Just watched episode 3 of The Mandalorian season 3 . This one was a mixed bag . Started out strong with great action and then in the middle it switched to follow other characters in what looked and played like a bad fan film with an enormous budget. I mean, yeah , the establishing shots and the incorporation of some of Ralph Mcquarrie’s art were great , but I kept getting distracted by the bad lighting on the actors and the bad framing in some shots . The photon fizzles were ridiculous too …light lollipops , really ? Then there was the ending with a cosplayer cult initiation .
I did like the production art at the end though and it looks like they missed the mark in capturing the look and feel of it . I would like to see an animated show that looks just like the production art now . Overall I would rate this episode a 3 out of 10 . And I have to agree with others on here that the forced medical procedures by the New Republic were fucked up .like a twisted version of conversion therapy . I can’t buy that these were the same people who fought a rebellion against the Empire . I don’t know who directed this episode , but I hope it’s a one off and gets better . Has me worried for how they will handle Thrawn when he inevitably shows up , either here or the Ahsoka series .
Another criticism I have is that in modern Star Wars , even the sequel trilogy , which I mostly enjoyed up until TROS ,except for the Canto Bight stuff in TLJ ,is that the aliens don’t feel alien enough . That’s something I appreciated about the original trilogy …Ben Burrt came up with all those wonderful alien languages that had strange sound effects layered underneath and subtitles were added for them . ( they mostly dropped the ball on that in the prequels too ) . Now we get aliens with hillbilly accents speaking English ( or Basic , galactic standard ,what have you ) .
Yeah , Admiral Ackbar spoke English ,but it had some nice guttural and reverb effects added to it which helped retain an alien quality to it . The Mon Cal in this episode could have used more of that .The aliens in recent shows have seemed more to me like Star Trek aliens in the way they are portrayed onscreen , sadly . even the legacy ones .