It seems some Star Wars fans are accidentally review bombing the 2008 Australian horror film Acolytes instead of The Acolyte Disney+ series. The Acolyte is the latest live-action Star Wars series to air on Disney+, premiering its first two episodes on June 4, with new episodes airing weekly until the finale on July 16. The show has earned mostly positive reviews from critics so far, but it has been incredibly divisive among Star Wars fans, to say the least.
At the time of this writing, the Rotten Tomatoes critic score for The Acolyte is a respectable 84%, while its audience score is an abysmal 16%. Without delving into spoilers, there are Star Wars fans who are not happy about some of the creative choices in the show, feeling as though it doesn't fit with the rest of the Star Wars canon. Others are not impressed with the show's quality, and are unhappy at the direction the Star Wars franchise has been going in general. There are also some people who are upset that the show focuses on female characters and has a diverse cast.
Those unhappy with The Acolyte, whether it's due to legitimate criticism about the show's quality or anger over its "woke" content, have taken to Rotten Tomatoes to let their displeasure be known, spamming the series with low ratings to bring down its audience score. However, some individuals seem to have gotten lost, instead review bombing the 2008 Australian horror film Acolytes, which has nothing to do with the Star Wars franchise in any capacity. Now, the Acolytes film was never popular with audiences anyway; from what we can see using the Way Back Machine, it's gone from about a 42% audience score to a 33% audience score. Still, it does seem as though its score has been impacted by Star Wars fans who actually want to review bomb The Acolyte instead.
I'm really enjoying the story. It's not the best produced show, but it's expanding on some elements from the SW universe that haven't been thoroughly explored yet, like how the Jedi were viewed by those who didn't see them as the protectors of the galaxy, how the Jedi functioned outside of war time (they appeared to be very political), and how do the Jedi handle themselves when they make mistakes.
I think there are legitimate things to criticize with the show, but it's not worthy of negative reviews it's receiving.
I don’t care much for the show so far (still watching it), but I think review bombing anything is stupid. I hardly ever leave reviews on anything even if I absolutely love it. More than half of my Rate Your Music collection is left unrated.
Disney has been caught using bots to mess with things before, I give it a fair chance that it's now also hired bots for this, need to uphold the blame towards the "fans".
I can't easily imagine a lot of fans attacking ratings for a totally unrelated show, but bots being given just a title? Yeah ....