I have a confession to make.
I don’t like star wars.
He WHAT?!
Well, I should say I don’t like the movies. Or anything resembling the movies. Or the creator. And especially not tattoine. So yeah, basically for my entire life I just said I don’t like star wars cause I thought I did.
Then again, my experiences with star wars, at least anything in depth, was limited to the eight main movies(I never saw the ninth movie in the sequel trilogy), and two videos games, Star wars Jedi Academy(the only experience that left a mostly good taste in my mouth), and Stars Wars the Old Republic, the Massively Multiplayer Online game.
For anyone who has not played Star Wars the Old republic, it’s set like, ten thousand years before the prequel trilogy. But for some reason the Empire is there with the exact some aesthetic as the middle trilogy, fighting the prequel Jedi republic, with the story writing of the frist two Mass Effect video game teams. And despite that talent, the stories managed to just recycle George Lucas’s ideas.
And no, I’m still not over The Old Republic stealing writers from the Mass Effect triology, which I blame for why Mass Effect 3 was so terrible.
"He hates Mass Effect 3 too?!"
Look, lynch me later, I have an opinion to put out, and it’s not on The Old Republic or the Mass Effect Series. I’ve heard that KNIGHTS of the Old Republic, was actually extremely different and better then the Old Republic, but honestly star wars has left such a bad taste in my mouth I have yet to try that game.
The point is, I thought, for decades, that, depending on my mood, Star Wars was either not for me or at worst a overblown nostalgic memory that’s only good qualitiy was that people saw it when they were kids.
Then I saw the Mandolorian. I first watched it when I was at my brothers house celebrating Christmas, and while food was cooking we just watched the three episodes of it, which were the only ones out at the time. My brother happened to have Disney plus, which my parents did not have. We watched all three back to back, and It was so fucking good.
Starting with the first episode I was hooked. It follows a Bounty Hunter Mandolorian, a member of a multispecies warrior culture that never remove their helmets in front of anyone. The first 5 or ten minutes shows the nameless main character, we’ll call him Mando, bringing in a bounty target while also killing two men to stop them starting a bar fight. So yeah at first it seems he’s kind of an ass. Then near the end of the episode he…well I won’t spoil it but he’s kind of like Han Solo. He has a heart, it’s not just about the money for him. But he’s not an exact clone of Han solo, which is a rarity for star wars.
Somehow, the show only gets better as I continue watching this show. There are only eight episodes, and I just finished the fourth one as of this writing, which was the best so far.
First off, the acting is great. Not only are all performances good, the actor who plays Mando is severely handicapped in that he can’t emote, because he always has a helmet on. Yet, he does a lot with only the tone of his voice and body language, and he in my opinion does a wonderful job.
The effects, which I thought would be all computer animation, like the main star wars films, are mostly not. And those puppets, costumes, and animatronics? Are amazing. The baby creature puppet is an masterpiece, looking surprisingly life like and emotive. The characters are all interesting and look interesting, and I get the feeling that there are untold back stories and personalities for each of the main ones, and even the minor ones.
The locations are not just retreads of the main star wars planets! Hell, the first two planets you see are an watery ice world, and a mostly volcanic planet but not in a grand fashion, more of made of mostly molten rock way instead of active volcanoes every where.
While the writing is good, even great, to me what really stands out in the series is the direction, both in terms of general direction and camera shots. The camera shots are AMAZING. Each director of an episode does an great job, and as I said, it seems to only get better.
Also the fourth episode did two impossible things, which means we are one third of the way to having breakfast at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The fourth episode takes place with Mando trying to lay low from the-
Interruption Pancakes!
-and are now on what they call ‘a real backwater skeg hole’. While to us having anti-gravity hovercraft, droids, and other sci fi tech would not count as ‘backwater’, it is a planet without any spaceport, heavy industry, or really any cities of any kind. The perfect place to hide, as it were, and to my surprise, it’s not Tattoine, the most heavily trafficked backwater planet ever.
Anyway, Mando has a short, extremely short, almost but not really romance with a woman who seems to be a leader in a small middle of nowhere krill farm. Normally, short romances not given time to show either characters feeling makes me want to vomit and I almost always quickly forget about them. So what the hell happened here where it actually seemed plausibly. I can’t answer positively, but for me it was because neither were in love, just Feelings, or a crush, as it were. And also, Mando was not in love with the woman, but the way of life. I got the feeling he would’ve liked the quiet life. A 5 minute romance that didn’t make me want to stop watching should not be possible. Yet it did.
The second impossible thing is the AT-ST. Mostly famously known as Chicken Walkers because they walk like fucking chickens. That alone makes them not scary. Combined with the fact that that teddy bears, Ewoks, took them out in the third main trilogy movie, and they are apparently made out of paper Mache, means they’re a joke. If asked, I would say that they are an unsalvagble vehicle to be used in Star Wars.
So how the fuck did they make a chicken walker, scary. Because I was on the edge of my seat during the scenes with the AT-ST. They made it sound like a challenge to take down. They made it a -threat-. That should not be possible after George Lucas had them being destroyed by logs and teddy bears.
The Mandolorian made me realize, I don’t hate star wars. I love it. I just don’t like George Lucas’s version or vision of star wars, and the problem, is that many people who want to create in the world of Star Wars, George Lucas’s vision is the only way to do it. So what you get is mostly just the same stuff you’ve already seen twenty times before. This short sightedness is not limited to star wars, it can be seen in many places. Don’t think of someones vision or verison of something as the be all and end all, even if it is currently the best. Think of it as a starting point, for something even better.
And the Mandolorian is definitely better. I love it. Now let me tell you why George Lucas sucks and why I hate-
-on second thought I’ll just escape this angry mob now.
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