The Acolyte: What the Star Wars shows on Disney+ are desperately missing.
SlateIn 2024, Star Wars is increasingly hard to define. As illustrated by Disney+’s never-ending mill of Star Wars content—most recently The Acolyte, a new series starring Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae—George Lucas’ anti-imperialist sci-fi epic has by now become nebulous, less a recognizable world than a series of IP extensions. The Acolyte, like many of the past five years’ additions to the franchise, attempts to diversify the narrative scope of the vast Star Wars universe, depicting a mystery-cum-revenge story in space. The show’s costume design, production, and hair and makeup are also exemplary, creating a beautiful—if at times unconvincing—facsimile of Star Wars befitting the series’ staggering $180 million budget. The Acolyte doesn’t use StageCraft, per Headland, but the series still maintains the visual lexicon that the technology has instilled in Disney’s Star Wars.
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