‘The Acolyte’ Creator Leslye Headland Says Disney Star Wars Series Was “Tonally” Inspired By ‘Cowboy Bebop’
According to showrunner Leslye Headland, the ’emotionally jarring’ tone of The Acolyte‘s narrative was directly inspired by the likewise presentation of Spike Spiegel’s story in the classic anime series Cowboy Bebop.
Headland offered this insight into the widely-panned Star Wars series’ production during a post-season finale interview given to Collider‘s Maggie Lovitt.
In reference to her past pair of admissions, as made during her previous The Acolyte-centric interviews with Lovitt, that the visual depiction of the Space Witch Coven’s magic-usage was inspired by the main monster in the film Crimson Peak and that the relationship between Qimir and Osha was a direct riff on the one shared by Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon‘s Lo Xiao Hou and Jen Yu, Lovitt pressed the showrunner as to whether the series had “any other visual or story influences”.
“Yes,” affirmed Headland in turn. “Shinichirō Watanabe.”
“He is the creator of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo,” she explained. “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.”
Turning her attentions to another one of her influences, Headland continued, “With Osha and The Stranger’s relationship, [the influence was] 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,” the showrunner detailed. “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,'” Headland elaborated. “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.”
Drawing her thoughts on the topic to a close, Headland returned to her admiration for Cowboy Bebop, jovially concluding, “But Jecki and Yord, that was very Shinichirō Watanabe, like that sort of buoyant fun and then meeting a tragic end. The witches were Black Narcissus [a 1947 British horror film centering on the inner turmoil of a convent of Anglican nuns].”
Interestingly, Headland is not the only member of The Acolyte‘s cast and crew to have admitted that their contributions to the series were directly inspired by anime.
Speaking to GQ, Qimir actor Manny Jacinto revealed that both Demon Slayer and the live-action Ruroni Kenshin films played a major part in informing his take on the villain’s lightsaber combat style.
“When we were initially talking about how the character moved, we noticed that in the prequels with Hayden [Christensen] and Ewan [McGregor], they were always very upright, like a fencer’s stance,” said Jacinto. “But we wanted to just change levels and be incredibly dynamic. A big inspiration for us was the Rurouni Kenshin movies, these live-action Japanese movies with incredible swordplay. And I was and am really into Demon Slayer, which informed a lot as well.”
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