I’ve been wondering why BOBF (minus the latest episode) has felt somewhat cheaper than The Mandalorian and I wonder if it simply has to do with how bright and open Tatooine is as a setting. It’s so much harder to hide the rough edges of CG effects when everything is in broad daylight, and they might have had to resort to more green screen as the volume doesn’t work for most types of open spaces. Contrast this with The Mandalorian which was usually much darker and moodier, with the exception of its two Tatooine episodes and the Rodriguez episode on Tython, two of which had a fair amount of “it looks off” comments. The only exception here is The Marshal, but they definitely spent more time and money on that than other episodes.

I also think it’s possible that Rodriguez isn’t used to directing on a TV budget and/or schedule, though at the same time isn’t he known for being a quick and cheap director? I don’t really know his work all that well, but based on his episode of The Mandalorian I get the impression that he’s more of a “fix it in post” guy, and while this might work for movies like Sin City or Alita it can cause a lot of trouble on TV series, especially since the volume require extensive pre-production work, the reverse of most movies these days.

Of course in addition to my first point it could simply be that BOBF isn’t as big a prority to Lucasfilm and that the budget is simply smaller. And to be clear, with a few exceptions, I don’t think the series look bad at all, but it does feel a little “off” when compared to The Mandalorian.