Kali Installer no input controls

I am trying to turn my old MacBook Pro (2017 Intel model) into a Kali machine and after several hours of trying to get the installer to show up on the boot screen, I finally have it show up (twice) and as soon as I land on the language selection page I lose all input controls. I can boot up either of the 2 volumes and be shown the initial install screen where you choose graphical install, text install, etc. I can move around here no problem but as soon as I get to the language selection screen nothing works (no mouse, arrow keys, tab, etc). I tried plugging in an external mouse and keyboard but nothing works. If anyone knows what's wrong or has any ideas on how to get around this I would be eternally grateful. I'm trying to upload screenshots for content but it's not working for some reason but I'll keep trying and update if I can get it to work.

your 2017 macbook pro has a touch bar and as far as I'm aware, there is not a single Linux distribution that works properly with this..

There were some attempt at Linux drivers, not sure how far that has progressed though;

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Apple-Touch-Bar-For-Linux

Boot into Mac OSX and use a VM to run Kali instead, then everything works