A/V The Book of Boba Fett

So last week we got everything I like about the Mandalorian and the Filoni-verse. This week we got (almost) everything I don't like about it. Balance.
Okay, there were some things I did really like, so let's start with the positive (for Dave):

Spoiler

All the Cobb Vanth stuff was great; actually much better tan the Cobb Vanth stuff from Mando Season One, which didn't hang together that well as a plot. Having a straight-up Western "I'm the marshall around these parts" character engaging in gunfights is exactly the kind of thing that setting a show on Tatooine allows you to do. And the actor does a great job with the character. We even get a nice mini-arc with the scene with him outdrawing the Pykes in the beginning and the scene with Cad Bane outdrawing him at the end. And there's a nice lesson to it: as Mando says, the planet and galaxy are interconnected and a single honest lawman is not going to be able to protect his town from everything singlehandedly. It's sort of the same lesson that Boba got with the Tuskens (a connection that would be drawn directly if the show cared about Boba at all).

Even though it's a bit cheap, I do hope he survives so we can see the character again. Hey, Cobb Vanth anthology series?

Also sue me I like Cad Bane I have always liked Cad Bane I always will like Cad Bane. I could care less about his character and motivations but I really like his style. And having the Western-themed Bandito bounty hunter having a quick-draw fight against the Western-themed Tatooine Marshall is exactly what we watch Star Wars TV for. It had to happen, logic be damned.

Mando's initial approach to the Temple is also a nice sequence: I like the bamboo jungle, I like R2 as the mysterious servant, and I love the eerie ant-like worker drones slowly building the temple. It even provides a nice subtle sign of the difference between Luke and Anakins' characters as opposed to the Old Jedi. Obi-Wan and most of the Jedi we see in the Prequels kind of despise droids, whereas Luke and Anakin are both kind of gear-heads who form bonds with their droids.

Okay, now for the bad:

First, it's now clearer than ever that what happened is Dave & co wanted to do Mando S3 and/or some kind of Mando 2.5 interlude but decided they didn't quite have enough plot or more likely just went absolutely fandom power-mad and decided to expand their five-minute "how did Boba survive the Sarlaac?" flashback sequence and their 1-2 episode "Mando gets hired by Boba Fett, who's now a crime-lord on Tatooine, to help him defeat the Pyke Syndicate" arc into a full limited series.

This isn't as crazy as it sounds. Notice that the last two "Mando 2.5" episodes have each featured an extended flashback sequence visually detailing the backstory of (1) the Children of the Watch, and (2) Grogu. Now imagine that that last episode was the first of a 3-episode arc from Season Three of The Mandalorian, and the only difference was that they inserted a similar flashback scene cutting together Boba's escape from the Sarlaac and time with the sandpeople at the point in the plot where Mando meets Boba. Now ask yourself: is there anything, anything at all, that you would be missing that you needed to make sense of the show's plot and characters going into the finale?

Spoiler

I'm not going to harp on all the many missed-opportunities in the Boba Fett plotline that they ignored bc they obviously didn't care about that plotline very much--that ship has sailed, and has already been covered well by others.

It's a very minor critique, but I do feel like if they're going to set the show around the idea that the Pyke Syndicate and Spice are big problems, they should actually show what spice does and what it is and why it's bad news for Vanth's community. The scene where he pours it out on the ground is great silent filmmaking, but we could have used another where spice is shown destroying Tatooine life and community or causing death or addiction or something. Idk.

But mostly...dear Waru, those Luke training sequences. That CGI Luke. Ahsoka randomly showing up for no conceivable reason. Why are these scenes here? What plot purpose do they serve? What insight did they give us into Luke's character? Jedi training? Grogu? Anything?

I must be the one person in the world today who just gets profoundly annoyed at self-indulgent pointless fanservice stuff like this. Boba Fett in Mando Season 2 was awful. Ahsoka was good, but because she actually had an important role to play in an otherwise cool episode, and the fact that it was Ahsoka just added an extra, nice wrinkle for fans who knew who she was and why she was there.

But when I just randomly get five or six slowly-paced pointless scenes stuck into my show where my erstwhile childhood hero is portrayed by a rubber man who looks mildly perplexed and levitates frogs and tells me all about what happened in those other movies I liked when I was a kid...I don't know, man.

Luke showing up at the end of Mando S2 barely worked bc he was mostly just a mysterious cool presence playing the "Jedi" role in the season-arc plot, and the fact that he was a CGI monstrosity just made that distance more palpable. But if you want to set the plot of a whole episode around your CG monstrosity, you need to do more than just improve the CGI. And the writing and acting of Luke in these scenes is just awful. I get that he has to look kind of vague and out of it all the time bc of the limitations of technology, but they didn't have to write him and voice him like that! The main takeaway from the training scenes is that Jedi training with Luke is really boring, and I guess because that Luke is just kind of high all the time.

I get why fans want Ahsoka and Luke to meet, and Live Action Ahsoka continues to work as a character, but the meeting also comes off as odd and perfunctory, entirely because of CG Luke. Like she says he's so much like his father, which is a line that should land like gangbusters but doesn't work at all here since his father was an insane passionate loyal rage-monkey and Luke in this episode is painfully chill, only ever vaguely put out by anything, and also literally made of plastic.

No disrespect if you enjoy this kind of thing. Filoni and co are obviously nerds doing a very particular kind of fan-service, and their target audience for those scenes is nerds who also enjoy that particular kind of fan-service. I do not. At least when Luke was weird in a novel I could still imagine him as making more sense or being the Luke I remembered. This is just...a weird combination of boring and unnerving.

Re the celibacy/attachment debate, I want to mostly agree with @Dawud786 on the basic issues. Star Wars fans continue to treat "being a Jedi" as just like "being a gifted kid with super powers and getting to do what you want with them" when it's really "being part of an intense religious order that has to constantly train and travel around the Galaxy righting wrongs and sacrificing their lives at the drop of a hat while also trying to achieve true spiritual consciousness." I've been ringing this bell for many years, but the fact that that order is celibate makes perfect sense in itself even if you ignore all the GL attachment stuff, for almost purely practical reasons. Being a Jedi is like being an early Jesuit, and it's very hard to be ready at the word of your superior (Yoda) to travel from Spain (Coruscant) to Japan (Naboo) and possibly live the rest of your life there and/or get executed while praying the whole office (meditating a bunch) every day and also get home to your wife and kids each night. The fact that in the prequels GL established that Force Sensitivity is an inherited trait adds another wrinkle, as it's very easy to see why as a religious order dedicated to service the Jedi would want to put a fire-wall in the way of the establishment of super-rich super-powerful Jedi dynasties.

Likewise, the reading of the Prequels that's just "sticking to old rules is always bad" is not particularly compelling. Star Wars is a lot of things, but one thing it's certainly not is a vague progressive parable about how we just need technology and power and freedom and how tradition and old stuff and moral restrictions are always bad.

GL's vision of the Jedi is basically a Campbellian/Jungian religious perennialism combined with a strong ecological and anti-technological impulse, and a few weirder hippy things and things he just sort of made up. The Jedi in the Prequels fail for a lot of reasons, among which is pride and arrogance and lack of compassion for others (of which their refusal to care enough about the plight of the slaves on Tatooine to rescue Anakin's mother and free the other slaves is a glaring example); but the main reason they fall is that they get overtaken and rendered obsolete a vast technological-nightmare-reproduction military-industrial-complex war of clones and droids ushering in a fascist military state led by the literal devil. But on the most basic level, the Jedi even in the Prequels are the good guys, and the good guys precisely because they are an ancient religious order who follow tradition and have strict moral rules.

Now, that being said, I'm a bit confused on why this episode in particular should raise that debate so much. I don't see the episode ending as being at all extreme:

Spoiler

Maybe it's just that nothing with CGI Luke really makes sense or lands the way it should? Like Luke in that scene seems awkward and distant and cold and harsh and unhelpful, but that's sort of how he seems in every scene.

But I mean, "the choice" in itself makes perfect sense whatever your stance on Jedi and marriage and family and attachment. Being a Jedi is a huge commitment, involving the life-long practice of intense training, religious devotion, labor, suffering, adventure, and likely death all around the galaxy. It also involves intensive training for many years in meditation and magical powers. Learning to let go of family, initially, at the very beginning of training, is gonna be important no matter what, even if Grogu is allowed to get married or spend time with Mando later on. It's like going to boot camp or something.

Even more importantly, though, the Mando is not just some loving parent who Grogu could see from time to time on Family Weekend; he is himself a crazy religious fanatic weirdo who worships weapons and war and is intensely committed to a dangerous life of constant bounty-hunting and violence. I mean, as cute as the Mando-Grogu pairing was in Seasons 1-2, Grogu was in constant danger and constantly exposed to violence while with Mando; he wasn't going to daycare or whatever.

So Luke saying, in essence, "you can go and live the rest of your life with Mando and participate in the kind of life and ethos that he believes in, or you can let go of that and live as a Jedi, but you can't do both" makes perfect sense. If Star Wars as a whole shows anything, it's that you don't really want someone with Jedi powers but not the Jedi moral/religious ethos. And the very last thing you would want is someone with Jedi powers and training and a lightsaber going around killing people as a Mandalorian. If nothing else, it would be really bad press for Luke's New Jedi Order!

Actually, Luke in this episode is shown as being remarkably tolerant. Despite all these big red flags, he gives Grogu a basic course in defending himself using the Force and then offers him a choice about whether to do Jedi training or go do something else. Which is not something we ever see the Prequel Younglings/Oblates get. That he's willing to train Grogu somewhat without a commitment to be a Jedi, and that he then offers Grogu a choice about whether to be a Jedi or a Mandalorian, actually does show him being a lot more open-minded than the OJO, and I'm a bit surprised it's getting him criticized as a hidebound moralizing literalist.

Though again, CGI Luke? Still sucks for me.

 

Well better get used to CGI Luke cuz they had a chance to recast and didn’t take it


Also I still think this show gets a season 2


Edit: I often wonder what the reception of this show would be if it all came out at once instead of going week to week.

Granted i prefer week to week over binge but i do wonder how this would have all played out if they released it all at once.

 

I really hope not, they should do longer seasons of the Mandalorian.

 

A more eloquent thread about "The Book" idea of Book of Boba Fett

It's long so I can't post it all

 

Adam Frazier trying to compete with Tom Cruise and Alan Ritchson for the role of Reacher.

 

So this is a thing.



It sounds like Mark isn't involved in Book of Boba Fett at all.

 

Honestly I still rather have this than recast .

Unless you reboot Star Wars completely either do this or just don't use the characters at all.

 

The issue I have with it is that it gets pretty ghoulish once we start seeing "Starring Carrie Fisher" on projects when it's not even her face or voice, but digital replications.

 

I guess. But then I rather them just not use the character at all then.

Recasting in a shared cinematic universe that isn't secondary character or even early on (Like Rodie from the MCU) just seem odd.

These characters aren't superhero's were different actors can play them but also you get different universe.

Star Wars for better and for worse is ONE SINGLE universe...One timeline.

Even in the Legends sense it was still connected to the movies, or sprung from it.

 

It's fake. Fiction. Not real.

Different actors can play the same character. Or, as you point out, they could come up with new ones. Immersion shouldn't be the priority over ethics.

 

Sadly i sorta immersion quite a bit, and if they did recast that's gonna take me out big time.

Which is why I say the two easy options are
1. Do it animated where that's a lot easier to accept
or 2. Make new characters and don't use the old ones.

And in Star Wars case I don't think we can apply those rules.

Hence why I'm glad they killed off Iron Man in Endgame and aged up Cap in instead of recasting them.

Although if they do a whole multiverse thing to get knew Cap's and Iron Man i'd be more excepting of that but least it's a explanation.

Even still they had their chance to recast and well they didn't take it...So now where here. We might as well get used to it.

 

Perhaps it's a bit cynical of me, but it's hard not to link this whole thing to the fact that actors are unionised and VFX artists aren't, and this removes the former from the filmmaking equation outside of body doubles. Plus, this essentially allows Disney/Lucasfilm to own the likenesses of actors forever, even after they pass away or no longer want to participate. Otherwise, I'm struggling to see the justification from an artistic perspective - it looks and sounds lifeless on-screen in a way that even the worst recast never could, and it's not like they're adhering to the wishes of the original actors or anything; Harrison Ford enthusiastically endorsed Alden Ehrenreich, Mark Hamill has praised Sebastian Stan and I can't imagine Carrie Fisher would have a problem with Billie Lourd playing Leia.

I do understand the argument that having Luke, for example, go from Mark Hamill to Sebastian Stan back to Mark Hamill as you go along the timeline might be a bit jarring. That's a fair point. But I can only speak for my own experiences, and from my perspective going from Mark Hamill to wooden deepfake man back to Mark Hamill is a lot more distracting. But obviously I'm not trying to devalue anyone else's enjoyment of it - it just doesn't work for me.

 

I mean it doesn't bother me.

But it's a lose-lose either way as far as i'm concerned.

Also...I mean why i don't know if Lucasfilm themselves are doing this because of Union actors...I mean...Boy oh boy i bet it's kinda nice to have someone you don't have to worry about shooting their foot in the mouth because they say something bigoted or dumb.

Sorta like Boba Yoda...He's Star Wars Mascot and he's a puppet they can completely control and won't do anything controversial.

 

Anyway, I feel I've been pretty negative on this thread - I am actually enjoying the series, believe it or not, and am really looking forward to the finale even if I've had a couple of reservations about the setup.

 

I hope Cad Bane lives....He'd make a good villain moving forward.

Honestly this series has been ...Fine...Just fine...It's not bad...It's fine.

And honestly....I think Star Wars fans just need to get used to have "Just Fine" Star Wars every now and then.

If we're gonna be getting a lot of content we're bound to get a "Just Fine" or "Dud" every now and then...That's just process of elimination by having a bunch of stuff.

 

I don’t think the fans need to shut up and accept mediocrity and just blindly consume. Critical thinking is a good thing when it comes to art, even when it’s directed at things we might love.

 

Wonder if will see Boba riding a rancor next episode?

 

If you end up with emotionally flat zen Jedi Master after all the robot synth vocal tools are thrown at it, not entirely awful. Like trying to emulate someone as energetic as Han using that method may feel a little wonky but Luke's voice is going for sage wise Jedi Master.

 

Regarding shift of focus from Boba to Din - IMO, the most amusing thing will be if the main purpose of fight for Tatooine is to show Qi'ra that Djarin possess the Darksaber so she can join a race to control the remaining Mandalorians.

 

IMO for adults Star Wars is best viewed through a lens of emotion and nostalgia, rather than a highly critical one. As with that fan tendency to create deeply entrenched expectations, I find the latter seems to lead more often to discontent than to satisfaction with the overall product. More than anything else I think that's why this series is hitting the nail squarely on the head for some of us and not succeeding for others. If you're the kind of fan who squeals for joy when, say, an Advozsec walks across the screen in Garsa's Sanctuary (I did exactly that and I'm not ashamed to admit it), you're loving this. And if you're looking for the flaws in the storytelling, well, you'll find them. I know there's pushback to the idea that there's a "right way" and a "wrong way" to consume Star Wars, but I think there is a way to consume it that leads to a greater degree of satisfaction with the output, and it is to focus less on the perceived flaws and let the emotional, nostalgic aspect of it win out sometimes. Rather than think of it as "blindly consuming," maybe look at it more as... meeting the material on its own terms.

 

Pretty sure Lucasfilm already owns the likeness of those characters in perpetuity since the 70s. They didn't need to get a new contract with Mark, Carrie or Harrison to put their faces on book covers and comic books and action figures. So they could use archival footage, b reels and stuff like that for digital reconstruction and audio replication under a similar deal.

All that said, I do think "deep fake" is likely to become a clause in film and tv contracts going forward. Especially on major franchises like this. Depending on the Star power of the person involved, they may be able to forbid that sort of usage. The less clout they have, they may not refuse that aspect of a contract.

I'm open to recasting Luke for this time period, but I'm also stunned by the technology itself. I would like them to find a better option to the voice than what renders him sounding rather flat and lifeless though. If they are going to insist on digital likenesses.

I absolutely agree. Star Wars is best consumed with childlike wonder. It can be fun to analyze, but at the end of the day you need to check out your cynical adult self and bring out your inner child.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

 

Not to make the "slippery slope" analogy...but...That contract clause sounds like a really good thing and I would prefer if doing live action to just recast but get someone who looks close to the original actor. At the same time...would Rogue One have been a completely different movie if they had NOT done that with Peter Cushing? I thought it looked great...however the bit with Leia at the end though looked kind of 2 dimensional.