Disney's new Star Wars series "The Acolyte" has faced criticism from some conservative critics and fans who labeled it as "woke" and "the gayest Star Wars ever" due to comments about potential LGBTQ+ representation and themes, as well as the diverse cast.

Showrunner Leslye Headland and lead star Amandla Stenberg jokingly suggested that popular characters like R2-D2 and C-3PO could be part of the LGBTQ+ community, and Headland acknowledged infusing the series with LGBTQ+ themes.

An old clip of Amandla Stenberg resurfaced, where she claimed her goal was to make white people cry, leading to negative reactions to her racially-charged comment.

Despite the backlash, "The Acolyte" received positive reviews from critics and had a successful debut on Disney+, with Charlie Barnett's shirtless scene sparking excitement among fans on "Gay Twitter."

The series has also attracted criticism for its diverse cast and accusations of "wokeness" from some critics, with Disney CEO Bob Iger emphasizing entertainment over messaging in content.

The Acolyte has received negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for character development and staying true to canon, while some have criticized the wokeness at Disney, including Elon Musk.

The series features a former Padawan, mistaken for an assailant, hunted by her former master, and a martial arts revenge story about two sisters amidst vengeance and secrets, offering a more intimate take on Star Wars but struggling with narrative withholding and pacing.

Sources: Forbes, Western Journal, MSN, Pride, SFF Gazette, ComicBookMovie, The Pink News, Cinefilos, The Post Millennial, Autostraddle, OutKick.

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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"The Acolyte," a new Star Wars series that will stream exclusively on Disney+, premiered with the first two episodes on June 4. These will be followed by weekly releases until the finale on July 16.

It offers a fresh start for Star Wars, unlike recent successful but nostalgia-driven projects like "Ahsoka" and "Andor." The plot takes place 100 years before the events of "The Phantom Menace," in the High Republic era, exploring the origins of the original trilogy.

It introduces new characters and moves away from the main timeline, following a hunt for an assassin targeting a group of Jedi potentially linked to the Sith.

Some critics found the series to be unsatisfying, with a convoluted storyline, creaky dialogue, and a generic feel to some secondary characters.

By taking viewers back to the heyday of the Jedi Order It explores an untapped region of the franchise, blending influences from martial arts movies, young-adult fiction, and the detective genre.

Cast includes Lee Jung-jae, Amandla Stenberg, Dafne Keen, and Charlie Barnett.

Sources: The New York Times, BBC, The Independent, Forbes, New York Post, The Verge, Mashable, Engadget, Gizmodo, CNET, The Economic Times, Yahoo News, Variety, The Washington Post, CNN.

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Israel's Channel 13 News mistakenly broadcast a clip taken from Star Wars as supposed war footage from Ukraine on Monday, Walla! reported on Tuesday. The "footage"– which at first appears to fit the overall combat setting of snow-covered terrain in the embattled country – eventually shows in one of the frames people who are playing stormtroopers, the fictional soldiers from Star Wars.

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It's unclear why the network made this error, but the most likely explanation is that this clip was deliberately placed within actual war footage or that it was bought from some third-party aggregator. It appears that the fake footage was first spread by a Telegram channel that has been covering the ongoing conflict.

הזיית ההזיות. סרטון מתוך ״מלחמת הכוכבים״ נכנס לדיווחים של חדשות 13 מאוקראינה. הסרטון אתמול במהדורה ובהיום שהיה, ואולי בעוד תוכניות. pic.twitter.com/n3enckupFS

— קרן אור (@0bgIpKtjmOpzNOP) March 1, 2022

Further analysis of the fake footage shows that it was in fact a mashup of two genres: highway cameras from Russia and the Star Wars franchise. The Israeli outlet has yet to officially acknowledge the error, despite it being on the evening newscast and on other primetime slots.

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Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who is known for her role as Wonder Woman in multiple movies from the DC franchise, could be cast for a Star Wars production, YouTube persona Mike Zeroh has claimed.

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Zeroh has previously said that Keanu Reeves would also appear in movie related to the Star Wars universe, as King Valar, and over the weekend, Zeroh said Gadot would appear in the same project and she "will be a part of this Dark Side oriented family," potentially in a movie trilogy on Dinsney+ that would be released as soon as 2023.

"They're going to be small-scale films … focusing on a Dark Side family where, pretty much, the downfall of those characters is going to be about falling to the Light Side of the Force. Kind of giving us a reverse of what happens in the traditional Star Wars films," he said on his YouTube channel, adding that she will be a "Sith princess" who "will be a part of this Dark Side oriented family."

Zeroh told weevegotthiscovered.com that she and others will play the role of "evil equivalent of the Skywalkers."

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Actress Gina Carano is no longer a part of "The Mandalorian" cast after many online called for her firing over a social media post that likened the US political climate to the experience of Jews during the Holocaust. 

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Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm with "no plans for her to be in the future," a spokesperson with the series' production company said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable," the statement read.

Carano fell under heavy criticism after she posted that "Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors.... even by children."

"Because history is edited," she continued, "most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"

Carano, who played the recurring character Cara Dune on the Star Wars series, deleted the post, but it was widely shared online and spurred the #FireGinaCarano hashtag to trend. 

Carano had previously been criticized for social media posts that mocked mask-wearing during the pandemic, alleged voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, and mockery of gender pronouns. 

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