The Mandalorian

[Corvinus85]

22 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Interview with Filoni and Dawson

spoiler's for Rebels:

 

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So it seems like they're at least considering ret-conning the timing of that final Rebels scene. But that's would mean she and Sabine never went to the unknown regions and instead just waited to hear that Thrawn was back? kinda lame. 

 

 

Spoiler

Or, Ahsoka heard what happened with Thrawn, proceeded to follow up on it, eventually reached a dead end, and sought Sabine's help. But the timeline would be a bit too long for all this, with Sabine just being a guardian of Lothal all this time.

 

[Corvinus85]

So apparently the magistrate lady may be a survivor of Dathomir, though not necessarily a Nightsister, as there were other clans living on Dathomir. It would fit with her people-were-massacred background, and since Dathomiri often skew towards being bad, it would also fit with her fury which she applied towards gouging out other worlds of their resources. And it would fit with her martial arts training, along with being Thrawn's pupil.

Plus, the actress who played her, Diana Lee Inosanto is a trained martial artist, her dad being a famous martial artist, and she is goddaughter to Bruce Lee. So if you bring in someone like her, you're going to use her in a close combat scene. Just like if you bring Ray Park, you're going have him do some flippy martial arts stuff, not carry out long conversations. (That's what Sam Witwer is for )

I do wish this background was brought forth in the episode, then everyone would have been like, ahh that makes sense. Well, everyone except @Veltigar who hasn't watch The Clone Wars. 

[Corvinus85]

5 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I thought of Kill Bill when I saw that fight, and glad someone made this:

 

Seeing the duel again, I have to say Diana Lee Inosanto did a pretty good job with her facial expressions. There was a look of acceptance when Ahsoka appears, but she quickly gains confidence; maybe she was thinking hey, I can beat this Jedi. Then by the end, she was totally worried, despite relieving Ahosoka of one lightsaber.

[Veltigar]

8 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

So apparently the magistrate lady may be a survivor of Dathomir, though not necessarily a Nightsister, as there were other clans living on Dathomir. It would fit with her people-were-massacred background, and since Dathomiri often skew towards being bad, it would also fit with her fury which she applied towards gouging out other worlds of their resources. And it would fit with her martial arts training, along with being Thrawn's pupil.

Plus, the actress who played her, Diana Lee Inosanto is a trained martial artist, her dad being a famous martial artist, and she is goddaughter to Bruce Lee. So if you bring in someone like her, you're going to use her in a close combat scene. Just like if you bring Ray Park, you're going have him do some flippy martial arts stuff, not carry out long conversations. (That's what Sam Witwer is for )

I do wish this background was brought forth in the episode, then everyone would have been like, ahh that makes sense. Well, everyone except @Veltigar who hasn't watch The Clone Wars. 

I actually now full well what Dathomir and the nightsisters are. I might not have the time to watch the cartoons, but I do get lost on Wookiepedia sometimes. That kind of backstory would have been great, but they'd have to properly introduce it and not just say "her people on Dathomir were massacred"

 

[Rippounet]

3 hours ago, Veltigar said:

It has been lauded as quality tv in the post I replied to. For me, amazing is one of the key attributes of Quality TV, perhaps not to you?

Indeed, "amazing" is an adjective I keep for the shows that truly blew my mind, not for every single show I find good/entertaining.

[RumHam]

37 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

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Or, Ahsoka heard what happened with Thrawn, proceeded to follow up on it, eventually reached a dead end, and sought Sabine's help. But the timeline would be a bit too long for all this, with Sabine just being a guardian of Lothal all this time.

 

Yeah that could be. I was just hoping to see the adventures of Ahsoka and Sabine in the Unknown Regions and now that seems unlikely. The magistrate probably wouldn't know where Thrawn was and be gather resources for him if he wasn't back in regular ole space.

It also means Ezra has presumably been a prisoner of Thrawn for ~10 years. Given that and all the attachments he had to people he lost or was separated from that's concerning! But I don't know if they'd go that dark with a character who originated on a show for kids as the kid stand in.

[DaveSumm]

6 minutes ago, RumHam said:

 

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Yeah that could be. I was just hoping to see the adventures of Ahsoka and Sabine in the Unknown Regions and now that seems unlikely. The magistrate probably wouldn't know where Thrawn was and be gather resources for him if he wasn't back in regular ole space.

 

Spoiler

Maybe she goes to see Thrawn, who tells her he left Ezra in the unknown regions, so she dons the Gandalf cloak and goes to get Sabine. So that could still be the premise, and it does sound cool ... a Jedi and a Mando exploring the crazier fringes of the Star Wars galaxy.

 

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

So apparently the magistrate lady may be a survivor of Dathomir, though not necessarily a Nightsister, as there were other clans living on Dathomir. It would fit with her people-were-massacred background, and since Dathomiri often skew towards being bad, it would also fit with her fury which she applied towards gouging out other worlds of their resources. And it would fit with her martial arts training, along with being Thrawn's pupil.

Plus, the actress who played her, Diana Lee Inosanto is a trained martial artist, her dad being a famous martial artist, and she is goddaughter to Bruce Lee. So if you bring in someone like her, you're going to use her in a close combat scene. Just like if you bring Ray Park, you're going have him do some flippy martial arts stuff, not carry out long conversations. (That's what Sam Witwer is for )

I do wish this background was brought forth in the episode, then everyone would have been like, ahh that makes sense. Well, everyone except @Veltigar who hasn't watch The Clone Wars. 

Just saw this:

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Theory that Morgan Elsbeth is a member of the Ming Po, the tribe Ahsoka saw Death Watch slaughter in TCW S4. If true, it's likely Bo-Katan's actions as a member of DW will be brought to light.

 

[karaddin]

I get what Wert is saying regarding serialisation being a mistake when you don't have an overarching story to tell, but I think part of that is the perception that you need to have incredibly high stakes when doing it. I don't need that from Mando, but I'd like more of a long term character arc with respect to accepting he was raised in a cult and embracing a more free version of Mandalorian. Which we might be getting but it's very slow.

Him being Grogu's father is another one of that and that is progressing.

[ithanos]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

Interview with Filoni and Dawson

Wow, the degrees of separation. Dawson attends acting school when she's 16yrs old, and one of her classmates that summer is Hayden Christensen. That's pretty cool. And nice to see the lessons paid off for one of them.

For The Mandalorian it seems logical to keep Gideon as the main villain, and pair off Ahsoka and Thrawn to another series. 
Regarding the imperials. I hope they are fragmented in that Thrawn & Gideon are not working together, but instead doing their own thing to consolidate whatever slice of the former empire each can piece for themselves. To have Gideon as part of Thrawn's command seems a waste of a conflict. A three way stand-off is much more interesting to me. If they keep Thrawn around, then it would be great if we could get him observing two parties battling in space and commenting on tactics and recognising flaws.

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I never knew you were such a big Gina Carano fan Wert  I'd say the actors are by-the-by serviceable. I haven't really seen anything very impressive yet on that front. The only one really breaking the mold is Gina and that's not meant as a compliment. 

Yeah, she's not great (as in Deadpool, she's adequate, no more, but not terrible) but that's like one character out of a couple of dozen at this point.

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I'll give you the production values, tone and atmosphere though. I would however like to reiterate that those only make part of a show. If technology fetishism had any base in reality, we would all be hailing the prequels as amazing after all. To earn that moniker quality, you have to combine those production values with some quality writing. 

The direction and cinematography has also been excellent (the last episode generated about a dozen desktop-worthy stills by itself) and the writing more than serviceable for what they are trying to do, which is not something that can be said about the prequels.

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Apparently Ahsoka has already been greenlit for a spinoff with Dawson, so this is basically just setting up her story I suspect. 

Not officially. It seems likely, but there's been no official confirmation. It's in the "Captain Pike spin-off show" no-brainer category, but that still took six months to greenlight after the main show aired.

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I also suspect strongly that Disney ain't gonna let them end after 4 seasons. It's one of the main things holding the Disney+ platform up. 

They got Season 2 on air so far because they were in production before Season 1 even aired. I don't believe they've done that for Season 3 yet, so I doubt we'll see Season 3 until 2022. So they're going to have some time to get more shows on the air (maybe four or five of their MCU shows will debut between now and then) and if they do S1 of the Ahsoka show between Mando S3 and S4, that'll give Disney more of an idea of the situation, and they can request that Mando keeps going. If we assume the four-season arc is getting Grogu home, that seems reasonable for that story (assuming they fill it out a bit more) and if they want to do a Baby Yoda-less Mando afterwards that should be possible.

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Let's start by this idea that the OT has bad writing. I can't even begin to fathom how anyone can think that.

For the original Star Wars, sort of. The original script was pretty ropey, full of the most ridiculous shit that got cut to ribbons in the edit, but they also had a lot of great stuff (some of it from Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who added all the Leia/Han banter, and Brian De Palma's rewrite of the opening crawl). Empire was pretty excellent, between Leigh Brackett's first draft, George Lucas writing the best revision he ever did (by his own admission), Larry Kasdan coming in and doing the polish and Kershner often just saying fuck it on set and letting the actors improvise.

Return of the Jed does have a surfeit of bad writing, both in the overall sense (a second Death Star? The first forty minutes having nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Replacing a slave Wookie rebellion with random teddy bears?) and the detailed sense, although there's still some pretty good individual lines (again thanks to Kasdan).

[Veltigar]

17 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, she's not great (as in Deadpool, she's adequate, no more, but not terrible) but that's like one character out of a couple of dozen at this point.

There were some other bad ones (remember that prison ship attack episode. I remember the twileks in that being particularly awful), but by and by I would say that the performances in the series have been serviceable. Not bad, but definitely not great either. There are certainly a lot of great actors in there, who have done great work in other stuff, but I have yet to see anything that in this series that rivals their performances elsewhere (e.g. compare Moff Gideon on this show v. his Edgar on The Boys). Not saying that those great performances can't still come, but so far, they have been adequate.

17 hours ago, Werthead said:

The direction and cinematography has also been excellent (the last episode generated about a dozen desktop-worthy stills by itself) and the writing more than serviceable for what they are trying to do, which is not something that can be said about the prequels.

I certainly won't disagree with that knock on the prequels.

17 hours ago, Werthead said:

For the original Star Wars, sort of. The original script was pretty ropey, full of the most ridiculous shit that got cut to ribbons in the edit, but they also had a lot of great stuff (some of it from Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who added all the Leia/Han banter, and Brian De Palma's rewrite of the opening crawl). Empire was pretty excellent, between Leigh Brackett's first draft, George Lucas writing the best revision he ever did (by his own admission), Larry Kasdan coming in and doing the polish and Kershner often just saying fuck it on set and letting the actors improvise.

Return of the Jed does have a surfeit of bad writing, both in the overall sense (a second Death Star? The first forty minutes having nothing to do with the rest of the movie? Replacing a slave Wookie rebellion with random teddy bears?) and the detailed sense, although there's still some pretty good individual lines (again thanks to Kasdan).

You know what, you are right about RoTJ. That is indeed the blemish on my compliment to the OT's writing. I'd say that part of it is really great, but the points you bring up are clear weaknesses. 

So let me just rephrase my comment and state that the OT's writing as we see it in the finished product of ANH and ESB is wonderful   

[Jace, Extat]

You've crawled so far up your own ass in an effort to be as witty and dismissive as Rick Sanchez that you're docking imaginary points off of two universally beloved motion pictures for stuff that isn't in the fucking movies. 

 

[Caligula_K3]

Maybe I've just read too much ancient Greek tragedy in my life, but to my mind, the re-use of plot elements is not a problem by itself. While originality is a great thing, I don't think it's the be all end all; familiar stories can be retold again and again with very different purposes. So I have no problem with a second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, because they use the familiar plot template to do different things than they had in A New Hope. Sure, ewoks are pretty silly, but the three pronged climax of the movie (Endor/space battle/throne room) is phenomenal and puts its own spin on things. Honestly it's one of my favourite climaxes in movie history.

Same with Starkiller base. I may have instinctively rolled my eyes when it was first revealed in the movie, especially since it really comes out of nowhere, but I enjoyed that in the climax, the space battle to take it out wasn't the point: it was the confrontation between Han and his son, followed by the lightsaber battle in the snow and Rey's powers awakening.

When it comes to the Mandalorian, I'm all for the homages to individual western movies or tropes; I just wish at times they'd put a little more effort into putting their own spin on it, rather than copying things beat for beat and calling it a day (albeit with jetpacks and Tuscan Raiders instead of rifles and indigenous people). I thought one of the best episodes in this regard was last season's with the prison break; it's an old trope, sure, but they did it in a fun way with a memorable cast of characters and also used it to deepen our understanding of Mando's past.

[J. Stargaryen]

On 11/28/2020 at 8:58 PM, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

The child's name isn't exactly a spoiler at this point so screw it.

I'm not saying this necessarily had anything to do with the decision making behind the episode, but bear with me:

"George" is the anglicized version of the greek name Γεώργιoς (Georgios). There is a patronymic of Georgios, meaning "son of" or "descended from", which is Γεωργίoυ (Georgiou).

'Could be that "Grogu" is a bastardized "Georgiou" rather than a sloppy anagram of "George".

That is an interesting idea, and I wouldn't rule it out. "Son of George" makes just as much sense as my idea, and neatly accounts for the "ooh"-sounding "U" at the end.

I was recently assured that the name is based off of the children's yogurt, Gogurt. Since Yoda was called Yogurt in Space Balls and possibly before. The reasoning being, is if Yoda=yogurt, "baby yoda"=children's yogurt. I have my doubts but who knows. Maybe there is some other, mysterious reason behind the name and the letters/sounds are purely coincidental.

I have since read Favreau revealed the name to Filoni, so we can cross out that part of my theory. The same facts about the consonants and vowels still stand, of course.

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Jon told me early on in season 1 what it would be, which made me start to think about how people could learn the name.

- Dave Filoni

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, J. Stargaryen said:

That is an interesting idea, and I wouldn't rule it out. "Son of George" makes just as much sense as my idea, and neatly accounts for the "ooh"-sounding "U" at the end.

I was recently assured that the name is based off of the children's yogurt, Gogurt. Since Yoda was called Yogurt in Space Balls and possibly before. The reasoning being, is if Yoda=yogurt, "baby yoda"=children's yogurt. I have my doubts but who knows. Maybe there is some other, mysterious reason behind the name and the letters/sounds are purely coincidental.

I have since read Favreau revealed the name to Filoni, so we can cross out that part of my theory. The same facts about the consonants and vowels still stand, of course.

- Dave Filoni

I will bet you all my money against all your money that Star Wars will never draw inspiration from Space Balls or any other Star Wars parody.

This is the real shit, son. The real shit.

However, there is an anecdote from Biskin's Easy Riders Raging Bulls that oddly orbits this. One of the things Lucas thought-out-loud about, regarding his Star Wars moneys back in '77, was buying a yogurt franchise.

[TheLastWolf]

I am not sure if this belongs to the Star Wars thread or here, but here's it anyway. 

If 'The Child' or Baby Yoda (netizens) does become Darth Grogu, who will be his Sith Master/s and apprentice/s? Not to mention the possibility of Jedi too

[Maltaran]

2 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

I am not sure if this belongs to the Star Wars thread or here, but here's it anyway. 

If 'The Child' or Baby Yoda (netizens) does become Darth Grogu, who will be his Sith Master/s and apprentice/s? Not to mention the possibility of Jedi too

Time to confirm the Darth-Darth Binks theory?

[Kalbear]

New ep is out. And it's really nifty!

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

I hear it's making people cry.