Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Anyway there's some sort of making-of for season 2 dropping I think on Christmas itself; won't be a series like the previous one, probably since all the basics had been discussed already.

I would watch another hourlong dive into how The Volume works though

Imagine if they could track your head and make it into a very expensive single-person holodeck using dynamic perspective.

https://www.theonion.com/i-have-an-ipod-in-my-mind-1819584018

Finally caught up with the last couple of episodes. Some of it was kind of dopey - too much dark this and dark that - but there were some solid laser fights, and nice genre nods to everything from Wages of Fear to nu-Battlestar Galactica. Didn't care about the look of youthafied Luke when in the end he's still acting against a puppet, a robot trashcan, and a variety of Boba Fetts of different bents. Did find the terminators silly, and even my daughter commented how every bunch of baddies (stormtroopers, terminators, space pirates) seemed to come in never-ending waves. We thought it would have been hilarious if they just left the Dark Terminators floating in space, and some future Star Wars thing could have a ship flying around and run into them.

"The sensors are warning there's an asteroid field ahead!"

"Those aren't asteroids ... those are Dark Terminators!"

Their batteries would be dead by then. Would have been cool if their jet shoes drained too much battery, and they took turns punching the door until they died so that only a few were left to fight.

I would have liked Mando to offer Luke a small but key piece of aid or advice during the Jedi battle sequence, just so as not to be completely useless.

Hamill's voice performance was more disappointing than digital putty face, considering he does a pretty good Harrison Ford...

I wonder if they even tried to post-process the Wolverine out of his vocals...

I'm shocked Mando didn't give Gogurt that metal ball as a parting gift.

Also, Luke really should have been all "baby Yoda!!?!!?"

The two had already communicated via that magic pillar of light, so Grogu's species probably wasn't a surprise.

Eh, I'm sure they bonded adorably once they were off camera and Luke didn't have to pretend he was cool.

Ok I finished this, and actually I was fine with deepfake Luke, but I have low standards for sfx.

Other than that it was still pretty dumb & bad, but I can accept at this point that it's just supposed to be an oddly violent live-action kid's cartoon. Cool that people like it and they're making a million more of them I suppose.

That's sort of the Marvel model, especially early on. Lots of killing, no blood.

ballard’s criticism that the massive casual violence (including genocide) is a big problem with star wars remains true.

one of the virtues of the mandalorian is that it showed a somewhat politically equivalent and scrappy system, including imperial remnants and went some way to humanising stormtroopers - their armour looks scrappy and a bit unclean iirc in the first episode, and they’re jumpy, and boba’s caving in of a stormtrooper helmet was quite effectively and it seemed to me deliberately humanising (it was quite a lingering shot) - there’s a skull in there basically.

so to use them so consistently as polystyrene pew-pew fodder is not v appealing tbh.

I guess everyone’s pretty accustomed to seeing stormtroopers blown away like that (which doesn’t make it cool) - but the screen in s1 where mando sniped half a dozen Jawas just to send a message was a real WTF moment for me when watching with kids!

*scene

yes, it's a rather moralistic argument to make, and seeing people zapped is fun! ofc mandalorian and original star wars is v much a western. don't want to finger wag, but i do remember watching star wars again relatively recently and really feeling the casualness of 'let's zap an entire planet' and got it a couple of times in the mandalorian as well.

Thousands of Gungans died in Episode 1...and for what?1

No Blood for Kyber!

I'm shocked Mando didn't give Gogurt that metal ball as a parting gift.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, December 23, 2020 4:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the ball went up in flames with the rest of the razor’s crest :(

i could swear he did manage to save the ball for him

-the Lance Armstrong story

He did save the ball. (Not that ball.)

Mando -- has only got one ball!
Grogu -- has two but very small

when baby yoda becomes a sith, he’ll find the burnt out husk of that ball, put it on display, and speak to it like kylo did with vader’s mask

Holy shit definitely

Mando totally dug it out and rescued it from the ruins of the ship. Chekov's Ball did not deliver.

i do remember watching star wars again relatively recently and really feeling the casualness of 'let's zap an entire planet'

I really liked how this series examined the (psychological) aftershock of Alderaan’s destruction, though.

(I liked the Cara Dune character in general; too bad the actor is a wingnut.)

when oh when will there be star peace?

xp totally agreed. it's a shame - i liked her when she left the UFC and started out in Haywire

I could not stop laughing at the rock 'em sock 'em robot punching.

same, that was very amusing

"We didn't want to spoil the surprise during the big Kathleen Kennedy announcement of all the shows [during Investor Day earlier this month], so they let me keep this one a secret, " Favreau says. "So this is actually separate from The Mandalorian season 3. But what we didn't say in that announcement is the next show coming up — what Kathy called 'the next chapter' — is going to be The Book of Boba Fett, and then we go into production right after that on The Mandalorian, back with the main character that we all know and love... pretty soon following that. There's a lot of Star Wars content coming out, I think they announced 10 projects, I think this will be 11."

This raises the possibility that The Mandalorian itself won't air until 2022.

I read that somewhere too – S3 planned for 2022.

The Marvel shows start debuting in 2021, right? So Mandalorian should be back just in time for the Marvel movies to start belatedly hitting theaters.

Yeah, Wandavision hits Jan. 15, Falcon/Winter Soldier March 19. Loki in the summer. I'm sure Disney+ will drop something else for November.
Book of Boba Fett should be December, guessing there will be some kind of crossover with Mando S3 or one of the other announced SW shows.

one of the virtues of the mandalorian is that it showed a somewhat politically equivalent and scrappy system, including imperial remnants and went some way to humanising stormtroopers

I thought the most effective example of humanizing stormtroopers in this season was Chapter 15, where Mayfield and Mando dress up as Imperials and when they make it safely through the pirates to the Imperial base, and all the stormtroopers are cheering for them and clapping them on the back. It showed a kind of camaraderie and warmth you usually don't associate with stormtroopers.

Yeah, also it felt like a sly meta-commentary on how many stormtroopers get casually slaughtered in the movies (and this series): they're super happy and surprised to find out some of them actually survived an enemy attack.

I forgot about the Tron:Legacy youth cgi. This has been around for awhile.

Finally watched the Season 2 Gallery thing. While I don't think it warranted another full season, I did find myself still wanting more. Interesting that they didn't talk at all about the Luke scene. Spoiler tags juuuust in case.

Yeah I was noticing that as well -- wonder if they had some other character somehow standing in, or just did a reallll skeleton crew situation for that part.

Hamill said something about how well they kept it a secret (for a year?), but I don’t know the specifics.

My wife and I were just hanging out with The Last Jedi on TV; the scene came on with those Jedi temple “caretakers” cleaning up after Rey shoots a hole in the wall. My wife (who also watched this series) was like, “Is that the same frog people? Is that the son of the frog who....”.

I thought that was pretty funny.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2020 season is nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

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 (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

This dude cruises around my area on a skateboard; I saw him today and he gave me a nod: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/masked-mandalorian-los-angeles-toluca-lake-burbank-street-baby-yoda/2508293/

A mask is a mask is a mask, I guess.

BREAKING: Lucasfilm fires Gina Carano from The Mandalorian after “abhorrent and unacceptable” social media posts. https://t.co/jlv1F3bxq1 pic.twitter.com/TD7fRJIQTU

— IGN (@IGN) February 11, 2021

surprised they finally pulled the trigger on this honestly