jakob
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Posts: 827
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Post by jakob on Dec 7, 2019 6:26:32 GMT
I really thoroughly enjoyed the first three. The last two, though, just have not been pulling the same weight. I know a lot of people are complaining about the "filler"ness of the last two, but my biggest complaints are the fact that the tone, style, pace, acting, dialogue, and plotting have all just dramatically dipped in the last two to a mix of bad early SyFy Channel series mixed with Cinemax porn without the sex. The new characters introduced have been radically uninteresting and miscast (Amy Sedaris was terrible here, I don't understand the internet enthusiasm this morning with her). The plots have been rushed and the production value has even felt deflated. You see the concept art in the credits and it looks like it was intended on being much more visually ambitious. I have faith for the last couple episodes given Taika Waititi and Deborah Chow are back. I just want to get to Giancarlo Esposito's villain already. I'm getting kind of tired of this "it's for kids too so we have to tone back our cool original pitch!".
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Post by JangoB on Dec 7, 2019 10:23:29 GMT
I quite liked the third and the fourth episodes (incidentally the female-directed ones), especially the fourth one since it finally provided some semblance of human emotion and character development. And then it's back to basics with episode five which once again is all about getting from point A to point B with a random little adventure along the way. I wish they came up with a proper story for these eight half-hour episodes instead of just having Mando jump through planets and have his little quests. Oh well, at least the BABY is so fucking cute, right? And I'm not knocking it in any way - it is the cutest damn thing ever and I could easily spend these 30 minutes simply watching him go about his baby business!
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Dec 7, 2019 14:20:53 GMT
THEY'RE ONLY HALF HOUR EPISODES??!
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 7, 2019 21:25:46 GMT
THEY'RE ONLY HALF HOUR EPISODES??! Yup, with long ending credits so they're sometimes even shorter. Ep5 was the worst yet - with a juvenile power rangers tone that wasn't helped by a laughably self serious performance from Bobby Cannavale's son
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Post by JangoB on Dec 28, 2019 2:05:42 GMT
Now that final episode of S1 was everything I hoped this series would be. The only time this show felt like it was made by a properly strong filmmaker. The action, the humor, the story progression, the emotional beats - everything was working in unison. Although I did find it funny that as a director Waititi gave the droid character that he plays this big death scene with the overdramatic music and all this big pathos - he really does love himself, doesn't he All in all, S1 was a pretty mixed bag. The whole 'each episode is its own adventure' thing could've worked if the adventures themselves had more of an impact or were substantially more entertaining. But most of them were just pretty stale and forgettable. When the show got back to its central plot it worked fine. And the last episode did kick some ass. It's nice to see a different chapter of the SW universe but frankly it just gives me more excitement about the future of the theatrical movies - we're finally done with the Skywalker saga and now the door is open to endless possibilities. This is a decent appetizer but what I need now is a big separate SW movie with a proper story. Or maybe the second season of this show can deliver that for me. I hope S2 will be more focused. But yeah, Baby Yoda is just the best. I love how even the internet crowd, who usually loves to dump on Disney for cheaply inserting cutesy creatures in their movies to sell toys, seems to have abandoned its cynicism for Baby Yoda. He's just that adorable and awesome.
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Post by Miles Morales on Dec 28, 2019 10:20:06 GMT
I fucking love this series, warts and all. The worldbuilding, the main character, the score (must've listened to the main theme 150 times now), and of course, Baby Yoda - all are excellent. The last two episodes were especially fantastic. Really excited with where the story is heading.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Dec 28, 2019 22:51:37 GMT
So I finally finished the season, and I got a lot to say.
There’s a lot to love about this show - for TV, the production quality is stunning. The cast is uniformly great, and despite Pascal’s mask, I felt so much from that character. The set-pieces are really entertaining (especially the O.K. Corral mayhem of the finale). And... yeah, Baby Yoda. A perfect little addition that’s cute, but doesn’t exist solely to be cute. He’s the real standout.
But too often, the show goes off in these unimportant tangents. Episodes 5 and 6, in particular, have no reason to exist. Even as world-building entries, they’re not very engaging. I’m just gonna say it. As it is, there was no reason this couldn’t have been chopped down to a 150 minute movie. If you’d have trimmed, condensed, and rewritten specific plot elements, this would have made an amazing Star Wars movie. As it is, it’s a decent Star Wars show, where nothing much of substance happens depending on the episode.
And with the revolving set of directors, it kind of leads to a whole mish-mash of inconsistent quality control. The clear highlights come from the one-offs (Howard and Waititi), Chow is in total command of her craft, Famuyiwa has one hit and one dud, but Dave Filoni was the real disappointment (he’s amazing in animation, but is not well suited to live-action), which doesn’t help when the single worst episode is also written by him.
So there’s a lot of good to be found in this show, but also a lot of lessons they can learn in the next season.
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Post by JangoB on Jan 17, 2020 18:50:14 GMT
Awww
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Post by getclutch on Feb 5, 2020 12:34:27 GMT
8/10. I really enjoyed this series. Loved the supporting cast & I thought the story was very intriguing along with the beautiful photography. Cannot wait for S2. I had one issue therefore I probably will get disliked for this. Pedro Pascal is an excellent actor with a great resume from his past work. Was it necessary to cast him? Pedro did a fine job though I am positive a “lesser known” actor would have as well done the same. Also, I had no idea BDH directed episode 4, wow! That was a genuine episode.
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Post by getclutch on Feb 5, 2020 12:35:35 GMT
Beautiful indeed. Greig Fraser photographed three episodes. Cannot wait to see his work on Dune & The Batman.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on May 28, 2020 5:02:11 GMT
Finally watched this and, like others have said, I thought it was a mixed bag. Only about half of the episodes I found to be really engaging, with most of them in the second half of the season. This really could have just been a solid movie, but instead it's needlessly stretched thin.
One of my biggest issues with it was the style of humor, and more generally the way dialogue was written. A lot of the stuff coming out of characters' mouths rang too modern and "familiar," for lack of a better word. Basically, the humor and dialogue too often felt like it was out of Marvel movie instead of something from another world altogether. It just seemed like the writers were simply trying to appeal to the widest audience possible. Things like characters yelling "You got this!" encouragingly during battle, or snarkily saying "You done?" in response to another character acting in an annoying manner. Probably the cringiest moment was Mando saying "That's my line" when someone repeats the "I can bring you in warm or cold" bit, so there's also an element of self-aware humor that I found irritating as well.
I also felt like they took the edge off Mando's character too quickly and too much. Like he's introduced as this hardened badass in the first episode, but then we quickly see him speaking affectionately to Baby Yoda when there should be a more gradual softening of his character with more of an internal conflict and awkward interaction between them as he settles into the role of a protector.
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Post by Miles Morales on Sept 15, 2020 14:37:34 GMT
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Post by JangoB on Nov 22, 2020 1:48:02 GMT
Anybody watching S2?
I find it a bit better than the first one so far. It's still more of the same 'A side-adventure per episode' stuff but it's sort of lightly entertaining. The first episode had a fun IMAX climax (very Dune-influenced), the second one was a fun creature feature (very Alien + Peter Jackson-inspired), the third one was the most forgettable and boring one for me (and of course the internet seems to think it's the best one so far because it's got some characters from the Clone Wars cartoons or something, I guess?) and the fourth one was the best so far with Carl Weathers doing quite a terrific job directing the action and the comedy.
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Post by JangoB on Dec 19, 2020 14:27:49 GMT
Well, S2 is done and it was definitely an improvement over the first one. The more story-focused this season stayed, the better the show became. The final episode was genuinely excellent fun - full of action of all sorts of varieties, very well done on a technical level and quite emotional at the end. The severe fan service wasn't as exciting for me as it might've been considering that we've already seen Luke and R2D2 quite a bit lately in the proper saga episodes and that the CGI face wasn't fully working for me but it was still a cool sequence and the very ending was certainly very moving.
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Post by Miles Morales on Dec 19, 2020 15:24:49 GMT
This season had rock-solid consistency. Better writing, a more engaging story arc, more exciting action sequences, deeper emotional stakes and more standout performances topped off by the great character development and cool fanservice-y moments. I honestly lost my mind when I realised that it was Luke fucking Skywalker who came to rescue the gang in the final episode, and the makers did an excellent job in redeeming Boba Fett . Overall, it was a superb season improving on the first in every way. Can't wait to see how they continue Din and Grogu's stories and the Darksaber arc, and how the Boba show turns out.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Feb 11, 2021 5:26:21 GMT
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Feb 23, 2021 7:45:40 GMT
Just finished watching S2, which I had been putting off until now. I definitely liked it more than S1 - the dialogue/humor didn't irritate me as much, the action sequences are well done, and every episode is at least engaging..... but I'm getting pretty sick of the video game plotting at the service of a thin overarching story with a simple end goal. Almost every episode is "If you want X, you have to do Y for me," and while some of the "side quests" are fun, it just feels lazy after a certain point. And regarding the finale, CAN WE PLEASE MOVE THE FUCK ON FROM LUKE SKYWALKER?! Jfc, enough already. I also don't want to look at a fake-ass looking CGI-rendered 1983 Mark Hamill...
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Sept 10, 2022 21:54:42 GMT
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Sept 10, 2022 22:04:54 GMT
Please be better than Book of Boba Fett.
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