The Mandalorian The Mandalorian 3.04 - Chapter 20 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

His brown jacket isn’t a onesie though, right? And we don’t see those when he’s wearing that.

 

Maybe, but it kind of does look like a onesie. And they showed his green chest in this episode, so this might be the only thing covering him.

Anyway, just a moment of silliness.

 

I always just assumed it was like a long coat only that ran down past his legs and assumed the chain mail was a similar length and that they were building toward an eventual full time clothing change.

 

The same here and the bottom half would closely resemble the other Mandalorian's armour - with the many different moulds formed together to give protective armour to the nether-regions; but not as one piece to restrict flexibility.

But like you, I imagine the chainmail as a coat - very much like old english knights.

 

Well I just started the episode, I'm about 5 minutes into it, and I just already had to say this looks so awful. It is shot awful, it looks cheap as crap, the set looks like a low budget stage play. Some of the armor on the mandalorians looks good, while others look like they came from Party City. I mean the episode starts out with them training and you got mandos shooting into the water for no reason, can they not afford some targets to make it look like they're actually Target practicing. everything is shot so flat you can see the seams of the volume. This is worse than Obi-Wan kenobi. Then a creature just stole a child and they chased after it and oh my God, Superman back in the '70s had better flying sequences than this, what is going on. This really does look like a low budget episode of a Sci-Fi channel show.

 

Oh yes it did, superman had more Dynamic flying shots thanks to Dick Donner than this. It was shot so flat here that it looked awful. I actually enjoyed the other episodes directed by Carl Weathers, it was so much more Dynamic, I don't know what went on here. Plus he lingers on shots of Grogu walking too much, watching him walk makes the illusion of him being a real character come un done, at least for me.

 

I'm guessing this refers to me, I don't know what brand you think that is. Considering I gave last week's episode a 8/10 and thought for the most part it looked really well shot. But whatever you got to tell yourself.

The rest of the episode was not much better, some shots looked cool and I did like the creature design although the babies looked awful. And then the fight with the beast in the air was shot somewhat better, but way too many cuts, that it was sometimes hard to tell what was going on. Some of the stuff on Coruscant looked cool other parts looked bad at least to me.

The best thing about the season continues to be Katie Sackhoff as bo. This felt like a dave episode in the worst way possible. Ahmed best robes were cool looking, but did not like his goofy facial expressions. This was to me a version of a mediocre rebels/clone Wars Episode. I did really enjoy the music and sound design. But since different opinions are not really welcomed here. I think this ep, was a 4 out of 10 and that's all I got to say, have a good day.

As always I will watch it again with my wife when she's ready and maybe it will improve some or get worse, so who knows?

 

That whole flashback sequence felt like a huge on the nose apology to Ahmed best. I mean they did not hold back giving him a whole sequence of relevance and action.

Must admit the budget showed a little in that sequence though. But they tried.

 

Really fun episode, and yeah, Ahmed as a jedi, wow, so no Darth Jar Jar?

Spoiler

 

I realised they also got temuera to do some new trooper lines. That was nice

 

I am trying to imagine their reasoning behind ignoring/hiding the larger antagonistic forces that will eventually stand in the way of our heroes and which typically drive conflict and anticipation of conflict within narrative and I’m struggling mightily.

On the one hand I can appreciate that when this season was first being promoted and anticipated there were clear questions related to Din’s quest for redemption, his desire to be part of this cohort despite being a care giver of an alien species, as well as many questions surrounding Bo Katan because of where we last left off with her, and knowing she wanted the darksaber Din has, and knowing she felt it was her birthright to rule what is left of the Mandalorian people, which where all strongly suggested in promotional materials.

And to Favreau’s credit we are now half way through this season and most of those setups have now been paid off in various ways. Din is now redeemed and with his cohort. The clan has not only welcomed Grogu as one of their own now but also Bo Katan. Last but not least, Bo Katan has so far not shown any of the possible antagonistic potential some imagined might be there in this season and no desire at present to challenge Din for the darksaber.

So, a pretty solid argument could be made that with the exception of the Dr. Pershing/Kane story, these first 4 episodes have functioned almost like one large 2 hour premier episode that has now resolved most of the main setups that were promoted. And if that is indeed the case then what better time then the next episode to get into the forces of antagonism and some additional mystery box setups and conflict? It’s just a shame that this is only an 8 episode season though because now is where things feel like they could get most interesting.

I will say that if if episode 5 onward does end up being its own antagonistic Gideon-lead mini arc then I will find the decision to tell the Kane and Dr Pershing sub plot where it was told all the more puzzling. To me, structurally, if everything from here on out more directly involves Gideon’s crew and use of the pirates and further explains Kane’s role for him then the cleaner structural move would have been to begin next episode with the Dr Pershing and Kane sub plot and lead it directly into some kind of cliffhanger where Kane tells someone via a com link “It’s done. He won’t be sharing anything any more to the New Republic” and follow that up with the realization she’s talking to Gideon and then building the narrative thrust onward. Less artistic? Sure but on point for serial storytelling and narrative thrust.

Serial storytelling benefits from cliff hanger moments that lead directly into revaluations. Previous Mando seasons have done this well. Perhaps the most notable being when Grogu was first taken by the darktroopers. This season of Mandalorian has felt more wayward. Even if I do acknowledge that it has at least wrapped up many of the setups it promoted already.

 

Felt like the whole Coruscant sequence could have done with better direction. Love them going back like that, but for christ sake, take your time - spend some time on building some sort of suspense and true danger. Not just flying vehicles and lightsabers galore. The Order 66 event is one of the most important transitions in Star Wars in general. Here - a chance to further make it personal and gritty. I know its supposed to be a flashback seen through the mind of Grogu though, so this might reflects his vision ( like dreams, they are often fast and chaotic). Does The Volume as filmmaking tool, again create a bit of a artificial distance on what we see? Felt like that. Nice nod to Ahmed Best. The dinosaur action was partly great, except the ending was more Jurassic World than Jurassic Park ( yes, its about direction again, Spielberg vrs Trevorrow is no match).

The overall storyline is a bit messy and we still lack a real hook or fear for any antagonist. I would hesitate that building a tv series storyline is different from the 3 act structure of a film, so its not a big concern for me that we are not having a «big bad guy» or «catalysator moment for the hero» yet - but i am in need of some kind of action that really puts the main characters in turmoil. Mando himself, a bit lost here. Another episode thats way too short as well.

6/ 10

 

Yeah this episode felt cheap, rushed and not well executed. I also agree with @Bor Mullet the dialogue was very clunky with very little diversity in word choices. The only things I really liked was Bo's character development and the sound design and music. Like I said I know everybody loves the fact that best got a comeback but I wish they would have let him do a couple more takes cuz he was making some goofy facial expressions to me. I also agree the stakes seemed way too low throughout the entire episode, I never felt like anybody was in real Danger. Especially climbing the mountain it looked like if they fell they would have fallen 2 ft to the bottom of the set.

 

The opening scene of this season shows the Armorer making a helmet from a round, flat piece of metal. This scene shows the armor also forging a round, flat piece of metal that looks exactly the same, but smaller, for Grogu. The implication that she might be forging a helmet for him was clearly intentional, IMO, even if you didn’t see it. And reinforced by the earlier scene where the kid asked about why he wasn’t wearing one. Din said he wasn’t ready for it yet, but it’s reasonable to presume that perhaps the Armorer decided it was time.

However, this is a pretty small matter. Not least as I would’ve been totally fine with it if what was forged had a little more narrative meaning to it. Instead it’s just…a chest plate that covers up the mail that was already forged for him. An oddly underwhelming result.

 

This. Plus, Famuyiwa is right there as Executive Producer! Let him at least revise your scripts, if he’s not going to full-on write some. The narrative and dialogue has been noticeably subpar this season (uniquely terrible at times), and the production quality seems generally lower. And now that we’re halfway through, I feel I can confidently say that it’s clearly not as good as seasons 1 and 2. And when a show doesn’t get better, it’s disappointing. Even if I’m generally having fun watching it, and looking forward to what comes next for the Mandalore plot.

Mando does not, and should not, try to emulate the Andor style. It’s a different kind of story and it should confidently embrace that. But it can learn a writing lesson or two from that show simply in terms of dialogue and character-building. Or better yet, just acknowledge that Rick Famuyiwa, who is a veteran of the show now and still deeply involved, is a much better writer than Favloni, and ask him to improve your mediocre fanboy scripts.

 

For whatever reason the broad daylight scenes have rarely worked on this show. I remember the Rodriguez stuff shot in California being similarly criticized for feeling low budget and also the very first episode that Bryce Dallas Howard directed made with the villagers also being criticized by many. They end up feeling too much like Cosplay fan film scenes. Probably because we’ve all seen scenes like that in Cosplay fan films before. We expect more from Lucasfilm. Tatooine gets away with it because it’s familiar and iconic at this point but for something as important as a Mandalorian hide out location a cooler spot might have worked better.

Mando has always felt most cinematic in indoor settings with dramatic lighting. Even the stuff within the Mines of Mandalore felt much higher budget than this episode. Similarly, the BOBF episode with Mando in that ring world setting looked extremely high budget by comparison.

 

In healthy tv shows, seasons 2 to 4 tend to be the best seasons, as a rule of thumb.

Here, they have such an evident lack of ideas story-wise that we were excited for season 1 and then it went all downhill from there.

 

More like, The Floundering. This is NOT the way people!

Before this episode we knew that Grogu survived Order 66 because he was saved by...somebody and this weeks episode indeed confirmed that he was saved by...somebody. Very enlightening! Yes, I understand that there's more to Grogu's Order 66 story that we might learn in another episode. The point I'm making is that this flashback didn't really advance that backstory because it essentially told us something we already knew from context. It would've been more interesting if the flashback gave us more actual story other than showing us how Grogu was saved by some rando. I will say that I do appreciate that Grogu was saved by some rando Jedi instead of some known character. The Star Wars universe often feels small when they do that sort of thing. HELLO R5-D4!!!

If they're going to give us practically a full episode about Dr. Pershing and Kane, I wish they also give us a longer flashback sequence that didn't just show us something we basically already knew but also added something else. Don't just show us that Grogu survived Order 66. Show us how he was then separated by that rando Jedi. It would be more interesting to see what happened between when Grogu escaped Order 66 and the events of Mandalorlian season one, episode one. Honestly though I don't even need that. I was perfectly fine accepting that Grogu was saved by somebody during Order 66 and then for one reason or another he ended up where he ended up in episode one, season one.

Not much else to say about this episode. Watching the Mandalorians target practice, i.e. shooting at the water sure was something. Even if you say it wasn't target practice but was an exercise in getting used to holding and firing their weapons, it still looked silly. Also, hey we're going to see those baby flying creatures help the Mando's in a future episode. Got it.

Both Bo-Katan and Grogu got new Girl Scout patches, I mean pieces of new armor. So Bo is getting more sucked into the cult and is sort of a foundling herself? I'm cool with all of that.

Speaking of Grogu and armor, I really want Grogu to keep his lip zipped from here on out if it means that he's not going to have to wear a Mando helmet. I really don't want to see him wearing a helmet.

Also, presumably Paz Vizsla and Din are bros now that Din saved Paz's son. Cool I guess? Their conflict so was so barely even there in the first place but hey it's over now. Cool.

On a side note after learning that the foundling was Paz's son I couldn't help but wonder if Mandalorian's do the nasty with their helmets on. Kink it up Star Wars! Kink it up!

 

you might be onto something, just like with Obi-Wan you can see the seams of the volume. This whole episode felt like they were on a very small Sound Stage. And not many takes happening. I feel like this episode carl was like that's good enough moving on...

 

Love the mirroring of Grogu with the Armorer as she made that piece of Beskar for him. Like Mando, this kind of ceremony made him link to his past in a memory. Damn, loving all the episodes this season.

Oh, and it was nice to see Jar Jar again

Also, TCotW group, they seem honorable so far, with the way they are treating Bo, and Grogu. Lots of mirroring again from TBoBF with the Tuskens in how they accepted Boba and integrated him into their culture.

For me the most humorous aspects of these shows is how perfect everyone face is when anyone takes of their head gear, Mandalorian or not. So funny, but understandable.

 

No, that’s not it. This show looked absolutely phenomenal in S1E2 (The Child), on Arvala-7, which was all out in the open desert, whether it was broad daylight, magic hour lighting, sunset, or nighttime. The difference? Directing. And perhaps more importantly, a DP who knew how to use the Volume better than anyone in the business: Greig Fraser. His absence is clearly felt. The show simply looked a lot more beautiful and convincing with him behind the camera.