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So....The Mandalorian


Filthy Jawa
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3 minutes ago, Tank said:

The Mandalorian isn't about Grogu's journey to being a Jedi. It's about Mando's journey to finding himself and developing an identity after knowingly becoming a faceless, emotionless, hunter/solider.

While Star Wars is stacked full of characters, there is a very precise POV to each entry, and while there are many overlapping themes and ideas, everything must serve these POVs,m which means the rules are going to get bent more often than not.

Without a doubt but this whole discussion started with what I said about Luke's appearance not actually being about showing leak in his prime, it was about showing Luke beginning to suffer some of the same mistakes made by earlier Jedi. Whether that was Filoni and Favreus intent doesnt matter because thats what it does. I agree the overall show is about Mando but they are the ones who chose to bring Luke, and thus the overall story of the saga, front and center at the climax of their shows 2nd season. A move they had to know would completely overshadow the plot of the show. 

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24 minutes ago, Spider-Man said:

In regards to Yoda destroying the Tree and by implication to Luke the Jedi books in the sequel trilogy.

The context here would seem to suggest that Yoda isn’t telling Luke the old ways were wrong, rather that Luke’s (and perhaps the Jedi before him) clinging to those teachings as the only way is what was wrong. It would appear to be another reinforcement of attachment as ownership, and the unwillingness to bend. Luke (and again perhaps the Jedi before him) looked at those teachings almost as absolute, with rigidity, and defining their failures through not being able to apply the knowledge in those texts to students. Perhaps making the message that Yoda was telling Luke was that his failure was forgetting he was taught differently, and yet he clung to words in books (in addition to Yoda suggesting that just because someone fails that then doesn’t make them worthless). In a way, this message here also appears to mirror modern educational concepts of how to reach individual students.

Its not about saying everything the Jedi did was wrong. Certainly they were well intentioned, tried to do right and alot of what they taught was good. When Luke says "its time for the Jedi to end" he isn't right about that. Totally ending the Jedi is throwing out the baby with the bath water. Its about moving forward and not repeating the mistakes of the past. But there were mistakes, big mistakes that they made. Mistakes that Id say Luke is repeating in his Mandalorian appearance.

I think particularly with the books Yoda is saying don't be overly reliant on them. He says there is wisdom in them but in the end they don't matter in alot of ways. To compare it to the real world its like when people take a couple lines from The Bible and say it says homosexuality is evil when the overall meaning of The Bible is the exact opposite of that.

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The PT proves that the Jedi messed up by breaking the rules and training Anakin.

Then Luke did the same thing and took at least one apprentice who wasn’t a baby (Ben) and it went horribly.

If anything, the Jedi need to follow their rules more, not toss them out.

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4 hours ago, Fozzie said:

The PT proves that the Jedi messed up by breaking the rules and training Anakin.

Then Luke did the same thing and took at least one apprentice who wasn’t a baby (Ben) and it went horribly.

If anything, the Jedi need to follow their rules more, not toss them out.

This is a very literal take on the story and what its trying to say but I probably couldn't say its a completely unfair take either. 

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16 hours ago, Filthy Jawa said:

Why is the answer to a perceived problem always to go to the extreme opposite? ‘The left isn’t getting the job done, we need the extreme right!’

More often (always) the right answer is to meet somewhere in the middle, but reactors gotta react. 
 

I totally see your point about all the fan service moments. Personally I like some of it and some of it just strikes the wrong notes for me as well. But someone with no sense of Star Wars would be a disaster. That’s crazy. 
 

Also I don’t think all the things you mentioned are just fan service. Dave Filoni further developing Ahsoka’s or Bo Katan’s story is not the same as Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazan popping up in Rogue One. 

I always think of Irvin Kerhsner when these types of conversations come up. Someone who understood storytelling and character development but who wasn’t necessarily a Star Wars nerd when making his movie. 

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12 hours ago, The Choc said:

This is a very literal take on the story and what its trying to say but I probably couldn't say its a completely unfair take either. 

It definitely wasn’t the intended message, but it also sits there pretty clearly. Although maybe Sidious would have trained Anakin directly after the council denied him. 

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On 12/31/2020 at 2:56 PM, The Choc said:

Its really basic fantasy story telling. The hero is nearly always reluctant. Look at Harry Potter. When Hagrid first tells him he is a wizard Harry thinks hes made a mistake. Hes not like "hell yeah lets go". Hes like on you must be wrong. Contrast that with the flashbacks to Dumbledore visiting Tom Riddle in the orphanage. When Albus tells Tom he is a wizard Tom is basicaly like "hell yeah I knew it, when can I get to school". This is important and its similar to Star Wars and the difference between how those who become heroes and how those who become villains accept their power or their call to adventure is important. If the characters didn't act like this the story would feel wrong to us because it has to be this way.

Excellent point. Throughout all kinds of storytelling it's almost like this is a prerequisite to being a hero. The hero is the one who doesn't want to do it. I'm a what? A wizard??? Oh God no, I don't want that. I just want to be normal. Whereas the villain is the one who gets excited by the prospect of the adventure without thinking of the consequences. I'm a wizard? Ha, I knew it. I can't wait to develop my power!

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Heroism and Villainy is not as simple as a hero is someone who doesn’t want power or adventure, while a villain craves it (the “rules” for Jedi don’t apply to every heroic archetype). There might also be confusion here regarding the call to action and the self doubt that displays growth or/ change through the journey (also neither of those things are exclusive to heroes, really).

;-) Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.

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In mythic storytelling it does tend to go that way though, doesn’t it? Luke, Rey, Harry Potter, Frodo, The Last Starfighter... they all had the power but didn’t believe it at first. It’s often the journey of learning to believe in yourself and then succeeding.

Weirdly it doesn’t seem to hold true for comic book heroes as consistently. Supes, Cap... those guys just wanted to be heroes from the get go. Maybe that’s why they’re the boring ones.

But then look at Wolverine in Bryan Singer’s X-Men (which arguably created the mold for every successful superhero movie to follow). Reluctant outsider, doesn’t want to get involved, finally sees the bigger picture, gets in the game and saves the day.

 

 

 

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You can tell different kinds of stories but when you do the hero's journey/coming of age tale you need certain elements. The hero has to turn down or at the very least show significant reluctance when given their initial call to adventure. Its the same with mentors dying. People thought Luke wouldn't die. He HAD to die. The mentor(s) always die so the hero has to succeed on their own. Although nearly in all cases the mentor is able to offer some aid after their death. 

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14 hours ago, Filthy Jawa said:

Weirdly it doesn’t seem to hold true for comic book heroes as consistently. Supes, Cap... those guys just wanted to be heroes from the get go. Maybe that’s why they’re the boring ones.

One of the elements I remember about the Smallville TV series which I found worked well for the character was Clark showing that same reluctance. At times throughout the show you could feel he almost hated having his powers. He just wanted to be “one of the guys” and go through his teen years as a normal person. One episode in particular I remember Clark had lost his powers. So he started doing the things he hadn’t been able to do before. He tried out for the basketball team and during a game one of the other players hit him particularly hard going for a rebound, knocking Clark to the floor. Clark lay there on the floor and when he realized he was ok and no one else had been injured in the scrum (they way they would have if he still had his powers), he just started smiling, elated that he could do these “normal” activities. 

Adding this character trait to Clark Kent I feel was necessary to give him that mythic heroic quality we’ve been discussing. Makes a huge difference to the way he was portrayed in the 1978 Donner film where Clark just wanted to use his powers to be the big man on campus and it was his earth father who reigned him in. 

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I'm a moron and posted this in the other thread when it belongs here innit.

I just binged season 2 in two days. Had the ending spoiled for me so I knew it was coming which kind of sucked. Though I thought it was fitting, the ending that is....not having it spoiled. Thought the Luke CGI was rubbish. CGI humans done to that level of realism look incredibly fake once they're next to an actual real life human. The eye just doesn't buy it at a certain level of detail. Especially next to an actor.

 

Thought Ashoka stuff was awesome. There were some of the best moments of any Star Wars in this season. Certainly, for myself at least, it's been the best Disney Star Wars product and story they have put out so far. It gives me renewed optimism for the other announced series, for sure. 

 

Really liked Temuera in this. Infinitely more than him in the PT. He looked fucking terrifying with his bald head in the black robes with his war club. He bought some Maori ferocity to those fight scenes. The weapon he was using is very similar in function to a traditional Maori weapon called a Taiaha which is essentially a staff with a spear head at one end and a club at the other made out of a solid peice of wood, usually from the Kauri tree which is super hard timber. Anyway, Temuera was welding his club as Boba like a Maori warrior and looked as though he relished every moment. It was a joy to see.

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What I love about the Mandalorian is that the Jedi are not the primary focus. I loved that they were in there, but spoken of in hushed tones and veiled in mystery. They're described as "sorcerers" by the only people who've encountered them. And when we meet Ashoka she's an unknown quantity (for me at least who's not seen clone wars) and kind of weird..like do I trust her? Theyre powerful, majestic and secretive and having them only in for an episode here and there, existing on the periphery only strengthens their mystique. 

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I haven't been watching this show week to week, didn't do it that way last year neither. Kind of assumed that if I had then I'd end up spending half an hour after each one browsing through Wookieepedia looking at DL-44 rifling twist rates. But if I watch the seasons in large chunks then this way that wasting of the only truly precious commodity any of us are ever given can be kept to a relative minimum. Am I going to follow this method with the next Star Wars show or the next Star Wars show or the next Star Wars show or the next Star Wars show or the next Star Wars show or the next Star Wars show or the next Star Wars show? I DO NOT KNOW!!??

 

I watched the whole show over a weekend after it all wrapped then blathered out ~2500 words of opinion. Yet every time I felt like posting about it here y'all were in the midst of discussion and I kind of felt like offering up what I had to say would register as an interruption. Even if only in my own head!

 

I didn't feel like doing that up until now but seeing as Odine has bravely stood in the gap (Thank you, Odine!) I now feel comfortable and at ease with offering my substantially edited thoughts on the matter. I can't figure out how to put it up behind spoiler tags anymore, so sorry!

 

 

Here ya go :

 

I liked the show! I really enjoyed this show for children! Sitting at home alone, desperately trying to avoid catching or spreading the Krytos virus, please don't deny me my small comforts. I enjoyed all eight episodes!

 

BUT COME ON ALREADY

 

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) doesn't take us back to Tatooine or bring in another Death Star. The new characters we meet in the new movie are new characters, not previously established elements of the mythos being brought to the fore. Having the new season start off with familiar creatures (Twi'leks, Gamorreans, I think the Cyclops guy isn't new but he feels new enough that he doesn't count, actually) and a return to a familiar planet to deal with a familiar thing struck a sour note to me. We've already been to Tatooine! We've already met Amy Sedaris! And then the show kept striking sour notes, over and over again, ceaselessly and without end. I feel like the only completely new character this season was Rebbetzin Frog. Everyone else was recycled from last year or from earlier television shows or so rooted in established lore that they didn't feel new at all. Who is the Mamdamalorian going to recruit into one of his crazy schemes for Season 3 other than her? Timothy Olyphant, sure, maybe the bearded guy in the X-Wing. He didn't really get any new new playmates! Just people from the animated shows, people who are just slightly different action figures of existing action figures (even if you're not brainpoisoned enough to recognize Timothy Olyphant as Jodo Kast or Jaster Mereel or whoever was the guy who found Boba Fett's armour and cosplayed as him for a while until Fett merked him, well, that character he's playing is still just a guy who was Boba Fett for a little while, that's what he's got going for him), and the people we've already met on the show so far!

 

It occurs to me that the above paragraph can be summed up in eleven words : THIS STAR WARS TELEVISION SHOW IS A STAR WARS TELEVISION SHOW. Actually, that's only seven words total with four of them repeated. I understand that a sequel to a movie is a different animal than a second season of a television show, and then there's the whole 1980 v. 2020 aspect to all of it, yeah. I get it, I get it. I know.

 

Still, I think there's some merit in what I'm talking about. The only planet that felt new on any level was the harbour planet. Maybe the scrapyard junkheap planet that Bill Burr was serving time on? So two new new planets out of eight episodes? Come on, man! The Mandamalorian's gotta go to more new planets! I don't want him to go to Tatooine or the planet with Carl Weathers and Gina Carano on it all the time, I don't want him to go to planets familiar from the show or Star Wars in general, I want him to go to new places with new people on 'em. (Wait, I forgot about the dying forest planet where Ahsoka Tano was fighting Cheri Oteri! Three new planets! Okay, maybe the show did a better job at this than I thought.)

 

It doesn't help that a lot of the appeal of the show is seeing great character actors come in to do a bit of Star Wars for an episode, put on a Star Wars uniform and say some Star Wars stuff on the Star Wars show. So even the new stuff there isn't really new in its newness, it's not a new experience for me to see Titus Welliver. He's in everything!

 

But there is one area in which the show absolutely succeeds, where it's really firing on all cylinders, and that is of course this :

 

It never EVER stops being funny to see the Bébé Yoda wanting food, chowing down on food, using its little force powers to get itself some food, vomiting up the food he's already eaten, eating things he's not supposed to. Bébé Yoda is a hungry boy! Feed the Bébé Yoda his Welsh rabbit with a poached egg, not too runny, bacon, scones, butter, cream, jam, NOT STRAWBERRY, a pot of lapsang. Feed him his sausages!

 

Best bits ---

* the Krayt dragon vomiting up ichor all over the Tusken Raiders, then them hacking and slicing through its exploded corpse

* finding out in the credits that it was Dan Dority (W. Earl Brown) under the Weequay makeup

* "She said all that." "I paraphrased."

* I literally laughed out loud @ the Bébé Yoda eyeing those eggs during the opening landing sequence of the 3rd episode

* the fashion choices of the Mon Calamari, not just the sweaters but the scarves and the headwraps as well

* the little redeyed rat squirrel, the one the Ponda Babas were about to eat

* Horatio Sanz pointing out "There's no guard rail on this."

* Ahsoka Tano and Cheri Oteri doing the doffing-the-cloak-before-battle thing

* Ming Na-Wen exposing her cyborg-y midriff

* both the Mamdamalorian and Temuera Morrison doing the gunslinger guntwirl thing

* the destruction of the ship, absolutely surprising

* the AT-ATs repurposed as industry machinework cranes, which is their (apocryphal?) realworld origin

 

tldr = justice for alan dean foster, justice for michael a. stackpole

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/31/2020 at 9:59 PM, Filthy Jawa said:

So why can't Mando give Bo Katan the Darksabre? Didn't Sabine give it to her before?

Yup. And shortly after that the planet was purged, and the Mandalorian diaspora began. If you look into the Mandalorian backstory from legends, they were a warrior society to the extreme before modern times. They would conquer other planets because they believed that strength was morality, and therefore weakness was sin. Any society that put up a good enough fight was invited to accept the creed and become Mandalorians themselves. Those that didn't were wiped out or subjugated because they were sinful. The universe naturally rewarded survival of the fittest, so allowing weak societies to grow and prosper was unnatural and against the will of the universe. Bo's sister started the "New Mandalorians" and tried turning Mandalore into a pacifist society, which was a failed experiment in the end.

With that context in mind, it is not hard to see why Bo taking the saber through peaceful means the first time was seen as weak (aka sinful). It is unlikely that anyone will be able to unite the disparate clans through peaceful means for the foreseeable future as a result. While there are likely some relatively peaceful Mandalorians still around, the purge was probably a pretty big: "Aha! I told you so!" moment for them, so their voices don't hold much sway anymore.

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I don’t know my Mandalorian history as well as you obviously, but it sounded like Mando’s crew were regarded as some cultish sect by Bo Katan and her friends. And they were linked to the Deathwatch, right?

I suppose it’s one of those ‘perspective’ things. But it didn’t sound like Bo Katan was some fringe player in Mandalorian politics in the time of this series.

But I like your explanation. It’s better than anything I’ve got.  

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Bo used to be part of their group, but backed away from it well before the purge.

She took possession of the saber after she had moved to a more moderate stance that was somewhere between pacifism and genocide, to counter their growing extremism.

Their creeds appearto have diverged even more since the purge. The helmet rule wasn't a thing back in the Clone Wars era. Not sure if they adopted it for legitimate reasons either. Those types of purity tests are pretty typical of groups like this in the real world, and sometimes serve no other functional purpose besides testing loyalty to the group.

I imagine part of the future of the series will be exploring Mandalorian history and reunification efforts in much greater detail.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Best Star Wars show ever!

We are slow to gain new technology in our homes, especially if it requires money.  Streaming services have to be worth our while before we pay money each month to watch TV.   Two Thanksgivings ago, we went to a relative's home who had Disney+ and was nice enough to put on the first three episodes of "The Mandalorian" for us.  Unfortunately, he didn't turn the captions on and no one would shut up so we watched the episodes without actually hearing them.

Christmas Day 2020, socially-distant in our home, we found out all about the MCU TV show schedule and took the plunge.  We streamed the last season of "Clone Wars", the entire "Rebels" series and both seasons of "The Mandalorian".   Loved it, loved it, loved it.

Now to nitpicking (what SW fans love to do best):

* How'd Boba Fett get out of the sarlaac pit?
* Why can't Din Djarin just give the Darksaber to Bo?  Didn't Sabine originally give it to her anyway?
* Please stop CGI'ing old Star Wars characters to make them look young.  They look weird.  
* Would have been more effective if Djarin had waited to take off the helmet until that last scene with Grogu.
*  Speaking of which...Grogu, Grogo, Grogu.  Every scene he was in had us laughing; his last one left us crying
*  That Boba Fett fight with the Gaderffii stick was the best.
*  Luke Skywalker in his prime...what we wanted to see in the sequels and thought we had in "The Last Jedi" until it was revealed to be a big fakeout.  
* Just what is the ratio of Yoda-species years versus human years?  Grogu is 50 and can't even talk, but he can run, feed himself and use the Force.    Did Yoda just die young or is Grogu developmentally challenged?

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I posted a DeepFake on here a few pages back that showed a more accurate Luke. Now I present to one to you that is even more impressive along with how it was made. Instead of simply putting the new work over the old, these people started from scratch, with a new actor and new special effect. It looks amazing if you ask me.
 

 

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13 minutes ago, Zerimar Nyliram said:

I posted a DeepFake on here a few pages back that showed a more accurate Luke. Now I present to one to you that is even more impressive along with how it was made. Instead of simply putting the new work over the old, these people started from scratch, with a new actor and new special effect. It looks amazing if you ask me.
 

 

I watched that last week.  Cool series. 

Ehhhh, maybe if they worked it out more, had a better stand-in, someone who can do the body language better.   The deep fake that was made that still used the same footage was better, IMO. 

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In most cases, I'm not a fan of cancel culture.  Whether I agree or disagree with the person being cancelled.  It seems too much of a knee-jerk reaction to basically delete someone's career or life from existence because of one or two regrettable mistakes.  We're all human, all make dumb mistakes, and are all always learning and improving.

But in cases like this, she very likely had multiple chances.  She's posted dumb and insensitive stuff before and probably got a corporate talking down and maybe even had someone go to bat for her.  When it's a pattern, and goes to the extent that it had, then you have to eventually take the trash out.

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