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OK but I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

Bo-Katan is definitely seeking power. Her motives seem ambiguous. She could want power for noble reasons (like Leia, Padme, and Mon Mothma) or she could want it for selfish reasons (like Palpatine). The somewhat obsessive, fanatical way she talks about it doesn’t make her seem all that noble.

 Lance845 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
There is no character assassination of Luke. Luke was a feth up the entire time. Even when he was getting gak done he was doing it stumbling his way through it all. Are you remembering Jedi correctly? Because I don't think Lukes plan was to not have force manipulation work, fall into the rancor pit, have to kill a monsters and get tied up, taken to a sarlac pit, and have to kill a ton of people on his way out to "save" his friends. WHICH BTW, he did by being the distraction. He didn't actually save any of them. He just jumped around a couple skiffs chopping wood with his light saber while they did the actual rescuing.

But thats what happens. Because Luke kind of sucks.

Then he goes to Endor. And he gets brought to the Emperor. And he's all I will convince my dad to help me. But he doesn't. He ends up ALMOST going dark side and angrily chopping wood onto his dad till he removes his hand. THEN he does the one thing he is really actually great at which is turn back from the dark side and stand his ground. His plan was never to get almost killed by a bunch of lightning and then have his Dad do the actual work of killing the Emperor.

Remember when Luke was a feth up and almost died in the snow?

There is no character assassination of Luke in the sequels. The Sequels handle Luke PERFECTLY. That is EXACTLY who he should be growing up to be. The issue is you have 30-40 years of thinking of Luke as the main character filled with EU garbage that turns him into a super competent savior while ignoring everything that he actually is. Which is a confused, sad, person who wallows on his failures and stumbles his way through situations he is not prepared for.

dude, anyone whose plans go perfectly every time without having to change them and iprovise is the worst kind of mary sue

Right. And then he went to go make a Jedi Academy, and over years he made mistakes. And then he wallowed on his failures. The EU Luke is the worst kind of Mary Sue. The movie Luke is a regular kid whos been in over his head since the day we met him.

NONE of Lukes plans work out in any of the original 3 movies.He succeeds at any of those situations because of OTHER people. When the chips are down and Luke is the boss at the Academy he has nobody else to turn to. It all lies on his shoulders. And we have never seen him succeed on his own at anything.

EU Luke is far better in my opinion. Sounds like we have different perspectives.

 Manchu wrote:
Bo-Katan is definitely seeking power. Her motives seem ambiguous. She could want power for noble reasons (like Leia, Padme, and Mon Mothma) or she could want it for selfish reasons (like Palpatine). The somewhat obsessive, fanatical way she talks about it doesn’t make her seem all that noble.

I only meant that if she turns out not to be vilain she would be a rare case of heroin seeking power. I think she will be an antagonist somehow to the largely apolitical Din.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

The resolution of this conflict is what allows Luke to become a Jedi Master, as Togusa outlined above. And that is what we see in the finale of The Mandalorian.

What we see in the Sequel Trilogy is someone who seemingly forgot everything that happened to him during his arc, someone who never developed from being unsure to finding that he can and should trust his feelings.

What you see at the end of Mano is a Luke that has reached a place of confidence with a mission. He is a "Master" in that he knows the skills well enough. But Ezra at the end of Rebels was closer to a master in his giving himself over to the force and the peace and power that comes with that then Luke at the end of RotJ who was right but hasn't reach that point yet.

Like Yoda says to Luke in the sequels. His mind is always looking to the future and the past. Never the here and now. He wallows on what was and what could be instead of doing whats right in the moment. Thats not a lesson we saw Luke really learn. He didn't forget everything. He never LEARNED everything. And when he saw Ben becoming the next Vader he freaked out. And then, with those deaths of his charges around him, with the loss of his nephew, he wallowed as Luke is want to do.

Uh, that's why we have the Luke presented in the Mando as he was, much more confident and controlled. TLJ luke is garbage writing and wastes the characters potential.

Luke is not a master in the Mandalorian. To be a Jedi Master one must have trained a Padawan. Luke is a Jedi Knight, who has started a very optimistic path to rebuilding in a better way what was lost.

The Luke from the new movies is just an unlikeable bitter old man, poorly written.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jadenim wrote:
This thread has made me realise something very interesting; the Emperor is defeated not by being out-Forced by a Jedi, but by Anakin abandoning his twisted beliefs for basic human emotion, his love for his son.

Yet this flies totally in the face of Yoda (and presumably the Jedi) “no attachment” teachings. If Luke and Anakin hadn’t had that attachment, they wouldn’t have won.

It ties in with one of the annoyances I have with The Last Jedi, where Yoda burns the Jedi texts. For a brief moment it looked like Yoda was admitting to Luke that he got things very, very wrong and that dogma doesn’t matter, Jedi or Sith, what matters is that you’re a good person. That’s a very interesting core for the films and builds on the earlier “force being out of balance” theme from the prequels. Unfortunately they undermined that whole concept by Rey just having the books anyway

I think this is more or less the point too. The Old Jedi order is akin to modern Christianity. It's teachings twisted and warped, they became too involved with the Republic and refused to see other paths. For example, The Force exists, whether or not it's dark or light depends on the user and their emotional awareness. But, both Good and Evil must exist, and during the Republic's time, Good far out balanced Evil. Hence the story. I honestly think that Lucas was making a statement about how modern Christianity has fallen from the teachings of Christ in favor of this warped view of what it means to be a person of faith.

Yoda can be both wise and still fallible, and they've shown that pretty well. Check out this video for a sorta take on this and why Qui Gon Jinn was very, very underrated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4H9v8fJ2d8&t=1s

Obviously not cannon, but it's a great idea that probably should be.

 Manchu wrote:
OK but I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

Bo-Katan is definitely seeking power. Her motives seem ambiguous. She could want power for noble reasons (like Leia, Padme, and Mon Mothma) or she could want it for selfish reasons (like Palpatine). The somewhat obsessive, fanatical way she talks about it doesn’t make her seem all that noble.

And we’re still yet (very early days admittedly) to see Din actively stand in her way. Or show so much as a sliver of interest in leading anyone.

The only question is what counts as a defeat in combat when it comes to satisfying the legend.

In terms of canon, we’ve seen Maul claim the Darksaber, having slain its previous wielder. Yet, between Solo and the events of Rebels, it ends up on Dathomir, where Sabine finds it. She then willingly passes it on to Bo-Kayan, recognising her as being better placed as leader.

We can infer that perhaps just being handed it (and therefore power and authority) may not have been enough. But that’s without really knowing what happened on Mandalore between times, other than the Empire glassing the planet and the Saber ending up in Moff Gideon’s hands, without him killing Bo-Katan.

Then there’s the “no true Mandalorian” idea, which they’re yet to fully explore. We do know there are differences in culture between Bo-Katan’s covert and Din’s covert regarding the helmet. But what other differences are there? And where do they stem from? Holy texts, unspoken tradition etc.

Is Bo-Katan even willing to kill Din? Thanks to the mood and pace of the episode, we don’t actually have much of an idea just how far she’ll go. I’d suggest perhaps not. Because if there’s one thing that episode did make absolutely clear is that Din didn’t recognise the Saber for what it is - nor did he have any idea about the lore and legend surrounding it. So it’s not as if Din did any of it with malice aforethought.

That leaves a decent amount of narrative scope to really dig into the background and society/societies of Mandalore.

It could even wind up with Bo-Katan recognising a Foundling, someone with no previous political baggage might be the leader needed. After all, if she did screw up prior to the purge, how truly loyal might her following be with the Saber in hand?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thought on the Sabine involvement.

Clan Wren were a noble house on Mandalore. It may be there are different standards between Nobles and Foundlings in terms of the Darksaber.

Another kink in the puzzle is Boba. Bo-Katan and her compatriots make clear that they don't consider him a Mandalorian.

But then he says he never claimed to be. Which is true, he never said he followed any creed, just that the _armour_ belonged to his father.

Din puts pretty high stock in that. I suspect his thinking is that if you've earned Mandalorian armour, you are a Mandalorian. Noble or foundling is irrelevant. Boba's also shown a definite tendency to do right by Boba, way above and beyond what could reasonably be expected.

And now Boba has just taken over the remains of one of the largest criminal empires in the galaxy.

I think that's not going to sit well with Bo-Katan, who is ambivalent to Mandalorians being bounty hunters but is likely to take a much dimmer view to them being actual crime lords.

I don't think Din will see it that way.

With that and whatever remains of his Covert out there (and I'm still going to say that there's a lot more than the Armourer), Din's going to be pulled in a lot of different Mandalorian political directions next series. And he has absolutely no interest or ability in that field.

And that's without whatever happens to Grogu. Interesting times.

What if it’s more complex than Gideon let on? He had an obvious agenda in trying to turn our protagonists against one another at a critical moment and so we can’t accept his words at face value.

Nor does it make much sense. It’s hard to imagine that Bo-Katan really needs to fight someone who makes no claim to either the Darksaber or the mantle of the Mandalor. That would be artificial to the point of absurdity.

To speculate, what if the real difficulty comes down to however Gideon got possession of the Darksaber to begin with — which may have to do with how Bo-Katan lost it? Losing the precious relic to an outsider would be politically humiliating. Did this loss disqualify Bo-Katan as a pretender? Perhaps she must redeem this specific dishonor in order to rehabilitate her political career.

In which case, it could be that Gideon intended to lose to Din specifically to disrupt Bo-Katan’s agenda. I suspect Bo-Katan‘s real problem now actually hinges on failing to redeem her humiliation rather than on Din beating up an elderly Imperial intelligence officer. That is, even in his defeat, Gideon managed to outfox and humiliate Bo-Katan once again.

There’s also the question of just where did Gideon get the phase 3 Dark Troopers?

At first, I for one had his Light Cruiser pegged as a research vessel. A highly mobile base where top secret projects could be worked upon in secrecy, and able to simply jump away from a fight.

But from what we saw? No labs. So I think it’s reasonable he didn’t create them himself. So who did? Are there more? Were they prototypes, or production models?

It seems very possible that’ll play into the new show. Dune has him in custody, and he’s ISB (ex-ISB, possibly). The New Republic will no doubt do what they can to get answers and intel from him. Where might that lead him?

I suspect he’s in with Thrawn to some extent - there could be many links in that chain. It would certainly be the thread that unites Mando, Rangers and Ahsoka together as shows - which we’re told to expect.

Also...don’t lose sight that we’ve no idea what he wanted Grogu for. In fact, on reflection? Season 2 didn’t really answer many questions, but sure left us with a load.

We watched a story about Din and Grogu, not the Imperial Remnant. There’s a lot going on in this setting and not braiding every single thread together into one narrative, as the Sequel Trilogy tended to, makes Star Wars feel bigger rather than smaller.

Gideon's future is likely to be something along the lines of Hannibal Lecter, a behind-bars consultant carefully manipulating his captors. I agree we’ll probably see him play out the role as a part of the Rangers show.

I doubt Gideon has any substantial connection to Thrawn. His connection to the Darktrooper and M-count cloning projects is probably a facet of his ISB background. I suspect Thrawn has a totally separate agenda.

I was suprised that the Dark Troopers were just fancy droids. I was fully expecting them to be cyborgs with high M-count being required to make them work properly. It definitely seems that Grogu's blood was part of some entirely different plan.

I place good odds on the writers having no idea of what that plan is yet; I'm betting that they've learnt from Marvel to just set up a cryptic lead and then figure out when to use it later.

 Jadenim wrote:
I was suprised that the Dark Troopers were just fancy droids. I was fully expecting them to be cyborgs with high M-count being required to make them work properly. It definitely seems that Grogu's blood was part of some entirely different plan.

I place good odds on the writers having no idea of what that plan is yet; I'm betting that they've learnt from Marvel to just set up a cryptic lead and then figure out when to use it later.

There is the impending mass of Palaptine clones and Snokes. Rey, Grogu is your father (donor)! It does seem really strange that Palpatine would be humble enough to experiment with other sources of force sensitive folks- unless his own genetic material was damaged by plot armoring his way through a reactor and death star explosion, or force lightning. I would have thought Palpatine was totally cool with direct clones.

Why make a direct clone of yourself when you can make a direct clone of yourself with SUPAR MIDICHLORIAN POWA

And the lab was on Nevarro - they blew it up.

Question. Is there a Lando thread yet?

Well... there you have it:
https://twitter.com/starwars/status/1341013938570371072

The Book of Boba Fett, a new Original Series, starring Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen and executive produced by Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni and Robert Rodriguez, set within the timeline of The Mandalorian, is coming to
@DisneyPlus
Dec. 2021.

I'm pretty relieved, while I'm happy to watch more of those characters, I didn't want it to be at the expense of the existing Mandalorian cast and the story they've been telling there.

It's also a simple way to back door pilot a bunch of the other more prominent surviving canon BHs and spin off further if reaction is positive.

I think the reason Bo Katan was so adamant that Boba wasn't a real Mandalorian was that they basically had to publicly denounce Jango Fett during the clone wars. He was essentially excommunicated due to his role with the separatists in Attack of the Clones.

balmong7 wrote:
I think the reason Bo Katan was so adamant that Boba wasn't a real Mandalorian was that they basically had to publicly denounce Jango Fett during the clone wars. He was essentially excommunicated due to his role with the separatists in Attack of the Clones.

It might also have to do with her viewing Mandalorian more in the sense of an ethno-culturral group than a creed like Din views them. To her Jango's identity as a Mandalorian is weak and that of his cloned son is basically next to null since he never was even raised in Mandalorian. It also explains why she rejected Maul's leadership as he was "an outsider" in her own words. She wasn't too hot on the Republic occupation of her world at her bequest and militantly opposed to that of the empire. Then again both Din and Bo-Katan have their "no true scotts" issue, but both have shown a certain ability to make exception and temper their views with Bo-Katan obviously respecting Din's courage and sense of honor and Din respecting the fact that not all Mandalorian cover their faces.

 Graphite wrote:
Another kink in the puzzle is Boba. Bo-Katan and her compatriots make clear that they don't consider him a Mandalorian.

But then he says he never claimed to be. Which is true, he never said he followed any creed, just that the _armour_ belonged to his father.

Din puts pretty high stock in that. I suspect his thinking is that if you've earned Mandalorian armour, you are a Mandalorian. Noble or foundling is irrelevant. Boba's also shown a definite tendency to do right by Boba, way above and beyond what could reasonably be expected.

And now Boba has just taken over the remains of one of the largest criminal empires in the galaxy.

I think that's not going to sit well with Bo-Katan, who is ambivalent to Mandalorians being bounty hunters but is likely to take a much dimmer view to them being actual crime lords.

I don't think Din will see it that way.

With that and whatever remains of his Covert out there (and I'm still going to say that there's a lot more than the Armourer), Din's going to be pulled in a lot of different Mandalorian political directions next series. And he has absolutely no interest or ability in that field.

And that's without whatever happens to Grogu. Interesting times.

This is my reading, but I am thinking the act of Fennec freeing that girl is a pretty blunt statement that Boba isn't so much "taking the reins" of a criminal gang as he is going to start cleaning up the seedy elements in the outer Rim. I'm also curious that since Din saw the armor chain code and saw Jaster's name, he might have recognized the name and that might have given him more trust in Boba.

I think what you are seeing is a very long game where the ideals of what it means to be a mandalorian are being changed, adapted and molded.

Imagine what will happen if Clan Wren shows up next couple of seasons? Buckle in, cause this train has only just left the station.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I'm pretty relieved, while I'm happy to watch more of those characters, I didn't want it to be at the expense of the existing Mandalorian cast and the story they've been telling there.

It's also a simple way to back door pilot a bunch of the other more prominent surviving canon BHs and spin off further if reaction is positive.

Yeah. If had to chose, I'd choose Mando, and I like Boba and was happy to see him appear in the show. You can't block me like that Disney. I already have such low expectations of you XD

I think it's been mentioned that the Book of Boba Fett is a one off series, immediately before Mandolorian Series 3 starts, rather than an ongoing thing.

Doing a big old binge of seasons 1 or 2.

And I have a genuine criticism.

The Gammoreans. They look awful compared to the ROTJ version. Too skinny, obviously Bloke In A Mask.

LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special is funny.

Although Rey now sounds like she's from Watford for some reason...

 Souleater wrote:
LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special is funny.

Although Rey now sounds like she's from Watford for some reason...

I was shocked at how they tried to lean into the "Finn should have been a Jedi" mindset that a lot of people felt ripped off by from the posters for TFA. They also heavily relied on time travel which a lot of people thought would be a plot point in Episode IX.

Behind the Scenes are up now. It’s a little over an hour, and for my money worth a watch.

I just more or less binged the entire show over the last couple of weeks. It was pretty good.

However, I felt like they fell really hard down the well of making the enemies so incompetent as to remove a lot of tension from the show. It was a huge mark against the prequels for me when they made droids that could be killed out of hand by everyone with no sense of danger. This show definitely did that with the Stormtroopers.

How many times can a person in a helmet be knocked out by a single punch to the face/head? Like, completely leaving aside how useless the armor is against blasters, there are a dozen or so unaugmented face punches that immediately incapacitate a person wearing a full helmet. Then there is the whole "Hey, that guy just shot three of my friends who ran out into the hallway, better run out into the hallway too." moments, as well as a number of times when the bad guys had weapons pointed straight at the protagonists and just... didn't shoot. During the fight on Tython, a Stormtrooper runs up behind Ming-na Wen's character with his blaster pointed at her and she has time to shoot a guy, spin around and shoot him and he never gets a shot off. Functionally every use of the whistling birds or whatever should have resulted in someone pulling a trigger, since that is faster than those mini missiles and yet every time everyone just kind of stands there like Lacey Chabert is coming down the stairs.

All the character stuff, all the lore building, all that was great. But a lot of the gunfights just seemed... ridiculous to me. There isn't even the veneer of "Well, the force makes spinning around during a swordfight and showing your back to your opponent a bunch of times make sense"thing going on, since they aren't Jedi.

Eh. That credibility fell long ago. When 3 foot teddy bears can fell armored and gun-toting soldiers (with armored support) with not-particularly-sharp rocks and sticks, you've essentially got a bunch of cosplayers.

On the other hand, the problem with competent villainous henchmen is you need a big pile of red shirts to sacrifice on a regular basis. For a small cast show, competent enemies is a continual problem.

Its particularly exacerbated in any setting with guns, simply because having the protagonists be 'near exceptional' doesn't actually provide any magical protection from just being shot. Sometimes you need to go the Western route and just have someone important get critically wounded or killed, otherwise there aren't any stakes.

Voss wrote:
Eh. That credibility fell long ago. When 3 foot teddy bears can fell armored and gun-toting soldiers (with armored support) with not-particularly-sharp rocks and sticks, you've essentially got a bunch of cosplayers.

On the other hand, the problem with competent villainous henchmen is you need a big pile of red shirts to sacrifice on a regular basis. For a small cast show, competent enemies is a continual problem.

Its particularly exacerbated in any setting with guns, simply because having the protagonists be 'near exceptional' doesn't actually provide any magical protection from just being shot. Sometimes you need to go the Western route and just have someone important get critically wounded or killed, otherwise there aren't any stakes.

I guess, but I just expected more because there are people out there straight-facedly calling this the best tv show that has ever happened. No one is seriously calling ROTJ the best movie in history.

The incompetent stormtroopers are the only issue I have with the show...but it’s a big issue. However as Voss says, if you make them competent, how are the heroes to survive?

I mean, I think it could be done but it require a major rethink. Fewer troopers, putting up much more of a fight individually. And if you want realism (which admittedly Star Wars isn’t really the place for lol) not every shot the heroes fire have to land. A gunfight could, in fact probably should, be both sides in cover firing dozens and dozens of rounds at each other without actually hitting anything.

Realism is boring though......

 Future War Cultist wrote:
The incompetent stormtroopers are the only issue I have with the show...but it’s a big issue. However as Voss says, if you make them competent, how are the heroes to survive?

Good (/better) writing would be a start.