If you were paying attention to Disney’s social pages this past week, you may have noticed the entertainment giant bragging about its recently released Star Wars trailer.
The trailer, which is for the upcoming — and much-criticized — Disney Plus series “The Acolyte,” apparently broke a Disney record. The trailer reportedly garnered a staggering 51.3 million views in its first 24 hours, a Lucasfilm/Disney+ series record, which Disney was quick to boast about Thursday.
Despite what Disney said, however, it looks like the high view count is actually masking some terrible news for the upcoming series.
The Force is strong with #TheAcolyte as the trailer breaks Lucasfilm records: https://t.co/B7oUbMr56A pic.twitter.com/JiPHURehSL
— Star Wars (@starwars) March 21, 2024
Why? Because of one hidden detail on YouTube: The trailer has garnered far more dislikes than likes.
Though YouTube hides the number of dislikes a video can get, certain web browser plug-ins allow users to view them.
Various entertainment news accounts and outlets reported on the staggering number of dislikes garnered by the trailer shortly following its debut.
Would you watch this show?
#TheAcolyte trailer now has more dislikes than likes on YouTube pic.twitter.com/taZzg6VVuj
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) March 20, 2024
According to Movie Web, as of Thursday, the total dislikes for the trailer stood at an astounding 270,000 to only 155,000 likes — a catastrophically bad ratio.
That’s far from the only criticism the upcoming series has faced in recent days.
Even on a basic plot level, the show appears to be subverting the traditional Star Wars dynamic of “good” versus “evil.”
Instead, the show will focus on (as one character says in the recently-released trailer) “power and who is allowed to use it.”
An actor in the show’s cast, Charlie Barnett, went as far as saying “The best [part] of Star Wars is there is no good or evil,” while promoting the show back in April 2023.
This sentiment appears to fly in the face of Star Wars creator George Lucas’s vision for the franchise, however.
Lucas expressed how Star Wars balances the struggle between good and evil in an interview with former Democratic senator Bill Bradley in 2012.
“The conflict between good and evil is the basic conflict,” Lucas said.
“Those are the two things. We all have good and evil in us because we have the selfish side and we have the compassionate side of us. The idea is how do you keep those things in balance and by keeping those things in balance you can do a lot of good things.”
