like, yeah, it's like, come on, lady. Like, how did you get this far?

I get it. You have to save the people. Yeah. That was obviously the right choice. But like, to let your guard down completely, we all knew that was coming. Yeah, exactly. Like redirected or something, you know, it's like, I got my eye still on you as I force this thing. I don't know.

I don't know how the force works. Yeah. We don't know. We're just sitting here on a couch pretending that we know how to use the force, but, you know, excuse me, it's a bed. Oh, sorry. But what did Jabby say to Achara

when they land on, you ate a lot of food? Stupid. I don't know. I was holding on to that for a while. Oh, really? How do I integrate this? That's why you were using your brain power for for this one joke that you were going to say

during the discussion portion of the video. Just be like, you ate a lot of food. I ate a lot of food. You ate a lot of food. You ate a donut. Anyway, let's get it to episode two. Here we go. I was thinking, like, are we going to get to see the Wookie Jedi?

There he is? Yeah. That's awesome. That's it! Oh, wow. You know what they say. What? You can't go far and co-far.

Oh, my God. But you. We weren't sitting on that pun for like the entire... As soon as I saw the name, I was like... You've got to be a joke in there somewhere. Oh, man, I was enjoying that so much when it ended there. I was like, what? I really do want more.

That's super fun. They have a rhythm that they've set up so far. You know, you start out with May trying to kill somebody. Yep. Or killing somebody. And then you go into the adventure with OSHA and whatnot there. And then you end on a cliffhanger point. of sorts that leads you to the next episode.

It's a structure that works. Yeah, absolutely. Showing us a little bit of what happened in the past or more so telling rather than showing, which is fine. Like, we're getting the sense that whatever happened in the past was really, really bad, but we don't know exactly what yet. Because OSHA blames May, right?

Because she's like, May killed our mother because May started the fire. But then May is after these Jedi. And clearly the Jedi did something. that doesn't really sit right because Torbin took the poison willingly. Absolutely, yeah. So there's something going on here that's like much deeper. And then we're also getting the sense of like just how annoying the Jedi bureaucracy can be.

Where it's like, no, you have to follow the rules and come back. You can't just go on this chase and do this thing, you know? I'm enjoying the story and everything so far. It's just that like this episode, it like kind of goes between giving you this sort of, uh, vast look at like when it's entering a new place, new planet or whatever. It's like so beautiful and big. And then you get down in the middle of it and it starts to feel like a little bit like avatar where the last airbender that just came out on Netflix where it's like

everything feels very small. The whole situation with May and the Jedi and everything like that when she's walking around, it felt like the city block was maybe, you know, in its entirety 200 feet. It didn't seem that big, you know, and it doesn't seem very populated. And so obviously they're picking and choosing where. to put their budget, you know, and so they're doing just enough wherever it is to facilitate telling the story, so I get it. But I couldn't help but notice in this episode that it just felt smaller. You know what I mean? Like when dude was honing in on her with the binoculars,

it's just like bang on her. It's like nothing's in the way. You know what I mean? Right, right. So the fight scene was pretty cool. I thought that was a terrible use of the Star Wars screen wipe, Because normally the screen wipe is used to illustrate, we're going to a whole new place now. Whereas they used it here just to transition to like another location in the same, like maybe 10 feet away. Like, it just seemed kind of odd to put the screen wipe there. That's a nitpick kind of thing. But I do have an issue with him not having, you know, OSHA like just right there ready to go. I mean, because she didn't know her sister was alive.

And like that would have been the ideal time to bring out her sister. Sure. But ultimately, OSHA was like, look, I want to kill myself. sister I want to get my revenge and she made a good point which is like I'm not your Paduan so you can't tell me what to do she also like kind of in a way helped her get away you know like because she was trying to make it look like she oh I shot at her but I missed it's like everyone can see that you didn't miss this the the city block is like 10 feet big so they saw what you did you know they just looked the way they were walking up and

looked at OSHA was like girl we know what you did we saw it no but I mean, I think it's just really complicated for her, right? Of course. She's only just found out her sister's alive. Plus, she has all of these feelings of, like, anger and blame and rage and sadness and grief and all of that. And so, yeah, it's understandable that maybe in that moment she's like, I can't quite shoot you right now. Yeah, she changed her mind. Yeah.

That moment of them seeing each other came a lot sooner than I was expecting. Like, I thought that perhaps that we were going to get that a little bit later. If I was OSHA, I would have shot the car, like, stopped her from running. Catch up again. We got some catching up to do. Yeah. I have to talk to you. Like, where have you been?

What have you been doing? Yeah. Why are you killing people? Exactly. Yeah. Well, no. She understands why she's killing because this is the Jedi and, you know. Well, yeah, but still, you don't see.

She's not going out there trying to kill the Jedi. So clearly, you know, there's a difference of opinion there. I did also really enjoy that fight scene with Master Soul. I don't know. I just like all that stuff that they were doing there where she's like just trying so hard to get him and he's just like picking up his feet and he's just so smart and cool with it that he can like guess her every move and block her every move. I think it's so dope. This is going to sound lame, I'm sure, to a number of people including you, but I actually

enjoyed the fight where she was fighting herself more than... That was cool. I enjoyed that more. That was very creative. Yeah, it's like, there's two challenges there. It's like, how do you make this interesting and how do you execute this without it looking stupid? And it requires the, the, the, the the stunt performer to be really good. You know, they did this extra thing, and I don't know how exactly they did it.

It's very subtle, but she tried to do like a stomped kick at the master who was meditating. And it looked like it hit a wall, like an invisible wall. Yeah. And so there's two ways you can do that. You can actually put up like a glass pane of some kind, or it's VFX. Either way, it looks good.

It looked really good, yeah. And so all that hopping around in an effort to not able to land a single blow was fun to watch, you know. Yeah, it was really cool. And, like, props to the stunt person who's doing the actresses stunts, I'm assuming, unless the actress herself is, like, so badass

that she can actually do all of those moves. But, like, just the way that this character moves is so cool. Like, she's so acrobatic and flexible, and she has so much flair. And, like, this makes my heart so happy because it's just all of the kind of stuff that, you know, I really enjoyed,

watching as a kid of like super cool warriors, just like being able to move like that and do things that I'm not able to and make it look really beautiful. How do you feel about the pacing? It's a 30-minute show, basically. Yeah, I don't mind it. It's just that some scenes from me feel a little bit really truncated, you know. Yeah, I did notice that a little bit, yeah. She's supposed to go in and get the confession.

She walks in, he's like, the poison work, it got the confession. It's like, there wasn't even a breath. There wasn't even an exchange too much before the guy just spilled it, which, to be fair, is entirely possible. That could happen. It just feels like normally when you see a scene like that, there's a bit more buildup to getting the confession. The main actress is cool. I like her, but I wish that they did more to discern her from her twin sister, because there isn't a heck of a lot other than one of them's got a bit of an attitude to discern them from one another.

They feel like the same performance between the two of them. I think it's pretty subtle. I mean, I agree maybe there's something that she could do more in, like, the way she moves or in her walk or something like that. Anything, yeah. But I do get the sense that they're different characters, right? Like, May is a lot more aggressive and direct. Whereas I get the sense that OSHA, maybe she's sweeter. She has maybe a little bit less confidence in her.

and so like when she went into the apothecary and she's looking at the guy there was this kind of like innocence and fear in her eyes which is like very different from her sister it might not whatever i'm reading may not even be 100% her fault it might be in the writing as well you know or in the direction who knows but sure there's just something where it's like it just doesn't feel like a huge chasm it's like they've spent how many years apart they have led completely different lives they're going to behave totally different it's not going to be that similar other than if they're standing still, would you mistake them? Like, the way they walk and talk is going to be totally different.

Sure. And so I just wish that we got a little bit more of that so that it feels like I'm watching a different person. Right, but maybe it's got to be close enough that we can buy into this idea that everyone's like, oh my God, it's OSHA. She's doing all this stuff, you know? Yeah, as I said, if she's standing still, they look the same. But as soon as they start talking and walking, they're like two total different people.

And that's all. I'm not really getting that. You know what I mean? But yeah, but still, I like her. And I like, you know, the overall vibe she's bringing to OSHA is cool. I can't tell, like, which one I enjoy more between OSHA and May. It's just because it's so similar. Yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And so I guess what, you know, what I'm rooting for here or hoping for is that, you know, she's able to help May redeem herself and bring her back to the good side. Yeah. I'm hoping for that. well. So overall, I mean, it's fun. It's not, you know, when is it perfect? But it's like, it's noticeably not perfect. It's just, you know, I want to say what I'm feeling, you know.

Right. Right. And so, but I am enjoying it. It is cool. Yeah. I think I'm enjoying it a lot more than I expected to, which is definitely a positive. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing the next episode. So that's also a positive. There it is. You guys, thanks so much. Peace out.