Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Hell with it, let's do a separate thread. Final trailer now live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmI7WKrAtqs

I hope Werner's paycheck can cover a couple of new docs

I've no doubt.

the only way I'll pirate this is if the Herzog vs other actors' dialogue ratio is the same as in the trailers

Pew. Pew pew.

Cant wait for The Bobo Fat Show starring Bobo Fat

So they always freeze their prey in carbonite?

Also, "best in the parsec"?

This looks cool, but it's a perpetual annoyance that every new Star Wars release has to take these little details from the original movies and reframe them as if they were always meant to be canonical elements of this world.

Hey, why bother with world building if you're not going to show off the world you've built?

I hope there is an Ewok Assassin Squad in this.

https://cdn.drawception.com/images/panels/2018/2-7/FWeH8WjWdt-4.png

Moodles otm. Every moment where like a character says 'stop being so SALACIOUS, you CRUMB' and then turns to look directly at the camera while winking furiously and saying 'DO YOU GET IT, GUYS? DID YOU PICK UP ON THAT REFERENCE? ISN'T IT A HILARIOUS CALLBACK?' makes me retch.

meh, Herzog's only in one episode

the trailer is baller tho

Except maybe for parts of SOLO I haven't found the Disney-era fanservice to be all that winky and egregious? But I am a true SW stan and not to be trusted tbrr

My wife and I did the three-years prepaid Disney+ plan for the 20% savings, that's how ready I am for this.

Star Wars IX will be my last SW

may the Farce be with you

Which one was the last one? Is this new one the 9th one? I'm pretty comfortable being done. I don't think my wife has even seen the original trilogy, and my kids don't give a poop.

Whenever I see this thread (and the show title) my first reaction is always that it's an announcement for a Star Wars themed casino/resort. Which ... give it time, I guess.

The resort part is already happening

I was gonna say....

Dunno if I'll watch it, but it's kind of amazing that TV shows look like this now.

I meant like Vegas-style, not Disney style. Or is there a Vegas Star Wars resort opening, too?

I agree with Moodles that this should ideally be a musical, set in 1920s Chicago, and if possible called Chicago the Musical: a Star Wars Story.

That's exactly what I was saying

Start the speeder
I know a yubnub spot
Where the milk is blue
Cause Tatooine is hot
Bring a droid, you're a fool
And there's a nightly duel
And all
That
Jizz

xpost Except way, way gayer.

They really just need to keep piling on the gay until the toxic fans all collapse from rage strokes.

You didn't need the xpost there, really.

I realized as soon as I xposted.

I was born with stars in my eyes, watching the skies, asking myself why was I born with these feeeeeeeelings?
Dreams of death stars, outer space wars, battles that would leave you reeeeeeeeeling.
One of these days I will be one of them, one of these days I'll be outgunning them ...
One of these days I'll be outmanning them, every last one-man of them, again and again, you can't force me to stop when the heavens they have no clear ceeeeeeeeiling ....

The usual io9 breakdown of these things, ie trailers.

Every moment where like a character says 'stop being so SALACIOUS, you CRUMB'

real life lol

are they putting out the whole series on Nov 12 Netflix style or is it coming out week by week Hulu style?

Week by week

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/werner-herzog-the-mandalorian-star-wars-jon-favreau-disney-plus-1203400810/

URL pretty much gives it all away, no reason to even click.

Do you watch any television?

I do, I watch the news from different sources. Sometimes I see things that are completely against my cultural nature. I was raised with Latin and Ancient Greek and poetry from Greek antiquity, but sometimes, just to see the world I live in, I watch “WrestleMania.”

An unexpected choice.

You have to know what a good amount of the population is watching. Do not underestimate the Kardashians. As vulgar as they may be, it doesn’t matter that much, but you have to find some sort of orientation. As I always say, the poet must not close his eyes, must not avert them.

So you’ve been watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians?”

I’m starting to discover it. I’m curious; that’s my guiding principal.

In all seriousness, there are so many great quotes in that interview that cutting and pasting is pointless.

Favreau has made some highly successful films recently; did you feel an element of pressure working with him?

I do not know what other films he has made.

You don’t?

No.

Yeah, Herzog strikes me as an abyss-gazer, for sure.

these things are only foreign to you if you let them be foreign

pretty sure underestimating the kardashians is a risk-free proposition, what a silly thing to convince yourself of. "It's important to keep tabs on what regular people are into", says the director of Fata Morgana

to confuse the mundane with the depraved is a common mistake

(I'm mumbling these in a Herzog impersonation voice as I type)

One must unflinchingly look into the dark heart of the culture to comprehend the behavior of the most debased among us.

Reminded of this old gem:

https://i.redd.it/e923cdvfu8yz.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYEQh9IkVXU

hits all kinds of genre conventions in a tight 40 minutes, excellent settings and costume work, would watch many more episodes

This was fun!

someone in my group dm made a salient point. herzog's future obits now to read: "star wars actor werner herzog dies age 95"

Imagine that : a Star Wars tv series that seems more attuned to what made the original films work than the current SW films do.

The blurrg CGI was... not good.

Oh Jesus Christ they're going to sell a zillion dollars in toys of the big reveal.

There were a couple of blurg shots that were off, true.

Getting some _Lone Wolf and Cub_ vibes off that ending.

It is good to know that Salacious Crumbs make excellent BBQ.

This was good! Surprisingly good! Some of the animation is a little wobbly and the music is overbearing but otherwise absolutely hitting the last streak of affection i have for this godforsaken universe. Would recommend.

Also: Posehn!

Looked cheap, badly acted, ropey dialogue. Really disappointed.

The metal guy in the last sequence was good though (avoiding spoilers)

why can't we have like a sitcom or a procedural or an inner city high school drama or really anything set in this universe besides Bounty Hunter Who Is Good At Shooting show

tbf looks cheap, badly acted, ropey dialogue is pretty much a description of A New Hope

good editing and music, though

a new hope looks great, wtf

I dunno, if remove the nostalgia blinders I can kinda see where he's coming from tbh

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DGUqdV7UIAA5rvU.jpg

how dare u, those fire extinguisher droids have been beloved fan favourites for five decades now

Mandalorian version of Too Old to Die Young I would watch.

I was glad to see a little trash can dude again. The "cheap" look compared to the fancier planets is definitely intentional.

the CGI on the blurg cowboy guy was pretty rough though

if they really want the old look how about some puppets and miniatures

did I say looking cheap is bad? looking cheap is good imo

let me see here..... it was Tsar

As an adult male, watching a space fantasy on a children's streaming service, I thought this was enjoyable.

my baseline for evaluating it as a Lucasfilm television project is "is this better than The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles?"

Tsar Wars. Mostly big in Russia. The twist where it turns out Darth Rasputin had been Tsarevitch Alexeis father all along. Formative.

going in with low expectations I was able to enjoy this as well.

I'm psyched they let Dave Filoni direct the kickoff to their live action project

As an adult male, watching a space fantasy on a children's streaming service, I thought this was enjoyable.

― brotherlovesdub, Wednesday, November 13, 2019 8:49 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not to call you out in particular, but my optic nerves are fit to snap from all the eye-rolling induced by this arms-length approach to so-called 'children's entertainment' errbody is engaged in of late. As if the bulk of so-called 'adult entertainment' isn't hot + steamy compost. If it isn't promoting hate or something, there's really no need to apologetically qualify one's enjoyment of a cultural object. IMVHO.

it does weird me out when 100% of an adult's cultural interests are like, pixar movies and harry potter, though

throw some star war in there, buddy

I assume the people you describe must exist but I don't know that I've personally encountered them. Not since like high school, at least.

why can't we have like a sitcom or a procedural or an inner city high school drama or really anything set in this universe besides Bounty Hunter Who Is Good At Shooting show[

That'll be Ewan's Obi-Wan show. Wanders Tatooine and helps people out with their personal problems.

now that i can get into

'Obi-Wan, those wamp rats are back in my attic again, if you wouldn't mind taking a look?'

Tidying Up with Obi-Wan Kenobi

This Old Moisture Farm

Special mention to the scoring in this, the music was excellent throughout, with a lot of departures from what's typically considered "Star Wars music."

Surprised, but not unpleasantly so, by prominent usage of 'Jingle Dogs' on the soundtrack.

This was fun! And, let's be honest, I feel like they threw out the "life day" fan service bone in a way that wasn't nearly as cringe-worthy as it easily could have been.

Gotta love a Star Wars show that stuffs in not only all the people we knew about, but Horatio Sanz and Brian Posehn.

And am I crazy or did they actually design that Ugnaught to look like Nick Nolte? OR WAS THAT NOT MAKEUP?

an inner city high school drama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A68Ka8hiiI

They did, indeed, make the alien face look like his own face. I was impressed!

why can't we have like a sitcom or a procedural or an inner city high school drama or really anything set in this universe besides Bounty Hunter Who Is Good At Shooting show

Isn't this the case of 99.9% of fantasy and sci fi (whether TV, film or literature)? Is the next Game of Thrones book going to be a farmer's meditation on the emptiness he feels as his children move away to the city?

loved nick nolgnaught, not looking forward to all my nerd friends ending all their drive thru orders with "I HAVE SPOKEN"

lol

riding a blurrg through the drive thru

"three chalupas, a whopper and a large frosty"
"sir, this is a mcdonalds"
"I HAVE SPOKEN"

I’m going to ride my skateboard over to my buddy’s house and watch this later

That'll be Ewan's Obi-Wan show. Wanders Tatooine and helps people out with their personal problems.

Oh, just a reprise of David Carradine in the Kung Fu television series then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPfPYVVNgVw

I once blurrg'd at a drive thru

I thought y'all had invented a jokey colloquialism for some SW creepy crawly but, no, no, it appears there actually is a thing called a 'blurrg'. Must've been 'no trying' week in the Mandalorian writers' room.

n the Star Wars canon, blurrgs first appeared in "Liberty on Ryloth," an episode of the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars that first aired in 2009. In the Star Wars Legends continuity, blurrgs first appeared in the 1985 television film Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.

lol beat me to it

I am so embarrassed rn.

there's also a Life Day reference in The Mandalorian episode 1

Awesome. So was the CGI reconstruction of Bea Arthur up to snuff?

too many tentacles sadly

carl weathers being a tightwad A+++

werner was kinda perfect too! as was waititi as the IG. all the casting was excellent.

series of interesting set pieces + faceless bad/good guy with eccentric bushido code + near endless stream of creative creatures and weaponry and architecture + snappy inscrutable jargon delivered with total conviction + not taking any of this shit too seriously + this goes on basically forever with only minimal character growth and a general avoidance of too much backstory = all i really wanted out of a starwars teevee show

ep 1 here delivers on everything. if favreau and co can maintain at this level, this will be a fave of the year.

Love the guy who summons landspeeder taxis with jazz flute :)

err...sorry..."jazz recorder".

Very Prometheus, that.

i thought willy wonka but hey

also: delicious blue calamari flan
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/11/13/20962858/the-mandalorian-star-wars-currency-credits-calamari-flan

https://i.imgur.com/KRwff8U.jpg

wouldn't it be a "jizz flute" in star wars parlance?

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/WeakWearyEuropeanfiresalamander-size_restricted.gif

Check out jizz flautist Hammerhead's sexy new album entitled Nadon Momaw

I like the bit where the flute guy goes to put it in his snout and misses, and tries again, and they kept it in the cut.

Well, they finally did it... they put a goddamn space toilet in Star Wars.

The blue guy seemed totally out of place; more Spaceballs than Star Wars. I liked the “I have spoken” guy, and the droid. So many elements from Tatooine on whatever planet he’s on for a while; it’s kind of confusing.

The final reveal was just enough to keep me watching...

Episode 2 was shit loads of fun

My 9 year old absolutely loved it

It absolutely was. Watched it twice already.

I loved the little homage to "Last Crusade" (incoming desert ledge while hanging off moving vehicle).

Oh is Ep 2 out already? Thought it was weekly from the launch date. That's good news.

That whole sequence was very Indy xp

No spoilers yet though as lots probably haven't seen it

It's every Friday from now on.

Except for when Skywalker comes out when it'll be available on the Wednesday xp

Yeah, this is great.

Ned: good call on the Lone Wolf and Cub connection; Favreau definitely used the phrase "baby cart assassin" somewhere in his pitch.

I'm gonna count that as a spoiler, lol!

If you already watched the first ep it’s not much of one

Wasn't totally sold on episode 1, but i definitely settled into the vibe with this one

Enjoying the low-stakes, compact storytelling. Plus the baby is very cute

so are all of that species strong like that or...

Ned: good call on the Lone Wolf and Cub connection

Yeah did that hunch ever play out in this one. And presumably the rest but we'll see.

What the fuck is this, anyway

Ok, yeah, that was a good episode.

I like how it captures the languorous pace of the Tatooine scenes in the first and third movies (even though, ahem, it’s still not Tatooine).

The Egg! The Egg!

I liked this episode a lot. It's always tricky to keep an audience watching when there are long stretches of no dialogue -- especially TV audiences -- so the pacing and action were well-handled.

rocket sniping jawas or whatever that was, I coulda done without. But yeah good show so far

where are we then? Dantooine?

Schmantooine, i think.

some fantastic point missing in the Atlantic review which vacillates wildly from paragraph to paragraph in terms of calling pros cons and vice versa:
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/11/mandalorian-disney-review/601828

Can't believe you all paid for Disney+, can't you see that's just what they want you to do

i think you’ll find i actually torrented the first two episodes of this, thank you very much

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjwexw/disney-and-the-mandalorian-are-driving-people-back-to-torrenting

i feel so seen

Oh great. That definitely means there will be a massive crackdown on torrenting immediately. Knowing Disney, I'm guessing the first move will be the easiest: shutting down karagarga...

i think the tactic on this round of piracy is more likely to pretend its not happening. apple/disney's core audience is not ultra tech savvy and prosecuting loudly will only make people curious about downloading options; better to lose a few that likely weren't going to pay anyway rather than tempt a larger audience to explore the options. anyways, as per that vice article, the new "pirating" is using your mom's login

hmm maybe i should tell my mom about Disney plus. What mom stuff is there?

I’m an idiot who pays for an expensive verizon phone plan and got the service “free”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/11/15/why-are-we-getting-short-27-minute-episodes-of-the-mandalorian-on-disney-plus/#50c3703b6339

Disney Plus unleashed another episode of The Mandalorian today, its premium, live-action Star Wars show that is attracting good buzz and reviews from fans and critics alike. It will start premiering on Fridays for its eight episode, first season run, but if you go to play it today, you’ll notice something kind of strange.

It has a 32 minute runtime. That would be short as it is, and yet when you cut out the “previously on” scenes and four minutes of credits, the total runtime for today’s episode, The Child, is just 27 minutes.

I thought it was a little strange when the premiere episode said it was 40 minutes long, really just 36 minutes without credits. But 40 minutes is at least somewhat close to the 42-44 minutes you’d get in an hourlong network drama once you strip out commercials.

But today’s episode now has me and many other fans wondering if the entire series is going to be like this, if in addition to getting only eight episode for a season, if we’re going to be getting sub-30 minute episodes meaning the runtime of the entire first season is going to be something like 4-4.5 hours, at most.

class action lawsuit time!

some Netflix show runtimes are all over the map. Never really thought about it.. the format is probably a plus for the creators who just want to take the time needed to tell chapters of the story with minimal padding?

Or is Netflix signing deals for x minutes of show?

Isn't The Good Place half an hour (well, 25 minutes)?

most stuff is too long, this is a good development*

FLAVORFUL ORIGINS is exactly the right length per ep

*may not apply to LA REINA DEL SUR

on the other hand, lack of C plots is hurting an important sector of talent development? Hmmmm

Well, "Good Place" (or other network TV shows) is built around commercials in half-hour blocks. I suppose the argument that guy is making is that Disney is a pay service, and this Star Wars show is like the only top-tier new programming it has in that vein, so 8 potentially short episodes seems a little stingy and perhaps not enough to sustain a subscription service. (See: spike in torrents or whatever). Those other Marvel shows aren't due some time until some time in 2020, right? I mean, "apple/disney's core audience is not ultra tech savvy" is probably right, as a whole, but people subscribing just for this Star Wars show might not stick around or might find a workaround. Not that Disney is going to lose much of its base.

I still think this service is priced fairly. Even if this new show is "only" 4.5 hours or whatever, that's still two movies' worth, and two movies for $10-$14 or however much is not bad, especially since Disney lets you cancel any time.

pray they do not alter the deal

ACHUTA!

dip dup

One reason why they may be rolling it out episode by episode, instead of all at once, is to keep folks subscribing for a few months who signed up just to watch the show.

The thing that bugs me the most about the show is how relentless it is about showing you comfortingly familiar elements. In the first ep., I couldn't believe it when he was startled by something jumping into his viewfinder, just like Luke and the Tusken Raider... we've seen this exact thing before!! (Even fighting the mudhorn ep. 2 – which I liked – echoed Attack of the Clones.)

A friend of mine who’s really into Star Wars (he watches the cartoons and reads the comics and stuff) reports, “All three Dave Filoni projects have now had a "the Empire is tracking down Jedi babies" plotline.” Guess there are clichés I didn’t even know I was missing!

I mean, that's been nu-Star Wars's thing, right? "Remember this?"


xpost oh, they are totally going to hike prices after a year or so. Hulu's big price hike the other day came with no warning or even much of an explanation.

Yeah, I just thought they were promoting this is the series where we would finally “see new things.” Guess we have to wait for the new movie trilogy for that!

(We signed up for the 3-yr deal to lock in the $6.99/mo. price, or whatever it worked out to be.)

I missed that deal. I have a good friend who was going to share his login information with me, but I considered that I have done so many sketchy things on the download and streaming front, this is the one thing my kids are really going to be paying attention to, I want my name and our account up there.

Guess we have to wait for the new movie trilogy for that!

wasn't this already nixed

Uh, some of the torrenting will be a nation like me - I'd consider paying for this, but Disney+ isn't available in the UK until next Spring, so hoist the Jolly Roger and away!

The trilogy by the dinguses who made Game of Thrones is cancelled - the one by Rian Johnson is AFAIK still on.

It is indeed still on.

FOR NOW

Perfect:

Spoilers for people who haven't watched yet! But I had to do this homage to Lone Wolf and Cub for obvious reasons 😁 ---#themandalorian #mandalorian #starwars #lonewolfandcub #samurai #western #art #illustration pic.twitter.com/2xsJnyCPDa

— AndrewSebastianKwan (@theAndrewKwan) November 18, 2019

lol, nice

hopefully they tip their hand fully and just start referring to baby yoda as "cub"

If Pascal doesnt take his mask off all season I want my pirated money back.

Someone on Twitter theorized that the Mandalorian must ***POTENTIAL SPOILER***

be a woman; because that's what it always means when someone's face isn't shown in one of these things, it's like a rule.

xpost U criminal

heh.

Hah, my 8-year old came home from school last week and said that he heard the Mandalorian was "really a girl".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcMoL-9ph2g

http://ayay.co.uk/backgrounds/star_wars/rebel_alliance_characters/princess-leia-disguised-as-boussh.jpg

playground sketchy rumors about Star Wars? omg my heart

https://yt3.ggpht.com/a/AGF-l78fpd02vse8JgdR50h2a5kEQVu1SrzufiVT1w=s288-c-k-c0xffffffff-no-rj-mo

Me high looking at myself in the security camera at CVS pic.twitter.com/xfDALq7dmX

— eli (@eliyudin) November 18, 2019

So Boba Fett is going to have some kind of heartwarming journey with baby yoda and then ... get killed by Han Solo in the most humiliating way possible? I feel bad for the kids who are coming to this fresh.

it's not boba fett

this takes place years after Boba Fett is ostensibly dead

it's going to develop into a complex may/december love story between the 50-something year-old baby of yoda and the thirty-something child of boba fett
surely rule 34 already applies here somewhere (please do not link to examples)

It’s his son, Fetty Wap

http://i.imgur.com/foJ3VMO.png

playground sketchy rumors about Star Wars? omg my heart

Haha, right? I was doubtful those conversations existed any longer!

ohhhhhhhh

How dare you not know everything about the franchise.

My missus was getting all confused with the timeline of the movies when I was trying to tell her when this takes place. I told her she can look up a timeline on the web. She asked, there's that kind of stuff on the Internet?

I...admire your wife's sincere unawareness of that.

that is mostly what the internet is, I was heard to remark

she is a great time

I really should give it a couple more decades at least before assuming that people just kinda know that stuff's out there somewhere, just in case.

The chronology of these various things can be a little confusing, even if you are paying relatively close attn.

i just assume everyone knows the Prioress' story and get frustrated when they confuser her with the Friar.

https://www.gq.com/story/werner-herzog-baby-yoda

my brain's fried and I forgot only twitter gets a preview

“I have seen it on the set. I’ve seen it on the set,” he began, before veering into a passionate elucidation of his feelings on the petite marionette. “And it’s heartbreaking! It’s heartbreakingly beautiful.”

He explained that he witnessed two technicians operating its various mechanisms—"one was for the eyes and the mouth and the other one was for other facial expressions"—and that it was "a phenomenal technological achievement but, beyond the technological achievement, it’s heartbreaking.”

When the interviewer asked him to elaborate on why exactly it was so heartbreaking, he shook his head wistfully and admitted that he didn’t know why it touched his soul so deeply. He hadn't even seen it onscreen yet. “It looked absolutely convincing,” he continued. “It made you cry when you saw it.”

I just keep wondering who changes its diaper...

(They showed a space toilet, they opened the door to this.)

the back side of the force

i was worried it wasn't eating anything or getting fluids. then it ate the frog.
still worried about it staying hydrated tho.

also – can Herzog be serious when he says he's never watched star wars?!

yes

does he strike you as a prevaricator?

he has a weird sense of humour.

a prevaricator

Isn’t that one of those creatures Luke fought in Jabba’s palace(?)

a point for which I reserve a fair bit of rancor

after herzog got shot DURING a filmed interview, i don't question anything he says

what

It was not significant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrRNM9cMBDk

also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDcnLfLaFiY

https://i.imgur.com/vChy6TN_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

lol and

Me high looking at myself in the security camera at CVS pic.twitter.com/xfDALq7dmX

— eli (@eliyudin) November 18, 2019

oops ned 3days ago haha guess whos high rn

Haven't seen Ep 2 yet, but baby yoda didn't look more than a year old - so at a 50-1 human to yoda years ratio, actual yoda was a teenager when he was leaping around fighting count dooku, then he died a decrepit old man 6 months later.

Yoda was born in 896 BBY... he’s 874 when he fights Dooku, and he’s 900 when he dies in ROTJ.

Another way of looking at it is that 10 years of aging for Yoda’s species equals 1 human year; and so the baby in the show would be the equivalent of “5.” That’s a long infancy period... but I guess they needed to set up the reveal with a misdirection about the target’s age (and it wouldn’t have worked to say “10,” we’d still be expecting a child).

Another discrepancy is that Yoda had learned his skills and began training Jedi at age 100; so all things being equal, The Mandalorian baby has a lot of growing to do in the next 50 years.

My No-Prize attempt: that baby is a lazy asshole, and could totally be walking around and training like Yoda was at his age; it just likes being shuttled around.

I dunno, shuttling myself around on my mind beams sounds a little more tiring than walking

I think it’s some kind of hover-carriage (not mind beams)?

who knows. all I know is that we were all Born After the Battle of Yavin. We are all BABY.

You know, I had been assuming that “50 years old” was more or less an arbitrary number they chose, to set up the reveal; but considering the series takes place in 9 ABY (“Five years after the defeat of the Galactic Empire”), that would put the baby’s birth in 41 BBY... the same year another prominent character was born. 🤔

Was there a deleted scene in The Phantom Menace where Mace Windu asks, “What’s troubling you, Master Yoda?”; and Yoda snaps:

When 180 years of child-support payments you face, be cheerful you will not!

Just watched Chapter 3 — it is excellent.

It is the way

these guys have spoken.

Apparently it was also the first live-action Star Wars anything to be directed by a woman (Deborah Chow).

Not quite the same fun quotient as Episode 2 but indeed great and that set piece resolution towards the end was definitely a moment xps

So far my fave new The Star War stuff since Rebels and "Rouge" One. Literally feels like Favreau wants to write in as much "this is the kind of cool stuff 9 y.o. me imagined happening" material into each episode as possible and I'm down with it in a true "Okay Gen X-er" way. Having been 8 y.o. myself in '77.

https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/76676823_10158543737539672_6833772952006164480_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_ohc=jSk3uInOIggAQl1RNGjvpJ_5XaEnPNkXbm_rJmWlHQDEavr4dO3PYt0QA&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-1.xx&oh=c38637996a3604bb04e37d64ba2e187d&oe=5E4DE28A

seeing a whole-ass Mando squad in action like that is something a lot of fans have been waiting for for like 30 years

The final moment/fan-service gag was maybe a bit much... but NBD. It was of the best episodes of TV I’ve seen in a while (notwithstanding some shaky acting from a few folks).

I know this has been a joke since 1977, but — does Stormtrooper armor provide protection against a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g??

It protect’s the empire’s budget

Wick-homage fob action?

I swear my autocorrect is on the fritz and I'm not just randomly putting apostrophes in things these days

forgot to mention my deep appreciation to whoever on staff said, "Oh, we need a prop here? I have just the thing!" and went full fanservice. at least we know now why Willrow Hood was hauling ass to vacate Cloud City.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/b/bb/Willrow-hood.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080518233740

wait, I didn't catch that. what was it?

anyway this episode was awesome

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/V63VBttMgVxf42OtT5QCoSxgpM4=/0x0:1896x798/1400x933/filters:focal(914x170:1216x472):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65753475/camtono.0.jpg

Some more prop nerdservice with the Companion Cubes from portal (sans heart stencils) sitting around everywhere

Oh oops I got it backwards, apparently companion cubes were designed after storage crates that have been in Star Wars since a new hope

I hope they finally got to have a big ice cream party

So at 14 minutes right before the Mandalorian comes in to talk to Carl Weathers, Carl weathers dresses down some Alien and calls him a 'dust breather' and tells him to go away, and that alien says, quite clearly, "fuck you". I watched it 20 times. Tell me I'm not the only person who heard that.

also carl weathers is fucking terrible in this.

^agreed

I mean I would not call Carl weathers a Great Actor to begin with

Baby, you’ve got a stew going

Not feeling this show.

Carl Weathers saying “Mando!” is a highlight and you’re all crazy

What he said.

Extensive interview with Göransson on the music:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-mandalorians-ludwig-goransson-on-scoring-what-felt-1840006928

This is fun!

Enjoying this a bit more because I am still watching it for some reason, but the acting remains surprisingly bad. Significantly worse than Solo bad.

watching this with my kids and now glad to have "I Have Spoken" as a reasonably good-humoured way of shutting down backchat

bad acting and cheesy fx are what MAKE this a star wars show; i hope you don't go to Arby's for the ambience
third ep holding up

Yeah let’s not forget why we liked Star Wars in the first place - because it’s fun and silly and looks cool.

Amazing that a single piece of costume design has spun out into an entire TV series! This is ALL because a dude’s helmet looks cool!

don't forget the aborted action figure accessory.
http://www.jedinews.co.uk/collecting/articles/myths-rocket-firing-fett/

boba straight-up packing a big red dildo on his back

http://www.jedinews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/20cback.jpg

Guess it’s fitting that the dude fell into a belching vagina dentata.

Let us not forget the Holiday Special and its animated feature, which this show borrows from heavily (!)

So Disney's got the first batch of baby Yoda merch (or "The Child" as they're calling it)... incredibly lazy. Like slap a screenshot on mugs and Cafe Press t-shirts lazy.

https://i.imgur.com/pkYAwhq_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

http://i.imgur.com/7wxFBOo.png

well it's big universe out there and i guess they had to end up on a Stargate SG-1 type planet eventually

I was thinking more Seven Samurai meets ST: TNG first season, but hey. Still great though.

yeah it was still fun. and watching with the younger ones i'm very conscious that this isn't the 78th time they've seen that plot rehashed, and that it still works.

eyeball-on-a-stick security robot popping out of the front door at herzog's house was so deeply enjoyable; one of those tiny crumbs of nostalgia i had no idea remained to be mined

I like the idea it's the Nest of Star Wars. Or whatever those security setups are called.

of course it has a wiki page, why would i think it wouldn't have a wiki page

Anyone else remember when the Wookiepedia was available as a massive downloadable Access database file?

apparently still is? am i doing this right?
https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Help:Database_download
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Statistics

So now Ron Howard and Bryce Dallas Howard have both directed a Star War. I'm sure the episode directors are on a fairly short leash but nonetheless this one was well done considering it had a lot more personal interaction. I always love to see Gina Carano.

The action stuff was well-handled too. Treating the AT-ST as practically a living monster was a good choice.

There's definitely a weird effect going on now where I'm certainly looking forward to Rise of Skywalker but more heavily anticipate new Mandalorian episodes. I keep feeling like how this is this weird time for the franchise where it's almost like we're saying farewell to the movies (for three years at least) and more shifting to this approach, and the movies themselves almost become advertisements for the streaming service. (See also Marvel of course.)

My No-Prize attempt: that baby is a lazy asshole, and could totally be walking around and training like Yoda was at his age; it just likes being shuttled around.

I nailed it! LOL

well it's big universe out there and i guess they had to end up on a Stargate SG-1 type planet eventually

― umsworth (emsworth), Friday, November 29, 2019 2:06 PM

I was thinking more Seven Samurai meets ST: TNG first season, but hey. Still great though.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, November 29, 2019 2:26 PM

That’s funny, I got a strong Hercules / Xena vibe... whatever flavor you choose, this ep. totally had the look & feel of a syndicated ’90s action-fantasy show. Wish the production values were juuuuust a bit higher; but still enjoying it.

It cracks me up how they keep calling B-Yodes “the kid” (and when the “beautiful widow” says something like, “Won’t you stay here with your boy?”) — as if he’s Mando’s actual, human child.

Nice to see Pillboi from The Good Place see some action, too...

That’s funny, I got a strong Hercules / Xena vibe...

bingo

I hated this episode

Loved the baby in this one - how could you not ? - but totally felt like a '90s WB Television series with just a taaaad too much cutesy stuff. Waitress/restaurant owner was also a little too -- I dunno -- New Yawk and took me right out of that scene. Really weird jarring tonal stuff in the acting and dialogue these first few eps.
And some of the kid actors were "stop lookin' at the camera!" bad lol.

The waitress was totally “off” (like the blue guy in the first episode). I don’t know what it is that makes a performance feel “not Star Wars-y,” but some of these sure have it.

OTOH, “Cara Dune” is an excellent Star Wars Name.

One other detail I thought was funny was how the mother in the village spoke to her 6(?)-yr-old daughter like she was a toddler (“This good man will help save us from the bad ones!”).

Waitress/restaurant owner was also a little too -- I dunno -- New Yawk and took me right out of that scene. Really weird jarring tonal stuff in the acting and dialogue these first few eps.

I consider this kind of stuff part and parcel of what you sometimes get from Star Wars. Episode II has a waitress robot that says, in a straight Laverne Difazio Bronx accent, "You wanna cuppa Jawa Juice?"

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/a/a4/Off_she_rolls.png/revision/latest?cb=20180204100457

This last episode was some next level cheese. Felt embarrassed for putting it on in front of people who haven’t seen any of the show yet. I mean this isn’t high level stuff in the first place, but OTM to the Xena/Hercules comparisons. Some minimum effort TV writing.

xpost Yeeesh. Don't remind me lol

This one felt like an A-Team episode

having a “teaching a peasant village how to defend themselves” episode seems really on theme for the show imo

trying real hard on the samurai/western vibes. felt the family/kid stuff was a little flat but it’s a fine line between pulling that off and complete pandering

at least there was no kid going “shucks, mister mandalorian. do you think we’re gonna make it? i’m scared!”

Came here to name check A Team!

are you kidding me pic.twitter.com/occtAetXqs

— Glitter 🦦 (@xoGlitterTV) December 1, 2019

i am looking forward to future Kurosawa inspired episodes of the Mandalorian, including Favreau's take on Ikiru

this was by far the weakest of the bunch but it was still a lot of fun

It was a weaker plot and the directing was super-sharp last episode

bebe Yoda is basically Gizmo hairless?

https://gremlins.fandom.com/wiki/Gizmo

this episode was rubbish, ugh. get on with it.

Otm with the comparisons to early '90s SFF TV shows, but it was still fun. Liked the shot of the red eyed AT-ST creeping through the forest at night.

The early 90s SF TV show vibe made me nostalgic a bit, but overall this one was the first that kind of disappointed me. I was expecting the AT-ST thing to lead to something bigger, but nope, this group of raiders somehow got their hands on a functioning AT-ST worth probably billions of imperial credits (or whatever currency is now used) without any kind of explanation. It was blown up and now we move on to the next planet.

I am totally digging the western/samurai vibes of this series though.

I would imagine a lot of Imperial outposts were quickly abandoned, and a lot of heavy machinery left behind

there's never been a black market or kleptocracy for weapons after a government collapse

;)

Liked the shot of the red eyed AT-ST creeping through the forest at night.

Thought it was funny that by not showing its occupants (if any) they seemed to imply the AT-ST was alive or maybe automated damn since the Empire fell how many people lost their job to this

I am totally digging the western/samurai vibes of this series though.

Is this like the movie nerd equivalent of "It's a magazine not a clip!" https://t.co/1HMybXLqP3

— Social-Democratic Party of Galar (@weedlewobble) December 2, 2019

i mean they literally did the seven samurai spear training sequence with the villagers

so did they not explain what was up with that one villager who clearly knew how to shoot

There are episodes, friend

http://https%3A//images.brickset.com/news/75267-LEGO-Mandalorian-Battle-Pack_4.jpg

Are you all aware of the little Lego Mando club that's coming to a shop near you just after Xmas?

Damn image link.

https://brickset.com/article/47311/mandalorian-battle-pack-revealed

I do wonder if the Netflixification of how we watch TV has knackered people's ability to watch stuff week-by-week - like, I'm pretty sure that some stuff will get tied up in the last few episodes. It can't be 100% episodic, there has to be at least some thread connecting things.

i more bring it up not to question the plotting of the showrunners but rather to suggest that this wasn't necessarily the disconnected limited one-shot storyline one might think aka there are still unexplained mysteries with these villagers.

village lady in a jetpack will save mando from a sarlacc in season 2, book your bets now

(my money is on "some of these are bottle eps and one of the tip offs is celebrity director at the helm")

Carano's already coming back next season so...who knows?

well i'm glad to hear that! she was fun.

So I realize that I have no one to blame but myself for this, but I had a carefully worked out theory in my mind that Yoda, whatever species he is, looked the way he did because he was 900 years old, i.e. he had once been considerably taller with shorter ears and was possibly less green as well. I assumed he had lived 900 years through his supreme mastery of The Force, not because he comes from a species that regularly lives 900 years old (and btw the 50 year "babyhood" or w/e makes no fucking sense even if his species lives 900 years - most animals don't spend 5+% of their lives as infants).

You’re not alone in that first thought.

Loads of insects are grubs for months and only mature for days or hours though.

he's not really an infant tbf, he walks around and drinks soup out of bowls much more effectively than my 2 year old. baby yoda catchier than advanced toddler yoda

yeah, he's basically a 2.5 year old, which means that 900 is basically 45 which means that Yoda really should have taken better care of himself. The Force is no substitute for healthy eating and regular exercise.

all them frogs catch up with you

I’ve been comparing him to my 22 month old and thinking they’re pretty close. Baby Yoda is less messy. That thing in the first couple of episodes was a stroller, not a crib.

yeah, he's basically a 2.5 year old, which means that 900 is basically 45 which means that Yoda really should have taken better care of himself. The Force is no substitute for healthy eating and regular exercise.

― silverfish, Tuesday, December 3, 2019 2:53 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

But I mean that's still doing it proportional to human years, whereas basically no other species works that way. Tortoises live like 120 years but it doesn't take them over a year to walk.

pic.twitter.com/qcKw5tIC0K

— henno (@jrhennessy) December 3, 2019

chomsky writing flash fiction there

baby yoda shoes

baby yoda morphs into chomsky who morphs into snoke

there are species that age differently and i don't think it's so troubling that the ultra rare unknown species yoda belongs to might be one of these

or maybe this shit's all made up

imo 900-yr-old yoda is also still a baby in ref his species (clues: small, can't talk in the right order, neoteny to the max by design)

how old is yaddle?

me when i catch baby yoda pic.twitter.com/itJGE0xFQw

— ً (@moretylenol) December 4, 2019

Ain’t no laws when baby yoda drinking claws.

To end 2019 I got a tattoo of Baby Yoda drinking White Claw.

Enjoy babbbby! pic.twitter.com/jG5MoeBSME

— Baby Yoda’s Baby Daddy (@brockmclaughlin) December 4, 2019

oh dear god no

No results found for "larval blobby"

as we all know, that's because blobby's larval stage occurred outside the human conception of spacetime and attempting to render his extradimensional form as an image would shatter a human mind

it was only once he was extruded into our four-dimensional space by forces still unknown that we could experience his presence, albeit only as a fragment of his true image

Lots of fan service this week.

People seem to be making a big leap regarding that closing shot

It's always Darth Vader uh hang on.

The question is, was Amy Sedaris's hair model Sigourney Weaver or Brian May?

Diminishing returns these last two episodes. More and more cornball "guest stars" and it's beginning to feel like some hokey '70s sci fi tv show all of a sudden.
And what's with young Frankie Valli as a bounty hunter?

Finally the Star Wars Christmas Special sequel we've always yearned for.

The question is, was Amy Sedaris's hair model Sigourney Weaver or Brian May?

https://ibb.co/QK8tXwv

https://ibb.co/QK8tXwv

my wife is a bit of a crafter and, well

https://imgur.com/gallery/yTucSRK

!!!

your wife is v talented <3

Maybe if Amazon or Netflix gets jealous they will make a Strontium Dog tv show.

This episode was pointless, and the young guy's acing was distractingly bad. (At least they finally checked off the "visits actual Tatooine" box...)

...make that "acting" (Jon Lovitz voice)

This is a dumb question, but why does everyone know to call him "Mando"? That's just b/c he's a Mandalorian, right? Would they call any random Mandalorian "Mando"?

Yes, but the implication is that there are not many of them around anymore

The Tuskan Raiders teleporting to 9 ft away was kinda hilarious, then continuing the comedy by doing that weird, cagey sign language, which The Mandalorian initiates by being David Byrne in the Once In A Lifetime video.

Jay Vee is otm, wouldn't be surprised if Favreau was a big Salvage One fan.

NBC's "Buck Rogers" :)

I could have sworn the music playing as they rode over the dunes was meant to sound like Toto’s “Africa.” (Wouldn’t put it past this show!)

Pedro Pascal is seriously in everything these days.

The bounty hunter wannabe kid is Bobby Cannavale's son!

One more thing: I had guessed that the standard-seeming plot had been nicked from an episode of some old Western, and they’d have to credit the original writer at the end... guess not, though.

The bounty hunter wannabe kid is Bobby Cannavale's son!

Certainly didn't get many of his pop's acting chops though, I thought he was terrible. Amy Sedaris didn't bother me nearly as much as he did. And here I thought young Solo was a charisma suck...

No wonder I disliked him lol!

it was brought to my attention on twitter that Disney+ has an impressive array of audio tracks/subtitles

want to watch The Mandalorian dubbed into Polish with Portuguese (Portugal or Brazil flavor) subtitles? they've got you covered

After Bryce Dallas Howard told me last week that she never worked with Pedro Pascal while shooting her episode of #TheMandalorian, I did my best to find out who, exactly, was most often below the helmet. https://t.co/31yuEsDrMv

— Liz Shannon Miller (@lizlet) December 9, 2019

damn, sweet gig for pedro pascal

The supporting players for the last few weeks have been turrrrrible. Like they plopped in from "Zeena" or "Breaking Bad" or something only this time decked out in Star Wars-y costumes/makeup but acting like folks who would serve you a burger/fill your gastank at a NJ Turnpike rest stop.
What a dip in quality!
(just watched Ep 6)

*Xena

bounty hunting is a complicated profession

I was surprised that Mando used to run with the Sons of Anarchy, but everyone’s gotta start out somewhere

Richard Ayoade!

What is it with Star Wars casting British comedy actors as droids?

They’re betraying the secret of how we actually regard British comedy

And we thank them for it. I think.

Anyway, strobe light stalking moment FTW. Half-guessing these last two episodes will be a compact arc and I bet the 7th episode cliffhanger is Baby Yoda gets taken away by Giancarlo Esposito's character, but we'll see. (Reminder too that the next episode is on Wednesday.)

https://i.imgur.com/VDGeVwV_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

oh cool, Bill Burr in episode 6. can't wait to see him tell the people of Galactic City that he hopes their mothers get cancer in their center of their assholes

Cannavale's son wasn't *that* bad. he came across as a naive toolbag which is kinda what he was supposed to do. his biggest problem was that he acquired Hayden Christiansen-speech syndrome

The supporting players for the last few weeks have been turrrrrible. Like they plopped in from "Zeena" or "Breaking Bad" or something only this time decked out in Star Wars-y costumes/makeup but acting like folks who would serve you a burger/fill your gastank at a NJ Turnpike rest stop.
What a dip in quality!
(just watched Ep 6)

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), Friday, December 13, 2019 9:44 AM bookmarkflaglink

One of them was in Breaking Bad in a bit role actually.

(also u rong)

the assassin tentacle headed woman in the last episode was SO. FUCKING. BAD. Like they let a LARP cosplayer on set by mistake.

That would be Natalia Tena of Harry Potter and Game of Thrones fame

kinda agree on her and on the general "this has not been good" vibes. Last two weeks have been lacking whatever secret sauce they've been using (could it actually be favreau?) Two more weeks to go though, right? I presume we're past the fill-in episodes.

lol that the NYT didn't have the balls to go with their online headline in the print edition for this front page above the fold half-page picture leading the arts section
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/arts/television/baby-yoda-mandalorian.html

xp I have no liking for HP or GoT either. That said, I did like this last episode, particularly when Mando demonstrated why they needed him. They have used that gag of someone apparently shooting, but being shot themselves three times now, I guess it's a trope?

(xxpost) I knew it! Also, not rong.

Fact that she was in HP and GoT kind of proves she’s a cosplayer. Like EVERYONE else in this...

I actually thought this last episode (in the prison complex) was one of the best so far. And I really liked the over the top Twilek performance.

You won't find a better review of last night's Watchmen than this. pic.twitter.com/PYF7Rz3aQn

— Ben Towle (@ben_towle) December 16, 2019

oh ffs sorry

no you're among likeminded folk here

Found this waiting for me when I got home:

https://i.imgur.com/I0JBxht_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

favreau on ep 7...

Oh no

he did the first four! which i thought were good!

No, I mean the actual ending of the newest episode :(

oh. um. okay, will watch tonight.

just pretend I meant the prison ship one and I really was emotionally attached to the twi'lek guy

well he was so charismatic

Bill Burr nooooo

Im sorry but Bill Burr’s accent in star wars implies some sort of space Boston

— Jake Flores (@feraljokes) December 16, 2019

correct response "that's called Uranus"

I mean so what? There has to be a space England too

New episode more like it compared to the hackiness of the last few weeks.

Yeah, enjoyed this week's.

Only one left now?

wow that ruled.

if you'da told me one of my new favorite shows would have Gus Fring, Apollo Creed,AND Bobby Munson making appearances, I'd have told you that you were talking about Mandalorian.

Very good episode indeed. Chow two for two.

Yes, one episode left a week from Friday.

(And that episode is Taika's, so I'll be interested to see how he sticks the landing of the whole thing.)

This “droid” in Chapter 6 is the jankiest guy-in-a-robot-suit ever. Even his “robotic” movements are half-assed.

And these other two-bit players... oy

This episode makes the last episode look like “The Suitcase.”

this show is really only good when Baby Yoda is on screen which luckily is most of the time. The acting across the board in every episode, even by people who are good actors (ie: not carl weathers) is stiff and weirdly off; maybe this is because the Mandalorian's lines are all dubbed in? There seems to always be an extra beat of silence.

that said the last episode was good.

also wtf Ming Na Wen is 57? Holy fuck. I went back and watched that JLo SNL after that where every sketch was about how hot she was and all I could think was "yeah but Ming Na Wen is 57!"

in one of these episodes (maybe the last one? can't remember) someone flat out calls Gina Carano a 'human'. Have they used this word in Star Wars before? My son was like "WTF they're humans????"

Yeah

haven't watched the latest episode

overall, it's probably the most "video game" film/show I've ever seen, ppl say that a lot but I don't think it's usually true. but every episode feels like a mission/quest.

it's been fun though I hope this all adds up to something

I like that on that star wars wiki page they list every appearance of humans in star wars

gus fring final battle is a good reveal
i do wish they hadn't killed REDACTED
we have a very obvious chekhov's droid / baby yoda kills a dude sequence on the way
i don't see it adding up to anything more than a cliffhanger for next season but that's been the way of the film serial since the 1910's!
this has been a naturally critic-proof and fun distraction from the end of the world, worth recommending in the way i would recommend that people eat Airheads: they're tasty and utterly nutrition-free but you're going to enjoy it.

This last episode was good

I figure that with Nick Nolte (can't remember character's name) shot, the IG-11 robot is going to come out to protect him and kill the two storm troopers who picked up baby Yoda and end up taking care of baby Yoda which will force Mando to overcome his droid racism and have a droid teammate.

um, spoilers, I guess.

Disappointed that Esposito didn't recreate his Don Eladio speech

I mean so what? There has to be a space England too

― 100 Percent That Grinch (Neanderthal), Wednesday, December 18, 2019 12:54 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

And space Scotland, space Germany, space Indonesia . . .

Space...in space.

mandalorian has been a boon for youtube remix culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwzt1itvW6Q

Best episode so far.

Yeah, Chapter 7 is worlds better... it feels like the original show again.

Cara Dune is pretty awesome, too

Excited for the atacc/protecc memes

they existed after the original appearance! and within that stretch he had frog snacc

Oh I was talking about IGGY

Hey, when’s the next one? I thought it would drop today...

There’s a movie out

Haha, that’s why they dropped it early? 🤣

Yup. Next/final episode is next Friday.

a Star Wars movie, wow what will they think of next

A TV serwaitaminute

Toys?

a religion? oh wait they did that too

A self-help group?

Having now seen the movie — which I’m happy to report is pretty damn rad — there is actually a “storytelling” rationale behind making the latest episode of the show available to watch first... Nice bit of synergy, actually.

is Baby Yoda the Emperor y/n

Omg my heart 💔

xp I was really hoping the epic reveal was Palpatine ghost inhabiting a Yoda clone

Agreed re synergy -- nice touch (literally). There's also something else in the movie that made me think a bit about what in the end the whole motivations for the Empire remnants being after Baby Yoda to start with could be about, but we'll see next Friday.

The local Moff knows something few do: infants of that species are delicious

The thing that had crossed my mind is that baby yoda was used either to bring Palpatine back to life (or just to keep him living) or to create Snoke(s). I guess we'll know some day.

hooded figures in TROS where you can’t see their faces? all baby yodas

Wtf spoilers thread this is not

tbf mh's is barely a spoiler, and silverfish's is something the trailer spoiled months ago

Did I miss something? What was the tie-in with the movie? (Or are we just talking about the general downfall of the empire/first order)

Baby Yoda Force-healing Apollo Creed.

Yeah. everybody thought Ivan Drago was the real victim after Creed came back from the dead and kicked his ass, but the real losers were sportsbooks, who suddenly found themselves paying out massive +500 wagers to Creed bettors

Was force healing a thing before this episode and this movie?

It apparently appeared in some SW media previously

when you're at someone's house and they have a cat pic.twitter.com/6AdLBE2Jir

— baby yodan (@DanLaChapelle) December 22, 2019

Lol this show

I mean, in an approving way, surely.

Thought it was a good way to end in terms of setting up what a continuing series will be, a continuing antagonist, fan easter eggs all the way up to the end, etc. etc. I kinda appreciate that we still don't know why Baby Yoda is wanted, though I'm with the general guesses that it's to do with clone research of some sort.

he’s special

Good finale!

Where have we seen those big droids before, that were attacking his planet when he was a kid? I know they’ve appeared, but don’t remember in which movie or context.

Battlestar Galactica?

xp it shames me to know, but they are super battle droids, seen hassling R2D2 in Revenge of the Sith and maybe the one before it.

i know it was pure pandering but the adam pally stormtrooper taking wildly inaccurate potshots at a can six feet away was pretty funny

I'm almost embarrassed that I turned to my wife and said, "Ooh, they're bringing out an E-Web" a full 30 seconds before the word "E-web" was spoken on screen. Almost.

At the end, I also shouted, "HE HAS THE FUCKING DARKSABER."

I like this show.

"stormtrooper taking wildly inaccurate potshots at a can six feet away was pretty funny"

I watched this scene twice!

So it seems canon now that Imperial-era Stormtroopers are terrible shots cos possibly they're all the same mediocre clone, whereas First Order Stormtroopers are more capable cos they're all kidnapped and trained from birth?

I thought troopers weren’t necessarily clones anymore, by the time of the Galactic Civil War (OT) era?

maybe their guns are all shitty. he did shake it and look at it.

Eliza, my first thought was to wonder what your reaction was to that scene would be!

The two incompetent stormtroopers bit reminded me of the late 90s fan parody TROOPS tbh

Closing two episodes really made this after a couple of nondescript moments in the middle. Never bad, just sometimes underwhelming.

The fan service in this was way more satisfying than that in TROS.

Prequel-era troopers: Jango Fett clones
Imperial-era troopers: Human conscripts and volunteers
First Order-era troopers: Kidnapped children

The Clone Troopers are shown, on the "Star Wars: Rebels" animated series, to look like this by just a couple of years before ANH thanks to their accelerated aging.

https://thewookieegunner.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/star-wars-rebels-season-two-the-lost-commanders-captain-rex-commander-wolffe-gregor.jpg?w=950

starwarslemonparty.png

apparently it is not canon that this was Rex, but I want to believe
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nik_Sant

Thanks Eliza. I misremembered.

I loved how the ex-clone Stormtroopers were used in Rebels

this was a lot of fun

I think I enjoyed it the most out of any of the new Star Wars stuff (aside from maybe Rogue One)

just felt so unburdened by not being this Major Addition to the Star Wars Movie Canon

also Baby Yoda is amazing, obviously very cute but also it's the only element of the new stuff that really "feels* like the original trilogy, it's got that oddball, hokey, almost homemade quality to it that is really endearing

I agree, also, Taikia Waititi should direct more of the next season, or maybe the entire thing.

I’m a little surprised that Din has never heard of the Jedi, considering that he came of age (and trained with the Mandalorians) during the era when the Jedi were still active.

I think he’s younger than that? the final purge he mentions presumably follows the action they’re going to show in cartoons soon, and that was nearly concurrent with the jedi all being killed.

so the jedi get mostly killed, he’s raised by mandalorians before the empire cracks down on them a final time, and he’s in an expatriate group his entire life

Fair play to PP for looking like absolute shit during the brief helmet reveal.

this wound up nicely though i wish they hadn't taken the mask off that old lone ranger

i've definitely come around on the music here, the theme is as good as GoT was as getting you in the right mindset. I still wish they'd dial it back a bit so that it doesn't blow the rest of the sound out of the water but maybe that's my teevee

was discussing this with a friend who hadn't seen it (who, sidenote, was designing a stein with the mandalorian insignia on commission) and wanted to know if baby yoda was THE yoda and I did the whole "no-real-yoda-died-earlier-in-the-saga" bit and digressed with the comment that there's no known race of "yodas" but that the prior yoda and this one appear to be some sort of figures of power that appear occasionally in the star wars world and she said "oh so it's like the dalai lama" and i was SO embarrassed i hadn't made that connection but now i'm hard pressed not to see "baby yoda" as "reincarnated yoda"

btw based on their costuming, the group that rescued our intrepid hero as a child was specifically the Death Watch. If you aren't familiar with them, get ready for a ride.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Watch

xp there was one other Jedi of his species on the council... Yaddle

Also Yoda was still alive when The Child was born.

he's not a tame lion yoda

re the helmet reveal, how do you get a weatherbeaten face if you literally never expose it to the elements?

When he goes home at night he takes off his helmet and then has droids blast him in the face with Hurricane force wind and debris, so he will look epic if ever demasked.

Naturally he destroys these droids every night so that's why his bills are so high

story checks out

xp i skipped more than half of the new films (i.e. anything post original trilogy) and kinda barely engaged with the ones I saw; even so i assume there can be multiple incarnations of the bodhisattva? and that the yoda species are the chosen host forms?

morrisp: do we know for sure that the timeline has baby yoda alive at the same time as old yoda? is there an argument to be made that the child comes to full fruition only when the last incarnation passes and that explains its slow genesis? am i going to hell for asking these questions?

lol at "yaddle" btw

the show takes place ~5 years after return of the jedi and the baby is 50 years old so yeah they were alive for ~45 years simultaneously

so we can assume the child was swaddled in a exogorth silk cocoon* that it only emerged from when yoda passed, hence the sudden rush to find it. it's all obvious if you think about it.

*cocoon sold separately

A who what now

http://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/6/65/SpaceslugAnat-woswfg.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/fBoRSBm.png

can i just say how amazed i am that they've managed to suppress any and all pictures of the puppeteers of baby yoda for so long? Can someone provide me visual evidence that it IS a puppet? I mean I get that it's a mix of puppet and CGI but disney has somehow managed to make sure no one has seen any of the imagineering for the past few months and that's a real feat!

also, apropos of nothing, here's a fun alternate universe:

The Yoda puppet in The Empire Strikes Back was controlled by puppeting legend Frank Oz, who in his career not only controlled and voiced the Star Wars icon but also characters like Miss Piggy, Cookie Monster and some of the many creatures from the film Labyrinth. However, that character too was nearly not a puppet. According to J.W. Rinzler's book The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, the character was nearly portrayed by a trained monkey in a costume.

However, a crew member who had worked on the ape sequences at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey reportedly warned them about all the trouble a monkey would cause on set, leading them to abandon the idea.

YODA: That is why you fail.
- YODA flings shit at LUKE -

"Fuck this. going home to Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen"

"Dead, that are."

"Be that as it may..."

*they

most of the time you only see his face so he’s likely 90% remote controlled facial servos

I think the arm movements are all manual puppeteer movements because he only does them in close-up

For the scenes where he’s being punched or dropped, they used a human toddler in a rubber suit.

That makes sense

I want to know what kind of gigantic food sources the space slug happens to drift by that it needs a mouth like an orca but known whatever wookiepedia tells me will be disappointing

Really liked this piece. It touches on some things my girlfriend's noted (she loves the series deeply).

https://io9.gizmodo.com/i-never-knew-how-much-i-needed-a-star-wars-tv-series-be-1840725748

the show had a massive $15 million budget per episode

still, the speeder bike troopers sequence at the start of the last episode was great. Bendis-y dialogue works well in live action star wars universe shocker.

I should watch Rebels then, I guess.

This was a blast IMO. Favorite bits were the A-Team episode, the prisoner heist, and the siege in the last ep. The whole western-meets-samurai movie worked well and the lack of interest in an overly complicated overarching plot were positives. All the bounty hunters looked cool, and Mando was a sufficient badass but not so much so that he didn't get in way over his head pretty regularly. Herzog was great, Esposito was unexpected. I irl lol'd with Weathers' "he's trying to eat me" line. Not paying any attention to this pre-release really made it a fun surprise.

I was today years old when I learned that the aw shucks nice guy that Buffy befriended on her first day of college who was immediately turned into a vampire was played by a 24-year-old PEDRO PASCAL pic.twitter.com/5q7jAZiDWm

— Brett White (@brettwhite) December 31, 2019

The stuff with Amy Sedaris reminded me of the Holiday Special (in a good way).

I’d like to think she styled her own hair

kinda wish she'd just gone full Jeri Blank on it, overbite and everything.

I flew through the season this weekend. imo this is the closest a SW property has gotten to the tone of the originals: the adventure, the half-explained culture/mysticism, and also not afraid to slow down the pace (something the new trilogy really missed). I couldn't believe how bad the three middle less-plotty eps were in comparison to the rest though, like below-average eps of Farscape. I guess the prison break one was ok. If they can tighten the quality next season, this could be a truly excellent show

I liked this much more than any Star Wars film I’ve seen - though I didn’t watch any post phantom menace.

You liked it much more than the original movies? That’s certainly a take!

you know what, i'll cosign that take! Maybe not the first time I saw them, but I like the best of the mandalorian more than i like the best of SW1 or whatever the fuck the numbering system is.

Not sure where to put this (the SW9 thread is full of “toxic fandom” or something), so I’ll put it here... kind of interesting rumor:

https://makingstarwars.net/2020/01/the-next-star-wars-film-saga-to-be-set-during-the-high-republic-era/

didn’t that site go full-on into publishing salacious rumors in the run up to the recent movie? the theory being that site traffic was going to peak before the movie release so anything for clicks was game

I dunno, it was linked somewhere else (CBR.com). If it’s not reputable, I retract my post, lol

They won’t rest til adult Yoda is a baby once more

Nobody has mentioned it but I also thought Ludwig Göransson did an amazing job with the score. Sometimes a little distracting but some really cool sound design and ideas

I was listening to some of the episode scores on Amazon Music and they really are terrific. He is definitely doing some very different things for Star Wars, even more so than Kevin Kiner did on Clone Wars.

i have both mentioned it and nominated the theme for the ILX Song poll!

oops so you did!

Yeah the score is awesome.

Loved the score. The processed recorder stuff is wonderful.

Nothing was ever concluded re: the mysterious figure at the end of the Amy Sedaris speeder bikes on Tatooine episode, was it?

Moff Gideon knew a lot about who Mando is, so do we assume it was him? Or just a bounty hunter tailing them?

At the time everyone was assuming it was somehow Boba Fett but pretty sure it was Gideon

(although redditors are still convinced it was BF based on the sound effect used)

in one of these episodes (maybe the last one? can't remember) someone flat out calls Gina Carano a 'human'. Have they used this word in Star Wars before? My son was like "WTF they're humans????"

Are the people in the Star Wars movies humans?

xpost -- yeah was wondering this myself. BF seems...a reach. Has he been resurrected in the Disney EU yet?