Star Wars: The Mandalorian

The only thing I really chuckled at was the lava-river gondola droid, who can apparently only row on the port side, yet the boat goes perfectly straight

like... a gondola?

over the last 40 years my mind never even conceived of a frankendroid like that existing and it kind of messed with my head to see it

xp A gondolier doesn't switch sides? Then never mind, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Yeah that droid freaked me out a bit. However I lost my shit with delight when the stormtroopers showed up in a troop transport straight out of the 1978 Kenner catalogue.

Omg yes! I’m sure I had that

I lost my shit with delight when the stormtroopers showed up in a troop transport straight out of the 1978 Kenner catalogue

Skies of Risewalker

The deepest confession

https://io9.gizmodo.com/adam-pally-tells-all-about-the-day-he-punched-baby-yoda-1840958370

The circle is now complete.

pic.twitter.com/y121exIBtZ

— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) January 17, 2020

<3

Ned u should go do an intentional bad post now just for fun, you've earned it

Amazing

Was wondering when we'd start seeing these:

https://www.slashfilm.com/the-mandalorian-stagecraft-photos/

impressive how they were able to get nolte so small

he lost height for the role

nice tech!

My daughter asked me if I wanted to start this tonight, so I figured, we have Disney, why not. And hey, the first two episodes were really surprisingly entertaining. Kind of reminded me of the stuff I used to watch on TV in the early '80s, but with better production values. I wonder if they actually sat down, jotted down a list of all the things the nu-Star Wars movies did wrong, and made sure to take a different approach?

I’m pretty sure they must have done just that.

Hopefully Witcher S2 will take some pointers from Mando S1. A few characters, a monster, there you go

We're watching episode 3, and this is like ... space John Wick?

Oof, really didn't like episode 4. So corny, like an episode of Hercules or Xena.

7 Samurai one and the one after are probably the two least good episodes but I kinda liked them both tbh. The corniness and Hercules-adjacentness is part of the draw of this show. I really like how tea-time it all feels.

Yeah, episode 4

... was the seven samurai one. Just kind of clunky and inert and not well acted or directed. Was that Bryce Dallas Howard's directorial debut? Maybe that's why.

The A-Team episode? That was a highlight imo

I wonder if that was the brief actually - do an “A Team” one, do a Xena episode, etc. That’s what Community did, and pretty successfully for the most part.

lol yeah, the ep was totally A Team! Which fits with my first impression that this is like what I watched as a kid in the early 80s.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Whuh, Bill Burr?!

After a few duds that was a really good one, like John Carpenter directing "Star Wars."

don't forget Clancy Brown, baby!

That was the worst one - you’re a madman, Josh !

(But you’re kewl for endorsing my “Hercules or Xena” observation from upthread, undoubtedly without having read it.)

Don’t listen to them! Prison break was my second-favorite one!

Hated the prison break episode, though not for Bill Burr. But the Seven Samurai ep was even worse. Remarkable those episodes were in the same season as the first few and last two

Why did you all hate the prison break episode? I thought it was a stylish action caper. Though I think I missed why Mando was even doing such a sketchy job in the first place. Or, for that matter, what his endgame is at all. He's just compulsively traveling the universe doing odd jobs with baby yoda locked in the bathroom? Anyway, a couple of episodes have been dull, Seven Samurai/A-Team sucked, a couple have been solid. At least these geniuses have figured out that it's smart to make the first few episodes of a new series strong, rather than drop one of those "it takes 5 episodes to get going" turds.

The general charm of the show carried me through the three filler episodes. What show is wall to wall gold anyway?

xp It was full of corny, half-baked cliches and bad acting. (And please don’t “Welcome to Star Wars!” me; I know the difference!)

My favorite detail was how those sliding doors apparently don’t have sensors, and will f up a lifeform if it’s standing in the doorway when it closes.

Ha, I actually liked that. It felt like a riff on a familiar SW trope (those fast sliding space doors) that no one's ever toyed with before. I mean, this is a show/world where apparently you can't set your phasers to stun, so it totally makes sense that they haven't invented the garage door opener safety space tech yet.

As for "corny, half-baked cliches and bad acting" (besides, well, yeah), this show is innately corny, so far, but the cliches and bad acting in this one were nowhere near as bad as the Seven Samurai episode, which will be my baseline going forward. And I thought the direction of this one (unlike that one) was super sharp.

I've noticed so far that there have been relatively few shots of Mando running, no doubt because it would highlight the cheapness of the costume, lol. Better to have him just move with purpose to control the illusion that all that cardboard and plastic has real heft and weight. (See also: "RoboCop".)

They can set blasters to stun!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYelmcVoZg8

no one ever uses blasters on stun unless it's an important plot point

one of the funnier star wars things

IIRC the only other time we've seen the stun setting used on-screen is when Leia stuns Poe in TLJ. (With the same pistol she used in ANH, no less.)

Here's another article similar to the one I posted above, but much more interesting and detailed, about the new hi-def LED screen technology allowing them to do on-set/in-camera effects: http://www.icgmagazine.com/web/a-new-hope/ . It's really fascinating, like a Cyclorama thrust into the future.

xp Well, it's rare that anyone wants to stun (rather than kill), these are nasty wars!

In the jailbreak episode there is a standoff with everyone pointing guns at one another, and Mando is all "it doesn't have to be like this ..." No, because you could just set phasers to stun! (Ironically enough, the one dude is killed with a knife, though, so ... )

Last couple of episodes were solid! It's kind of wild how well this show both expands on the universe we know and introduces new stuff. I didn't see "Solo" or the most recent one, but without a doubt this is better than those other three. Good characters, good set-up and storytelling, and if I'm being honest I could probably watch a show just about his ship landing and taking off.

Well get ready for spinoffs.

Bill Burr's Galactic Masshole

xpost Ugh, no! Don't lean on the movies, bounce *off* the movies! Young this, young that ... who the fuck cares about whoever the fuck that guy is in Rogue One? Who cares about Young Obi? No one needs a Young Wicket prequel. They've spent all this time developing a world, it's time to play in it a bit, like this show does. Introduce new quests and questions, don't answer questions that no one really has. "It turns out Ben was a big fan of the rapper *Obie* Trice from D12 ... "

I'm actually looking forward to the Cassian Andor show, because I love the idea of his Rebel secret agent character who had to do a lot of morally-compromised wet work. Plus I love Diego Luna.

Anyway, premium nerd collectibles company Sideshow Collectibles (I have a bunch of their stuff) just revealed a life-sized Baby Yoda that will be selling for $350 to the Star Wars collector with refined taste.

https://www.sideshow.com/collectibles/star-wars-the-child-sideshow-collectibles-400369

https://www.sideshow.com/storage/product-images/400369/the-child_star-wars_silo.png

Has the show confirmed it to be Yoda, or just, er, *a* Yoda? Because good luck un-naming it, show.