Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Clone Wars ended strong

tbf the entire draw of D+ is kids who haven't seen any of the back catalog and families that will watch it together

I can't hate on Disney otherwise, as far as streaming crap goes, because they've tossed FX's back catalog on Hulu and are doing some collaborative Originals program over there

I haven't yet but i understand that watching Rebels is the thing after finishing Clone Wars. Same showrunner as CW and The Mandalorian and it takes place between those two shows.

I have a three your old. We were generally pretty good about not watching too much tv but isolation and general anxiety has kind of changed that. Disney+ is pretty crucial as we go through everything classic and not so classic movie most weekends.

oh yeah. Rebels! i should definitely watch that. I've heard less good things about Resistance.

Have any of you watched the "Forces of Destiny" cartoon? I saw it promoted on there and thought I may check it out, I like the idea of it (but I guess they're really short?)

Resistance is for younger kids and was kind of boring. I watched a couple episodes

Rebels is pretty much the best Star Wars animated thing they’ve done, although my memory of Droids is haphazard

Rebels is indeed great and I need to finish it

As for the first part of the Mandolarian documentary -- light but enjoyable, basically had all the directors in a round table and then interviewed individually. Some good Dave Filoni stories.

I will watch and enjoy but I was watching some cooking show on netflix, the Skywalker Ranch episode (btw their garden is lit) and when Filoni showed up and started riffing with Jon Favreau I had to shake my head and mumble “neeeeerds”

I mean, I enjoy the little nods in episodes and Star Wars minutiae but all the “peel the curtain back” things I’ve seen, and this is a judgment of my own nerdery, are people chuckling over things I’ve read

I'm hoping they'll let each episode director do a full-episode commentary at some point. It's trivial now with streaming media to just record the thing and make it an audio track option. I'd love to hear Bryce and Deborah esp. talk more at length about their experiences as the first women to direct live-action SW.

or you could also listen to the many surprisingly good multiple language tracks

the mandalorian in Portuguese, still good

on ep 2

my kids are v pro-jawa and v anti-mandalorian at the moment

THE EGG

Filoni's story about meeting George was good, but wish the other directors would have had more time to talk. Hearing the women and POC talk more about being brought into the Star Wars universe would have been even more interesting, maybe we'll get more of that in future eps. Surprised to see that much footage of Lucas on set, didn't realize he'd be that involved.

i love how faithful the subtitles and fonts and everything are. it's pretty great.

also nice to see an elasmotherium rocking up -
https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/last-siberian-unicorns-what-happened-mammoth-sized-one-horned-beasts-legend-021239

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/mandalorian-finds-boba-fett-temuera-morrison-1293675

(spoiler alert, I guess)

episode 3 is like an episode of samurai jack mashed up with horizon zero dawn. the red eyes in the AT-ST were a nice touch. (it felt like it was about twice as big as the AT-STs in Jedi!)

in the last ep when his mask comes off my son goes "i thought his face would look a little more..... buff"

Buff or not, he's eligible for a Golden Globe thanks to that brief reveal (otherwise, he wouldn't have been): https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/mandalorian-pedro-pascal-golden-globes-rule-change-masked-characters-1234616883/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUL8QcjcFuI

Didn't know voice-only performances weren't eligible. Pretty stupid and definitely going to come up again when somebody eventually gets serious consideration for a CGI-only performance.

Also weird that the GGs are decided by only 85 voters right now, but I know of some worse organizations.

Amazed more than 85 people in the world even cAre about the golden globe awards.

I’m seeing The Clone Wars movie for the first time (my son is watching it); the “Huttlet” makes Baby Yoda seem a bit less... novel.

Finally watching this (thanks to a friend's D+ trial), and it's...ok? I guess I was hoping it would be better? We're halfway through. I wonder if they're purposefully mixing in some bad actors to get that o.g. Star Wars flavor, but dang, when there's actually dialogue, it is so bad.

A little less pew-pew action and more of a sense of humor would be nice, but oh well.

lol I liked this, but I don't know why anyone would expect it to be better than just okay.

REFUSE to watch FAN SERVICE mandaWHORian!

does anyone know when s2 starts?

First two episodes are proper good, best Star Wars thing since the 80s, then they go a bit samey.

Oct supposedly

Ok the last two episodes finally felt like a decent show. Although I would prefer if it was just Amy Sedaris as a single mechanic babysitting Baby Yods and playing cards with droids. Or those two stormtroopers doing Waiting for Godot.

jordan you didn't get any humor out of it? I thought that was one of its strong suits

I feel like the funny maybe came a bit later? Esp that one episode directed by Taika Waititi, that one was tops.

Yeah, the only actually funny stuff was Taika-related (either his initial droid appearance or the last ep) imo. Or Amy Sedaris just being onscreen. Everything else felt pretty forced (no pun intended) or relied on a reaction shot from baby Yoda.

Little yoda was funny af, what’s wrong with you

i didn’t realise until the kids pointed it out that that’s not actually yoda, since this takes place after yoda dies. i totally thought it was.

Oh yeah, my wife had the same realization after we finished the last episode.

Baby Yoda was great, but there was not enough Baby Yoda to substitute for writing decent dialogue and plots.

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

SORRY THIS FAN SERVICE IS DISGRACEFUL

That was from the episode Taika directed, does not count against my thesis

the Horizon Zero Dawn episode was pretty good i thought.

haha, was that also the Xena one? Or the mudhorn one?

yes the xena one!

the IG-88 one (or whatever this one’s name actually was) was sick af imo

I claim credit for christening it the "Xena one," lol

I didn't think anyone could describe that episode as anything else than the Seven Samurai one, since that's where the plot came from... But the Seven Samurai plot has been done so many times in American media, starting with The Magnificent Seven, so I guess Xena might've had an episode like that too?

I dunno, it's not even about the plot specifically - it just had the look & feel of a cheesy mid-'90s syndicated show, like Xena or Hercules.

(and I guess the plot did feel like something that would happen on Xena, but I don't know all the episodes by heart, I was always stoned with my roommate when watching it.)

I claim credit for christening it the "Xena one," lol

Credit due, it's totally apt (in terms of tone/acting/premise). The pretty widow having a crush on the Mandalorian just because he was...there, so bad. Also, maybe it was a Seven Samurai reference, but their big plan was to get the AT-ST to step in a river?

IIRC there's a scene in the SS where the samurai allow some of the bandits on horseback to ride into the village, only to be met by the villagers who they didn't except to be armed and fighting back... So the AT-ST trap scene was probably meant to be equivalent to that. Tho of course in SS the bandits attack in several phases, and the battle takes up the entire second half of the movie, whereas here they obviously had much less time available, so they had to compress the villagers' gambit into a single make-it-or-break-it trap.

And the romantic subplot comes from SS too, where one of the samurai the villagers hired and a girl from the village have a budding romance, but in the end they can't be together (though in SS it's because of class differences).