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The Mandalorian Official "The Mandalorian" Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Discussion in 'Star Wars TV- Current and Future Shows' started by Corran1138, Nov 9, 2017.

  1. Bor Mullet

    Bor Mullet Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 6, 2018
    I'd argue that it could refer to both. After all, the writers of the show made it a point for Baby Yoda to become a Mandalorian foundling at the end of season 1.
     
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  2. A Chorus of Disapproval

    A Chorus of Disapproval Head Admin & TV Screaming Service star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2003
    The season 1 "stinger" was that the two of them are "a clan".

    Even down to the shape of the pram that The Child travels around in, this series is so heavily steeped in the classic Lone Wolf and Cub, that both characters are integral to each other.
     
  3. cwustudent

    cwustudent Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2011
    I want more Amy Sedaris, mainly to nag Mando until he names his kid.
     
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  4. Blackhole E Snoke

    Blackhole E Snoke Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2016
    Yeah but Din has people in the show calling him the Mandalorian. I highly doubt baby yoda would be called the Mandalorian by another character. The Foundling would be more likely, or still The Child.
     
  5. TheCloneWarsForever

    TheCloneWarsForever Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 24, 2018
    It's pretty clear to me Baby Yoda is here to stay for the count.

    The show's title is not a straitjacket. At most, it says Din will be there for the count. It doesn't put a tenure cap on anyone else.
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2020
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  6. Todd the Jedi

    Todd the Jedi Mod and Loving Tyrant of SWTV, Lit, & Collecting star 6 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Oct 16, 2008
    Also Star Wars shows don't have the best track record with relevant titles. Remember that show all about a bunch of people living day to day on a fueling platform called the Colossus? It was called Colossus right? The Wacky Adventures of Kaz? What? Resistance? But they were in like, three episodes! :p

    Point is, don't get hung up on the title.
     
  7. Jedi Knight Fett

    Jedi Knight Fett Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2014
    Like I bet when the Cassian and Obi Wan shows finally come out they’ll have pretty irrelevant titles
     
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  8. Bor Mullet

    Bor Mullet Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 6, 2018
    I'm not saying Baby Yoda is called the Mandalorian. It's just that the title of the TV show can be more broadly interpreted to also include him. And I don't think there's any justification for saying that the title, being the Mandalorian, necessitates that Baby Yoda eventually exits stage left. Baby Yoda can remain until the end without any damage to the show, or its title.

    I mean, Star Wars has more than just stars and wars in it, and we don't complain about that. Or... do we?
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2020
  9. Blackhole E Snoke

    Blackhole E Snoke Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2016
    Yes I agree about that. I'm saying The Foundling (I've decided that's what I will call him now, upgrade over The Child) can stay or leave, while Din Djarin cannot leave. You would not have The Foundling taking over as The Mandalorian. Talking about the Foundling, I wonder how exactly they are going to manage and explain his character growth? A being that has not learned to speak a single word in any language in 50 years, how can that character grow in the space of a show and have it still make sense as to why no learning had taken place in the previous 50 years?
     
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  10. Bor Mullet

    Bor Mullet Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 6, 2018
    That’s a good question (though clearly BY had learned to show compassion and to force heal in the past, so he did show evidence of real learning). But I imagine it will be hand-waved away. He’s learning from Din Djarin now, and that’ll happen in real time. Can be explained as “well, Yoda species start a spurt of cognitive growth at 50” or something. They’ll find an easy way around it.
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2020
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  11. Dags

    Dags Jedi Grand Master star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 3, 2000
    You beat me to it. The Child could suddenly turn into a teenager/adult practically overnight if that's how the species evolves. Remember, Yoda himself was 900 but was training Jedi at 800. So assuming he was exactly like the Child at 50, then he matured a lot in the following 50 years.

    It's also worth noting that The Child could easily be the direct offspring of Yoda (the timeline certainly works). After all, we have no idea how the species procreate, in which case it really could be called 'Yoda's baby'.

    Also on another point, The Child could be just like Maggie from The Simpsons. Everyone likes her character because she stays as a baby throughout the series, so if the Child DOES mature and age quickly, will it lose its 'cuteness' and therefore its public appeal?

    Finally, I'd love it if someone referred to The Child as Baby Yaddle. It seems that little lady has been left by the wayside :)
     
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  12. Darth Smurf

    Darth Smurf Small, but Lethal star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 22, 2015
    I think the child will shed its skin like a lizard, will suddenly be twice as big and begin to speak with bad grammar.
    Mando will take his helmet off and say:
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2020
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  13. Fjall

    Fjall Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 9, 2014
    I would love to see teenage baby Yoda.
     
  14. Seerow

    Seerow Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 7, 2011
    I wonder if a teenage Baby Yoda would through a rebellious stage. Be all like...

    Din: Stay here on the ship
    BY: Boss of me are you not old man.
    Din: Don't take that disrespectful time with me young man.
    BY: You will, blow it up your rectum old man.
     
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  15. R.D.

    R.D. Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Nov 26, 2015
    Anyway, very much late to the party (thank Disney Plus staggered releases around the world), but I did my free trial, plowed through Mandalorian last week, and now I can finally talk about it beyond just clips on Youtube and forum descriptions!

    Short version--I liked it a lot, wouldn't say I loved it completely, but still good, and a fine foundation for even better things to come. I found 'Sanctuary' and 'The Gunslinger' to be the weakest episodes (not bad ones, to be clear but could've been a bit more to it I felt), but 'The Prisoner' was my favorite, outside the opening. I ramble more in my blog post here, but suffice it to say, glad I finally watched it. :)

    I sort of hope we can see maybe some more urban settings next season, whenever that may be, in contrast to the frontier theme of this one.
     
  16. Ancient Whills

    Ancient Whills Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2011
    https://deadline.com/video/the-mandalorian-jon-favreau-dave-filoni-emmys-disney/
    The first live-action TV series coming from the Star Wars universe has broken ground on two fronts this Emmy season. It not only became a breakout success for the first year of the new streaming service Disney+ by earning a whopping 15 nominations including Outstanding Drama Series, but it also overcame Television Academy voters’ general bias in the marquee categories for anything in the science fiction realm, a prejudice often also exhibited by their counterparts in the Motion Picture Academy.

    Some were surprised to see the love for this new series so quickly on the Emmy front, but it had an advantage in also being one of the most critically acclaimed new shows of the year. There was no doubt about it at the Disney Drive-In series presented by Deadline that took place last night at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, where cars packed in to see the first two episodes play on the giant screen, preceded by a conversation I moderated with executive producer/creator Jon Favreau and executive producer/director Dave Filoni, the latter no stranger to Star Wars fans as the creative force behind Star Wars animated hits The Clone Wars and Rebels. Everyone got dinner, a souvenir photo in their car in front of the ‘drive and repeat’ Mandalorian sign, as well as a Baby Yoda (!) In our chat Favreau explained how it all got started.

    “We wanted to really wind it back to the things that inspired the original Star Wars and really get it small in scale and tell simple stories, because part of what you inherit when you’re going to see Star Wars now is this whole history, because the stories have been told for decades, and it was nice, with the new medium, to be able to start with a new set of characters to introduce a new audience,” Favreau, a dedicated fan himself since he was a kid, said of the blueprint for the series. “But we always knew…and this is something I learned from…over at Marvel and working with Kevin Feige, is you always want to keep the core fans in mind, because they have been the ones that’ve been keeping the torch lit for many, many years, but these are also stories for young people and for new audiences. These are myths, and so you always want to have an outstretched hand to people who might not have that background. And so you’re really telling two stories at once. You’re telling the story for the people who are fresh eyes, and you’re telling the story for the people who’ve been there with the property and with the stories and the characters for so many years, and make sure that you’re honoring them, as well.”

    As for Filoni, moving into the live-action side of the saga was new but exhilarating. “It’s a shift, for sure, and something that I was interested in for a while. I really got interested in, you know, seeing if I could do it from working with George [Lucas] and listening to his stories and his experience, and from the way he taught me how to, you know, shoot animation, because we were doing it in kind of a virtual sense, as well, with our animation programs that he was creating to tell The Clone Wars,” he said. “So a lot of what Jon was doing when I saw him shooting Jungle Book, but even more so, Lion King, was very relatable to me as far as technique and technology, from what George and I had been doing in Clone Wars. So [Lucasfilm head] Kathy Kennedy and I, we’re always looking for a good bridge for me to try to, you know, change mediums, and this was, to be honest, a very perfect fit and a great environment, and I gained a great mentor and teacher in Jon here to shepherd me through the process of live action.”

    To hear more of what their collaboration has wrought, including “building a wall” that became a huge technical achievement in bringing The Mandalorian to life, watch the video above.
    https://deadline.com/2020/08/the-ma...wig-goransson-contenders-tv-watch-1203012666/
    When Jon Favreau set out to make The Mandalorian, the Star Wars franchise’s first-live-action series, he had a strong sense of the world he wanted to create: Intimate as well as grand, the series should harken to the vision of the original Star Wars trilogy, while taking the universe established by George Lucas in new and exciting directions.

    “This was an opportunity to prune everything back to the beginnings again,” the executive producer said during Deadline’s virtual Contenders Television: The Nominees. “And having new characters allowed us to do that.”

    The central character for Favreau would be Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), a lone Mandalorian bounty hunter who chases down criminals in the outer reaches of the galaxy. In pre-production, the creator looked back at Star Wars’ beginnings with A New Hope, intending to surround the character with elements of the genres that inspired Lucas to begin with, including samurai films and Westerns. But in doing so, he came to an epiphany. “What was really mind-blowing is there’s so much to trying to create that authenticity, to make it feel akin to what George had done,” he said, “and then you realize that George was doing it without a road map.”

    From Favreau’s perspective, the experience of developing the series spoke to the challenges faced today by a great number of filmmakers in a landscape dominated by pre-existing IP. “To have a way to create a freshness, while still being respectful of what came before, I think is one of the challenges of storytellers in this moment, because we’re inundated with so much content,” he said. “Now, everything’s at the touch of a finger, so everybody has a tremendous cultural context…You know, everybody’s checking your work.”

    To explain how he grappled with this pressure—the inevitability of comparison to Lucas’ Star Wars films—Favreau offered an analogy. “We’re DJs, playing Beatles songs. He’s The Beatles,” he said. “And the trick is, how do you recombine that?”

    Among the collaborators Favreau tapped to help pull of that trick were director/executive producer Dave Filoni and Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson, both of whom joined Favreau on the Disney+ panel.

    Long an influential figure in the world of Star Wars, Filoni played a major role in the creation of an instantly iconic, new character—The Child, otherwise known as Baby Yoda. “Dave had done a sketch of kind of a Michelangelo/E.T. moment, and that was a source of inspiration,” Favreau shared about the Child’s first scene, drawing parallels to Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” and Steven Spielberg’s famous alien. “Then, Doug Chiang and the whole art department started generating drawings of it, and the Legacy [Effects] people built it.”

    Getting his first shot at live-action directing on The Mandalorian, on Episodes 1 and 5, Filoni certainly was met with a learning curve. At the same time, he would rely heavily in the process on lessons he’d learned from Lucas on Clone Wars, about shooting and editing, within the context of virtual production.

    Göransson, on the other hand, was able to pen a completely unique score for a universe most closely associated with five-time Oscar winner John Williams, using a set of woodwind recorders as a starting point. “For some reason, I gravitated to this instrument that I used to play as a kid, so it was just going to the studio and playing around, away from the computer, with instruments that I could touch, like piano,” he said. “When I saw Star Wars for the first time and heard the music, I remember that feeling it had, and I kind of wanted to re-create that feeling.”

    Working over the years primarily in film, Favreau is a major fan of the experience one gets in a theater. Releasing The Mandalorian on a streaming platform, then, was a new experience, though it was certainly no less communal. “[It] has created this really interesting flow, creatively, through the digital world,” the creator said, “that I’d never encountered before.”

    On July 28, when this year’s Emmy nominations were announced, The Mandalorian stunned by snagging 15, including breaking into the Outstanding Drama Series race in its first go-round. At September’s virtual ceremonies, the series will also compete in the categories of Guest Actor, Cinematography, Production Design, Music Composition, Picture Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Special Visual Effects, Stunt Coordination, Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes, Prosthetic Makeup, and Character Voice-Over Performance.

    The Mandalorian will be back for a second season on Disney+ next year.

    Check back for a video of the panel soon.
    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...l-george-lucas-reaction-disney-series-1307207
    The streamer's debut boasted the first live-action 'Star Wars' TV series, which has earned 15 Emmy nominations. Executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni explain why the show is much more than just the meme-friendly Baby Yoda.


    On Nov. 12, Disney+ launched with a major offering for subscribers: the first live-action Star Wars show and the most meme-able new TV character on the internet. Executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni's The Mandalorian, which stars Pedro Pascal as a mysterious bounty hunter, fueled Disney+ to impressive signup numbers (the service now reaches more than 60.5 million paid subscribers) and was rewarded with 15 Emmy nominations, including a drama series nom that is rare for a sci-fi show. Filoni, who for years has masterminded many of Star Wars' popular animated shows, is also nominated this year for Star Wars: Resistance. The pair took a break from postproduction on season two (due out in October) to recall keeping Baby Yoda (which they call The Child) a secret and George Lucas' reaction to the series so far.

    Go back to the morning of Nov. 12, before The Mandalorian debuted. Were you ready for the internet to explode with Baby Yoda memes?

    DAVE FILONI I don't think anything can prepare you for the reaction to be so all-encompassing. It seemed like everyone just fell in love with this little guy that we had known from the shoot. The first person who really clocked that it was going to be bigger than I realized was [castmember] Werner Herzog. We were so focused on making it and bringing it to life, but Werner was like, "This is really magical."

    Keeping The Child a secret meant not allowing merchandise to be made early, which left money on the table for Disney. Jon, what were those conversations like?

    JON FAVREAU I thought it was very important to establish that there were going to be surprises. When you are promoting a film, you are putting your best stuff out there in the marketing campaign because you want everybody to show up that Friday. Television is different. You want to be able to build. You want word-of-mouth to spread. You want people to tune in and know that something is going to happen that they are going to want to talk about.

    At the end of episode five, "The Gunslinger," a mysterious figure shows up with spurs. Fans quickly noted that Boba Fett had similar spurs in the original trilogy. How much do you debate when to put in teases like that?

    FILONI We try to layer in things in the universe of Star Wars to make it feel authentic, but also to give a little nod, clues, whatever they may be. They can be small to large. You can look at a movie and you recognize Club Obi-Wan in [Indiana Jones and the] Temple of Doom, and that's a different kind of wink. Our things are always a little more in-universe. Jon and I love that stuff because we are fans. We both keep our eyes open for things that we like or little connective things that might mean something to people like us.

    Dave, you are very close with George Lucas and are considered by many fans to be his heir apparent. What kind of feedback did he give you about season one?

    FILONI Not a tremendous amount. We talk about other stuff. When I talk with him, I like to get more knowledge. He'll give me some reminders, especially before I shoot something, about how many setups I should try to get in a day, and I might rack his brain for certain things about how to cover a scene. He's been very complimentary. I think he's enjoyed the show, and he said once [that] now he gets to watch it as a fan and watch it as a viewer. My job is to bring that knowledge forward and pass on what I've learned from him in every discipline to Jon and to the creative departments.

    Given that your production involves a lot of virtual sets, will that make it easier to get back to filming a potential third season amid COVID-19 restrictions?

    FAVREAU The fact that the set is much more contained is a benefit, because you can limit the number of people. A lot of the people controlling it are doing it remotely from what we call the Brain Bar, which is a bank of gaming computers, essentially. The amount of people near the camera could be much smaller than [usual]. We also shoot a lot outside, which is helpful, too. We build to a moment in filming more like an animated production, where we have a lot of storyboards, a lot of discussions and scouting in virtual reality. We use cinematic tools in VR much the same way we did for The Lion King and The Jungle Book. A lot of times the actors you are seeing on the screen aren't actually there on set.

    Emmy nominee Giancarlo Esposito made a big impact with limited screen time this season. Did you make a promise that he'd have even more to do in season two?

    FAVREAU I had worked with him on Jungle Book, and we worked on a show together called Revolution. That was me being able to reach out to him and call in a favor. We knew that he would bring a theatrical nature but also an emotional grounding, because he is such a fantastic actor. I think Star Wars relies upon the actors to really ground it, because it could otherwise feel like something frivolous. You really need a couple of heavy hitters in there to bring reality to the world.

    Interview edited for length and clarity.

    ***

    And The Odds Are...

    Perhaps the biggest twist of the drama race is the inclusion of The Mandalorian. The Disney+ Star Wars series from Jon Favreau, part Western and part IP machine, gave the new platform Baby Yoda, heat for the young streamer and, now, a daunting 15-nomination haul at its first Emmys. As the only freshman series in a race full of aging and returning nominees and even one former winner (The Handmaid's Tale), the element of surprise could certainly work in its favor. But are TV Academy voters ready to embrace a space opera in which the titular lead rarely shows his face in the night's most competitive category? Game of Thrones proved that fantasy was not off the table, but the former Emmy champ was undeniably embedded in the zeitgeist. This probably isn't The Mandalorian's year. — MICHAEL O'CONNELL
     
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  17. Bor Mullet

    Bor Mullet Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 6, 2018
    Great show. All accolades are well-deserved. There’s no faking enthusiasm for this. It’s just good, plain and simple.
     
  18. bb8isno1

    bb8isno1 Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2020
    Never been a fan of SW tv shows only the films really mattered to me until I saw this. This is what I invested in Disney Plus to see and it didnt let me down, Cant wait til season 2 and hopefully the Cassian Andor and Obi Wan tv shows will be as good.
     
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  19. Ancient Whills

    Ancient Whills Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2011
    https://www.thewrap.com/lucasfilm-p...-the-mandalorian-and-the-future-of-star-wars/

    Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy on Baby Yoda, ‘The Mandalorian’ and the Future of ‘Star Wars’

    by STEVE POND | August 21, 2020 @ 10:06 AM

    TheWrap Emmy magazine: “There was an opportunity to create a workflow that’s different than what has essentially existed for the last hundred years,” “Mandalorian” executive producer says

    Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm and a winner of the Oscars’ Irving Thalberg Award, is nominated for an Emmy this year as one of the executive producers of the Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.”

    The “Star Wars” spinoff series landed a surprising 15 nominations, putting it in the top five of all programs and making it the only first-year show to be nominated in the Outstanding Drama Series category. (No debuting programs were nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series.) We sat down with the veteran film executive to talk about the future of beloved sci-fi franchise — both on the big and the small screen.

    Congratulations on all the Emmy nominations for “The Mandalorian.”

    Thank you. That was a very nice surprise. I don’t think any of us anticipated that.

    I have to admit that I expected it to get quite a few nominations, but I didn’t expect the drama-series nomination.

    No, that was really nice to see. Really nice.

    For years, there’s been talk about possible live-action “Star Wars” TV series. Why was this the first one that actually happened?

    Well, there’s been no live-action work done in television by us until “Mandalorian.” But when (former Disney CEO) Bob Iger announced that he was moving forward with Disney+, the minute that he did that we jumped on it. And it really came about because I’ve known (“Mandalorian” creator) Jon Favreau and I’ve known of his interest in “Star Wars” for a long time. The thing that I think bonded Jon and I right away is we both had an interest and fascination in technology, and we’d been talking for a while about the fact that there was an opportunity to change things and create a workflow that’s different than what has essentially existed for the last hundred years.

    Jon had come off “The Jungle Book” and was segueing into “The Lion King,” and he showed me what he was doing with the tech. It just seemed like a natural progression that when we got this opportunity to move into television, we might approach the show that way. It was a very exciting evolution of conversations that have been going on for a while.

    Is the series using technology that hasn’t been used in the “Star Wars” world before?

    Not entirely, because no technology comes out of nowhere. Obviously, there’s been a lot of work we were doing inside of ILM. All the visual-effects houses and the gaming world has been in ongoing discussions for the last decade, and there have been incremental steps going on in movies and in visual effects work for a while, most of all in gaming. Game engines is where always knew the convergence was going to happen that would allow for this. And Jon was using game-engine technology in the work that he was doing with “The Lion King.” So even though we ended up going with Epic (Games) and using their game engine, he was using a very similar technology. And prior to that, we had been doing some work with LED screens and with laser technology in “Rogue One” and “Solo.”

    So it was really the combination of all of those efforts and discussions and talent. Frankly, people are always what drive this. I’ve always loved the approach to this kind of development — even going back to what Bob Zemeckis was doing (on 2009’s “A Christmas Carol”) and what James Cameron was doing (on 2009’s “Avatar”) when Steven (Spielberg) and I did “The Adventures of Tintin.” (2011) We were working near where Bob was working and where Jim was working, and everybody was visiting each other’s sets.

    What’s been exciting about this evolution is that we were fortunate enough to walk into (former Disney streaming chief) Kevin Mayer’s office, John and I, and lay out what it was we wanted to do without necessarily knowing exactly how we were going to do it. And between Bob Iger and Kevin Mayer, they were willing to take a risk on us. Because we believed we could take this to the next step, they believed. So it was everybody joining hands and, frankly, jumping off the cliff together. And we were lucky enough to have it all work.

    You can talk about the advanced technology, but one of the things that appealed to me about “The Mandalorian” is that it has the feel of the original trilogy or even the original “Star Wars” movie. However different the process was, it definitely feels like it’s from that universe.

    I agree with you. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the advanced technology is actually allowing you to feel that way. I think that that’s really true. I think that in an interesting way, it has all the DNA of what George (Lucas) was always interested in. He was trying so hard in pushing technology, but at the heart of it, it was still focused on storytelling and characters, and also a kind of lived-in feeling to everything. Which I think is something certainly (“The Mandalorian” director/executive producer) Dave Filoni understands in all the work that he’s been doing for years inside the company, and something Jon always loved. The technology has never been an attempt to try to move this further into some kind of science-fiction world. It’s still in service to that original feeling.

    From a storytelling point of view, what were your priorities going into “The Mandalorian?”

    Well, the most important decision made by Jon was the decision to focus on the Mandalorians inside the “Star Wars” mythology. The fact that they are in this metal armor meant we didn’t have to deal with everyone being in human form. That was extremely important, because it gave us some flexibility and forgiveness, frankly, in what we were trying to do with the technology. So that was a really important decision, and an idea that Jon had right from the outset.

    The big question: Was Baby Yoda part of this from the beginning?

    Baby Yoda was part of this from the beginning. We didn’t know exactly what Baby Yoda was going to look like, and we didn’t necessarily call him Baby Yoda. But yes, he was a part of this.

    I was just talking to Jon yesterday, because we’re in a visual effects review, which we do every week going through shots. And I actually hadn’t realized that the movie “Paper Moon” was a big influence on Jon when he was thinking about this story. That is not necessarily a movie you would immediately go to, but the minute he said it, I was like, “Yeah, of course.”

    With Baby Yoda as the Tatum O’Neal character? I wouldn’t have picked up on that, either. You must’ve had an inkling that Baby Yoda, or “The Child,” or whatever you were going to call him, was going to be a real attraction.

    Well, we did because all of us were attracted to the character as he evolved. And we knew when he was on the set from how everybody was reacting that he would certainly be a popular character. But I don’t think anybody quite anticipated the degree to which he would catch on. That, I have to say, was a bit of a surprise.

    We knew enough to keep him secret. (Laughs) But we keep a lot of things secret on “Star Wars.”

    At the end of last year, when “The Rise of Skywalker” came out, you said you wanted to take time out to think about where the franchise is going from there. Are you still doing that?

    Oh yeah. It’s an ever-evolving process. You know, when I personally came into this, George had already been having conversations with his previous actors, Carrie (Fisher) and Harrison (Ford) and Mark (Hamill) — there was a saga that the fans loved and he never finished. He always talked about doing nine movies and he was ready to complete that. And so our focus had been from the beginning on finishing that saga.

    And now we’re stepping back. Stories have been told within this universe over the last 40-odd years, and there’s now the realization that this is a mythology that actually spans about 25,000 years, when you really start to look at all the different stories that have been told, whether it’s in books and games.

    We just need the time to step back and really absorb what George has created, and then start to think about where things might go. That’s what we’ve been doing, and we’ve been having a great deal of fun doing it, and meeting with lots of different filmmakers and talent. There’s so many fans out there and so many filmmakers that have been influenced by “Star Wars” for so long that it’s a fantastic opportunity to get a sense of who wants to be a part of this. So that’s what we’ve been doing.

    The lines between film and television are obviously blurring now, but do you think that television is very important to the future of the franchise?

    I do. And I’ve already seen evidence of it. The ability to be very character-driven, with extended storytelling and connected storytelling, I think this space offers us a great opportunity to do that.

    There are a record number of women directors nominated for Emmys this year, and three of your eight episodes were directed by women. Is that a priority for you?

    It’s absolutely a priority. It’s been very exciting to see the talent that’s come in. And we’re now developing the limited Obi-Wan Kenobi series with Deborah Chow, and she’s just been doing a phenomenal job.

    I was actually sad because I love Nia DaCosta, who was just announced to do “Captain Marvel” (the sequel). She’s another director I’ve been watching, and I think she’s enormously talented. Certainly, the kind of television that’s being made now is going to give many people an opportunity to direct more and be more involved with shows that have special effects and extended production values. It really gives people an opportunity to move into big technical movies. That’s exciting. I think we can develop a lot of new talent and it’s about time.

    You finished the second season of “The Mandalorian” right under the wire before the shutdown, right?

    Under the wire? It was literally five days and the country went down. We were enormously lucky, and then we didn’t wait (to finish postproduction). Even though we wondered to what extent people could work remotely, our IT department and ILM had everybody up and running within a week, working from home and continuing to work in the cutting room and on visual effects shots. It was pretty staggering how quickly they got everybody up and running. So we haven’t really lost any time.
     
  20. Bor Mullet

    Bor Mullet Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 6, 2018
    I find Kathleen’s mention of the 25,000 year span of canon (when talking about stepping back after the ST) to be very, very encouraging. I would not be surprised by a Jedi origin or other old timey Star Wars saga, at this point.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2020
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  21. Jid123Sheeve

    Jid123Sheeve Guest

    Would line up with old rumors those were the Benioff and Weiss films that are no longer happening but that doesn't mean some concept along those lines are still in the works
     
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  22. MrDarth0

    MrDarth0 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2015
    Sounds like somebody actually explained to her there is reference material and books she can draw on.

    [​IMG]
     
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  23. Jid123Sheeve

    Jid123Sheeve Guest

    Yeeeeah if they do DEEP PAST stuff it probably more or less be it's own thing
     
  24. Vorax

    Vorax Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jun 10, 2014
    "And now we’re stepping back. Stories have been told within this universe over the last 40-odd years, and there’s now the realization that this is a mythology that actually spans about 25,000 years, when you really start to look at all the different stories that have been told, whether it’s in books and games."

    Well, better late than never in acknowledging the ol SW EU, instead of lying and denying like she once did. Am looking forward to The Mandalorian cause I like Jon's stewardship and it feels like lower budget SW quality of the past instead of expensive junk.
     
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  25. GregMcP

    GregMcP Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 7, 2015
    "lying and denying"?
    This isn't the US election.