I watched your first chapter and it’s overall my favorite feature-length ‘first’ Mandalorian film in terms of overall story and visuals. Just a few suggestions:
- Love that you kept the opening bounty scene for characterization, but it could be further trimmed. Just cut from them walking to the razorcrest to the ship flying away, and then show Mando freezing him in carbonite and pan out to show all of the frozen bounties - this shows how successful and no-nonsense he is and tees up the offloading scene nicely.
- Trim down the Jawa + repairs sequence even more if you could. It gets a little slow in the second act.
- I agree that you need a third act after moving the wetlands to film two (the final sequence where they leave Nevaro is the best ‘film one’ ending beat in my opinion, so good idea). But the stakes of the prisoners arc are way too low and we don’t really get the sense that Mando is worried about Grogu if he’s willing to literally leave him in the hands of imperials on the planet. The idea that his interaction with the covert and memories of his own situation as a foundling increase the urgency of the rescue makes more sense. Also, Pershing shouldn’t have access to Grogu for more than a day or so, otherwise they would have the blood they need and Gideon would have no reason to recover him in season 2. I suggest that you have the prisoners episode happen on the way back from Arvala-7 to Navaro. It would still achieve the goal of making it clear that Mando is fed up with bounty hunting, but the catharsis at the end of the arc would be that he gets to go back to Grogu and reckon more with his decision to turn Grogu in.