OT: What Happened to The Mandalorian?
There are some natural preambles here (following a near-perfect debut season is impossible, flaws in exceptional shows tend to be ignored), but for as great as the show as the Mandalorian was just 20 episodes ago, it has become almost unwatchable. the latest episode with Lizzo and Jack Black felt so ham-fisted and silly that I could barely contain my outrage. In fact, it’s the lowest-rated episode in the entire series and I have no idea where they go from here. To be even more frank, this season has blown, comparatively to seasons 1 and 2 and what was once the best original series in Disney+ history is now near relegation.
So what happened? Writing? Directing? Studio meddling? It’s not just the character actors or the arc, it’s like everyone who made it, from the writers to the animators, stopped caring.
That wasn't even the worst part of the episode. Bo Katan (spelling?) has been made the main character. All hail ma queen. Din is now just a side character. I like her but I'm not a fan of where this is going.
It's a show for children. It's always been bad.
Gotta agree. Couldn’t make it past halfway through S1.
Mandalorian isn’t even the best show in the Star Wars universe. Andor has been the only show on Disney+ I’ve been able to finish a season of.
I remember thinking the writing seemed weak and the plot ridiculous in the first season seems voiced my thoughts to my family who just wanted to love baby grogu. It's not been a great series.
The first season was basically a Western and was episodic, there really wasn't much of an over-arcing plot. The problem with the show started when it forgot what it was and tried to bring in and over-arcing plot. If you're going to so something like that you need a consistent vision from the beginning, which is NOT the strength with Disney Star Wars.
While I've watched most of the Star Wars based series, Andor is so far & away better than any of the others it's difficult to imagine the creators of Andor had anything to do with the other series!
Andor is fantastic - you could watch, follow & enjoy it if you knew nothing prior of the Star Wars universe!
If anyone logging in here to decry the downfall of The Mandalorian hasn't seen Andor, hasten to do so!
Super fun through the first story arc, fell off a cliff in the second story arc, IMHO. Agree that the first few episodes are really good.
it's not just a show for children, it's an entire franchise for children.
Here's my hottest take: The original trilogy is good but was propelled to nostalgic glory by the special effects. Everything that has happened afterwards was built on quicksand and we are seeing the effects.
It's hard to suspend disbelief time after time when the backgrounds and settings are entirely one dimensional and completely disposable. Entire planets are one faceted. The desert planet. The ice planet. The jungle planet. The planet with beaches. Inevitably each place feels like some sort of small village instead of this vast universe of trillions of people. The extremely dangerous opponent ends up being a bunch of bumbling idiots almost every time they appear on screen.
Andor is the exception that proves the rule and even that show plays fast and loose with common sense rules.
This is very close to correct IMO.
I think all Star Wars movies and shows are equally good, because all of them are equally bad. The original trilogy is full of embarrassing crap. People only think otherwise because they saw it as children. The one exception, among the stuff I've seen, is Rogue One, which is better than everything else mainly through not really being a Star Wars movie.
You're right and wrong (and I mean this only about episodes 4 & 5, the rest are patent trash- the moment Ewoks started using slingshots, all was lost). You're right that by the standard of a "great movie", like The Godfather, There Will Be Blood, or Dr. Strangelove- movies whose total composite, writing, editing, acting, directing, stand up to the best in history- no Star Wars movie comes close to this. I would argue that, for the genre, Back to the Future is the closest I can think of as "Great". Star Wars, even 4 & 5, have lots of goofy stuff, bad acting, etc. But, for the era, and what was possible, they were incredible. While I like episode 5 the best, episode 4 is remarkable in that nothing like it had ever been seen before. It's the invention from nothing resembling it in the past that makes it so spectacular, the risk involved in trying something new (risks which are seldom taken in cinema). After the success of 4, none of the pre/sequels were really taking any risk.
Back to the Future is a perfect movie and holds up 38 years later.
Like others have said, the original Star Wars movies were only good if you saw them as younger children and really do not hold up as an adult. Empire is the one that comes closest but A New Hope is so long and boring on rewatch. Jedi was cheesy but Carrie Fisher in the slave Leia costume was the best part of that. Prequel and modern trilogies are just garbage. All of the shows are just cash grabs for Disney and are not good. The only good Star Wars related show/movie post 1980 was Rouge One.
Back to the Future is a perfect movie and holds up 38 years later.
Perfect? We just gonna ignore that “Say ‘Hi.’ to your mom for me.” is beyond cringe?
Actually many people of that generation in Hollywood, still cite Back to the Future as an archetype of a sci-fi movie. I don't watch much crap. Haven't seen a Michael Bay movie in my life. Choke through the cliched Marvel Universe for the sake of my kids. But Back to the Future is truly incredible. Not a wasted scene in the movie. A testimony to great editing, directions, casting, filmcraft. The sequels were Meh, as usual.
It's a bit hard to tell from your comment whether you think the originals are also just garbage. I really mean that they're all equally good/bad. I happen to think the prequel trilogy is better than just garbage, because my kids loved it. The sequel trilogy, on the other hand, is incredibly overrated fan service.
I find the premise that, because your kids like something, it can't be garbage, dubious. I am a cinephile- Kubrick, the Coens, Paul Thomas Anderson, Bergman, Tarkovsky- but I also remember thinking that The Bad News Bears and Escape From Witch Mountain were pretty darn good movies, at one point in my life.
I agree that in general my kids’ preferences are of dubious evidential value but I only meant to suggest that it’s slightly better than garbage, like all Star Wars properties
Andor, Jon06, Andor!
A Prequel to Rogue One, and better than the film, much better!
Haven't seen it yet. I haven't even seen most of the Han Solo movie yet, since my kids got bored during the first part and so refused to watch it. They are making stuff my kids aren't enthusiastic about way faster than I have time to consume it.
The Original Trilogy still holds up, because it had a clear vision and clear influences and a focused story.
Everything(TV and movie-wise) after that was a casualty of trying to explore EVERY faucet of a gigantic universe in a medium that isn't exactly known for being able to show a world in its entirety. Rogue One being the exception that proves the rule in that it was a defined story with a defined beginning and end. Solo, had too many producers and also suffered from trying to introduce the beginnings of a franchise. Rogue One didn't have to do that. It's why, in my opinion, the Knights of the Old Republic videogame and the Dark Horse Comics line along with the first Clone Wars series were good, they had time and space to flesh out storylines and follow them through and side-quests could be accommodated, you can't really do that with movies or VERY limited run TV series.
Honestly not very hot at all in my books. As the sequel trilogy unfolded, I sort of realized that if I'm being honest with myself, Star Wars has been more bad than good, so in reality, am I really a "Star Wars fan?"
I didn't watch Star Wars until sometime shortly after episode 3 came out on DVD and then I plowed through all 6. I did the weird thing by watching them in timeline order instead of production order. Naturally I knew a few things that were unavoidable knowledge, but other than Anakin becoming Darth Vader I didn't have a clue about anyone else, so I had the benefit of surprise with most of the character twists that any other fan would have known were coming and I still thought they were pretty meh. Most critically, the original movie that seems to be held in high esteem by most people, was also pretty meh. I'd rather watch Spaceballs. Episode 5 was at least pretty legit, but then episode 6 was also pretty lackluster in my mind as well.
Episode 7 was pretty decent mostly because it was very safe, if not a little lame in that it was again about exploiting poor engineering choices. And then 8 and 9 were also pretty meh.
So yeah. Can't honestly say I'm a Star Wars fan, but my reasons are opinions shared by many Star Wars fans, so I feel like a lot of people out there are not actually Star Wars fans but haven't come to terms with that. I'm happy to learn that I am apparently not as a lone as I thought I was.
Rouge One, though, was really good. Would watch again.
The first SW film was in many ways an homage to the old Flash Gordon serials - but it caught lightening - special effects had improved to a point that it took film makers and producers a while to catch up. Adjusting for inflation - it would be a billion dollar movie today. This started the special effects and CGI push that exists to this day.
Fun fact one of the key programmers who wrote code for Industrial Light and Magic to control the motion control cameras was from Ann Arbor, John Knoll. He and his brother would write a little computer program that you might have heard of: Photoshop. Having talent like that made Industrial Light and Magic an industrial leader for a long time and sped to conversion from practical effects (e.g. old Star Trek special effects with beautiful giant models serenely moving by in a beauty shot) to the complete digital effect that are largely taken for granted. Knoll remains an exec there and helped inspire Rogue One.
The ecologically impossible, all desert planets and all winter planets with breathable atmospheres is a direct homage to the old Flash Gordon.
Then Empire Strikes Back happened. That film was directed and scripted by others, and was so much better written in terms of the depth of the story and subtle points, better directed and the actors were now pretty comfortable in the roles that only fueled the popularity - making it a rare second film (like Godfather II) that many consider superior to the original.
Even adding the puppet Yoda only helped (despite not aging well) - that raised expectations which were already high - now they were astronomical. Lucas took back the directing and writing load for the later films and well, never quite hit that height, but he had made a great deal on the merchandising. Never again would a studio just sign over the merchandizing rights assuming it was just for a bunch of posters and t-shirts. It made Lucas wealthy - enough that he could front partially some of the later films that made him less beholden to studio advice (not all studio advice is bad).
Very much true.
The Mandalorian died in 2005. But he did leave us with a really cool car he created that we can see in all of the Back To The Future movies.
Agreed. It's been lame since the beginning. It's like a soap opera the way each episode (I only watched season 1) drags on around overly simplistic plot elements, with that low-budget costuming, cheap Southern Cali set feel of Star Trek, the Next Generation, though with far worse writing and acting. Jon Favreau continues to take his vapid work to the bank.
Iirc there were 2 episodes not directed by Favreau in Season 1. Those 2 were by far the best.
Perhaps that's the problem indeed.
I was so underwhelmed by that first season I've not seen anything since.
I always thought the best movie in the series was "SpaceBalls".
Amen
Yup. Watched the first three episodes of the first season and it was a CHORE. This show is childish garbage. Embarrassingly bad. I assumed it was just all StarWards nerd fanboys who liked it.
As a grown ass-man I agree. I stopped playing with Star Wars toys in 1983.
I thought the scene that went viral with those two was a joke at first. I thought Black must have hosted SNL and Lizzo was the musical guest or a special guest and it was a short skit. I'm not even exaggerating, I was stunned when I read that was real.
Not even The Prequels hit that level of weird, worse than CGI look and terrible writing. It was honestly shocking.
It went bad with Book of Boba Fett and then those ridiculous biker gangs. Just go watch all the stuff they're stealing from. Lone Wolf and Cub, Akira Kurosawa.
On as side note, 65 was fairly entertaining. Nothing special, fairly predictable, but if you might enjoy a mashup of Jurassic Park and Lone Wolf and Cub, check it out. Adam Driver turns in a solid performance.
I thought it pretty well established that Lucas ripped off the idea for star wars from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. Good movie btw.
Trying to only kind of skim this threat, but seasons 1 and 2 were great. I've only managed to get through like half of this season, and it's been terrible. Like I can barely even watch. I care about the characters but like the storylines are just awful.
I liked it, but stopped watching and cancelled Disney when they fired Gina Carano. It sounds like my timing was good.
The season hasn't been particularly good but I haven't hated it either. There were a few really dumb scenes and generally boring plot lines but nothing that made me stop watching.
Boba and Obi on the other were absolutely terrible and couldn't finish either season.
There's been a mix of both really bad and really good. The Lizzo and Jack Black thing was weird but I actually really liked that episode. Most of the previous episodes were kinda boring but I do like the direction this is going with a big fight for Mandalor against Moff Gideon.
Jack Black was went wrong. Just a shitty actor
Not a great actor, but he was leagues better than Lizzo! He has a place in movies, she most certainly does not. The next time I never see her in a show will be too soon.
Lizzo belongs in a zoo
Look everyone! We found the burner account of a GOP Representative from the Tennessee House.
Wow, what a trash comment about Lizzo. No doubt you are trash.
April 10th, 2023 at 10:47 AM ^
A 4 time Grammy winner? No. But you should get help.
April 11th, 2023 at 12:08 PM ^
Grammys are a popularity contest. Winning one or 4 of those doesn’t amount to a whole lot in my book. She just isn’t that good at much and certainly not acting.
None of the Star Wars Disney stuff has been good except Andor. The rest of Disney Star Wars is hot garbage.
His role as Barry in High Fidelity is absolutely fantastic. With that, I do agree that he is a bit of a one-dimensional actor (I’m setting aside his musical talents here), but he’s not Michael Cera bad.
He was awesome in that, though I was crushed when he changed the band's name from Kathleen Turner Overdrive.
Agreed. But Sonic Death Monkey was my favorite of his band names. Although Barry Jive and the Uptown Five isn’t too bad.
Watch Bernie and you'll see Black has some real acting chops. The problem is Disney. Disney ruins everything.
I gave The Force Awakens a shot and it was clear that Star Wars was forever destroyed. I'm not going to let that evil mouse fool me a second time.