John GruberFive minutes into episode 1 of “The Acolyte”: it looks like a show shot with a $50 high school play budget. What a disgrace to both Star Wars and Disney.
Jeff@gruber In hindsight, it probably would be better to just binge watch the entire series in a day.
DHa@gruber Wait until episode 3
Brian Grinter@crichton007 @gruber ep 5 - holy shit…
@gruber I thought I was one of the only people to not like it
John Hugg@gruber That show starts rough and gets better as it goes.
Tyler K. Nothing@gruber I got through two episodes and stopped. Star Wars used to be fun. I haven’t really enjoyed much lately except Rogue One which, as it turns out, was inspired by Force 10 from Navarone! I loved that film and Guns of Navarone before it :) Silly war films.
Tom@gruber episode 5 has one of the best lightsaber fights in Star Wars. Tough out the pilot.
ruffin
Khürt Williams@tbridge and a "I can't believe Disney allowed it", neck snap.
Alex@gruber the backdrops and stages which pretends to be outside (woods, city, etc) look terribly cheap. Inside of starships and houses are fine. I can not understand how nobody sees how cheap it looks.
Overall story is okayish, but the craftsmanship on filming… oh boy…
BenRiceM@gruber it’s worth sticking with it for episode 5
Casey Liss
Jan Wedekind@caseyliss @BenRiceM @gruber that, and maybe turn on filmmaker mode on your TV (or turn off all the motion smoothing stuff)? It never looked cheap to me tbh. I quite like that they are doing something new and enjoy it a lot more than Ahsoka.
Christian Kent 𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥@janwedek @caseyliss @BenRiceM @gruber I can't believe people are still complaining about LFR stuff turning to HFR, but never care a bit when HFR gets smashed into LFR online. At least that motion smoothing stuff helps bring it back. FWIW Sony's algorithm makes it harder to notice it's happening -- I'm sure it's poor quality and artefacts that made "soap opera effect" so infamous.
Nevertheless there's certainly a more subtle point to be made that low-quality effects in LFR become more prominent when converted to HFR. But high quality effects look better or fare better at least.
T@corsairstw @janwedek @caseyliss @BenRiceM @gruber High Frame Rate and Low Frame Rate
LFR = 24, 25, 30 fps
or the American 23.94, 29.97 etc
HFR = 48, 50, 60 fps
including 59.97 etc
@gruber @caseyliss @BenRiceM you said “first five minutes”, which IIRC is the bar scene fights which I don’t think looks cheap to “be ashamed off”. That said, the forrest scenes did bother me neither tbh. Episode 5 was quite good regardless. Environment looked better than in the final Obi Wan Darth Vader fight.
@gruber @caseyliss @BenRiceM also, from that screenshot, you like have all the oversharpening etc of the TV on, which makes such scenes look way worse.
@gruber well sure. If the setting is a gorge.
Phil Gastwirth 
@gruber
Yeah I haven't had that thought once. Not sure what you are referencing. The scene in the photo looks good to me.
@janwedek @caseyliss @BenRiceM
Yeah I haven't had that thought once. Not sure what you are referencing. The scene in the photo looks good to me.
@janwedek @caseyliss @BenRiceM
Neal Pozner@gruber I felt the same way about parts of Ahsoka. I don't understand why these very expensive shows look so distressingly cheap at times.
heavyboots@heavyboots @gruber I like the shows, but they do sometimes look really cheap. I know they’re filmed on a soundstage in Toronto or wherever, but it shouldn’t feel like I’m watching actors on a soundstage in Toronto.
@gruber Couldn't even make myself start watching it. I'm down to just watching S02 of Andor when it comes out and I think I'm pretty done with the Star Wars universe for the foreseeable future.
Nigel Wadsworth 🇦🇺@gruber the whole thing so far is a struggle. It’s astounding how the Jedi survived at all.
Mike Muegel@gruber so grainy and low resolution. They need to up that bit rate if they’re going to have so much noise. Now I do have a projector, but Andor looked great on it.
Son of a Sailor@gruber It's become a grave disappointment. Run. Run while you still can.
@gruber Also, it's infuriating how little story advancement happens in three episodes of The Acolyte compared to one 30-minute episode of The Bear.
Justin D Kruger (he/him)@gruber It's not that bad. But it's not amazing.
I do want more Andor and Ashoka than this.
Casper 👻@gruber keep watching.
enthraxxx@gruber That's what I said upon seeing the trailer: everything looks FLAT.
Shots meant to be impactful have background actors in frame with the same lighting and focus as the characters.
On the goddamn trailer!
Not wasting a second of my time with this slop.
Where's the lighting?
Where's the director?
Shots meant to be impactful have background actors in frame with the same lighting and focus as the characters.
On the goddamn trailer!
Not wasting a second of my time with this slop.
Where's the lighting?
Where's the director?
↗️ upright ↗️@gruber it’s pretty good overall. No Andor, but definitely not as bad as Book of Boba Fett
Fogmeister@gruber that first fight scene was straight from The Matrix. 😂
They even ripped off the actor and music too.
Cesar Cavazos@gruber all I could think after watching it was how I missed #themandalorian
Don Gratton@gruber like Pixar ain't the same with Jobs out Star Wars ain't same with Lucas out.
Steve Sebban, CSI@stevesebban @gruber thanks for info. I think star wars best movie was return of the jedi. Disney would never ok Princess Leia dressed as a slave girl in today's PC world.
Sloan Studio@gruber I was fine with the special effects, it's a TV show. But the characters all kept doing dumb shit and I just didn't like any of them. Oh well, lots of other great shows.
Jeffy 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🇺🇦 ❤️🇱🇺@gruber A powder blue sport car and now THIS??? O, the humanity!
Eduardo Ramos@gruber at least in Brazil it is being streamed with ads in the middle. Disgusting.
Noel Walling@gruber You should probably keep watching. By episode 5, it’s the second best star wars show. Only Andor tops it.
Dr. Joe Sarsero, Ph.D.@gruber It’s not that bad for what it is. Ep 5 is quite good.
Sebastian Hagedorn 
@gruber Apparently I don't care about the way a show looks, because that didn't bother me. I liked the first two episodes fine, but I hated the third one so much that I gave up on the show.
matthamm@gruber it’s all shot in The Volume. The virtual set with big screens. The Mandolorian was shot in the same way. But The Acolyte seems to suffer from the money saving technique. Not the best Star Wars by a long way, but great Lightsaber action in EP.5 though.
Kyle Brickman@gruber I didn’t quite have the same reaction to it, but like what @matthamm pointed out, so many of the Volume shots are painfully obvious (Disco and SNW over on the Star Trek side of the fence often have the same problem). Just like CG, it’s a tool that can be incredible, but abysmal if handled poorly.
Iestyn Lloyd 
@gruber i feel it has a lot to do with how they film them, so sharp and crisp, it’s the Sony camera look, there’s no grit and grime, no film ‘imperfections’.
Christos_Cloud@gruber I dislike the character selection.
Matt Warren@gruber Reminds me of original Star Trek. All the space between rocks is perfectly flat and level ground.
Josh Brown@gruber I really enjoyed it. Sorry you didn’t.
Raouf Dool@gruber another origin story that squashes whatever mystique the Jedi had
Rod Christiansen@gruber you could simply, I don’t know, enjoy it.
Chad C.@gruber Couldn’t agree more. It looks like The Land of the Lost show from the 1980s in terms of production value.
@dominocollege Here's the screenshot I've been sending to people arguing with me about the show's production values. Are we supposed to believe these people are outside?
@gruber Exactly. The Brady Bunch back yard looked more realistic than this. It’s amazing when you compare it to something like House of The Dragon's set and production values.
Moltonlava@gruber @dominocollege No that doesn’t look like they’re outside, but do we really expect every tv show to have huge production budgets now? I remember even the modern Star Treks had sets that looked like they were made out of cardboard and I didn’t care.
Luke M. Perez@gruber 5 minutes is about where I turned it off and never turned it back on.
@gruber it's not that bad. It's not great either.