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The show in general leans hard into the *space western* concept, and the music is no exception. It’s a little janky at first, but it’s rapidly grown on me. It very much helps to give it a different tone from the more grandiose scores of the films.

Again, it’s a technique that both Rebels and Clone Wars have employed to find their own particular “brand” of Star Wars, for lack of a better term.

 insaniak wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I don’t get why adults want to act like children and especially why adults would criticize other adults for not acting like children..

It's less about acting like children than about not wasting time watching something just to pick it apart. I'd rather focus on the things I like about a movie and enjoy the experience than pick apart all of the faults and come out of it feeling like I've just wasted two hours of my life. YMMV.

Ding ding! That was much better put than what I was trying to say. All of our time is valuable, so I'd rather get the most out of it.

If you think a show/movie is going to be garbage or that you are going to be disappointed in it, than don't watch it. But if you are like me and you are still drinking the Star Wars Kool-Aid, you'll have a much better experience.
I acknowledge that movies like the Prequels and TLJ have some issues, but I don't let them affect my enjoyment of them

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 Galef wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
To Elbows’s point, I am convinced the Mando is actually a greenhorn poser trading on the rep of his people. Yes he is a great quickdraw but he is also rash, prone to anger, and prideful. This reading is supported by him only now getting his first real beskar pauldron.

All of which makes him a more relatable character which we as the audience can share in his experience, rather than a fully "complete" character that doesn't need to grow at all and is there just to "be cool".

I totally agree, he is a much more interesting character if he is not just a hyper competent badass. I really hope he is a poser who happens to be pretty good on the draw with a pistol and sorta makes up the rest as best as he can.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I don’t get why adults want to act like children and especially why adults would criticize other adults for not acting like children..

It's less about acting like children than about not wasting time watching something just to pick it apart. I'd rather focus on the things I like about a movie and enjoy the experience than pick apart all of the faults and come out of it feeling like I've just wasted two hours of my life. YMMV.

Thinking about what you consume is wasting time? To me, that sounds completely juvenile. But like you say, YMMV.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sterling191 wrote:
The show in general leans hard into the *space western* concept, and the music is no exception. It’s a little janky at first, but it’s rapidly grown on me. It very much helps to give it a different tone from the more grandiose scores of the films.

The style of the music is fine. What it needs to have is an iconic theme. I haven’t listened to it enough to gauge how memorable it is.

No, thinking about what you consume is fine. But when you reach the point where everything you're getting from that experience is negative, that's a waste of time.

I watch movies for fun. If it's not fun, I'm wasting my time.

And sure, you can brand that as 'juvenile' if you like. There's a well known quote from C. S. Lewis that sums up quite well just how much I care about being thought childish.

 Ouze wrote:
I don't think I recall the answer to this, if there was one - are there different release dates regionally? I know it was speculated about but I don't know if there was a definitive answer.

Yes.
Australia gets it on the 19t, not the 12th. The Disney+ is not yet fully operational, so to speak.
UK gets it NEXT year in April?

If whether a film is fun or not comes down to the viewer refusing to think about its flaws then something has gone very wrong. If a restaurant serves rotten food, do you smile and choke it down to avoid wasting time?

Most media is a mixed bag. There are flaws and there are quality moments. Enjoying the latter isnt a function of pretending the former doesnt exist. For me, I enjoy the good all that much more for being honest about what’s not so good. The first two episodes of Mando are a great case in point. A lot of bland references in the pilot gave way to something really fresh in the second episode.

The only part of the score that irked me too much was when the mando and that nick nolte alien were riding the Blurrgs over these chasms. It felt like a really campy tune, very goofy to me. The use of the score in the 2nd episode was better to me.

 Manchu wrote:
If whether a film is fun or not comes down to the viewer refusing to think about its flaws then something has gone very wrong. If a restaurant serves rotten food, do you smile and choke it down to avoid wasting time?.

You're arguing a point I never made. I didn't say that I refuse to think about the flaws. I said that I don't let them impact my enjoyment of the film. Just as I can enjoy a restaurant meal even if some parts of it aren't quite up to scratch. If the meal is 'rotten' then I avoid wasting time by not eating it.

To clarify my earlier statement (which seems to have ignited some arguments), I think the show is okay, or good. I just don't see the mouth-watering "can't get enough" appeal that some people are spouting.

But it's also 2019 where people need to say something is garbage or "OMG it's the best thing I've ever seen". Maybe people need the extreme language because simply saying something is pretty good is...not enough now? I don't have particularly high standards, but I also don't grant things praise if they don't really earn it. I can only think of a half dozen properties in the past 5-10 years that have exceeded my expectations or blown me away - products that I can fully 100% endorse enthusiastically.

When I enter threads like this (and seeing similar posts on Facebook) I just think to myself "Did we watch the same show?". I posted on another forum that if you're in a country where this is delayed, you're not really missing anything. There's nothing life-changing about the show...it's just a good show. You'll see it in a few months and that's fine. I think a lot of people think you must hate something if you don't scream and shout about it like a high schooler.

I assume there are other people like me, so I don't mind trying to balance out the over-enthusiasm. If I read this thread before I watched the show I would have been let down. So, tempering expectations isn't a bad thing.

 insaniak wrote:
I don't let [the bad parts] impact my enjoyment of the film.

Seems like this is an issue of granularity. Some folks are looking at their media in very broad strokes, it’s either acceptable or not. Others are evaluating each piece: this scene worked well, this one didnt.

 Manchu wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
I don't let [the bad parts] impact my enjoyment of the film.

Seems like this is an issue of granularity. Some folks are looking at their media in very broad strokes, it’s either acceptable or not. Others are evaluating each piece: this scene worked well, this one didnt.

And to add to your point, I also think different people are vocal about different things.
I was a theatre major in college, so script and story analysis is at least familiar to me. I can tell when a movie/show has "weak points" but unless those weak points are EGREGIOUS*, I don't bother discussing them.
Instead, I try to focus on the stuff that I did enjoy so I get revel in those moments for longer**. And I fully admit I let myself fall victim to nostalgia, so there is certainly bias for me here

*and by egregious, we are talking dumpsterfire levels of "I wasn't even going to watch that in the first place"
**Seriously that baby Yodling is so friggin cute I can't stand it! And the memes it is spawning were worth the D+ subscription alone

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 Galef wrote:

**Seriously that baby Yodling is so friggin cute I can't stand it! And the memes it is spawning were worth the D+ subscription alone

-

Is it wrong that I'm a 38 year old man and I want a Yodling doll?

 nels1031 wrote:

 Galef wrote:

**Seriously that baby Yodling is so friggin cute I can't stand it! And the memes it is spawning were worth the D+ subscription alone

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Is it wrong that I'm a 38 year old man and I want a Yodling doll?

Nope, not one bit.

 nels1031 wrote:


Is it wrong that I'm a 38 year old man and I want a Yodling doll?

Nope and they should bundle it with a porg plushie. It's the one good thing to come out of TLJ IMO.

I have D+ now. I'm so happy I don't have to sail the high seas as much as I might have done.

*cough*

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have D+ now. I'm so happy I don't have to sail the high seas as much as I might have done.

*cough*

Well, I'm in the UK, soooo..

Arrrrr.

At least in my case, I'm an uncritical lapper because I'm not deeply enmeshed in Star Wars fandom. I didn't see the original trilogy until I was at least 27 or so, and didn't think they were that great. I think a lot of the appeal of the original trilogy when they came out was that nothing like this had really been seen before in the mainstream, but by the time I saw them, mainstream space sci-fi adventures were plentiful - and it just didn't engage me. I saw one of the prequels theatrically with a friend who was super into the franchise, and while I thought the droidika (sp?) were cool... on the whole it was kind of boring to me.

The only ones I saw when they came out in theaters were the most recent two, and I felt the same about those - they were OK, no great shakes.

So, I don't have any real expectations and my knowledge of the lore is very shallow. A such, it's a fun space western with characters I sort of recognize. The bar for "something great in the Star Wars universe" is for me is pretty low.

Also, seperate from (but added onto all that), I'm beginning to suspect I'm just easily amused.

 Manchu wrote:
To Elbows’s point, I am convinced the Mando is actually a greenhorn poser trading on the rep of his people. Yes he is a great quickdraw but he is also rash, prone to anger, and prideful. This reading is supported by him only now getting his first real beskar pauldron.

I don't think he or his fellow mandalorians claimed he was the best. The ritual with the armor made it seem like he was relatively junior. He can still be a good bounty hunter with some good street cred and still be a relatively newbie Mandalorian. I'm sure his bounty handler is not above overselling the abilities of the bounty hunters to perspective clients.

Hopefully he gets more mithril soon.

 Ouze wrote:
At least in my case, I'm an uncritical lapper because I'm not deeply enmeshed in Star Wars fandom. I didn't see the original trilogy until I was at least 27 or so, and didn't think they were that great. I think a lot of the appeal of the original trilogy when they came out was that nothing like this had really been seen before in the mainstream, but by the time I saw them, mainstream space sci-fi adventures were plentiful - and it just didn't engage me. I saw one of the prequels theatrically with a friend who was super into the franchise, and while I thought the droidika (sp?) were cool... on the whole it was kind of boring to me.

The only ones I saw when they came out in theaters were the most recent two, and I felt the same about those - they were OK, no great shakes.

So, I don't have any real expectations and my knowledge of the lore is very shallow. A such, it's a fun space western with characters I sort of recognize. The bar for "something great in the Star Wars universe" is for me is pretty low.

Also, seperate from (but added onto all that), I'm beginning to suspect I'm just easily amused.

I mean, it sounds to me more like Star Wars just didn't grab you personally. Which is fine, but it's not indicative of much beyond your personal taste, plenty of people have fallen in love with Star Wars at various times and ages regardless of how many other sci-fi movies they've seen.

Well I am enjoying it. I do like that he is not a veteran Mandalorian. We get to see him grow and earn his armor. That's pretty cool. It's like playing a SW RPG. And baby Yoda is awesome. I also really dig the space western vibe.

Feels to me like people are trying to back into their expectations with regard to the Mando. I don't get any impression that he's some sort of trainee. He's just not superhuman, to LunarSol's point. So yes, taking on big monsters and giant tanks can be a problem for a lone guy with a rifle.

Regarding the beskar, the writers made a point of explaining that amount is rare and extremely valuable, so that's why he's not clanking with the stuff. The answer is right there in the script. I think it's fair to say that the Mandos are diminished, but they aren't presenting an incompetent Mando warrior, just a mortal one.

 gorgon wrote:
Feels to me like people are trying to back into their expectations with regard to the Mando. I don't get any impression that he's some sort of trainee. He's just not superhuman, to LunarSol's point. So yes, taking on big monsters and giant tanks can be a problem for a lone guy with a rifle.

Regarding the beskar, the writers made a point of explaining that amount is rare and extremely valuable, so that's why he's not clanking with the stuff. The answer is right there in the script. I think it's fair to say that the Mandos are diminished, but they aren't presenting an incompetent Mando warrior, just a mortal one.

Agreed. I'm in the middle of watch Rebel seasons 3 & 4 right now and it seems like there are quite a few episodes that will expand on how the Mandos are divided during the era of the Empire.

I'm not sure if Mandos being slightly super-human (kinda like Jedi without the Force) is still canon, but even if it is, it seems clear that the Mando of this show isn't of that lineage directly as he is a "foundling" whatever that means.

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I believe Mandalorians were always a specific culture. Not some super human subspecies. They're just regular humans with a famous culture.

Yeah. Spartans were not some kind of superior genetic line. They had a culture those rose those within it (and survived) to a legendary status.

The mandos are like that. A group whos society breeds bad asses.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I believe Mandalorians were always a specific culture. Not some super human subspecies. They're just regular humans with a famous culture.

Mandalorians are a cultural group. They are explicitly not a species, nor is any kind of augmentation part of their schtic. They're also not exclusively human (though are often presented as such in current lore), as any sentient can be adopted into a Clan.

The issue with the "super soldier" expectation is entirely due to how earlier now-Legends iterations on their lore were written. In short, they were Gary Stud to hell and back, then cranked up to fifteen on the plot armorometer. You can thank Karen Traviss for that (who incidentally just re-skinned them and used them as SPARTANs in her Halo novels, which should give you an idea of how ridiculously they were presented).

Sterling191 wrote:
The issue with the "super soldier" expectation is entirely due to how earlier now-Legends iterations on their lore were written. In short, they were Gary Stud to hell and back, then cranked up to fifteen on the plot armorometer. You can thank Karen Traviss for that (who incidentally just re-skinned them and used them as SPARTANs in her Halo novels, which should give you an idea of how ridiculously they were presented).

Ah. That explains things, as I'm not an EU guy and took them more at face value as presented in the films and TV.

Yeah, I think a lot of their "super soilder" status has to do with them culturally developing to counter Jedi. So to the wider galaxy that views Jedi as super human, Mandos would likewise seem super human, even though they are not, because they can go toe-to-toe with Jedi.

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 gorgon wrote:

Ah. That explains things, as I'm not an EU guy and took them more at face value as presented in the films and TV.

TCW, and later Rebels did IMO an excellent job of tempering the Mandalorian lore into a much more nuanced depiction of a highly fragmented, and at times even contradictory, martial culture. Unfortunately, there's a *lot* of baggage from the aughts thats proving hard to shake.

I expect (and in fact hope) that we'll see further exploration of the culture with this series.