Ian Thomas Malone

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Wednesday

5

April 2023

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COMMENTS

The Mandalorian Season 3 Review: Chapter 22

Written by , Posted in Blog, Star Wars, TV Reviews

The Mandalorian has spent most of its third season grappling with its conflicting interests between episodic and longform storytelling. Last week’s episode blended the two quite effectively, albeit in a rather inexplicably abrupt manner for a show with no real runtime constraints. There’s nothing stopping the show from engaging in meaningful character development alongside its fairly self-contained adventures.

Part of the fun of The Mandalorian is the way the show can jump across genres. “Chapter 22: Guns For Hire” is essentially a buddy cop episode. After a scene reminding the audience of who Bo-Katan’s old friends were, the show mostly gives itself over to a silly droid caper on the planet Plazir-15, ruled by Captain Combardier (Jack Black) and the Duchess (Lizzo). The show did a laughably bad job trying to come up with an explanation for why this nonsense needed to serve as a precursor to Mando and Bo-Katan’s intended helmet missionary work, but Black and Lizzo were entertaining to watch. It’s a little unclear why Mando felt okay leaving Baby Yoda with complete strangers, but we got some cute Grogu antics out of it.

The return of the Battle Droids, stalwarts of the prequels, was a bit of a mixed bag. The show abandoned much of the cringe comedy that defined the Battle Droids in Revenge of the Sith, but the chase sequence with Mando and the Super Battle Droid fell a little flat. No droid has ever moved like the Super Battle Droid in this episode, looking far more human than machine. Star Wars droids are not known for being nimble.

As a location, Plazir-15 was a much-needed breath of fresh air over the show’s preference for one-note planets or stale CGI, but the special effects weren’t necessarily great either. Thankfully the practical sets were pretty beautiful and the CGI showed plenty of variety, even if the planet came across as fairly sparsely populated. It seemed odd that neither Mando nor Bo had previously heard of this place when their local Ugnaught population seemed to know his old friend Kuill. Is this universe so big that people don’t know all the planets, or so small that everything revolves around a handful of families and people overlapping with each other across the decades? Star Wars has seemingly reverse-engineered their species’ entire culture to center around their debut appearance in the Cloud City garbage room in Empire Strikes Back.

The episode took a weird stance on capitalism and democracy. Captain Combardier and the Duchess ceded power to plurality rule, but the show clearly took the stance that the citizen’s exit from the working class was incompatible with a happy life. The droids are also apparently incapable of seeing their life through any lens but their own use value to their “creators,” the proletariat perpetually in debt to the bourgeoisie. Chapter 22 firmly established that the sympathies of The Mandalorian reside with capital over labor, a slap in the face to the franchise’s proletariat roots.

Christopher Lloyd put forth an easy crowd-pleaser as Commissioner Helgait, a Count Dooku-worshipping head of security. Helgait was a very predictable villain, and his Separatist nonsense will sail over most casual fans’ heads, but Lloyd was a lot of fun causing low-stakes mischief while envisioning himself as the living embodiment of a long-failed movement. An over-the-top villain isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world for something like Star Wars.

Director Bryce Dallas Howard continued her streak of excellent action sequences, aside from the sloppy Super Battle Droid chase. The fight between Bo-Katan and Axes Woves was an instant highlight of the entire season, Katee Sackhoff firmly establishing herself at the heart of the show’s emotional core. For a season that’s been oddly light on Grogu, Bo-Katan seems to be the only person with a clear character arc.

The show had to bend over backward once again to come up with a reason for Mando to hand over the darksaber without turning the show’s protagonists against each other. Mando using the transitive property to explain how Bo had actually bested him already was pretty pathetic, the kind of empty narrative hole that can’t be covered up with a cute puppet. This show does not enjoy doing its homework when it comes to long-form plot progression.

Chapter 22 made for entertaining television, but the episode also highlighted some of the show’s broader problems. The Mandalorian isn’t the low-stakes Western it once was. This show has broad ambitions for Mandalore and the fall of the New Republic, but it never seems interested in laying down the actual groundwork that brings these stories together. Something’s missing about this season that goes beyond its complete abandonment of exploring the relationship between its two key characters after reuniting them on a completely different show. The Mandalorian clearly wants to be more than The Baby Yoda Show, but it doesn’t necessarily know what it wants to be either.

Friday

25

February 2022

0

COMMENTS

The Book of Boba Fett never makes the leap from product to art

Written by , Posted in Blog, Pop Culture, Star Wars, TV Reviews

Science fiction often carries its greatest impact through the genre’s ability to invoke a sense of awe and wonder. The cantina scene in the original Star Wars practically changed cinema all its own, a dazzling display of creativity and world-building. Throughout his time at the helm of the franchise, George Lucas placed a heavy emphasis on world-building, to take his audience to places they’ve never seen before.

Disney loves its piles of rocks and sand. As if Tatooine wasn’t enough of a remote desert wasteland, Star Wars threw cheap knockoffs Jakku and Navarro at the audience to switch things up. There’s a certain obvious joke to be made at how Boba Fett saw the show that bears his name co-opted by The Mandalorian, but it was never really his show in the first place. The Book of Boba Fett was always The Book of Tatooine.

Why go to another planet when you can film a whole season using only a sandbox and a green screen? Seven episodes is hardly a long season, but Disney struggled to come up with enough plot for even that amount for its empty shell of a show, choosing instead to give up halfway through in favor of The Mandalorian season 2.5. Apparently that’s life in the streaming era. When things aren’t working, just make episodes of a different show and pretend it’s still The Book of Boba Fett. The whole mess is certainly fitting for a character who had four lines in the original trilogy.

Temuera Morrison can hardly be faulted for an occasionally wooden performance. The Book of Boba Fett never laid out any clear vision for what it wanted Fett to be, a menacing bounty hunter turned morally righteous crime lord. Ming-Na Wen gets even less to work with as Fennec Shand, an alliance seemingly born solely out of the idea that she might be fun for the spin-off.

It’s easy to see the logic. Morrison and Wen have a natural, easy chemistry that was pretty apparent from their first pairing. The premise of the show should have followed suit, staying out of its own way to let two bounty hunters do what they do best. Instead, the gang plot often played second fiddle to Fett’s silly Sarlacc and Tusken Raider flashbacks, dragging down a narrative that never seemed to find its footing. The show even managed to botch introducing a character like Black Krrsantan, popularized in Kieron Gillen’s excellent Darth Vader and Doctor Aphra comics, neutering the wookie in service to absurdly silly Mos Espa politics.

There was something oddly depressing about watching Fett and Mando stand in a wide-open street being shot at during the finale, a fitting metaphor for the state of Star Wars under the Disney regime. Both men could easily use their jet packs to seek more advantageous tactical positions, but they don’t, for no reason at all. Too often, The Book of Boba Fett comes across as the product of a brainstorming session that lasted five minutes, with no critical thought or pushback applied to a single decision.

Disney left its content farm out in Tatooine’s suns for far too long, a wilted mess of a commodity masquerading as a television show. What a sad showing, not just for Star Wars, but for art itself. There is no reason on the planet why this show needed to be this bad.

Boba Fett is not the most interesting character in the world. He barely qualifies as an actual character in the original trilogy, an enigma that lent itself well to stories children play with their action figures. That kind of dynamic could have worked well for The Book of Boba Fett, especially with the Nikto gang and their ridiculous speeder bikes that look like toys from a different playset. You could probably make better Boba Fett stories in a local playground sandbox, which just needs a green screen to complete the Tatooine look.

All blockbuster franchises are products, even the ones that are crafted with love. That’s the problem with The Book of Boba Fett. It never looks like something anyone enjoyed making. Star Wars doesn’t need an artistic mandate, but maybe a little effort would be nice. It’s hard not to feel sad that this abomination exists.

Thursday

24

February 2022

0

COMMENTS

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Written by , Posted in Podcast, Star Wars

Grab your porgs and your blue milk! The Last Jedi is a bit of a polarizing film, to say the least. Rian Johnson brought plenty of fascinating ideas to the sequel trilogy’s middle entry, its best by a mile. Ian talks about what she liked about the film, what she would have changed, and the characterization of Luke Skywalker, diving a bit into Luke’s appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.

Ian’s original 2017 review of the film: https://ianthomasmalone.com/2017/12/the-last-jedi-offers-aimless-entertainment/

Ian’s write up of The Phantom Menace that is mentioned in the episode: https://fansided.com/2019/12/16/star-wars-phantom-menace-best-prequel/

 

Tuesday

2

March 2021

0

COMMENTS

Adrienne Wilkinson

Written by , Posted in Blog, Podcast, Star Wars

We delighted to welcome Adrienne Wilkinson to the show for a wide-ranging interview including her new film Dreamcatcher. Fans of Estradiol Illusions may know Adrienne best for her roles as Eve on Xena: Warrior Princess, Daughter in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Maris Brood in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and as Captain Lexxa Singh in Star Trek: Renegades. Adrienne shares many fascinating insights from her career throughout so many iconic franchises.

 

Dreamcatcher is available March 5th, on demand and digital, on Amazon, Apple, Redbox, and other major VOD services.

 

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Ian’s review of the film: https://ianthomasmalone.com/2021/03/dreamcatcher-subverts-slasher-norms-in-an-intriguing-horror-narrative/

 

Headshot courtesy of Adrienne Wilkinson. Photo by Damu Malik.

 

Poster and stills courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Tuesday

5

January 2021

0

COMMENTS

The Mandalorian Season 2 Review

Written by , Posted in Blog, Podcast

Join host Ian Thomas Malone as she breaks down The Mandalorian’s excellent second season. The Baby Yoda Show covered a lot of ground this year, finally bestowing a proper moniker on the little fella. As Grogu heads for the Jedi Temple, Ian talks about what worked and what didn’t for season two.

Ian’s written review: https://ianthomasmalone.com/2021/01/the-mandalorian-season-2-review/

Saturday

12

December 2020

1

COMMENTS

The Mandalorian Season 2 Review: Chapter 15

Written by , Posted in Blog, Pop Culture, Star Wars, TV Reviews

This season of The Mandalorian has done a superb job with its big moments. Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, and Bo-Katan all shined in their debut episodes. As a medium, television rarely relied so heavily on the giant splashes before the streaming era. The quieter moments need to count too.

The Mandalorian is not very good at stopping to take a breath in order to process its events. Mando has assembled an impressive team of Fett, Fennec, and Cara Dune to help him rescue Grogu, but as an episode, “The Believer” cares very little for any of these people. Chapter 15 belonged to Migs Mayfeld.

For a show starring a puppet and a bounty hunter who never removes his helmet, The Mandalorian has done a fairly decent job building up its supporting bench. Bill Burr shined in last season’s sixth episode as the backstabbing former Imperial sharpshooter. Now imprisoned, Mando needs his services to figure out the location of Moff Gideon, whose imprisonment of Grogu apparently prevented him from making an appearance this episode.

The whole Morak quest was a fairly paint-by-numbers undercover mission. The Mandalorian often leans heavily into Western tropes, but here it was borrowing heavily from the spy/adventure shows that once populated the network TV landscape. It’s fun without being particularly inventive or ambitious.

Most jarring in the episode was the sequence after the undercover Mando and Mayfeld fought off a raiding party, only to be greeted with a chorus of applause from Stormtroopers. We rarely see Stormtroopers winning anything, let alone actually hitting a single target. If anything else, it was entertaining to watch.

Burr did a great job with fairly mundane material. His commentary on the geopolitics of Morak was a clear substitute for American interventionism abroad in places like Vietnam and Iraq, fairly out of place in the Star Wars universe. As the audience, we can follow along with his broad points as they relate to our reality, but that isn’t a dynamic Star Wars has ever really shown to us. The Empire and the New Republic are not really two sides of the same coin.

The dramatic tension in this episode mostly stemmed from Mando being forced to remove his beskar helmet. As soon as the Stormtrooper helmet went on, it became clear that we’d probably get an appearance from Pedro Pascal, mustache and all. Bo-Katan’s statements on Mando’s sect of Mandalorian being extremists set this all up quite well.

Pascal handled the dynamic well, constantly looking like a fish out of water without his security blanket. It’s not a super compelling conflict, since I imagine most of the audience would rather see Pascal on a regular basis rather than stare at Mando’s expressionless helmet. Like Mayfeld’s pontifications on relativism, much of this drama felt like going through the motions.

Mayfeld gets redemption as a character through his ill-advised rant to his former commanding officer Valin Hess (Richard Brake, who’s familiar to Game of Thrones fans as the first Night King). The whole sequence was obviously made to set up his release at the end of the episode, while maybe also serving to show him as not a bad guy. It’s entertaining while also being just a tad too predictable.

The action was mostly good, even if the sight of numerous Imperial officers running to their immediate deaths in the mess room hallway seemed a tad ridiculous. Cara and Fennec had some moments, but Fett was left with not enough to do. I guess we can blame that on some stage fright that some Imperials might recognize his face after his father served as the template for the entire Clone army.

This season has largely been about Mando coming into his own as a father. With that in mind, it’s easy to see why the show wanted to have Mando send a threatening message to Gideon. It did feel rather out of place for him as a character though, needlessly showing his cards.

While a bit lazy in its execution, Chapter 15 served as an effective set-up for the season finale. Burr got his moments to shine, but with a 38-minute runtime, it’s hard to make the case for why no one else could have had a moment as well. Fett superfans were bound to be disappointed by the sidelining of the original helmeted bounty hunter. The Mandalorian needs to do a better job with simply taking a breath every once in a while.

For more Mandalorian coverage, check out Estradiol Illusions’ weekly recaps 

Saturday

28

November 2020

1

COMMENTS

The Mandalorian Season 2 Review: Chapter 13

Written by , Posted in Blog, Pop Culture, Star Wars, TV Reviews

There is a reason none of the Marvel characters from the Netflix series made appearances in Avengers: Endgame, a film with a finale designed to cap off a historic era in film connectivity. Popular as they may be, the inclusion of such characters presents some problems for a global audience that may have no idea who these people are. The hardcore fans are left with a natural degree of wanting for scenarios that would have been so incredible to see up on the big screen.

Ahsoka Tano is the breakout star of the popular animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, the former of which carried the torch for the fandom as it transitioned from the post-Revenge of the Sith Lucas era to its current home at Disney. There was a period of time where Ahsoka Tano was the best Star Wars creation of the 21st century, a sentiment countless Clone Wars fans undoubtedly still hold.

Tano’s appearance in The Mandalorian has been rumored since the show’s inception, a naturally tantalizing prospect for many. The logistics of her inclusion presented the showrunners with some of the same hurdles that the Marvel universe experienced with how to include a popular character in a global phenomenon that has plenty of fans who have never heard of her. Thankfully, Star Wars vet Dave Filoni rose to the task with near flawless execution.

The arrival on Corvus gave The Mandalorian a much needed reprieve from the piles of rocks on Tatooine and Nevarro, but also a chance to move the narrative forward in a game-changing fashion. This season has been about Mando delivering Baby Yoda to a Jedi. Given the show’s often glacier-slow pacing and affection for filler subplots, it might have been reasonable to assume that this might happen sometime at the end of the season.

Instead, we get a fan favorite character and a name for the Child. Grogu is not a good name. Yoda and Yaddle (the latter of which’s legacy was apparently forgotten by Tano, who presumably arrived at the Jedi Temple a little while after her death) are much better names. Grogu is the kind of cringy name that flies in the face of how adorable this fella is.

The action sequences were predictable phenomenal. Mando’s quest to find Ahsoka at the behest of former Empire leader Morgan Elsbeth was a tad perfunctory, but this episode had too much going on to be bogged down in narrative mechanics.

The audience could be forgiven for some eye-rolls at the timeline that Ahsoka provided for Grogu’s residence at the Jedi Temple. The little guy seems to understand Mando better this season, but he’s still basically a baby with a one-track mind for snacks. Are we really supposed to believe that he was trained at the Temple during the era of the prequels when he was 1/5th his current age?

Obviously Ahsoka is not going to train Grogu. That would require The Mandalorian to either lose its best asset or for the show to do a sharp pivot away from its title character. Neither Ahsoka nor Grogu popped up in the sequel trilogy, apart from the former’s brief vocal cameo in The Rise of Skywalker along with all the other Jedi who gave Rey a pep talk.

Rosario Dawson handled the fan favorite character quite well. Perhaps the highlight of the episode was when Ahsoka Tano reflected on her former master Anakin Skywalker in her refusal to train Grogu. Jedi are supposed to be trained at a young age to prevent outside attachments. Mando is for all intents and purposes Grogu’s father.

Mando can never succeed in his mission because it would mean the end of the series. In order to satisfy the viewers, the show is throwing out fan favorite mentions like Grand Admiral Thrawn and the planet Tython to keep things interesting. With the way “The Jedi” played out, longtime fans may get a bit antsy for more franchise reveals that probably won’t be coming anytime soon.

The only point that didn’t really work was Ahsoka Tano’s battle with Elsbeth. The whole nature of Tano’s efforts to make it seem like she killed Mando was a bit pointless, but seeing the skilled dual-wielding Jedi struggle to fight a woman wielding a beskar spear seemed very silly. Tano could’ve jerked the spear away with a single motion of the force. The fact that she didn’t gives fans a bit more satisfying of an action scene, but this sequence was silly enough to begin with.

Mando and Grogu will almost certainly not arrive on Tython with only three episodes left of the season, especially with Moff Gideon tracking the Razor Crest. Chapter 13 was the best episode of the series, striking a perfect balance between casual viewers and Star Wars superfans. This wasn’t just good television, but a perfect roadmap for a franchise to use with regard to exploring its own ethos. The Mandalorian is pretty great when it’s just performing as “The Baby Yoda show,” but there’s so much more for the series to explore.

Be sure to check out Estradiol Illusions’ Mandalorian recaps!

Saturday

14

November 2020

1

COMMENTS

The Mandalorian Season Two Recap: Chapter Eleven

Written by , Posted in Blog, Pop Culture, Star Wars, TV Reviews

Would Mando be better off simply traveling to various planets asking locals in their bars for help finding Jedi? Maybe he should stand on a table holding Baby Yoda up, yelling, “Does anyone know where this kid came from?” That’s basically where we’re at.

Last episode saw the Razor Crest almost destroyed because Mando needed to travel at sub-light to protect Frog Lady’s eggs. The reason beyond this dangerous missions was supposed to be that Frog Lady’s husband had valuable information as to where Mando could find other helmet-wearers like him. Mando will likely spend the rest of his days picking spider webs out of his ship in service to this vital step in his journey.

Upon arriving at the water-heavy planet Trask, almost destroying what’s left of the ship in the process, Mr. Frog Lady does have a big reveal. He points at a bar. That’s it. That’s the information Mando almost died for. A glorified chowder recommendation.

Mando would have been much better off simply asking the X-wing pilots if they knew of any Jedi. They probably do. None of this is nitpicking. This season has yet to supply a reason for its broader quest to find other Mandalorians.

Mando finds some leads while Baby Yoda chows down on octopus chowder. Mr. Frog Lady didn’t exactly give the best intel, as the Quarren fishing boat was less interested in helping Mando than acquiring his armor. Baby Yoda’s floating bassinet apparently doesn’t float over water.

Part of the beauty of The Mandalorian is that it’s clearly crafted by people who love Star Wars. The series isn’t constructed in a way that forces anyone to watch animated shows like The Clone Wars or Rebels, while rewarding those that do. Seeing Bo-Katan in live-action is amazing, especially with Katee Sackoff reprising her role from the animated series.

Unlike Mando, Bo-Katan and her buddies are free to remove their helmets. While fitting in line with their animated appearances, seeing helmet-less Mandalorians is also valuable for the audience. People like to see faces and the expressions worn on them. This dynamic also allows the show to explore Mando’s core belief, one that would naturally sound pretty radical to any casual viewer.

Bo-Katan suggests that Mando is a Child of the Watch, essentially a Mando-extremist cult that broke off from the rest of Mandalore’s society. Mando doesn’t have a ton of time to process this information before the rest of the 35-minute episode’s action scenes need to take place, but this is a valuable question for the show to explore over the course of its run. Ideally, we the viewer may like to envision a scenario where Mando settles down, able to look at his adopted son with his own eyes.

Speaking of Baby Yoda, thankfully the little guy didn’t eat any more of Frog Lady’s eggs. It’s kind of ridiculous that Mando would ask her to babysit considering his snacking habits last episode, but it’s not like he has a ton of friends, on Trask or elsewhere. Kuiil would have been a great traveling babysitter. I miss him.

The action scenes aboard the Gozanti-class Imperial cruiser were great. It was super fun to see TV veteran Titus Welliver as the ship captain, who sadly died before he got a chance to have some tea. Obviously the other Mandalorians weren’t interested in raiding the ship for blasters, or other weapons.

Great to see the return of Moff Gideon. Giancarlo Esposito is fabulous in everything he’s in. Darksaber is one of the big questions of this season, one that I suspect the show won’t be in too big of a rush to address. Fun episodes like this make the destination less important than the journey.

Mando’s quest to find other Mandos did prove fruitful. After quoting Hillary Clinton’s “Stronger Together” slogan from her 2016 campaign, Bo-Katan tells Mando to head to Calodan to find Ahsoka Tano, another fan favorite. He probably could have stumbled upon that tidbit without having to travel by sublight to Trask, but here we are.

“The Heiress” demonstrates the show’s keen ability to simultaneously satisfy casual fans and Star Wars diehards. The Mandalorian rarely suffers when it drags its feet, but this episode moved the plot forward in a way that’s been lacking from this season’s first two installments. We’re almost at the halfway marker, as much as it feels like things just got started. Boba Fett may not come back until the end of the season, if at all. For now, that hardly seems to matter.

For more of Ian’s Mandalorian analysis, be sure to check out Estradiol Illusion’s weekly recaps

Sunday

22

December 2019

0

COMMENTS

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Sinks in Familiar Territory

Written by , Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture, Star Wars

There’s a line in The Last Jedi where Kylo Ren is practically addressing the entire Star Wars fandom. The suggestion to, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to,” is good advice for a franchise perpetually in love with its own lore. The sequel trilogy was designed to introduce new characters into the mix, even as the films themselves often looked like remakes of earlier, better material.

The return of J.J. Abrams to the director’s chair suggested a change in course from Rian Johnson’s mandate in The Last Jedi to let go of that which came before. The Rise of Skywalker is a film all about the past. From the many cameos to the mirroring of earlier narratives, it’s hard to even discuss the film on its own merits, for it doesn’t really have any. The Rise of Skywalker is more like a greatest hits compilation than an actual movie.

Rey, Finn, and Poe were all introduced as characters with the potential to carry the franchise to fresh worlds and new adventures. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac all have obvious chemistry, characters brought together by a shared desire to belong to something greater than themselves. There could have been a point in time where a great trilogy could have been crafted all about these characters, and their adorable spherical droid companion BB-8.

The sequel trilogy always struggled to juggle its many pieces. There are the old characters, the new characters, the older plot, and the minor deviations the new narratives take to differentiate themselves just enough to justify their existence. The Rise of Skywalker can’t plot its own course because Abrams never allows it to stray too far from familiar territory. It’s hard to tell your own story when you have to squeeze in so much of earlier Star Wars lore as well.

The film does handle Carrie Fisher’s death quite well, making the most of mere minutes of footage left over from the previous two entries. It would be quite difficult to wrap up the “Skywalker saga” without Princess Leia. Abrams honors Fisher’s legacy in a way that feels vital to the narrative.

The same holds true for most of the other legacy characters. After being mostly sidelined for the past two films, C-3PO and R2-D2 each get multiple moments to shine. Anthony Daniels gets plenty to work with as everyone’s favorite mildly annoying golden protocol droid. Billy Dee Williams brought plenty of his signature charisma to Lando Calrissian, absent from the films since Return of the Jedi. Even Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo, who took over from Peter Mayhew who died earlier this year) gets a meatier plotline than previous entries.

Star Wars means a lot of different things to its large fandom. There are those who appreciated Rian Johnson’s efforts to plot a new course for The Last Jedi and there are those who loathe what the film did to Luke Skywalker. Plenty of people enjoyed Abrams’ The Force Awakens, which often felt like a straight remake of A New Hope.

The Rise of Skywalker understandably carries the most appeal to fans who want a nice heavy helping of nostalgia to go with their space battles and laser sword fights. The biggest problem with this entire approach is that it robs the new characters of any chance to stand on their own feet. Rey may be the hero, but this isn’t really her movie. It’s not Luke’s either, or Leia’s or Han’s, or any other possible person the film may try and make you remember. It’s the past’s movie, your childhood memories brought back to life for the sake of another ticket sold.

Star Wars used to make its audiences’ collective jaws drop, with stunning technological feats. George Lucas may have no skill for dialogue, but the man knew how to take people to places they’d never been before. As a child I was blown away by the sheer sight of R2-D2 on the bridge of the Tantive IV in the very first film.

The Rise of Skywalker lacks any of that wonder and awe. It doesn’t make an earnest effort to try to impress anyone. Rather, a half-hearted attempt is made to reignite the audience’s faded memories of better times with better movies. Lightning may never strike the same spot twice, but force lightning seems to only know one tired story. We’ve seen this all before.

 

Saturday

23

November 2019

0

COMMENTS

The Mandalorian Season One Review: Chapter 3

Written by , Posted in Blog, Pop Culture, Star Wars, TV Reviews

Note: this review contains spoilers

The breakout sensation that is Baby Yoda does not need much of an explanation. The audience knows absolutely nothing about this character, no name, no species, and certainly no backstory. None of that really matters since the character is one of the most adorable creatures in Star Wars history. There is perhaps another reason why this character has won over the hearts of so many in such a short period of time.

As a franchise, Star Wars evokes a lot of emotion from its fans. People passionately dissect every new minute of content entered into this canon for a very simple reason. They care.

The Mandalorian doesn’t give its viewers many outlets to channel that intense emotion. Its title character has yet to show his face. This isn’t a particularly dialogue-heavy show, dispensing character development in incredibly small doses. Baby Yoda captures the audience’s attention through its sheer cuteness, but also because there hasn’t been anything else presented to care about.

Chapter 3: The Sin was a very effective episode, delivering subtle nodes of character development while also establishing the clear arc of the narrative. Wisely, the show is doubling down on Baby Yoda, who won over the Mandalorian while playfully tampering with his ship’s controls. Every scene featuring Baby Yoda is like an instant endorphin rush.

The whole Mandalorian guild is a little silly, a bit too reminiscent of the Jedi Order. Why do all of these people wear their masks at all times? Don’t the insides start to smell?

At least we finally got a female character with a speaking role. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the first Star Wars live action installment directed by a woman. Deborah Chow did a great job with the episode, particularly with the framing of the action sequences.

Similarly silly was the idea that asking about the bounty is against the Mandalorian “code,” something that was brought up by both The Client and Greef Karga. It’s hardly outside the norm for a bounty hunter to be expected not to care about what happens after payday. There isn’t really a need to mythologize the taboo nature of his line of questioning.

There’s still five more episodes for the Mandalorian to show his face, but it would be a misstep for the show to go the whole season without this reveal. Boba Fett may not have taken off his helmet in the original trilogy, but his father did in Attack of the Clones. The difference between those two roles is that Boba Fett was barely even a character in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, on screen for barely more than five minutes. Here, the Mandalorian is a lead character.

This episode featured a couple fun Star Wars throwbacks. A super battle droid appeared in a flashback sequence from the Mandalorian’s childhood. Best of all was when a patron of the cantina uttered “echuta” at the Mandalorian in response to his success with the bounty, a line first spoken to C-3PO by a fellow protocol droid in Empire Strikes Back. “Echuta” is probably the closest we’ll ever get to Star Wars profanity.

Thankfully, the show looks poised to head to a new planet. The dynamic on the planet that’s probably Tatooine was getting a little old, exacerbated by the lack of compelling characters for the Mandalorian to interact with. Carl Weathers is perfectly serviceable as Karga, but the character simply isn’t that interesting.

The action sequences were a lot of fun. We finally got to see a Mandalorian with a jet pack. It’ll be interesting to see how much the Mandalorian mythology comes into play now that the show is heading off planet, but there’s certainly a lot of unfinished business with regard to the fallout of the Baby Yoda jailbreak. Is the credibility of their whole group shot? Who knows, but the mystery is quite compelling.

This episode was hands down the best of the three so far. A lot of the cast has yet to be introduced, leaving plenty of plot for the remaining five episodes. This episode also put the previous one in context as a standalone adventure rather than simply stalling. As long as there’s plenty of Baby Yoda, it seems safe to say this show will continue to be a hit.