The Kristian Harloff Show - Acolyte Episodes 1-4 NON SPOILER REVIEW! | Star Wars

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

The Acolyte is the latest Star Wars series. Unlike the other series this one takes place outside of the Skywalker era. This is 100 years before Episode 1. It is close to the end of the High Republic. The Jedi are plenty and a tragedy occurs and a murder mystery begins. Does it hold up? kristian Harloff gives his NON SPOILER review of episodes 1-4.

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Happy celebrating. How's it going, everybody? Welcome to the channel. Welcome back to the channel. This is a non-spoiler review of the first four episodes of the Acolyte. Now, what I'm going to do here on this channel, at least for the first four episodes anyway, I'm doing this review for the first four. The episodes one and two, I think debut on Disney Plus today.

So I actually did my reaction to episodes one and two. At least the first reaction of episode one will come out a little later today, probably after the first episode drops. So make sure you check that out. And in order to not miss that and the other things that we have here, just did an out of the theater reaction on bad boys, have a few other things on here. Just subscribe to the channel,

trying to get to 200,000 subscribers faster than we got to 100. And if you guys are here, we can do that. We got reviews, reactions, long-form podcast, shorts, all that stuff. So we hope that you'll join and be part of it, be part of the conversation. Okay, so I'm going to say the same thing that I essentially say in my first reaction. When this show was first announced a few years ago, I was excited about it because of the time period that it was set in.

I think that Star Wars has needed a change. I was always hoping for the old republic. I was hoping for knights of the old republic. And it never happened, but they said they're going to do something in the high republic. I said, okay, it's outside of the Skywalker era, and they're going to explore the high Republic and when the Jedi were flourishing and and the Sith kind of working in the shadows. So to me that sounded really interesting. The more stuff about the plot started to come out.

And then the trailers came out and I've not been so into it. I know there's tons of people out there who have loved the trailers thus far and thought it was an absolutely incredible and they like everything they see. And I say, great, great for those people. But for me, I was like, I don't know. It looks a little. Sometimes kids playing dress-up. It looks like I feel like there's a couple beats that look a little bit predictable.

And we'll see if I'm wrong. I will say out of the first four episodes, I feel like I was right about a lot of stuff. But I also feel like there's a lot of stuff that I wound up enjoying more than I thought I would. I would say, though, didn't love the first two episodes. I thought when I finished the first two episodes, it wasn't one of those like, this is terrible. It's like, no, it's like, I'm interested in the story. I think that the writing is good.

We haven't had, I mean, to me, Andorra is the best writing that the Star Wars series have done so far, Mandalorian Season 1, Season 2. And then after that, the writing has just not been good on these shows. It just haven't been. But this show is working with character development. And I give it credit for that. There's character development. Now, one of the things, though, is that some of the choices by some of the characters in the first two episodes,

a little questionable. and sometimes it plays a little CW-ish. I felt, like I said, I was worried about some kids playing dress-up, and it feels like that sometimes. But the performances are pretty solid. I think that Amanda Lestenberg does a great job in the role. And I think that we also have Carianne Moss, but I'll tell you, Le Jong-Jet, to me as Seoul is the standout.

I love the character of Master Soul, my favorite character, and it's the relationship that Saul has with Amanda Lestenberg, that it gets more interesting and gets me more connected to it. And I said, I think at the end of the first episode, I said, okay, why do I still want to watch this? I said, because I'm interested. I'm interested in the mystery, the murder mystery. If you don't know, essentially something's happening to a few Jedi

and then these other Jedi have to investigate it. So I don't want to give away more than that. It's all you really need to know. And the investigation, does the investigation work? It does. It's not as, it's not, I don't want to say that it's too kiddish in, in the way that, like, Leah running through the forest away from Flea with the Benny Hill music that should have been playing. Not like that.

But there's just sometimes, I was like, okay, just, it feels a little bit like dress up. But then there's other times where I'm like, this is, episode three is a really good episode. It's a really good episode. It's a good build on character. It's a good setting of the universe in general and the overall arc of the story itself. The overall, the things I like the best about it, the $170 million at a cost to make this show, I don't know if it needed to make that, it cost that much, but they use the money wisely as far as the locations go. Coruscant looks great.

the music, the sound, that stuff works tremendously. And I have said a few different times, I really don't understand why they don't use, even in the Knights' Old Republic, by the way, which was, I know, legends, but years prior, they had their own music, but they still used themes from John Williams. Kevin Kiner, throughout Clone Wars, throughout rebels,

used his own themes, but still used a lot of the John Williams tones to make it seen. And the same way that James Bond will have different scores in each movie, but still uses the theme and different things. For some reason, Star Wars is abandoned in that. I don't understand why. They abandoned it.

I mean, it showed up a little bit more in Asoka, and that's because Kevin Kiner did the score. They abandoned it in Obi-1. They abandoned it in this. Music's still good. It's still Star Wars music, but I feel like it could have been elevated a little bit more. The stuff, again, character-wise, that works,

is that when they actually dive deep into it. Now, one of the concerns that I had was the length of the episodes. I don't feel the short episodes the same way that I do in the other Star Wars shows because they do focus in on dialogue and building up the characters. So it's not like just these heavy action scenes and then it's over. And it's not like the, oh, well, now I need to fight a monster in a cave. They don't do that. It's like they are building through the characters.

The problem is that I have so far is that the predictability on some of it, like in the beginning I predicted something. And I'm like, well, that saw that coming and I kind of hate it. And then there was something that happened a few other times that was set up. And I'm like, well, that's going to happen. And that's, oh, well, that's going to happen. And then there's something that's teased all the way through episode four. And you'll see it when you see my reaction episode four.

I think I call it at the end. And it hasn't happened yet. This thing that I'm saying, I just hope that they don't make this one decision that I'm pretty convinced they're going to. Because it is, again, predictable. and it is also unnecessary, but it could be wrong. Now, as far as the Sith presence, if it is indeed Sith, we don't necessarily, no, we just know that there's an evil presence out there. I'll leave it at that.

But overall, am I interested in this show, and do I want to keep watching? Yeah, there are tons of shows that I've watched before that I'm just like, oh, my God, I can't believe how bad this is and how bored I am. I'm not bored with this show. I'm frustrated in some of the choices, but I, and I, And I think that there's some casting that's really good. There's some casting. I was like, I don't know.

I think you probably could have found someone better. But overall, the show is a better quality show as far as overall production, writing than we've seen in a bit. Now, will it deliver on its final, I think it's eight episodes total, so final four episodes? I don't know. I will tell you, though, and you'll see it when you watch. the reactions if you do. If they wind up going with this particular choice, unless they figure out a way to explain it in a way, then I'm like, okay, I feel it's just predictable, cliched, and it's going to hurt

the show for me. But I go and I look at reactions so far and people who have seen these four episodes and they're losing their minds over it. So you might be on that camp. You might be like, what the hell are you talking about? I watch these first two episodes and it's orodles and oldtles times better than than any of this stuff that's come out. It's way better than this, way better than that.

And I'm not going to necessarily disagree, like I just said, the production side of it. Then there's people that just, John Roke and I just talked about this on our live show the other day. To me, I know that there's people who are just going to love everything that comes out. It's fine. And good. You love everything, you love everything. Then there's people who's going to hate everything that comes out. Fine.

I really want to hear from the people that are like right in the middle that would go there's some stuff I liked some stuff I didn't like show me a good story and I'm going to like it I don't have I'm not going to just tell you I love something because it's got lightsabers in it I'm not going to tell you I hate it because it doesn't have the people in it that I want it's a good story I'm going to like it that's what I want to hear from in this one so when you watch the episodes tonight if you do watch them tonight and you come back and you watch this review let me know your thoughts um you can

can watch the episode one and two along with me and tell me how much you disagree with me or tell me if you agree with me and we'll do it together. But there's some moments in there that I was disappointed with and there was other ones where I said, it's a darker tone, by the way. It's not goofy, which I like. I'm always on board with the fact. It takes itself seriously and I like that. But that's kind of my rough review on the first four episodes. And I didn't want to give too much detail on any plot or anything yet because it's not it's not right to do because i haven't seen anything so i was gotten as non-spoiler as possible so that's my review um those are my thoughts as i watched the first four episodes i'm curious what you guys will think when you watch it as i said non-spoilers so hopefully

you check this out before it debuted and you watch it tonight come back here disagree with me if you loved it disagree with me absolutely if you say i don't know what you does not Nothing positive this show. Show stinks. Here's why. Don't call people names. Don't on both sides of it. Someone doesn't like it. Don't call them a hater. Don't call them this. Don't call them that. If someone loves it, leave him alone. Let them love it. I didn't love it yet. I'm interested. We'll see where it goes. I thought one was decent. Two was okay. Three was good. Four was fine. That's my review. Is it a raving review? No. But you'll find raving reviews other places if you search. Thanks for joining me here today.

I appreciate you. Once again, if you can, subscribe to the channel. We got a lot of things coming up soon. We got reactions to the boys. We've got reactions to House of the Dragon season two. I got an out-of-the-the-the-reaction up already for bad boys. I got a review coming out. Non-spoiler for bad boys.

There's so much coming out on this channel. So make sure you hit that button, be part of it. Thanks for joining me here today. We'll see you later. Bye.