[TV] The Mandalorian (*Spoilers*)

[Yunru]

Just so you guys know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai

This story is based on a very old movie. (Ep4)

[Super Kami Dende]

Fans don't want new shit. They want the same comfort food they've always had.

You mean People are Fans of certain things because they liked that certain thing? You don't fucking say Sherlock.

[Kaleredar]

Just so you guys know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai

This story is based on a very old movie. (Ep4)

And the magnificent seven, and the Road Warrior... the issue is is that it didn’t really innovate on any of those.

Again, the episode was technically fine, but entirely predictable.

[s_bushido]

The Obi series is going to be basic AF isn't it...

Oh, they're actually making an Obi-Wan series? Then yeah, it's probably going to be an extended Clone Wars episode...with maybe more adult themes.

Not saying that's bad (and definitely not saying this series is bad...because it's not), but it just is what it is. Studios don't take risks in large part because fans and general audiences aren't willing to pay for them.

[RobertoCarlos]

Just so you guys know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai

This story is based on a very old movie. (Ep4)

/facepalm.

Thanks for making us mere mortals aware of one of the most famous movies of all time. While you're at it I'd love to hear more about gone with the wind and Ben-hur. The more unknown little indie projects.

This show borrows a lot from a lot of different movies and themes. It's clearly a western told with star wars dressing.

Also mmo champ talking about last jedi numbers again like holy shit talk about beating a dead horse. And as always have a narrow view on it. If Disney were happy with sales of solo and rogue one they wouldn't be changing their plans.

I said last jedi not solo and rogue one! They are all connected you dolts. People were mad from last jedi and didn't even give solo a chance. It also didn't help it was a shit movie. Also there's a star wars thread for that kind of edgy talk.

Mandolorian is just trying to be a good show and is mostly succeeding at that

[callipygoustp]

Gave the show a shot on a whim, can't say I'm disappointed.

My only criticism is that the baby "Yoda" needs many more random scenes of him eating reptiles/amphibians/whatever.

All joking aside, pleasantly surprised with the show.

Edit:
Also, and I can't put my thumb on it, this show gives me a Firefly like vibe.

[s_bushido]

Also, and I can't put my thumb on it, this show gives me a Firefly like vibe.

The ship itself is reminiscent of the Serenity, with the roughly rectangular main hull/cargo bay and the cylindrical engine pods mounted on stubby wings/pylons. And the show goes for the same space-cowboy vibe that Firefly did.

[callipygoustp]

The ship itself is reminiscent of the Serenity, with the roughly rectangular main hull/cargo bay and the cylindrical engine pods mounted on stubby wings/pylons. And the show goes for the same space-cowboy vibe that Firefly did.

Nah, it's not the ship: at least not for me. It's definitely more the space-cowboy angle.

Edit:
Not that I don't see your point about the ships.

[Appelgren]

his voice on the show sounds nothing like his normal voice, not even his spanish accent. I didn't even knew he was on the show until I saw his name popping up on the credits

Uhm... I recognized him from his voice instantly. Didn’t even know it was him playing Mando. Soo that’s not true at all

OnT: Really liking the show so far!
Great atmosphere, music and characters.

Really excited to see how Mandos relationship with baby-“yoda” will develop in the coming episodes and what other nods to the movies we’ll see

[Zmagoslav]

And the magnificent seven, and the Road Warrior... the issue is is that it didn’t really innovate on any of those.

Again, the episode was technically fine, but entirely predictable.

It's kinda funny;
star wars being a space western with space samurai, borrowing from both "magnificent seven" and "7 samurai".

[eschatological]

Just saw this tonight. Instant thoughts:

1) Definitely thought this was the weakest of the 4 episodes so far. Weakest doesn't equal bad, but it fell short of the first three.

2) I don't want this show to be a procedural - "Run to a new place, get into shit, fight, run away to a new place." This episode definitely made me think of a procedural. I agree with the Firefly comparisons. All those episodes were great, but never advanced the story much in that first (and only season), though once the movie came out, you could see the seeds Joss Whedon had planted, but that's about it.

3) I like the less dialogue - as soon as you introduce so much dialogue this episode, especially from the Mando, he loses a bit of his stoic mystique.

4) Star Wars with American accents will always throw me off. For some reason it didn't bother me before this episode (maybe because Pascal is filtered robotically and because we had Werner Herzog), but a woman saying "Knock knock" and speaking in a plain American accent is pretty jarring for some reason.

5) Interesting backstory on Cara, especially that she was on Endor. I like calling Imperial forces "Imps."

6) Is no one going to address the issue of these tracking fobs? Like, how is it working? Surely they're keyed to an individual - does that mean baby Yoda has a chip in him or something? If so, how was that chip planted before they knew they wanted him as a bounty? I'm missing something here.

7) To sort of go with the dialogue point - I think it's too early for the Mando to be showing emotion and a softer side. Narratively, it's way too fast for him to go from this robotic bounty hunter to actually pondering settling down and taking off his helmet in 4 episodes.

8) Why is there a random AT-ST on a planet with no major cities or spaceports? Was there ever an Imperial presence there? If not, how do backwoods raiders get one handed to them?

9) The tactic of making a pit trap that didn't go far enough out (IE, the AT-ST could just stand far away and blast shit) is.....well, wow.

10) Baby Yoda is the best. This is the way.

[ravenmoon]

It's been 2 years and Star Wars fans are still butthurt over the last time the Dreaded Disney let a director try to do something different with the franchise and its characters. Seems to me like your bold proclamations about the Dreaded Disney missing an opportunity with this show are completely divorced from the reality of how fandoms work.

Fans don't want new shit. They want the same comfort food they've always had. Case in point: the overwhelmingly positive reaction this pretty shallow show has received so far. It hasn't done anything new, and fans are eating it up. And let's not even get started on how many G1 and G1-inspired toy lines Hasbro has released since the 80s.

So th en what's so bad about the episode 7-9 and why don't i like them much at all?

Maybe we judge tv shows differently, and expect a much higher standad for movies, one such that i feel the premise of 7 and 8 have failed.. to the extent that, the Mandolrian not sucking has been a pleasant surprise enough to like it again.

There is a charm of the dust setting the Mandolrian is in, something the movies fail to capture, but i think it's really because the movies failed on the spectacular, dreamer and wonder Star wars movies always gave. Every new batcch introduced something cinema hadn't eeen before and pushed the limit of what what was possible, did new and exciting things.

-6 may have had their dire settings, but so much of what they introduced was new, space travel, space fighting, laser swords, force powers, kid with desitny etc - but 7-9 just repeated that without bringing anything really new. 1-3, upped everything dramatically, mfar more impressive visual scenes, space fights, planets, lightsaber fights, force powers etc,, they didn't just rehash 4-6 in the same world settings but at an earlier time, it was spectacular, , their problem was jar jar binks or episode 1, and a bit weak on the plot side, but episode 3 was pretty good, and 1 & 2 had many exciting moments, which despite osome fans annoyances at jar jar and obvious racial connotations of the japanese and gungun actors, they pretty much enjoyed andwhile criticised, they weren't going off star wars. At least I wasn't at all, and I don't think it was because i was much younger, because i still really like a lot of sci-fimovie, and being older I appreciate more complex plots wihich 7 & 8 certainly delivered on, but failed in nearly every other department to impress.

- - - Updated - - -

The Last Jedi was the exact opposite of playing it safe. And a lot of people got really butthurt over it because it wasn't the movie they had written in their heads.

Last Jedi had lots twists and was much bolder,but it already failed because the setting and premises didn't shift or change.

In my opnion, they shouldn't have jumped further into the future, shown more incredible scenes, much better lightsabre fighting (Into the Badlands style choreography) and far better force movement, shouldn't have killed off Luke at all, and perhaps made him do more surprising things,

he and Solo are the great dramatic sacrifices, and both their deaths just plain sucked, didn't make us weep and and draw us in sympathetically or emotionally to the new movies, just made us more angry, with the first order continuing to be a repeat of the empire of 4-6, the same bland settings, another death star like place a very emperor like mastermind.. shocked they killed him off, making episode 8 feel like a combination of episode 5&6, but again, not really like a new movie or anything new.


At least the Mandaolrian is showing us something different, "Western"style approach some find charming, but it's a series, and for the massive disappointment star wars in Disneys hands has been to a lot of their fans, I think they are really relived the show is likeable. But as a movie, the Mandalorai would not have worked anywhere near as well and would have tanked like Solo. I mean, you kill of solo, then make a movie of his origin after all the anger at that.. I mean seriously.. Vader or Obi wan movies would have been much better. If Solo was still alive, Solo would have been received better, although it's a bad movie.

but that's just my opinion.

- - - Updated - - -

People need to calibrate their expectations a bit for this show. It's not that deep, and it's hella short. Like most blockbuster movies it's more about the enormous budgets, visuals, music etc than it is about telling a meaningful story.

On topic of the last episode I noticed that they mentioned the little villager girl's name a few times. She might be important again at some point. Just something I noticed.

i agree, people getting over excited it premature, we might be well pleased in the end, we might totally disappoint.

Lucas film pulled of good shows in both CLone Wars cartoons anyway, despite them being animated, I enjoyed them. I'm not crazy over the Mandalorian, at least not yet, it's likeable, and remains yet to be seen if it will be great.

It is very vague, and perhaps that's what fans of Star wars need and expect, or maybe they're just going crazy because it's such a relief to find Star wars enjoyable after being very upset over so much since Disney took over.

Both Mando and the new movies are set in the 4-6 type of world, yet most fans hate the movies, and are lapping up the Mando.

My conclusions, 7-9 would have made a great TV series (minus killing off Solo and Luke) to finish off the Emperor and empire/first order things, with epsidoe 7-9 now skipping ahead for something newer and more interesting, more spectacular , with cool force moves, even cooler lightsabre fights (get the guys who choreograph Into the Badlands) and with stunning cinematic vistas of planets, space, cities, aliens etc - which were a lot more impressive in 1-3 than 7-9 whoich should have carried on with the jump in quality, but didn't.

[s_bushido]

while criticised, they weren't going off star wars. At least I wasn't at all, and I don't think it was because i was much younger

You may not think you liked the prequel trilogy better than the sequels so far because you were younger...but I'm going to pretty much guarantee that's exactly what happened. I enjoyed ep.I as a kid, too. But by the time ep.II rolled around, the glaring flaws became impossible to ignore. And I don't think I'll ever buy the argument that ep.III was "pretty good" just because it had the only legitimately emotional scene in the entire trilogy (Obi-Wan standing over Anakin's burning body).

You say that the sequels brought nothing new, but that's exactly my point with this show: It's doing nothing new, and people are willing to give it a pass because the one new thing it does have is adorable baby Yoda...

You want to say that the movies are held to a higher standard? Sure, fine. I get that. But it doesn't exactly help the case that this is what people have declared to be "good Star Wars" and TFA/TLJ aren't. Especially if you're also going to throw the prequels in on the good side.

[Endus]

You may not think you liked the prequel trilogy better than the sequels so far because you were younger...but I'm going to pretty much guarantee that's exactly what happened. I enjoyed ep.I as a kid, too. But by the time ep.II rolled around, the glaring flaws became impossible to ignore. And I don't think I'll ever buy the argument that ep.III was "pretty good" just because it had the only legitimately emotional scene in the entire trilogy (Obi-Wan standing over Anakin's burning body).

I was in college when A Phantom Menace came out. I'd grown up with the Original Trilogy; had the Millenium Falcon playset and tons of other toys.

I had a lot of friends of a similar age who were all geeks like me.

We all went to see APM on opening night, half of us with lightsabers or whatever. We stood in line for hours to get tickets. That's how freaking excited we were.

And then we saw it. And came out. And there was a collective ". . . what?" It wasn't just that stuff like Jar Jar was offensively stupid and not in any way funny. The acting was wooden, the CGI in the pod race was cool but everywhere else everything felt "plasticy" in a way that the OT didn't, and still hadn't when we'd seen the re-releases in theaters the preceding years. There was a glacial pace based on a freaking trade blockade. Darth Maul was cool, and then died, whoopie. Just . . . . what?

So yeah; if you liked Episode 1, I'm willing to bet you were a kid when you saw it, and you didn't grow up with the OT as a touchstone. Ep 7 at least felt like Star Wars again, after Eps 1-3. I wasn't entirely happy with Ep 8, but some of it (Luke's arc) was exactly what I wanted. And even when it failed, it still "felt" like Star Wars again, just the bad parts of RotJ rather than the good parts of ESB.

Rogue One was great, Solo could've been great if it had nothing to do with Han. Mandalorian is great. Eps 1-3, nooope. Heck, I'm watching the Clone Wars show finally, and most of the episodes in the first couple seasons there are awful for the same reasons as Eps 1-3. People rave about this show and I'm hoping it gets better, but so far, it is "not good".

You say that the sequels brought nothing new, but that's exactly my point with this show: It's doing nothing new, and people are willing to give it a pass because the one new thing it does have is adorable baby Yoda...

Mandalorian is definitely doing new stuff. It's filling in time periods. The whole "lone gunman" western/ronin vibe is new, but a great fit (even if the 4th episode was a LITTLE on the nose for the tropes).

It's just ALSO tying in mostly physical effects work (even baby Yoda), a solid instrumental score (different from the films, to set a different tone), showing large numbers of hints of a MUCH broader world that they make no real effort to expand on immediately, etc. Which gives it that Star Wars feel.

You want to say that the movies are held to a higher standard? Sure, fine. I get that. But it doesn't exactly help the case that this is what people have declared to be "good Star Wars" and TFA/TLJ aren't. Especially if you're also going to throw the prequels in on the good side.

The reaction against TFA and TLJ is borderline insane. Especially when they start talking about "SJW stuff" with regards to it. TFA was great; I'd probably rank it above RotJ. TLJ struggled, but it's still better than Episode 1 or 2.

[Agrotera]

6) Is no one going to address the issue of these tracking fobs? Like, how is it working? Surely they're keyed to an individual - does that mean baby Yoda has a chip in him or something? If so, how was that chip planted before they knew they wanted him as a bounty? I'm missing something here.

7) To sort of go with the dialogue point - I think it's too early for the Mando to be showing emotion and a softer side. Narratively, it's way too fast for him to go from this robotic bounty hunter to actually pondering settling down and taking off his helmet in 4 episodes.

It's funny because everything about Mando's logic in the episode was right on track. Need to lay low? Sure, find a backwater planet. Just caused some shenanigans that you correctly assume has comprised your new secret spot? Beautiful, time to move on, and then boom, the episode loses me. What do you mean Mando wants to bounce but leave the kid there? Does he not know how tracking fobs work? He found baby Yoda using one himself so does he just believe that the Guild is only after him and not baby Yoda? Which that in itself makes no sense since Carl Weathers was willing to let bygones be bygones if he just gave up the baby. There's obviously a substantial bounty on baby Yoda and backwater Worlds will be the first Worlds to be scoured by the Guild so why in the heck does he all of sudden believe baby Yoda is going to be just fine? The fact that the episode zeroed in on the Bounty Hunter specifically using the tracking fob is what makes all this even more perplexing.

Your also on point with the dialogue. It seemed baffling that an importune run in with a village made him seriously consider settling down. It was obvious he wasnt going to but weird that the episode spent time on that, like you said, only 4 episodes in.

[Endus]

It's funny because everything about Mando's logic in the episode was right on track. Need to lay low? Sure, find a backwater planet. Just caused some shenanigans that you correctly assume has comprised your new secret spot? Beautiful, time to move on, and then boom, the episode loses me. What do you mean Mando wants to bounce but leave the kid there? Does he not know how tracking fobs work? He found baby Yoda using one himself so does he just believe that the Guild is only after him and not baby Yoda? Which that in itself makes no sense since Carl Weathers was willing to let bygones be bygones if he just gave up the baby. There's obviously a substantial bounty on baby Yoda and backwater Worlds will be the first Worlds to be scoured by the Guild so why in the heck does he all of sudden believe baby Yoda is going to be just fine? The fact that the episode zeroed in on the Bounty Hunter specifically using the tracking fob is what makes all this even more perplexing.

We have to assume he had reason to think the fobs were all destroyed, or that he'd destroyed whatever they were tracking the kid with (he's gotten rid of the floaty basinet, you'll note).

He turned out to be wrong, but the moment he realized that, he knows he can't leave the kid, because he won't be safe. He needs to figure out how they're tracking him, or why, and get him off that bounty list.

Your also on point with the dialogue. It seemed baffling that an importune run in with a village made him seriously consider settling down. It was obvious he wasnt going to but weird that the episode spent time on that, like you said, only 4 episodes in.

It's only "baffling" if you assume he hasn't always wanted that. He came back for the kid out of paternal instincts, because the Mandalorians who raised him consider foundlings precious and family to be everything. He's never shown any real eagerness for fighting; he's always ready for it, and very good at it, but he's not picking fights, generally. Just not willing to stand down from one when it presents itself, or when people need defending.

What this episode said to me was that he's tired of all this, he wants to settle down, but he doesn't feel he deserves that life. Which, again, is standard Western trope stuff.

[ravenmoon]

I fnially discovereed the charm of the Mandalorian - it plays like a video game /short movie series. It's like a live action version of the Clone wars cartoons - with carefully selected scenes and zones to manage costs.

[PACOX]

Good call on everyone who predicted Mando isn't a born Mando. Very interesting lore development.

[Puupi]

Good call on everyone who predicted Mando isn't a born Mando. Very interesting lore development.

Didn't he have those flashbacks about his parents in like episode 1 already....?

[Khaza-R]

I finally got a chance to watch the series this weekend. I am really impressed. Mando is a very likable protagonist. Baby Yoda is effing adorable. I also love how they've shown a bit more about some of smaller details in the SWU like the Jawa culture.