Star Wars: The Acolyte, a prequel to Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, will make you choose between the light side and the dark – and help you emphasize with both. For 47 years, Star Wars has largely seen the Force as black and white, good and evil. In part, this has been because of the specific story George Lucas told to tell, because he introduced viewers to a galaxy in which evil had triumphed and good was struggling to survive. But this year, Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte will usher viewers into an age when the Jedi Order was in power.
The latest issue of Total Film features interviews with the creator and cast, in which they tease the show’s themes. “Even though Star Wars has been pretty black and white in the past in terms of good guys and bad guys, I think with our show we’ll get audiences really thinking about whether they resonate with the light side or the dark side,” Manny Jacinto – who plays a smuggler called Qimir – observes. According to Rebecca Henderson, this is because the theme is about power: who wields it and who makes the rules.
There’s always been something incredibly seductive about the dark side of the Force, not least because it boasts some rather spectacular Force powers. Anyone who’s played Star Wars computer games will know the attraction of using the dark side, of wielding breathtaking and destructive powers. But The Acolyte‘s presentation sounds to be rather more subtle, because the show is set to explore just why a person would become a Sith. Do the Sith have a point?
The Star Wars original trilogy venerated the Jedi, but George Lucas’ prequels revealed just how flawed the order really was. While the prequels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars showed the Jedi at their nadir – the Jedi even committed war crimes during The Clone Wars – they didn’t get to that point overnight. There will already be a clear trajectory in The Acolyte, and the hint that this is all about power makes this particularly exciting. Power has a tendency of revealing a person or institution’s true nature, and that sounds to be the case here.
The aforementioned Star Wars computer games tended to consider the dark side from the perspective of flashy effects and incredible feats. The Acolyte, in contrast, looks set to be a critical reflection of both the Jedi and the Sith, helping make both perspectives understandable and thus providing essential context to the prequels. It’s fitting that it releases shortly after the 25th anniversary celebrations to The Phantom Menace.
Source: Total Film