The Mandalorian

[Toth]

1 minute ago, Vaughn said:

Well are they pure pirates or more like insurgents? Again, there's some iffy alien/human politics on that planet so I read it as more that they were not merely pirates but anti-colonizers.

Agreed. I must say, I immediately frowned and suspected some behind the scenes conflict going on. I mean the dialogue as they passed the village made it pretty clear that there are pissed off natives who are hostile to the Imperial miners occupying the planet and the action of the 'pirates' aligned very well with trying to disrupt their operations instead of stealing stuff. But I believe then the writers realized they had our heroes slaughter essentially good people, so they haphazardly cut in that single line identifying them as pirates to throw out the dark implications.

[DMC]

16 minutes ago, Toth said:

I mean the dialogue as they passed the village made it pretty clear that there are pissed off natives who are hostile to the Imperial miners occupying the planet and the action of the 'pirates' aligned very well with trying to disrupt their operations instead of stealing stuff.

Yeah the ethics become really fraught really quickly in terms of how the episode presented the situation.  Like I said, I hope Baby Yoda is worth Mando killing/getting killed all those "pirates."  And no matter how you slice it the triumphant music when they're "rescued" by the stormtroopers is pretty damn dumbfounding.

[Vaughn]

22 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah the ethics become really fraught really quickly in terms of how the episode presented the situation.  Like I said, I hope Baby Yoda is worth Mando killing/getting killed all those "pirates."  And no matter how you slice it the triumphant music when they're "rescued" by the stormtroopers is pretty damn dumbfounding.

I have no problem with it in the context of the show. This isn't 'Rebels' - it's fine to have some darker undercurrents to the show where it's made clear that this is a more cynical and transactional world. We've already established Din was raised by a bad cult of Mandos, right? He's not supposed to be perfect or purely noble (I don't think?)

[Corvinus85]

The season started with Mando twisting the words of a deal so he could still kill a guy without him doing the killing. So yeah, Mando is not a saint.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Vaughn said:

I have no problem with it in the context of the show. This isn't 'Rebels' - it's fine to have some darker undercurrents to the show where it's made clear that this is a more cynical and transactional world.

I was mostly referring to the inconsistency of the ethics presented within that episode, as Toth mentioned.  I don't have any problems with Mando's antiheroic persona generally.  But, still, I think the triumphant music when the stormtroopers saved them was pretty damn stupid.

[Corvinus85]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

I was mostly referring to the inconsistency of the ethics presented within that episode, as Toth mentioned.  I don't have any problems with Mando's antiheroic persona generally.  But, still, I think the triumphant music when the stormtroopers saved them was pretty damn stupid.

I thought it was meant to be ironic.

[Jace, Extat]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

I was mostly referring to the inconsistency of the ethics presented within that episode, as Toth mentioned.  I don't have any problems with Mando's antiheroic persona generally.  But, still, I think the triumphant music when the stormtroopers saved them was pretty damn stupid.

Why? The heroes just got rescued, but by the Empire. It's supposed to leave you conflicted. But you may have noticed they blow the base up before leaving? Because they're good guys who won't stand for being affiliated to the Empire for long.

[TrueMetis]

7 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I thought it was meant to be ironic.

That's what I got, the whole "Empire troops celebrating like the rebels did when they blew up the Death Star" only for that officer to immediately show how terrible the Empire really is. The bad guys think they're the heroes, but they're really just the worst.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I thought it was meant to be ironic.

Fair enough, I did not get that impression.

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Why? The heroes just got rescued, but by the Empire. It's supposed to leave you conflicted.

I don't see how a triumphant score is supposed to evoke conflict or moral complexity.

4 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

But you may have noticed they blow the base up before leaving?

Yeah, that'd be the whole point about the episode being inconsistent - Burr did essentially what the "pirates" appeared to be doing, blowing up the vibranium or whatever it was called.

1 minute ago, TrueMetis said:

That's what I got, the whole "Empire troops celebrating like the rebels did when they blew up the Death Star"

Right, to be clear, I'm talking about the score, not the celebration immediately after.  The latter, yes, was a clear ironic juxtaposition.

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, TrueMetis said:

That's what I got, the whole "Empire troops celebrating like the rebels did when they blew up the Death Star" only for that officer to immediately show how terrible the Empire really is. The bad guys think they the heroes, but they're really just the worst.

Well, with the caveat that most of the rank and file are just normal dudes. Like what Bill Burr was going on about. The Empire are villains because the people running the show, the officer corps and upper-echelon bureaucrats, are villainous. Not because putting on white armor makes you evil.

[Jace, Extat]

Just now, DMC said:

Fair enough, I did not get that impression.

I don't see how a triumphant score is supposed to evoke conflict or moral complexity.

Yeah, that'd be the whole point about the episode being inconsistent - Burr did essentially what the "pirates" appeared to be doing, blowing up the vibranium or whatever it was called.

Right, to be clear, I'm talking about the score, not the celebration immediately after.  The latter, yes, was a clear ironic juxtaposition.

I mean, the heroes just got saved. That calls for a triumphant score. Not sure what your issue is here. Do you think, if you were in Mando's armor, that you would have been affronted by an internal triumphant musical score when your life just got saved? The point of view character is Mando, whose life was just saved, not DMC on his couch.

[Corvinus85]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

Fair enough, I did not get that impression.

I don't see how a triumphant score is supposed to evoke conflict or moral complexity.

Yeah, that'd be the whole point about the episode being inconsistent - Burr did essentially what the "pirates" appeared to be doing, blowing up the vibranium or whatever it was called.

Right, to be clear, I'm talking about the score, not the celebration immediately after.  The latter, yes, was a clear ironic juxtaposition.

Well the music is there to enforce the emotions portrayed on screen. I don't think Palpatine's theme or something like that would have worked. Maybe mixing it with the Imperial March would have been good, but again, the scene as Jace says really called for something triumphant.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I mean, the heroes just got saved. That calls for a triumphant score. Not sure what your issue is here.

Not sure what your issue is that I have to agree with you.  The score is for the viewer, not for Mando, and as a viewer I found it fucked up that the score was being like "yay the stormtroopers showed up to kill off these 'pirates.'"

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Not sure what your issue is that I have to agree with you.  The score is for the viewer, not for Mando, and as a viewer I found it fucked up that the score was being like "yay the stormtroopers showed up to kill off these 'pirates.'"

You're right, I'm sorry. I will desist.

[Caligula_K3]

The ethical issues were exactly why I had such a problem with this episode, and why I couldn't just swallow some of the dumb writing (compared to say, Mando being able to access imperial databases just by scanning his face despite not being part of the imperial system, which was also dumb, but I can let it slide). On the one hand, the writers set it up so that this planet has an indigenous population which has been exploited by the empire. But then they also want their mid-episode action scene, so suddenly the indigenous population becomes pirates (and notice that they look completely different than the people we saw earlier); except their actions make no sense as pirates. So Mando and co. are either slaughtering innocent insurgents against the empire or very dumb pirates.

The same with the imperial base. I actually like the triumphant music when the Tie Fighters rescued them (assuming the attackers were pirates), and the slight attempts to humanize the rank and file Stormtroopers. You then get Bill Burr unable to supress his rage at his former commander for getting many of his fellow troops slaughtered. But after all that, the writers want the base to go boom because explosions are cool, so Bill Burr kills everyone.

I almost wish the show stopped trying to do anything morally or ethically interesting, because it always then gives up on it to have another action scene and be the kids' cartoon that it really wants to be.

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

The ethical issues were exactly why I had such a problem with this episode, and why I couldn't just swallow some of the dumb writing (compared to say, Mando being able to access imperial databases just by scanning his face despite not being part of the imperial system, which was also dumb, but I can let it slide). On the one hand, the writers set it up so that this planet has an indigenous population which has been exploited by the empire. But then they also want their mid-episode action scene, so suddenly the indigenous population becomes pirates (and notice that they look completely different than the people we saw earlier); except their actions make no sense as pirates. So Mando and co. are either slaughtering innocent insurgents against the empire or very dumb pirates.

The same with the imperial base. I actually like the triumphant music when the Tie Fighters rescued them (assuming the attackers were pirates), and the slight attempts to humanize the rank and file Stormtroopers. You then get Bill Burr unable to supress his rage at his former commander for getting many of his fellow troops slaughtered. But after all that, the writers want the base to go boom because explosions are cool, so Bill Burr kills everyone.

I almost wish the show stopped trying to do anything morally or ethically interesting, because it always then gives up on it to have another action scene and be the kids' cartoon that it really wants to be.

He destroyed the trucks that carried the rhydonium, not the entire base, though I'm sure more people died. Not sure how that is bad, when the officer threatened they were going to use it for loads of bad shit. It tied off his character's arc, too, as he tells Mando he wants to sleep at night.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

4 hours ago, DMC said:

Not sure what your issue is that I have to agree with you.  The score is for the viewer, not for Mando, and as a viewer I found it fucked up that the score was being like "yay the stormtroopers showed up to kill off these 'pirates.'"

Nah, it's a diegetic soundtrack that plays in that galaxy every time a Storm Trooper or Tie fighter pilot actually hits something. You don't ever hear it because it usually has John Williams' non-diegetic score playing over top of it.

Remember Chapter 12? When they're escaping from the secret base with Tie Fighters in hot pursuit and they couldn't hit jack shit? No triumphant music.

Science, people. Science.

[TrueMetis]

Apparently those walking cranes in the last episode were stop motion. That's really cool.

 

[Corvinus85]

Alright, poll time. It's likely they're not gonna leave Grogu's interstellar call unanswered in the finale, so who shows up?

1)      Luke

2)      Leia

3)      Ezra

4)      Ahsoka (she changes her mind)

5)      Yaddle

6)      Cal Kestis

7)      Cere Junda

8)      Kyle Katarn

9)      Quinlan Vos

10)  Mace Windu (hopefully not)

11)  Force-ghost Yoda or Obi-Wan or Anakin

12)  An original Jedi character

13)  An Inquisitor/some dark side user

14)  Maybe really no one

There can be more than one answer.

[RumHam]

I still think Windu makes the most sense unless they're going to blow our minds with a recast of Luke. 

Plus with Fett around there'd be some tension between them.