I really appreciate this conversation and your responses, but am not willing to type beyond this response I have (really sorry). My biggest criticism of The Last Jedi is exactly what you're referencing to. I think Luke was correct to abandon the Order, and Rey should have evolved beyond the Jedi.
The film seems to wrap itself up by doing an oversimplification of making Rey (and by the extension the Jedi Order) obviously good simply because she is in opposition to what Kylo Ren is doing.
Kylo Ren, for reasons I still do not understand, kills his master and then simply continues the same mission as his master at the end of the film. What would have truly represented evolution would have been for him and Rey to unite and dismantle The New Order after destroying its leadership.
Instead, the characters simply retreated into the same binaries they were in at the beginning of the film, despite the huge critical analysis the film takes us through. This Jedi vs Sith, light vs darkness, obvious good vs obvious evil binary is one of the weaknesses of the Star Wars films.
I appreciate your responses as well and respect your opinion in critiquing things you didn't like in TLJ. I think what you're saying now is distinct from what you initially stated w/r/t the intent and messgae of TLJ and its similarities to Acolyte. That's mostly what my replies were focused on.
That's fair, but that's still based on my interpretation of the Jedi Order's behavior holistically. I agree they are labeled and written as "the good" in the series, but that's not what I see portrayed by them (which is why I find the Acolyte to be accurate). Does that make sense?
Like, they take and indoctrinate children away from their native spaces rather than trying to understand those native spaces more and assist them long-term. The Jedi have always done this throughout the whole series, for example.
It makes sense, but tbc that's *your* reinterpretation of the Jedi Order, *not* what Lucas wrote them as in the OT, prequels or TCW, nor is it how they're depicted in TLJ. But it is how they're retconned in Acolyte, and that's my beef. We can agree to disagree on whether that's a good thing.
Oh, I see. Totally fair. I'm very much a "death of the author" kind of person, so I'm always placing art into a broader context outside the author's intent. Authors are also humans within a social medium, so I'm sure their stories are influenced by metanarratives unintentionally.