The Mandalorian

Bandwagon said:

Can someone explain to me why The Mandalorian is so popular, but the new Star Wars movies aren't? (I'm not being a smartass)

I'm not a huge star wars fan, but I liked the original 3 movies. I don't really follow what adheres to the SW universe and what doesn't or anything like that, but I didn't like the movies with young Anakin, teenage Anakin or jar jar Binks because all 3 of them were fucking annoying. I tried watching one of the newer movies 4 times and just couldn't ever get in to it. There's an X-wing pilot in "Rogue One" that I like, but anything else I've seen in the newer movies was completely forgettable. I haven't watched the last jedi.

All that being said, I like the Mandalorian because I like Pedro & Favreau....but the overall tone of the show feels pretty similar to me as the newer star wars movies. There's a shit ton of very predictable tropes and most of the episodes I feel like I know what's going to happen by the end within 5 minutes of the start.


I'm not trying to criticize the Mandalorian, but I don't understand why "true star wars fans" like Mando but not the newer movies?

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Maybe it's because our expectation are now so low that we can be thrilled by anything.. !
But my biggest grip of E7-9 is the main protagonist is a Mary-Sue, we can't relate to it, there are no struggles where we can see her overcome it using what she learned. it completly weakens everything. No training, no master, she probably never encoutered someone with the force yet can use it. That would be my biggest grip about the star wars stuff.
Generally speaking, outside of star wars stuff, there is a complete lack of - pardon my poor english here - representation of the opposing forces. On one side we have the knight of ren, the new empire stuff, etc. and on the other side ? They build a fucking star destroyer, yet their biggest enemies are .. ? if you read the novel you probably know, but I didnt and it felt competly off. Even in E1-3 we knew there were at least a few peacefull places.
In my opinion, they tried to make the final battle too big, and it becomes shallow. Mandalorian is exactly the opposite, and it fleshes out the world, making it feel much closer to what we know about it. Mando had never seen the force before, so it forces us to see the jedi through his eyes and it makes us think " yeah that must be pretty amazing to see" . They don't overuse it. It was just right.

tldr : mando focus on small stories, creating a super rich world. Ep 7-9 is a huge battle between the bigger badder darker force and Rey, a girl.

Bandwagon said:

That's what I gathered from skimming here, but do you have a simple example for someone that doesn't really know the source material? I get that people are pissed about killing off old characters, but what's something else?

I was thinking about this last night when I was watching the most recent episodes where he takes off his helmet, along with the other Mandalorians that don't follow those same rules in general. That's why I came looking in this thread, to see if that pissed people off because Mandalorians never do that or something?

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bunch of people have answered already, but i wanted to clear some things up. no one is really upset that old characters died, it was that there WEREN'T any old characters. it old actors playing different characters with the same name. there were very few things these characters did that was recognizable. force awakens was... alright? for a while it was sort of a schroedinger's movie in that it was both terrible and great at the same time depending entirely on what happened next.

it was clearly trying to emulate a new hope, and for a while it came across like an homage. like it was trying to show everyone that it was trying to re-center the franchise away from the prequel trilogy. the story has a LOT of similarity with a new hope and many of the similarities are beat for beat copies just with different characters. but because what came after it was so... messy, it just felt like force awakens wasn't trying to honor a new hope, it felt like it was trying to one up it.

as far as mandalorian goes, people were... concerned about him never taking his helmet off in season 1. we had lots of conversations about why... but the general feeling was more confused because Dave Filoni had a TON of input and he's the one that basically created the canon rules in the first place.

anyway, there ARE aspects of the sequels that i liked... i loved the concept that rian johnson put forth in canto bight (last jedi) that there are arms dealers who are getting rich off the war and they sell to both sides. the super rich keep getting richer while the regular nobodies could basically care less who is in charge. mando and mayfield also had a very similar conversation. i think the reason last jedi was so terrible was because all the ideas rian had, had NOTHING to do with the previous movie. i think it could have been a pretty interesting movie if it was just a separate, unconnected movie, because it basically was. it forced the rise of skywalker to be 2 movies condensed into 1 which is why THAT movie had such terrible pacing

Why did the new Star Wars movies suck? Luke was a fuckin homeless fuckin bum that did NOTHING impressive. Matter of fact almost every scene with Luke was cringeworthy, eyeroll or made simple.

Lets add in killing off favorite characters. Lets add in girl power for no other reason other than adding in girl power. STOOPID girl power at that! I'm all for adding a little diversity, but for fucks sake did they go over board.

Rey? Please. No struggle. No level up. Just straight power gain.

Horrible writing and script!

Is there a worse word for horrible? That was Kylo. You make a Sith act like a baby? Really?

Compare that to this last episode of TM. Every character on screen was either likeable, badass or made sense, because they built it up over the season. Moff Gideon? Badass. Mando? Badass. Apollo Creed? Likeable. Luke? Don't take a black light into my room!

Even the girl power moment was pretty good because it fit!

They really need to just forget the last three movies. Here's how you fix it! Have fuckin Han waking up or some shit in a cold sweat! Have a little memorial of Lei in the corner, where she dies of I don't know...getting Rey to Luke or some shit.

Brahma said:

Why did the new Star Wars movies suck? Luke was a fuckin homeless fuckin bum that did NOTHING impressive. Matter of fact almost every scene with Luke was cringeworthy, eyeroll or made simple.

Lets add in killing off favorite characters. Lets add in girl power for no other reason other than adding in girl power. STOOPID girl power at that! I'm all for adding a little diversity, but for fucks sake did they go over board.

Rey? Please. No struggle. No level up. Just straight power gain.

Horrible writing and script!

Is there a worse word for horrible? That was Kylo. You make a Sith act like a baby? Really?

Compare that to this last episode of TM. Every character on screen was either likeable, badass or made sense, because they built it up over the season. Moff Gideon? Badass. Mando? Badass. Apollo Creed? Likeable. Luke? Don't take a black light into my room!

Even the girl power moment was pretty good because it fit!

They really need to just forget the last three movies. Here's how you fix it! Have fuckin Han waking up or some shit in a cold sweat! Have a little memorial of Lei in the corner, where she dies of I don't know...getting Rey to Luke or some shit.

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All of the Skywalkers were sniveling manchildren. The worst by far was Anakin. That character alone ruined the prequels. I mean...he went to the dark side because the Jedi council wouldn't make him a master jedi. That was his entire motivation for going crazy. Luke wasn't as bad, but he was still a giant whiner. Kylo was the mix of the two coupled with his preposterous Sith Junior helmet. He looked about as ominous as hokey puck and was about as dangerous as one. Worse, Kylo went to the dark side because the jedi wouldn't make his grampa a jedi master. He had no reason to go off the deep end. Essentially, all of the Skywalkers were spineless psychotics who should have been drowned the moment they were born.

Rey? Rey who? The first 5 minutes of her story was cool, then it shit the bed.

Cybsled said:

Deepfakers took their shot

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That was an easy win for CGI

Jozu said:

The deepfake isnt that much better, just his eyes look more convincing and more lifelike. They have to figure out a program or system to fix the mouth sync. Once they figure that out sky is the limit.

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Its not better at all-- why are you trying to mollycoddle some deepfake fanboys on this forum? Are you getting anything out of that, tip-toeing around it?

Rewind it 10-15 times.

Check his eyes.

Check the fit.

Check the lighting.

CGI unzipped its pants and pissed on deepfake fanboys.

Fucker said:

All of the Skywalkers were sniveling manchildren. The worst by far was Anakin. That character alone ruined the prequels. I mean...he went to the dark side because the Jedi council wouldn't make him a master jedi. That was his entire motivation for going crazy. Luke wasn't as bad, but he was still a giant whiner. Kylo was the mix of the two coupled with his preposterous Sith Junior helmet. He looked about as ominous as hokey puck and was about as dangerous as one. Worse, Kylo went to the dark side because the jedi wouldn't make his grampa a jedi master. He had no reason to go off the deep end. Essentially, all of the Skywalkers were spineless psychotics who should have been drowned the moment they were born.

Rey? Rey who? The first 5 minutes of her story was cool, then it shit the bed.

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Eh, Anakin turned to the dark side because the Jedi tried to divorce their members from their feelings, but never really gave a healthy way to do it. That's why they recruited via younglings; grab them young and indoctrinate them to suppress their feelings. Anakin turned to the dark side because he was older, and the Jedi order was decadent and overly dogmatic by this point. He lost his mom, got snubbed, had to love Padme in secret, and all the Jedi had to say about it was, "Remove all these things from your life that make you feel emotion."

That's why Luke succeeded where the Jedi Order failed. Sentient beings have emotion and you cannot separate that from who they are. He brought Anakin back to the light side of the force because he never tried to remove his emotions; he was just taught (or realized) it's okay for a Jedi to have emotions, just not to be controlled by them. Had Luke been trained in that way, Vader probably would have seen him more as a stubborn, defiant Jedi than as his son, and just let the Emperor electrocute him on the floor.

(This is also another reason why Luke's arc was bullshit in TLJ; He ranted about letting the Jedi Order die. Like dude, you are the only Jedi Master; the Order is basically whatever you say it is. Just fix it how you think it should be fixed instead of running away).

Fadaar said:

They discovered what the Rebels were doing and didn't, ya know, block the hole really quick. The Empire really was incompetent.

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Shit, just put a metal grating on it and weld a few suits of beskar armor to it and you just saved nerds 43 years of pocket money.

Urlithani said:

(This is also another reason why Luke's arc was bullshit in TLJ; He ranted about letting the Jedi Order die. Like dude, you are the only Jedi Master; the Order is basically whatever you say it is. Just fix it how you think it should be fixed instead of running away).

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his entire point of view was based on the jedi from the prequels, which he never experienced. we, the audience experienced the prequel trilogy most recently, but luke didn't. the storyline was created not based on chronological logic. sure, yoda and obi-wan (and even qui-gon) could have spent 30 years telling luke the fallacy of the jedi, but like you said, luke is the ONLY JEDI MASTER. that's what the legends stories did right, despite the pre-empire jedi being... well.. a mess... luke rebuilt the order from the ashes and took the good parts while letting the bad parts burn away.

Tuco said:

Clone Wars is great if only because some of the gratuitous scenes.

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If only the movies had portrayed them as anywhere near as strong.

Tholan said:

But my biggest grip of E7-9 is the main protagonist is a Mary-Sue, we can't relate to it, there are no struggles where we can see her overcome it using what she learned. it completly weakens everything. No training, no master, she probably never encoutered someone with the force yet can use it.

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Writers are so afraid to give female characters flaws. It comes from this misunderstanding that male characters are strong and invincible. Some are, but any male characters written that way are boring as shit and not the popular ones. I even noticed it in Into The Spiderverse; all the Spidermen are at least a bit flawed except for Spider-Gwen who just swoops in and kicks ass all the time.
Then you've got a show like Queen's Gambit that completely bucks that trend and write a fucked up, flawed, damaged female character and it's completely refreshing and compelling. I hope writers learn from it.

Somewhat relatedly, something similar happens in real life with things like female CEOs. Whenever there's a bitchy one, you'll always get women supporting their behaviour and claiming that a lot of male CEOs are the same way. Sure, but everyone thinks those male CEOs are cunts. It's this weird distortion of reality

"Writers are so afraid to give female characters flaws. It comes from this misunderstanding that male characters are strong and invincible. Some are, but any male characters written that way are boring as shit and not the popular ones. I even noticed it in Into The Spiderverse; all the Spidermen are at least a bit flawed except for Spider-Gwen who just swoops in and kicks ass all the time."

Oh they will write flaws into some...the flaw of not realizing just how powerful and beautiful they really are!

Bloodrocuted said:

"Writers are so afraid to give female characters flaws. It comes from this misunderstanding that male characters are strong and invincible. Some are, but any male characters written that way are boring as shit and not the popular ones. I even noticed it in Into The Spiderverse; all the Spidermen are at least a bit flawed except for Spider-Gwen who just swoops in and kicks ass all the time."

Oh they will write flaws into some...the flaw of not realizing just how powerful and beautiful they really are!

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nothing is worse than a chick who is high maintenance and doesn't know it.

I agree about Anakin going towards dark because he is human, not a sniveling pussy.

What if the Jedi were really bad guys the whole time but they used propoganda to squelch such ideas. They just abuse young talented beings into doing their bidding.

i mean, they basically legally kidnap infants. count dooku is one of the very few jedi who, for some reason, were allowed to keep their family title. most of them aren't allowed to have any contact with their family.

the jedi during that time weren't really "good" people. that was part of the problem. when someone needed their help they would sit and deliberate and debate whether "the force" told them to actually do anything

j00t said:

i mean, they basically legally kidnap infants. count dooku is one of the very few jedi who, for some reason, were allowed to keep their family title. most of them aren't allowed to have any contact with their family.

the jedi during that time weren't really "good" people. that was part of the problem. when someone needed their help they would sit and deliberate and debate whether "the force" told them to actually do anything

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because Christopher Lee is the second most famous Count Dracula in movie history. Lucas is a big cornball.