The Acolyte, Disney Plus’ newest contribution to the Star Wars universe, is a homicide thriller. A minimum of, that’s what we’ve been given to know by its advertising and marketing. However now that we’re two episodes into the season, a wholly totally different puzzle has change into the brightest spot within the present to me.
It’s an irresistibly Star Wars-y query, however extra importantly, it’s an ideal body for precisely the sort of motion cred that was briefly, thrillingly, core to the Star Wars franchise.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the first two episodes of The Acolyte.]
Picture: Lucasfilm
How do you kill a Jedi with out utilizing a weapon?
That is the problem posed to Mae, our erstwhile apprentice, by her grasp, who appears like a Sith and quacks like a Sith, however as but has not had a lot time to espouse his alliances or philosophy. As the ultimate lesson in her coaching, Mae has to kill at the least one Jedi with out utilizing a weapon, as a way to kill “the dream.” What dream? The dream that each one Jedi reside in, apparently, “a dream they imagine everybody shares.”
In keeping with Mae’s grasp, “An acolyte kills and not using a weapon; an acolyte kills the dream.”
What does that imply?
It means everyone’s kung fu combating, child.
The Acolyte’s unarmed, hand-to-hand fight caught out from the second its trailers dropped. There’s little or no wherever in live-action Star Wars prefer it — the gravitational coolness of lightsabers is an excessive amount of to flee. Jedi and Sith struggle with swords; everyone is aware of this. Smugglers and troopers use blasters. Wookiees have crossbows that shoot lasers. Even Donnie Yen’s enigmatic Pressure adherent-but-definitely-not-Jedi Chirrut fights with a stick. Blame the marketplace for motion figures with equipment, I suppose.
For all that Star Wars is rooted in samurai movie, it has treasured few callbacks to the immortal trope of a fighter who refuses to attract his blade. However in The Acolyte, that’s how each Mae-versus-Jedi struggle begins, as a result of a Jedi received’t draw on an unarmed foe. In these first two episodes, Mae’s clashes with Carrie-Anne Moss’ Grasp Indara and Lee Jung-jae’s Grasp Sol are hyper-quick, riveting battles for dominance, the place we get to see Mae’s desperation contrasted with an unbreakable Jedi cool. We get these wild superhero moments when Mae reaches to steal a lightsaber mid-combat and is met with an impossibly fast twist of a supernaturally endowed physique. It’s the blow-for-blow, arm’s size, move-and-counter suspense of an incredible hand-to-hand martial arts sequence.
Mae’s quest to kill a Jedi and not using a weapon returns Star Wars to the realm of Combat Scene Cinema that the franchise developed throughout manufacturing on the prequel movies, however that has hardly ever, if ever, been equaled in reside motion since. However it additionally provides The Acolyte its greatest thriller. Not a whodunit, however a How Do You Do It?
Sol and his allies are fixing a homicide thriller, certain — we’ve seen that one million instances — however Mae is out right here beating her head towards a koan handed to her by a Homicide Buddhist, and I’m simply ready for the second when she realizes that possibly the reply isn’t literal.
