Star Wars: The Disney+ Empire Strikes Again and Again and...

I will say the ending scene has caused a great deal of consternation among the 10 year-old audience, picked up my son from school yesterday and there was heated discussion among his friends that Luke was "the biggest jerk ever" for making Grogu choose

luke is kind of a jerk tho

Jedi a portmanteau of "jerk, dick"

lol

The ancient jerk dick order

I'm guessing that Grogu is going to figure out a way to be both a Mandalorian and a Jedi and eventually wield the Dark Sabre since they made a point to mention in the last episode that the person who created the Dark Sabre was a Mandalorian Jedi

So yeah, Luke is being a jerk here and is providing additional evidence that the Jedis are for the most part not good at their jobs

Jon Favreau writing the last couple of episodes pic.twitter.com/Sa7ktLaokz

— Ireland Simpsons Fans (@iresimpsonsfans) February 4, 2022

lol

The finale mostly sucked but for RANCHOR SMASH which at least enjoyably sucked. Should've found a way to keep Cad Bane around for a while longer.

best part of the finale was finding out the theme song has lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljiVRV5B5i8

I can’t believe the How to Train Your Dragon “Firbidden Friendship” scene has been ripped off yet again.

best part of the finale was finding out the theme song has lyrics

― mh, Thursday, February 10, 2022 11:44 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Finding out the theme song has lyrics is exactly the same as finding out how han solo got his name

Binged through Book of Boba Fett this week in time to get to the finale.
Honestly, I was entertained the whole time! Weird to look at internet discourse (not just ILX, but pretty much every review I landed on) and see everyone complaining so much, considering in most respects this show was Mandalorean Season 2.5, especially those last three episodes (probably too much Mando honestly).

Yeah, there was a lot of clunkiness, and several character relationships could've been done better (hoping Fennec gets some more time in the next show) but as pure fan service - which these shows completely are - it succeeded immensely. Krrsantin and Cad Bane in live action! Rancor vs. MechaGodzilla fight! I was smiling like 90% of the time watching the show. Even the Luke CGI, while still a little uncanny, but was vastly improved over what we got in Mando S2 and reshashing Luke/Obi-Wan with Grogu was fun.

I'll be happy to stay on this Star Wars TV train with next season of Mando and if they bother to continue Boba Fett as a series, and Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan...

I loved it. Watched it with a 6.5-year-old that kept saying "The whoooole episode is a battle?!" while smiling. Amy Sedaris and Grogu ending were also huge comedy hits. Grogu's walk could have been more convincing.

yeah i loved it too & ageee re: baby yoda’s walk, it was v weird

Same. I found the Mandolarian quite boring and found this super entertaining.

loved the image of tiny baby yoda in the x-wing cockpit being all :D “yep i fly these now”… v funny

I assumed Baby Yoda's waddle was intentionally goofy, super muppet-motion

I found the first 4 eps of this pretty snoozy (albeit agreeably snoozy because it's Star Wars shit), but perked up substantially in ep 5 & 6 due because of excellent decision to jettison core concept. The ending was dumb but fun?

Ultimately I have felt deeply indifferent about this show ever since its existence was revealed at the end of Mando S2 - seems such a weird momentum-killing decision based on assumptions about Boba Fett that I find mystifying. As a OG SW '77 guy, I even struggle with the idea that Temuera Morrison is BF - he doesn't have the vibe I associate with the character at all, and I get no fan service payoff from his reprising the role.

As soon as Mando showed up in this he made Boba Fett redundant, as he has all along - effortlessly capturing what was cool about Boba in the first place (cool armour, body language, bad-assery) but also having compelling extra character layers.

Anyway I watched it with my kids regardless and they sat patiently thru the dull bits and loved all the Baby Yoda payoffs in Ep7.

Temura Morrison is also a terrible actor

he is a tricky little bugger

Was haunted by the faintest of memories so investigated, and - yes, the first time B.Fett actually appeared onscreen he was riding on the back of a big fuckin dinosaur thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC2Q6ANLXQ0

Good to see the new show honouring Boba’s deep love of sitting astride reptiles, a part of his character that I’m sure we can all agree has been under-explored

ok that is amazing

There's a decent boba fett history thing on disney+ that touches on this

my only complaint really is that it shouldn't have been that easy or quick for Grogu to return to Mando, which cheapens the end of season 2 after all that hard work of trying to get him to Luke in the first place. Having him come back as a full-fledged Jedi who doesn't need to take a nap every five mins would also have been more interesting.

He chose The Shirt

yeah, I agree. while I love Grogu as much as everyone else i was honestly hoping for at least one Grogu-free season of Mando

“ Temura Morrison is also a terrible actor”

Someone finally said it. Yes, he’s likeable enough, but damn, the voice actor in clone wars and bad batch provided infinitely more feeling to (what is sort of) the same character. - more range could have transformed this series. The fact that he’s paired with an equally lethargic version of Fennec sure doesn’t help either.

seems such a weird momentum-killing decision based on assumptions about Boba Fett that I find mystifying

In retrospect, having watched this series, I agree with this statement. I think most of the problems with the show stem from the weakness of the original concept. Boba Fett doesn't ever become a very interesting character, and I don't think it's primarily the fault of Morrison. He's just not given much to work with. His backstory seems to be a pile of well-worn tropes from action movies and TV westerns that never cohere into a believable personality. It just seems a perfunctory replay of the Mando pitch: he's a ruthless bounty hunter with a heart of gold! At least in the case of Mando you could imagine there was some weird bond between him and Grogu that was bringing out his soft side. But in the case of Boba, his decision to suddenly become the Richard the Lionheart of Tatooine never really gets any explanation. And the supporting cast is very bland. The only stand-out to me is the weaselly aide of the mayor who somehow heroically drags a memorable performance out of the wooden dialogue he's given to work with. (David Pasquesi, I'll look for him now.)

Pasquesi is a legendary improv artist; making a silk purse out of a sow's ear has been his livelihood for decades.

You need to watch Lodge 49 xp

also does good work in veep as selena’s ex husband

love pasquesi

wow, how had I not made the lodge 49 connection! of course

seems such a weird momentum-killing decision based on assumptions about Boba Fett that I find mystifying

really hated how nü fett's default state is without helmet. he takes off his helmet so freaking much! terrible. i get that the showrunners need a way to distinguish him from mando and you're probably paying temeura a lot for that face and continuity with attack of the clones. but '80 fett says that the helmet stays on during sex!

oh yeah other people totally OTM that it's really hard to square "he's worth a lot to me - he's no good to me dead" fett with "these are my people who I must selflessly protect" bad nü fett, regardless of whatever lizardworms entered his brain!

And again!

Between darkness and defeat, hope survives.

Watch the new teaser trailer for @ObiWanKenobi, and start streaming the limited series May 25 on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/XiJANgWrEz

— Star Wars (@starwars) March 9, 2022

Looks phenomenal!

Where can I hide the boy? Perhaps with his actual biological next of kin just in the same house they've always been in where they're easy to find. But for myself, I'll need a whole new identity — Ben Kenobi, they'll never crack that one.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 9, 2022

that dude is such a fucking troll

Yglesias, not Ben Kenobi

Not sure about that Fifth Brother look

genuinely never thought we'd reach a point where there was generalized nostalgia for the phenomenally shitty "first trilogy" but here we are i guess

tbf, Ob-Ewan is one of the (very) few saving graces of the prequels, so I don't mind more of him.

if i had to pick the most unobjectionable element of those movies, it's definitely mcgregor

genuinely never thought we'd reach a point where there was generalized nostalgia for the phenomenally shitty "first trilogy" but here we are i guess

It's an absolutely real thing, no lie, that for a lot of people who were my age when the originals came out that they're VERY fond of said first trilogy, compounded by The Clone Wars series' impact.

Yeah Clone Wars - both the Tartakovsky and Filoni versions - did a lot to redeem the prequels.

I’ll always feel bad for McGregor though for having to utter the line “I have seen a security hologram of him... killing younglings!”

Eps 4 - 6 look like a war in a war-weary universe

Eps 1- 3 look like a screensaver

Yglesias sucks but he's not wrong in that tweet upthread.

obviously, the reason that plot point doesn't work is because Lucas hadn't worked that part out yet when he wrote the first one, Ben was more or less just observing him from a distance to protect him and possibly recruit him later, not "hiding Luke from the dark side on his father's home planet using his father's actual surname".