Star Wars: The Mandalorian [** Spoilers **] [Disney+] (US Pace)

kerplun k

7 episodes in, 1 left.
I'm back in work today and I've spent my whole morning looking at baby Yoda pictures. This is the way.

IAMAMORON

The show is children friendly so you need to accept that Mando is not going to be killed by laser fire, even if he runs through 90,000 blasts a minute whilst keeping his head down running across the screen, you are into A-Team style shoot outs until the series is over. Get over it now.

For me I just like being in the Star Wars universe, it is fine as escapism goes. There was definitely a lot of filler going on, but it wont stop me watching another series.

fluke

This show is thing to happen to Star Wars in a long time. It's lean, simple, and works.

expectationlost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zDkniNTeZg

80's style theme, this is excellent really reminds me of Saturday evening programmes that were on as a kid

kerplun k

I hope baby Yoda's back is okay from carrying this show for 8 episodes.
All joking aside, I found The Mandalorian very enjoyable.

It’s funny how the consumption of a series can affect peoples opinion of it.
Anyone I spoke with who binged this enjoyed it more than the folk who watched it in weekly instalments.
I watched this off the back of Watchmen which was a very dense show, and one which gave people a week to digest and analysis each episode, but The Mandalorian is so simplistic in its approach, I think it works best as a binge, also, considering how "passionate" some of the SW fans can be, I think I would have found myself getting very frustrated by weekly instalments, especially with the pacing in the first 5 weeks.

Anyhews, onto the actual show, As I mentioned, it was very enjoyable. Between Filoni, Favreau and Yost, they came up with a very clear, simple, and hugely effective hook for this by centring the whole thing on Mando protecting Baby Yoda, and boy does this work well. This approach kinda reminded me of Tim Krings first season of Heroes, with the "Save the cheerleader, save the world" bit, using a very simple story arc to great effect.

But let’s face it, the key to The Mandalorians success is baby Yoda. he/she is just so god darn cute, So much so In fact, I don't actually care that Disney are doing this to shamelessly plug a toy. Shut up and take my money Disney.

Anther show that I kept thinking about while watching this was Marvels Agents of Shield. I couldn't help but think this is what AoS was supposed to be. The Mandalorian shares similar goals to AoS in that it was meant to be a family friendly TV instalment of a massive franchise that could forge its own identity, but with AoS first season, it was spread too thin, the narrative and objectives weren't focused enough and budget didn't match the ambition. This is where The Mandalorian triumphs. It's an ultra-focused machine. It knows exactly what it’s supposed to be and everyone involved here is fully behind it. It uses the classic TV "villain of the week" approach. It’s fully immersed in the Star War universe. We get Stormtroopers, Jawas, AT-ST, speederbikes, Xwings, TIE fighters etc. Disney have got the check book out for this one and they don't skimp, everything looks glorious, it’s been a long time since I've seen stormtroopers look this well, and as I said, this show knows exactly what it's supposed to be. It’s not ground breaking or game changing or universe shattering, and that’s just fine. It’s just a super fun Star Wars TV show that doesn't take things too serious and it’s exactly the kind of show that I hoped a star wars live action TV show would be. Good job Favreau.

Special mention goes to Pedro Pascal, It's not easy getting an audience to care about your character when you wear a helmet the whole time, but he does a fantastic job (Halo TV producers take note).
Carl Weathers, Werner Herzog, Nick Nolte, Gina Carano and Taika Waititi are all great in their respective supporting roles.
And of course the design team and puppeteers for baby Yoda. They make this show what it is.

Bring on season 2

silverharp

The 2 stormtroopers doing the target practice , very good! , I gather most of the show was shot in a studio, even the desert scenes , some mad progress in special effects

kerplun k

silverharp wrote: »

The 2 stormtroopers doing the target practice , very good! , I gather most of the show was shot in a studio, even the desert scenes , some mad progress in special effects

I physically wanted to attack them for punching baby yoda

pixelburp

kerplun k wrote: »

I hope baby Yoda's back is okay from carrying this show for 8 episodes.
All joking aside, I found The Mandalorian very enjoyable.

It’s funny how the consumption of a series can affect peoples opinion of it.
Anyone I spoke with who binged this enjoyed it more than the folk who watched it in weekly instalments.
I watched this off the back of Watchmen which was a very dense show, and one which gave people a week to digest and analysis each episode, but The Mandalorian is so simplistic in its approach, I think it works best as a binge, also, considering how "passionate" some of the SW fans can be, I think I would have found myself getting very frustrated by weekly instalments, especially with the pacing in the first 5 weeks.

That's a fair point, I was watching weekly and found its progress tedious, but TBH that's simply not going to change anytime soon. I neither have the time, palette, or eyeball stamina to mainline an entire series in 1 or 2 sittings. I'd love to know from Netflix etc. what the actual breakdown of viewers who binge vs. piecemeal are, because I feel like the latter are being ignored more & more by online services, for the sake of the endless slush of "content" we're leaned on to consume. It's not a huge factor in my enjoyment, but you can definitely tell those series where, if you watch it in a short space of time, the pacing works better.

I mentioned way back and maintain my curiousity: I'd love to see a "film" cut of this series, the fluff pared down and to see if you could cut the Mandalorian into a 2, 2.5 hour movie.

kerplun k wrote: »

Special mention goes to Pedro Pascal, It's not easy getting an audience to care about your character when you wear a helmet the whole time, but he does a fantastic job (Halo TV producers take note).

I don't have the link on me, but apparently Pascal only provided the voice, not the physical presence on-set (bar that one scene); it was two actors who were wearing the bucket throughout. Obviously, in the case of the action scenes that demand stunt-work, but it was someone else even for the dialogue & non-action moments.

Tony EH

kerplun k wrote: »

I physically wanted to attack them for punching baby yoda

I'm not as big on baby Yoda as some people are. But when your man punched that satchel, I nearly winced.

And it's only a puppet in a bag.

Actually, it's just a bag.

Tony EH

pixelburp wrote: »

I mentioned way back and maintain my curiousity: I'd love to see a "film" cut of this series, the fluff pared down and to see if you could cut the Mandalorian into a 2, 2.5 hour movie.

Aye. I felt that way too, but with the detours of 4, 5 and 6, that probably wouldn't work all that well now.

As for binge watching, I looked at the show in it's entirety again with the wife and it is much better that way. It still has its problems though.

Padre_Pio

Tony EH wrote: »

I'm not as big on baby Yoda as some people are. But when your man punched that satchel, I nearly winced.

And it's only a puppet in a bag.

Actually, it's just a bag.

Having a puppet instead of a CGI character was a masterstroke.

I know he's a puppet. He looks, acts, feels like a puppet, but I have a far greater emotion connection to this puppet than any other soul-less, fake, tennis ball on a stick computer imagery.

Tony EH

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Having a puppet instead of a CGI character was a masterstroke.

I know he's a puppet. He looks, acts, feels like a puppet, but I have a far greater emotion connection to this puppet than any other soul-less, fake, tennis ball on a stick computer imagery.

Absolutely. A puppet will always supersede a CGI model. Except for hardware, like starships and stuff, which has come on leaps and bounds.

And in that regard, 'The Mandalorian' has been excellent. The shots of the spaceship coming and going have been first class.

Foxtrol

Finally got a chance to finish this last night and really enjoyed the last two episodes and the season overall. It has flaws, though many would be hard to avoid with the formula they chose for the show - having a short season, trying to appeal to all demographics, and several big name directors given more of a license to do their own thing, which doesn't quite mesh together.

I know some will still disagree but, as I expected, by the end the complaints about the series being full of 'filler' episodes was shown to be jumping the gun. Even if you completely ignore character and relationship development between the child and Mando, along with some obvious plot holes that could have been opened by not having some of the episodes, only episode 5 and 6 didn't have a clear impact on the rest of the season through the introduction of recurring characters (though I suspect both will impact in season 2).

pixelburp

Tony EH wrote: »

Aye. I felt that way too, but with the detours of 4, 5 and 6, that probably wouldn't work all that well now.

As for binge watching, I looked at the show in it's entirety again with the wife and it is much better that way. It still has its problems though.

I dunno, I think 4 & 5 could be excised; the fourth episode introduced Cara Dune, but then in episode 7 we got a pretty succinct second intro when Mando went team building. While the fifth was a stop at Tatoinne Circle K & the most throwaway episode. Can't even recall the reason Mando stopped at his old friend's station, but episode 6 might make for a potential midpoint set piece.

Not saying it'd be seamless, but it'd make for an interesting experiment in editing to see how much of a movie you could make the Mandalorian without sacrificing pacing or coherence. Might make Mando's fleeing look even more brief than it was mind you

NIMAN

I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time before some nerd on the net edits the series down to a film, taking out whatever bits he/she thinks aren't needed.

Padre_Pio

NIMAN wrote: »

I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time before some nerd on the net edits the series down to a film, taking out whatever bits he/she thinks aren't needed.

That would be cool.

The edit of the Hobbit makes it a watchable movie.

Nigzcurran

Padre_Pio wrote: »

That would be cool.

The edit of the Hobbit makes it a watchable movie.

Never heard of this before, is it on YouTube?

Penn

Really enjoyed that last episode. Brought everything together nicely, with some decent action bits and a little sprinkle of comedy throughout. Plus c'mon...

Giancarlo Esposito with a black lightsaber...

ROLL ON SEASON 2!

AMKC

Padre_Pio wrote: »

That would be cool.

The edit of the Hobbit makes it a watchable movie.

I actually fell asleep watching that movie in the cinema it was so boring and I loved the first 3 Lord of The Rings movies in the cinema. Seen all 3 of them in the cinema was not arsed with any of the Hoppit films after the first one.

Homelander

Good show, really enjoyed it. It's really like a live-action version of a Star Wars cartoon - very simplistic, probably far too much so for non SW fans I would imagine, and very child friendly, but really entertaing. Impossible not to like both the titular character and Baby Yoda. Visuals are superb and love how faithful they are to the original trilogy. Overall I think they've done quite a decent job with it.

NIMAN

Nigzcurran wrote: »

Never heard of this before, is it on YouTube?

That's how I watched Breaking Bad.

Hego Damask

So I was watching Chapter 3 there, "The Sin", so seems this is set after the return of the jedi ?
This is not actually baby Yoda, but just the same species ?

I was watching the 1st 2 episodes believing it was set way back before the prequels ...

pixelburp

Yes it's set after RotJ, with the Imperials scattered and the New Republic ascendent. Baby Yoda is just a shorthand used given we neither know the creatures name or species (literally, George Lucas intentionally held off from ever giving a name, to increase Yoda's mystery and uniqueness)

Hego Damask

yeah, they are mentioning Endor in Chap 4 now ... cheers ...

Padre_Pio

AMKC wrote: »

I actually fell asleep watching that movie in the cinema it was so boring and I loved the first 3 Lord of The Rings movies in the cinema. Seen all 3 of them in the cinema was not arsed with any of the Hoppit films after the first one.

They took out everything that wasn't in the Hobbit book.
So Radagast, Saruman, Sauron, Legolas, the Pale Orc, that weird love story, most of the stuff in Lake Town etc are all removed.

It's a much tighter story. You'll find I if you Google.

Watched Rogue One yesterday and I noticed how the Mandalorian doesn't show damage when stormtroopers are killed. Even the originals had sparks and charred holes in the armour.
Really is aimed at adolescents.

Tony EH

^

Look up Maple Films. They did a 4 hour cut that's not bad at all. There are still huge problems with the way it was filmed however. But there's no Radaghast, or Dwarf/Elf love story and a lot of the gibberish has been cut out, making for a tighter film over all.

NIMAN

Padre_Pio wrote: »

.. the Mandalorian doesn't show damage when stormtroopers are killed. Even the originals had sparks and charred holes in the armour.
Really is aimed at adolescents.

It does.

Padre_Pio

NIMAN wrote: »

It does.

Definitely toned down.

Babe a look from about the 6.10 mark here https://youtu.be/FeOfhzu7ZdY

Some sparks and people falling down.

NIMAN

Well the episode when he went back to take baby yoda back after he had delivered him, there was plenty of violence against the stormtroopers.

I even thought about not letting my youngest watch it.

irishguitarlad

Loved this series, I much preferred it to the Witcher which was very meh.