Leslye Headland Shares the Major Anime That Inspired ‘The Acolyte’
“Star Wars: The Acolyte” is the latest and most controversial release in the franchise. It has received a mix of review-boosting and review-bombing from both fans and critics, making it difficult to form an objective opinion on the show’s overall quality.
Despite its issues, primarily related to pacing, dialogue, scripts, and character development, we have been analyzing these aspects as the weeks have progressed.
Even before the show aired, Leslye Headland shared the various influences that helped her craft such a unique Star Wars story, including Wuxia, Samurai, and The Matrix. In her latest interview with Collider, Headland revealed another significant influence: one of the most notable anime of all time, Cowboy Bebop.
I love all of the different influences that you have talked about throughout these three interviews that we’ve gotten to do, like Crimson Peak and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Are there any other visual or story influences that you had when creating this? That’s something I personally love, when you can see the fingerprints of different stories.
HEADLAND: Yes. Shinichirō Watanabe. He is the creator of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Those were big references, not visually but tonally. Especially, Cowboy Bebop bounces back and forth between Spike’s backstory, which is incredibly tragic and heart-wrenching, and then his fun buoyancy when they do the episodic episodes. He feels like a Han Solo-coded character. So, totally, those were references.
Headland also explained how Bram Stoker’s Dracula influenced the teased romance between Osha and Qimir, a relationship that has become a major reason fans are eagerly anticipating a second season of the show.
With Osha and The Stranger’s relationship, Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola — which I know is different from the book — that film is one of my favorite films. Again, it was to have someone that was so scary, to have somebody that we clearly see is a bad guy, and he’s doing bad things, and Lucy is dying, and then to have this deep connection with Mina, where you see a totally different side of him. One of the things that really works about that movie is that there is this past life, soulmate, reincarnation idea for this character that has been alive for centuries, and he is just shocked to find her.
There’s also a moment later in the movie where she agrees to drink his blood, and he says, “I can’t let you do this. It’s basically gonna damn your soul.” And she has the agency and makes the decision to make this bond between the two of them. Actually, in earlier drafts, The Stranger had a line from that movie, which is, “I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” A lot of Gothic romances were referenced — Jane Eyre, Rochester and sort of the Byronic hero for those two.
I have to admit, ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ isn’t my favorite show in the franchise, but seeing all these influences that inspired Headland is fascinating, especially the unexpected blend of gothic elements with space opera.
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