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Is there any point in having live action appearances if they're not really characters?

Hope you just enjoyed *seeing* Cad Bane, because he didn't do anything and then got merked.

its fan service mostly.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Is there any point in having live action appearances if they're not really characters?

Hope you just enjoyed *seeing* Cad Bane, because he didn't do anything and then got merked.

Easy.

Star Wars is a multimedia franchise spanning decades of real world time.

We who watched Clone Wars know well who Cade Bane is. Those who watched The Bad Batch (which I really should rewatch) will have a passing familiarity.

The same as Krrsantan. Those who have read some of the comics will be familiar.

Everyone else? They’re hooks to invest further in the various media offerings. And as such, bait for further income/viewing figures/action figures.

Consider. Some folk will have signed up to Disney+ just to watch Boba. But should they be sufficiently intrigued by the side characters, they’re more likely to stick around in the mid and ideally long term.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Is there any point in having live action appearances if they're not really characters?

Hope you just enjoyed *seeing* Cad Bane, because he didn't do anything and then got merked.

Easy.

Star Wars is a multimedia franchise spanning decades of real world time.

We who watched Clone Wars know well who Cade Bane is. Those who watched The Bad Batch (which I really should rewatch) will have a passing familiarity.

The same as Krrsantan. Those who have read some of the comics will be familiar.

Everyone else? They’re hooks to invest further in the various media offerings. And as such, bait for further income/viewing figures/action figures.

Consider. Some folk will have signed up to Disney+ just to watch Boba. But should they be sufficiently intrigued by the side characters, they’re more likely to stick around in the mid and ideally long term.

Maybe? I think the last sentence only hold true if there's any indication that these characters exist in some wider context. That's not the case at all with Krrsantan in BoBF and only very obliquely mentioned by Cad Bane just before he dies. I'm not really seeing any hook to pull people deeper when the show hasn't really done the work to build these characters up at all.

In fact, Disney+ is pretty bad with this kind of thing. I'd have thought after certain characters appear in these shows they should be pushing suggestions to subscribers for the earlier shows in which they appear but they don't do that at all. There's no obvious "so you liked blue Western alin with red eyes? Now go watch him in Clone Wars". Big missed opportunity for me.

That’s where the fandom comes in.

All bits and bobs stitched together to draw people deeper into a particular fandom/cultural rabbit hole.

That's Slipspace's entire point though. For the fandom, they're a wink and a nod. For the general audience, they're... nothing.
They don't draw anyone in. Maybe they'll get a google hit, but its not going to get Fred, Beth and their tween Twyla to go hunt down whatever random comic the inept wookie is from.

Yup.

My brother used to work for Warner Studios leading a team to help build the DC Universe App. One of my suggestions was to categorize all their content with tags for the characters.

So you read a good comic that features Harley and then it could recommend an episode of Batman the Animated series with Harley in it at the end.

Or you watch an Episode of Titans and then get recommended a Comic featuring Dr Light or whatever.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Star Wars is a multimedia franchise spanning decades of real world time.

We who watched Clone Wars know well who Cade Bane is. Those who watched The Bad Batch (which I really should rewatch) will have a passing familiarity.

...

Everyone else? They’re hooks to invest further in the various media offerings. And as such, bait for further income/viewing figures/action figures.

I disagree. The reason I say that the show wasted the character's potential is that they didn't do anything with the character. It was basically "Look! It's Cad Bane!" and expected you to know who he is.

That's the worst way to bring in an existing character that may not be familiar to the greater audience (especially when you kill him unceremoniously in the next episode). There's only a certain amount of taking your audience for granted that you can get away with, and expecting people to understand who Cad Bane - a character from a cartoon - is, is taking that too far.

I didn’t say it was done competently

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I disagree. The reason I say that the show wasted the character's potential is that they didn't do anything with the character. It was basically "Look! It's Cad Bane!" and expected you to know who he is.

That's the worst way to bring in an existing character that may not be familiar to the greater audience (especially when you kill him unceremoniously in the next episode). There's only a certain amount of taking your audience for granted that you can get away with, and expecting people to understand who Cad Bane - a character from a cartoon - is, is taking that too far.

i must disagree slightly here, because everyone i have spoken to who actually watched book of boda fett knew exactly who he was without further introduction, because they were all long time star wars fans who'd been watched the clone wars already. I dont think BOBF is bringing in new viewers really, its mostly getting watched by existing fans of the franchise.

I don't see why Cad Bane's introduction to viewers not familiar with him is supposed to be a problem. He walks into town, guns down the sheriff and the deputy and delivers a message from the bad guys. He doesn't wear their uniform and can easily be identified as a gun for hire.

Next episode he's revealed to have history with the protagonist, gets to talk tough and has a showdown which he seems to dominate only to get beaten in the end.

What more do you need from him if you have no idea he's an existing character? He fulfills a pretty typical function in this kind of story. What wasted potential is there without attachment to and expectations for the character? That's something reserved for existing fans who know the character and want to see him portrayed a certain way.

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I disagree. The reason I say that the show wasted the character's potential is that they didn't do anything with the character. It was basically "Look! It's Cad Bane!" and expected you to know who he is.

That's the worst way to bring in an existing character that may not be familiar to the greater audience (especially when you kill him unceremoniously in the next episode). There's only a certain amount of taking your audience for granted that you can get away with, and expecting people to understand who Cad Bane - a character from a cartoon - is, is taking that too far.

i must disagree slightly here, because everyone i have spoken to who actually watched book of boda fett knew exactly who he was without further introduction, because they were all long time star wars fans who'd been watched the clone wars already. I dont think BOBF is bringing in new viewers really, its mostly getting watched by existing fans of the franchise.

So, you realize that when you speak to people within your own demographic, people who know and like starwars enough to watch the clone wars when it was a Saturday morning cartoon, corrupts your census data, right?

Like, right now you are 9 out of 10 Dentists recommend this brand-ing yourself.

 Geifer wrote:
I don't see why Cad Bane's introduction to viewers not familiar with him is supposed to be a problem. He walks into town, guns down the sheriff and the deputy and delivers a message from the bad guys. He doesn't wear their uniform and can easily be identified as a gun for hire.

Next episode he's revealed to have history with the protagonist, gets to talk tough and has a showdown which he seems to dominate only to get beaten in the end.

What more do you need from him if you have no idea he's an existing character? He fulfills a pretty typical function in this kind of story. What wasted potential is there without attachment to and expectations for the character? That's something reserved for existing fans who know the character and want to see him portrayed a certain way.

So, I will admit that both my wife and I had no idea who he was and had never heard of him, and our reaction was exactly this! (actually, we both thought he was a cool NEW character that they introduced.)

It's only afterward that I found out he was supposed to be some big shot from other shows! I think his introduction went over exactly as it should for people who don't know him because that is literally my own experience with him!

 Lance845 wrote:

So, you realize that when you speak to people within your own demographic, people who know and like starwars enough to watch the clone wars when it was a Saturday morning cartoon, corrupts your census data, right?

Like, right now you are 9 out of 10 Dentists recommend this brand-ing yourself.

yes, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but my point was "people who watched clone wars cartoon" and "people who watched BOBF" seem to be highly corelated. ive not seen a huge influx of "who was he?" type posts/comments on facebook or other social media platforms that would indicate mass confusion as to who Cad Bane was. So, either the vast majority of the veiwership knew who he was, or the BOBF makes it clear enough that the basic plot makes sense without knowing all his backstory.

same as Krrsantan, who i have no idea was an established character before off-hand comments on this thread and elsewhere. he works well enough within the story arc that its not strictly relevant.

 Hulksmash wrote:
It says something when the best scenes of the entire series are scenes the main character isn't in.

The spectacle at the end of the show was fun when I could turn off my brain. Sometimes during it it was so bad my brain turned back on and then RANCOR!!!!

But seriously, this was the weakest disney+ offering to date.

Think this would probably be my summary too. It certainly wasn't that bad, I did eventually watch the last episode (although I think it says a lot that I forgot about it then came back a week later). But yes, it says a lot that the episodes I enjoyed most were the Mandalorian ones, or those featuring Luke/Asoka and baby Yoda.

To me, it had some good ideas but a lot of them were executed quite poorly:
- Quadrophenia biker gang led by Noel Fielding. Good idea with a kind of chop-shop biker gang, but I don't think they fitted in with the dirty and worn down looking setting. The cleaner clothes and cyborg stuff might have worked better in a Coruscant crime gang setting perhaps?
- Slow, dim-witted Boba that gets tricked and outplayed by everyone throughout the series. Got conned into thinking the biker gang had killed his beloved sand people. Is this the same Boba that out-witted all of the other nastiest Bounty Hunters in the galaxy in the original series, hiding his ship in the dumped waste when the Star Destroyer left? Or that beat Luke & the gang to the Cloud City and got the trap laid in time? He completely lost that sense of razor-edge, lethal feeling to me through the course of the series. I'm not actually sure Temuera Morrison was the right pick for casting, despite the prequels. Jeremy Bullock had a lot slighter frame and had more of the 'assassin' feel to him for me, relying more on his brains and wargear rather than head-butting his way through every encounter.
- Giant prequels-era robots were a great idea, as was the fight with the Rancor, although someone apparently forgot to take the blindfold off the robots! At least have them gun down a few of the Quadrophenia biker gang or a few other secondary characters to show how dangerous they were.

Anyway overall I won't say it was that bad, and there were bits of it that I really enjoyed. But, I'm not sure it was the legacy for Fett that I was hoping for, and as a whole I don't think the series was a patch on the Mandolorian.

I watched it with my wife and brother and neither of them had any idea who Cad Bane was. A guy in my gaming group watched it with his wife and daughter and neither of them knew either. I'm sure many did know but there were still a decent amount that did not. Not every Star Wars fan consumes all the content outside the movies. To be honest I more accidentally knew him because I didn't watch much of The Clone Wars but I did catch a few episodes he was in.

 Ahtman wrote:
I watched it with my wife and brother and neither of them had any idea who Cad Bane was. A guy in my gaming group watched it with his wife and daughter and neither of them knew either. I'm sure many did know but there were still a decent amount that did not. Not every Star Wars fan consumes all the content outside the movies. To be honest I more accidentally knew him because I didn't watch much of The Clone Wars but I did catch a few episodes he was in.

I got him mixed up with Hondo (or whatever his name is). And I did watch all of clone wars and the first season of rebels.....

xerxeskingofking wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

So, you realize that when you speak to people within your own demographic, people who know and like starwars enough to watch the clone wars when it was a Saturday morning cartoon, corrupts your census data, right?

Like, right now you are 9 out of 10 Dentists recommend this brand-ing yourself.

yes, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but my point was "people who watched clone wars cartoon" and "people who watched BOBF" seem to be highly corelated. ive not seen a huge influx of "who was he?" type posts/comments on facebook or other social media platforms that would indicate mass confusion as to who Cad Bane was. So, either the vast majority of the veiwership knew who he was, or the BOBF makes it clear enough that the basic plot makes sense without knowing all his backstory.

same as Krrsantan, who i have no idea was an established character before off-hand comments on this thread and elsewhere. he works well enough within the story arc that its not strictly relevant.

The vast majority of the viewership doesn't go on social media to ask questions about it. They watch it, talk about it face to face with their friends and family if at all, and then go about their lives. The people who take to the internet are the vast minority. A loud Minority, but minority all the same.

I have never seen more than a few episodes of the 1st season of Clone Wars, and I STILL knew who Cad Bane was, as soon as you could see any detail through the sun-haze.

I recognised him as a character from Star Wars Legions but then had to look him up!

I actually thought he was probably the best baddie in the series, he certainly carried a level of menace not exhibited by anyone else, and it's a shame they killed him off.

Not to worry. He's not dead until they chop up the corpse, incinerate the parts and dump the ashes in at least three stars in different corners of the galaxy. And even then I wouldn't be sure... what if they decided to let J.J. Abrams have another shot at ruining Star Wars?

Then we would get episode 4 again.

 Geifer wrote:
Not to worry. He's not dead until they chop up the corpse, incinerate the parts and dump the ashes in at least three stars in different corners of the galaxy. And even then I wouldn't be sure... what if they decided to let J.J. Abrams have another shot at ruining Star Wars?

JJ's still busy ruining star trek. With a 4th movie to be made later this year. "With the original cast [sans Chekov, because Anton Yelchin being dead and all)".

I had no idea about who Bane was and absolutely loved that character. I think also Rosario Dawson's and Katee Sackhoff's characers were supposed to be well known to SW fans when they made their appearance in The Mandalorian. No idea about who they were, still loved them.

I heard a lot of critiques about the series, especially about the protagonist. I've alwyas found the mandalorian (character, not series) extremely overrated and in fact even in The Book of Boba Fett the lowest points to me were episodes 5 and 6, when the mandalorian became the protagonist. Last episode was great. What did people expect from Boba Fett? He's always been nothing but an henchman, who was popular thanks to his amazing armour and gadgets, nothing more. I've seen Return of the Jedi like 10 times and don't remember a single line from him. Now he's finally a developed character.

Couldn't stand fake luke instead. I never understood the reluctancy to re-cast actors. JJ's Star Trek, which I adore, being paused partially because the horror of re-casting or eliminating a character annoys me as well.

Overall it was a nice series, same level of seasons 1,2 of The Mandalorian IMHO.