The Mandalorian

[Dirty Harry Potter]

What's the consensus on this? I loved season 2 - but this season has felt a like it's all over the place. Great FX but that's about it for me.

[Festoon]

Total mess. 

[Benny]

The show is a pale shadow of its former self. Meanwhile the animated efforts go from strength to strength.

[Benny]

I can't help but feel that Mando used to be this really cool and interesting character, and all this cult shit is just enboringifying him.

 

Yes, that's a new word I've made up to try to describe what is happening this series. Enshittening?

 

And this blandifying of character seems to be infecting Bo Katan and even Grogu.

 

It feels like a show that a studio has forgotten how to make or something and are picking it up again as they go along, rather than a third season that should be firing on all cylinders, from the production to the writing to the performances. But it just isn't.

[JPL]

6 hours ago, Benny said:

and it's rather poorly written.

I’m catching up on this at the moment and watched, I think, episode 2 last night. The one were they go to the mines of Moria mandalore. Anyway, when Mando tells the robot to go and check the atmosphere, but it looks scared so he tells it to stop being a big baby was absolutely awful writing.

 

It looks better than ever, but it’s starting to give me the feeling of the prequel trilogy. All form over function.

[Twinbee]

Yeah, I’m enjoying it in bits, and trying not to over-analyse the writing in the same way I wouldn’t over-analyse an episode of the A-Team. 
 

Which would be fine if they weren’t also trying to tie everything into some massive prequel-through-to-sequel timeline. 
 

I just want a fun, brainless, space-western with baby Yoda being adorable. 

[Harsin]

8 hours ago, Dirty Harry Potter said:

What's the consensus on this? I loved season 2 - but this season has felt a like it's all over the place. Great FX but that's about it for me.

Depends if you find Mandalorian '”culture” fascinating and enjoy watching space Jehovah's Witnesses being treated with utmost gravitas or just think they're a bunch of tits with buckets in their heads. At the moment it’s gone all in on it.

[Alex W.]

I don’t want to point fingers but there’s a creator of this series who wanted to do a space Western and a creator of this series who wanted to do an ongoing saga of the Mandalorian people and I think one of them is a lot more helpful to the Disney story-to-merchandise pipeline.

[Harsin]

[Twinbee]

Yeah. Though ironically, Favreau had to argue strongly to include Baby Yoda, as Filoni hated the idea. It was only Favreau’s assertion that a Lone Wolf & Cub scenario would be really strong, that Favreau relented. 
 

And how much baby Yoda merch has been sold???

[Pob]

The longer it goes on the more it becomes obvious that the season 2 finale was the perfect way to end it. Baby Yoda was an ingenious macguffin. It’s hard to see the point of the show now. 

[Alask]

The Mandalorians being absolutely awful in every way is definitely sucking my enjoyment out rather a lot. I can't see why anyone would bother wanting to join them, rather than literally anyone else. Makes Din look more like of a chump every week when he blindly goes along with them. 

 

Blasters are looking less impressive every week too. Probably better ditching them and starting to throw rocks at things instead.

 

[SpagMasterSwift]

The thing that has killed the MCU is now killing this for me.

[Kevvy Metal]

10 hours ago, Benny said:

Call me crazy but

 

  Reveal hidden contents

If you keep losing children to big monsters in both the lake AND from the sky on a regular basis, wouldn't you go do your weirdo cult prepper training somewhere else?

 

I honestly really hate these metal clad fucks now. They're nowhere near as interesting as the show thinks we think they are.

 

Can't fault the direction this episode though, but the actual show still feels much weaker than it's ever been and it's rather poorly written.

 

 

"poorly written"

 

DRINK! 🍺

[Benny]

How would you prefer it described?

 

A weak script?

[Kevvy Metal]

12 minutes ago, Benny said:

How would you prefer it described?

 

A weak script?

 

One man's non-interesting metal clad fucks, is another man's actually interesting metal clad fucks. 

[Darwock]

I would just like to know why they’re still called foundlings when it’s his actual biological child.

[monkeydog]

Maybe the mum tried to hide the kid his crazy cultist Dad?

[Mogster]

I quite enjoyed this week's episode, but I have to agree with some of the criticisms here that the series feels like it's gone off the rails a bit. This week's Bad Batch was so much better.

[Twinbee]

Another weird thing - I’ve loved Boba Fett’s design since I got a figure for my 5th birthday. Just looked cool - rugged space samurai. 
 

Loved Mando’s all-chrome version of this design. Looked ace, especially all the reflections. 
 

Loved Bo Katan and her couple of sidekicks in S2, a cool alternative vision of the original design. 
 

30 of them stood on a beach? Nah mate. 

[Alex W.]

I’m surprised they didn’t just decide that risking getting eaten by a big dragon as a child is The Way. Maybe next week we’ll see them tossing a coin to see who gets fed to the dragonlings.

[Darwock]

Feels like they were aiming for a Fremen vibe but it turned out more like Takeshi’s Castle.

 

Spoiler

I’m joining in the pile-on but I am rather enjoying the new series, it’s just we have to accept that Mandalorians are more akin to the original Boba Fett than we’d like to admit. Look cool but comically inept.

 

[Chindie]

Yet to start the third series but the alarm bells were ringing for me when they did the whole 'this sword signifies you as the leader of the creed and you are worthy of holding it only if you beat the current holder' thing. Immediate big lazy trope plotting energy - something the show didn't need but used as a way of progressing to the next story arc because they didn't have a better idea.

[Jammy]

I haven’t watched the latest episode yet, but I think 

Spoiler

the lack of a ‘big bad’ thus far makes it seem a bit directionless/motiveless at the moment. Mando’s just doing some stuff he needs to do for himself, and they’re not really doing anything that might cause ripples, like even collecting bounties or something. My big fear is that this season is a setup for S4 and is just treading water and providing exposition.

 

[Lochenvar]

18 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Yet to start the third series but the alarm bells were ringing for me when they did the whole 'this sword signifies you as the leader of the creed and you are worthy of holding it only if you beat the current holder' thing. Immediate big lazy trope plotting energy - something the show didn't need but used as a way of progressing to the next story arc because they didn't have a better idea.

 

That wasn't created for this show. It was already a thing in Star Wars Rebels.

[Chindie]

2 minutes ago, Lochenvar said:

 

That wasn't created for this show. It was already a thing in Star Wars Rebels.

 

Ah.

 

It was a shit idea there too then.

[Vulgar Monkey]

Bit of a tangent - I dunno if we've been seeing grogu toddle around on foot much more recently or if I just never thought about it til now, but how exactly do they do that? It looks like it's entirely done with practical fx, but surely cant be?

[JohnC]

They have a puppeteer walk him around and erase the puppeteer and sticks, wires etc after. It can be seen in some of the behind the scenes stuff. 

[Delargey]

4 hours ago, Kevvy Metal said:

 

One man's non-interesting metal clad fucks, is another man's actually interesting metal clad fucks. 

 

I don't like that for script reasons they don't seem very bright -

 

Spoiler

 

 

why don't they have Mando's keeping watch for the giant monsters who are picking them off each week?

 

 

It feels like something a elite fighting group would do?

 

The Dragon bird didn't really make sense and there was a real lack of urgency in the rescue. 

 

 

 

 

[Harsin]

Nicked from elsewhere.

 

Quote

Bo Katan: The Armorer told me giant flying bird-monsters keep eating their Foundlings so I asked how many Foundlings they have and they said they just go to war zones and get a new Foundling afterwards so I said it sounds like they're just feeding Foundlings to giant flying bird-monsters and then the big guy with the laser machine gun started crying.