Star Wars: The Mandalorian

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).

there was not enough Baby Yoda to substitute for writing decent dialogue and plots

could also apply to every other star wars property

The Xena/ A-Team ep was one of my favorites precisely for its Xena/A-Team-ness.

it all feeling very saturday afternoon tv is a big part of the charm

This was fun to burn through in a single weekend. How do Mandalorians get haircuts?!?

They must have really bad skin

They could teach many in this world about proper mask wearing.

Obviously:

http://i0.wp.com/gopostore.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Gopostore_Movie_The-Mandalorian_SYE1604008_2_fma_fl.jpg

They take off their helmets, just not in the presence of outsiders, right(?)

He makes it pretty clear he’s never taken it off in front of anybody.

Huh, I guess he must cut his own hair then.

xp except the emmy voting academy