This is a really exciting project. I love that you’re hitting the vast majority of the story beats. Other than trimming Boba’s ascent to power, what would you say are your most major cut subplots? (I appreciate you have changelogs but it’s hard to work that out from a process of elimination!)
Thanks for the support! I haven’t even watched my own films all the way through in one sitting yet, so I might make some further changes in the coming weeks but this has been a really fun and refreshing project.
The main cuts I made to BoBF are:
- No exposition dump scenes with Fennec describing everything. I found nearly every scene of these info dumps to be incredibly dull and do nothing to move the plot or provide any needed context.
- No Boba sitting on throne having conversations scenes. Accepting gift after gift, cracking jokes, talking to random farmers about the “troublesome youths”, the mayor’s secretary doing his pony show etc. These are all so slow and again, do nothing to advance the conflict against the Pykes. It’s just people doubting Boba and treating him as a chill dude instead of one of the most intimidating men in the galaxy.
- No mod gang recruitment, no gamorrean recruitment, no Twin Hutts, no Wookie night attack. I did show Kranstan getting recruited as that directly precedes the meeting with all the crime lords so I felt this one helped beef up Boba’s influence and it didn’t seem like he was recruiting for his 10 person gang, it’s more like Kranstan knows who Boba is and joins out of respect.
- No Rancor delivery/petting scenes. The revelation of Boba’s rancor is much more surprising now, and as I’ve made Boba already an established crime lord, we are now sitting in expectation for “when is the rancor going to show?”
- No Grogu on Tatooine
Those are the main ones I can remember! Keeping things focused on the growing Pyke invasion and getting Din and Boba reunited is a clear driving force.
good work with chapter 2, didn’t like what they did to boba fett but you made it more entertaining to watch. It was some getting used to switching from show to show. But the chronology is nice.
I agree on the lizard. Felt weird “why is he getting a lizard”. Fennec being fixed was fine, as boba explained it to her.
Exited for next chapters.
Thanks! Yeah, this one is structured the most uniquely as the stories intertwine in an odd way chronologically. How I viewed it, as my project is essentially trying to create “The Mandalorian Bible”, is that many books of the Bible were written by different authors and have totally different literary mechanisms. So I’m fine with this Chapter being structured differently than my other films in the series as that is reflective of the Bible as a whole.
Regarding the lizard, I viewed it simply as the Tuskens’ tradition. They gift you a lizard and you get splashed with hallucinogenic sand, that’s how they culturally show their admiration for your work. I don’t see any significance to the lizard that creates any plot expectation for it. But you are the second person who has mentioned it feeling odd, so maybe I am viewing it differently. If someone else gets the wrong vibe from it too then I’ll look into changing it, but I don’t see a problem from where I sit now. Thanks for the feedback!
One more announcement here: I’m renaming this project from The Book of Mandalore to The Way of Mandalore. Calling it “The Book” and using the films as “Chapters” didn’t really make sense with my “Mandalorian Bible” theme. It’s not “The Book of the Holy Bible”, it’s “The Holy Bible” with books… So renaming to “The Way” gives more credence to this “Holy Book” theme while also getting in that awesome phrase that has such great significance to the show. So it’s The Way of Mandalore and each film is a different “book” in that compilation of texts. I’ll be working on making a new logo for it that will replace the regular The Mandalorian logo in my films.
Thanks for following, and I’d appreciate more reviews if anyone has time! Will be rendering v2’s/3’s through the rest of the month.
(Links sent out to everyone who asked above)