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The Mandalorian - a general discussion thread - * SPOILERS * — Page 19

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Yeah, I guess “respect” isn’t the correct word. What matters is whether it adds to the canon in a respectful way. The sequels failed to do that in my opinion, so I’m excited to see what will happen in the future.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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I agree, there’s a ton of potential for this show and I’m excited to see how they build from what they did in season one.

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StarkillerAG said:

I think The Mandalorian finally disproves the myth that Star Wars fans are impossible to please. The reaction to the show so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Even the small minority of people who don’t like the show aren’t angry about it.

I would say it proves the theory that many have had for awhile, which is that the only way to not make SW fans angry is to not play with the preexisting characters/story at all. To that end, let’s check back in five or so years from now and see if everyone agrees on the quality of the Mandalorian’s final season.

Make a small-scale TV show that respects the canon and makes the audience care about the characters, and fans will eat it up.

The irony of course being that the show arguably disrespects the canon quite a bit in its treatment of Mandalorian culture.

Also, I have a few friends who are haters. They definitely exist. But who cares if there are haters? Like what you like.

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I actively despised episode 6, but it seems to be a pretty popular episode of the show which shows that a lot of SW fans just have bad taste imo

Andor: The Rogue One Arc

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DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

I think The Mandalorian finally disproves the myth that Star Wars fans are impossible to please. The reaction to the show so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Even the small minority of people who don’t like the show aren’t angry about it.

I would say it proves the theory that many have had for awhile, which is that the only way to not make SW fans angry is to not play with the preexisting characters/story at all.

And is that such a big problem? Did they absolutely NEED to make a sequel trilogy? They could have kept Return of the Jedi as the true ending, and no one would have complained.

To that end, let’s check back in five or so years from now and see if everyone agrees on the quality of the Mandalorian’s final season.

Maybe the show will go downhill by then, we don’t know. It doesn’t mean that Star Wars fans are hypocrites.

Make a small-scale TV show that respects the canon and makes the audience care about the characters, and fans will eat it up.

The irony of course being that the show arguably disrespects the canon quite a bit in its treatment of Mandalorian culture.

I thought the show made it clear that Mando’s tribe is an extremist group, not necessarily connected to mainstream Mandalorian culture. Dave Filoni is one of the showrunners, and I doubt he would forget about his own story.

Also, I have a few friends who are haters. They definitely exist. But who cares if there are haters? Like what you like.

Amen to that.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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NFBisms said:

I actively despised episode 6, but it seems to be a pretty popular episode of the show which shows that a lot of SW fans just have bad taste imo

“Bad taste” is a strong word. Just because someone else has a different opinion than you doesn’t make their opinion wrong.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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I was only joking, no need to high road me lmao. I don’t actually believe most fans have “bad taste”, I just can’t deny that what seemingly more and more people want for the franchise is at odds with my own preferences.

The Mando was a pretty good show, but to me it’s not the “savior of Star Wars” that I’ve seen a lot of people call it. And when they point to shallow episodes like episode 6 as a reason for that, but call something like episode 2 meh, it’s easy for me to slip into judging other’s preferences because if anything I would think the opposite. People love their badass action and towing the line between being a kids show and not, but that’s not enough for me personally.

Give me jawas, weird eggs, genre pastiche, worldbuilding, and real feeling people over headshots and borrowing the tones of “darker” things. I would have felt the opposite way once - when I was 13. That sounds pretentious but The Mando only pleases everyone by being so safe. It has potential to be so much better.

But I also rewatched Cowboy Bebop before this came out so my perspective may be skewed a little.

Andor: The Rogue One Arc

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I understand your point of view, but I don’t feel like The Mandalorian is too edgy, or too safe. Like the later seasons of Clone Wars, it’s a nice compromise between child-friendly and adult-friendly, safe and risky. I feel like that’s the route Star Wars should go in the future.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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Yeah, that’s what I meant. Star Wars is intended for all ages, and The Mandalorian really did a good job of allowing people of all ages to enjoy the show.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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Anybody else retconning the props in the StarWars bar that went on to be IG-88’s head to actually be repurposed assassin droid heads?
I now imagine that the bar owner was wrongly attacked & maybe lost a friend to them. He got his revenge, repurposed their parts & developed a hard grudge.

Ray’s Lounge
Biggs in ANH edit idea
ROTJ opening edit idea

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Honestly I love this idea! It would fit well with recontextualizing “We don’t serve droids here!” to him hating droids. I’m pretty sure the book From a Certain Point of View says he lost his family in a droid attack during the Clone Wars, so it fits. Maybe in his younger years he killed some droids and then used their parts for the Cantina.

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StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

I think The Mandalorian finally disproves the myth that Star Wars fans are impossible to please. The reaction to the show so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Even the small minority of people who don’t like the show aren’t angry about it.

I would say it proves the theory that many have had for awhile, which is that the only way to not make SW fans angry is to not play with the preexisting characters/story at all.

And is that such a big problem? Did they absolutely NEED to make a sequel trilogy? They could have kept Return of the Jedi as the true ending, and no one would have complained.

Well is the goal to try to annoy as little SW fans as possible? Because I think quite a lot of people have enjoyed what they’ve done with the story. As much as I dislike TROS, I’m very thankful for TFA and TLJ, two of the very best SW films they are. I really enjoy Solo as well. I’d hate to lose any of them. I’m sure many prequel fans would say the same about those films, regardless of the fact that they didn’t absolutely NEED to make a prequel trilogy.

To that end, let’s check back in five or so years from now and see if everyone agrees on the quality of the Mandalorian’s final season.

Maybe the show will go downhill by then, we don’t know. It doesn’t mean that Star Wars fans are hypocrites.

I didn’t mean to say SW fans are hypocrites (though many are, but that’s unrelated to what I’m saying). What I meant was Mando is universally pleasing right now because people have no preexisting attachment to the characters. In a few years, when the show is ending, fans will have specific expectations and wants, in a similar way to they do with the main saga.

Make a small-scale TV show that respects the canon and makes the audience care about the characters, and fans will eat it up.

The irony of course being that the show arguably disrespects the canon quite a bit in its treatment of Mandalorian culture.

I thought the show made it clear that Mando’s tribe is an extremist group, not necessarily connected to mainstream Mandalorian culture. Dave Filoni is one of the showrunners, and I doubt he would forget about his own story.

I don’t think that they made that clear at all. But that’s not a problem, because it is very easy to come up with that explanation/interpretation to make the discrepancy work. But there’s always an explanation/interpretation that makes a discrepancy with preexisting canon work. Some fans just refuse to think of what that explanation might be when they hate a work and think it “ruins” SW.

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StarkillerAG said:

I understand your point of view, but I don’t feel like The Mandalorian is too edgy, or too safe. Like the later seasons of Clone Wars, it’s a nice compromise between child-friendly and adult-friendly, safe and risky. I feel like that’s the route Star Wars should go in the future.

ray_afraid said:

I guess it’s kid-friendly? But I don’t remember ever feeling like they threw something in just for kids. I hate that $#*! & I was very much worried about it.
The tone feels very much like Empire to me. It’s for every age without pandering to any age.

StarkillerAG said:

Yeah, that’s what I meant. Star Wars is intended for all ages, and The Mandalorian really did a good job of allowing people of all ages to enjoy the show.

I can’t really explain this opinion too well but it feels different to me.

Empire didn’t pander to any age but this feels opposite. Like, they tried to pander to every age. Like they go halfway “for kids” and halfway “for adults.” It’s a show about a seedy criminal underworld but operates on very basic black/white morality. It tries to show the inherent goodness of our hero but also wants to make him a cold, ruthless badass. Baby Yoda but also, Bill Burr!

It’s how we get an entire episode seemingly endeared to the ambitions of a young hotshot bounty hunter, only for him to be quickly dispatched in such a weirdly dispassionate, cynical manner. But then how we get a mildly violent slasher-inspired “hunting for prey” scene next episode, only for every unsympathetic mercenary to be alive at the end. Together those are mixed messages. It goes back and forth between rule of cool and kid gloves.

And look, there could be an interesting discussion there, but any themes about the dichotomy inherent in all this is left only as subtext. There’s no real depth, in a way that feels like a symptom of the show being neutered from the start as something for a younger, less thoughtful audience.

It feels safe because there are new concepts and ideas here, but they just fold those back into the classical Star Wars archetypes. The Mandalorians as a violent warrior culture are treated as essentially just another honorable faction - with unique customs ofc, but - like the Jedi. These far reaches of the galaxy in disarray after a revolution, but we’re still seeing parts dominated by an evil Empire. The potential of humanizing the “simple men just trying to make their way in the universe” is forgone so that it can continue making all criminals just dishonorable scumbags; with the exception of our hero who is learning not to be (sounds familiar). I don’t care about making Star Wars “dark” - this isn’t about violence or anything - but they clearly use the interesting anti-heroism angles as a hook (esp. in the marketing), and cop out of exploring them.

If it was really like Empire, it wouldn’t pull its punches or simplify/ignore themes just because kids are in the audience. Granted, we lack the frame of reference for a “Star War” crime/western - the OT didn’t have a navigation of ambiguous morality and civilization to contend with. But it’s not like the PT dumbed down its own boring politics and trade disputes. Even if the original stories are your archetypal plucky heroes fighting evil bad guys, they existed in something far larger than that conflict. They brushed shoulders with all kinds of different exciting things that didn’t have to be the same genre/style if you were to go possibly into detail.

I guess that’s my issue with it. It still feels Star Wars-“branded” even when it posits to explore a side of the universe not connected substantially to the movies. The Clone Wars did bounty hunters and a criminal underworld with more nuance in a few one-off episodes alone. And that was for kids! The galaxy as it did when I was younger watching the OT just doesn’t feel as expansive or as full of possibility. It feels more obvious than ever that there’s stylistic/brand cap on the creativity of whatever Star Wars explores now.

I like the show, it’s certainly fun, but not in the way it is hyped up on reddit or across the internet.

Andor: The Rogue One Arc

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The Mandalorian Stagecraft Photos
https://www.slashfilm.com/the-mandalorian-stagecraft-photos/?fbclid=IwAR2Ra3VRnNC1Yxdt0g-Qe8-sC3nlDTqkZ4TgfeHkzHrr7iItPZnH104RrP4

The last two and the one with Kuiil were pretty obvious, but some of these were quite surprising.

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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Those behind-the-scenes photos are really cool. The way they used those LED screens to seamlessly integrate real actors and props with CGI backgrounds was groundbreaking. It couldn’t have been done 3 years ago.

NFBisms, I understand why you don’t really like the show, but I didn’t feel like the changes in tone were at all jarring. I’m glad the show wasn’t overly kid-friendly or overly adult-friendly, Star Wars has always been a franchise that has something for everyone. There are some light-hearted moments for kids, some dark moments for adults, and Baby Yoda, which is for all ages. It’s far more tonally consistent than some other entries in the franchise (glances at TPM and TLJ).

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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To me, Mandalorian feels like sort of a Saturday morning cartoon with a live action skin. Basically, it feels like one of the animated shows. Which isn’t really a problem for me, but I get the critique that some of the more adult aesthetics and posturing don’t exactly match what is at its core a kids show.

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Isn’t that kinda what ANH was though? I mean aesthetically it looked just like many other serious 70’s sci-fi films, and pre-SE it was even a fair bit violent, yet at its core the story is basically a Flash Gordon-inspired kid friendly adventure.

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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Yeah, I personally like that it feels like a live-action version of a Dave Filoni animated Star Wars show, which seems intentional since Filoni is one of the showrunners. But I understand why someone might not like that.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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StarkillerAG said:

Yeah, I personally like that it feels like a live-action version of a Dave Filoni animated Star Wars show, which seems intentional since Filoni is one of the showrunners. But I understand why someone might not like that.

Ditto. I’d personally be fine with all future SW shows, both live action and animated, being Filoni-esque. If it gets too dark, I personally would find it strange. My brother keeps half-joking that he wants aN R-rated SW show/movie, and even if that was possible, it would just feel off IMO. RO was to me the right amount of edgy and dark while still being SW. I don’t think it could go too much further than that. And Mando struck a good balance. Though I hope the Cassian and Kenobi series avoids any baby Yoda-like things to “balance” things out (though it works really well for Mando).

Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay)
Original Trilogy Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Beyond the OT Documentaries/Making-Ofs (YouTube, Vimeo, etc. finds)
Amazon link to my novel; Dawn of the Karabu.

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The first season of The Mandalorian was decent, not great (and certainly not as outstanding as some have proclaimed). I mean, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of depth or stakes (with a lot of the weekly entries being very episodic and self-contained). There were some nice moments, sure (and the show’s rating gets a bit of a boost from being, you know, Star Wars), but overall I’d probably give it a “B” (because there have been many really, really good series in recent years on AMC, Netflix, etc. that I feel were quite a bit better). So, even though it has Star Wars on its side, I’ll just continue to watch and hope it improves next season.

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I just don’t see any of this perceived “pandering”.
The baby isn’t anymore pandering than the one in Lone Wolf & Cub.
It’s cute, sure. But babies are cute. So What?

I certainly don’t see this pulling any punches that Empire would’a thrown.
I don’t think that statement holds any water at all.

Guess I don’t feel that this was to overly badass or cutesy.

Also, totally rad BTS shots!

Ray’s Lounge
Biggs in ANH edit idea
ROTJ opening edit idea

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ZkinandBonez said:

Isn’t that kinda what ANH was though? I mean aesthetically it looked just like many other serious 70’s sci-fi films, and pre-SE it was even a fair bit violent, yet at its core the story is basically a Flash Gordon-inspired kid friendly adventure.

I get what you’re saying, but it’s not really the same thing.

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ray_afraid said:

I just don’t see any of this perceived “pandering”.
The baby isn’t anymore pandering than the one in Lone Wolf & Cub.
It’s cute, sure. But babies are cute. So What?

I certainly don’t see this pulling any punches that Empire would’a thrown.
I don’t think that statement holds any water at all.

Guess I don’t feel that this was to overly badass or cutesy.

Also, totally rad BTS shots!

I actually don’t think it panders to children more than it panders to adults that would feel ashamed for liking things made for children. If that makes sense? But it clearly is made for a younger audience, they just put in stuff like door dismemberment to get “adults” into it.

To me it’s an illusion of the tone Empire hit.

Empire wasn’t mature because they lost and Luke lost a hand, it was a well written story about faith, sacrifice, and failure. Kids could enjoy it because it never crossed a line in regards to violence or sex, but they didn’t need to “get” everything that was happening on a thematic level, that makes it work as a great film.

The Mandalorian feels like it talks down to kids. And adults, for that matter. Perhaps it was just my expectations, but the reason to set a Star Wars show in this part of the galaxy would be putting us in the shoes of the scum and villainy of the galaxy. The OT is what it is because we follow plucky rebel heroes doing good. That morality doesn’t have to be consistent when we start following different characters. I mean, Rogue One didn’t.

For example, the Clone Wars and even Solo are able to depict dilemmas and nuanced characters that aren’t just Jedi or rebels. Ventress, Beckett, Boba, Bo-Katan, etc. But in Mando, bandits might as well be Putty Patrol. The mercenaries we meet in episode 6 are all unlikeable jackasses. Toro Calican is set up to be somewhat sympathetically over his head, but is coldly treated as “deserved to die” by the end of his episode. Everyone but Mando is bad, IG needs to be reprogrammed to be good, Carga is Lando he had no choice. The stories are simplistic and shallow in a way they don’t have to be considering what the show’s premise is.

It doesn’t feel like “for kids” in the sense that they shoehorn Jar Jars or cutesy droids, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s “for kids” because they handle subject matter the franchise has handled before with kid gloves, but through that demonstrate no faith in kids to appreciate more. It talks down equally to adults, as though we wouldn’t even give it a shot if it didn’t have an edge. It’s not a balance. It’s two clashing motivations for existing mashed together.

All of this say, I do like the show, but I think it’s one of the things that show Star Wars is a consistent brand as opposed to a universe I like.

Andor: The Rogue One Arc

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I don’t see how the show “talks down” to anyone. It doesn’t include violence for the sake of violence, all the adult stuff in the show has been portrayed very tastefully.

And I don’t get what you’re saying about the lack of nuanced characters. Almost all the characters in the show have depth. Din Djarin tries to follow the traditions of his people, but he faces constant conflict between people’s expectations of him and his own moral values. Cara Dune is tired of constant war with Imperial warlords, but when people are in danger she does whatever she can to keep them safe. Greef Karga goes from friend to enemy to unstable ally in the course of 4 episodes. Werner Herzog’s character wants the Empire to return, not because he just wants to be evil, but because he genuinely believes that the galaxy was better before the Empire fell.

And also, the comparisons to Empire seem unfair. Empire is one of the greatest movies of all time, you can’t judge this show just because it isn’t as great as Empire.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX