Isn’t Star Wars just basically Westerns, Akira Kurosawa samurai films and old WWII films set in space? They could have just stuck with Dances With Wolves meets The Magnificent Seven.
Shit, Robert Rodriquez could have just redone one of his films.
Those were definitely important elements, but it’s not just those. It also references swashbucklers, swords & sorcery, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, wuxia (almost before wuxia itself really existed), and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, that last of which itself draws upon a wide range of mythological sources.
The Mandalorian leaned heavily into the Western elements, and even moreso into the Spaghetti Western elements, with a notable side-trip that leaned heavily into (as in some shots were directly lifted from) the chambara (samurai sword-fighting) elements.
I mentioned upthread that it seemed like maybe Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni wanted the Robert Rodriguez who directed Desperado, and instead got the Robert Rodriguez who directed Spy Kids.
I’m starting to suspect that Rodriguez might not be that great a director. He was good at making a C-movie look like a B-movie, and he had some fresh ideas back in the 1990s, but really, how many actually good movies has he made? Desperado, The Faculty, the first Sin City… and that’s about it.
I wonder if Rodriguez is not a big Star Wars buff? Maybe he was trying to appeal to the big fans, but not being one he didn’t quite know how.
There was a lot of fun stuff in this series which is all I ask from Star Wars these days. That said, can we all now finally agree that Boba Fett is NOT the coolest SW character?
Boba Fett was cool because he looked awesome and was kind of mysteriously badass (until his ignominious Three Stooges death). Any focus on him was bound to tarnish what was only ever skin-deep to begin with.
But Mandalorian armor is still one of the coolest-looking things in the SW universe, and so in my book he’s still pretty dang cool.
They got pretty close to the rare Snow Rancor I made a few weeks ago!
Pointing your knee to shoot rockets out of it looks pretty silly, though.
(Maybe Womandalorians can have boob rockets like the girl robot from Tranzor-Z.)
Since first seeing it in The Empire Strikes Back, I’ve always thought it looked like something Tony Stark threw together while held captive in Vietnam.
Does Boba’s Rancor have a name? I propose “Chekhov” as in “If a Rancor shows up in the third episode…”
Admittedly quite silly.
Is it actually established in the movies that there are “Dark” and “Light” force powers? Yes, we only ever see bad guys uses lightning, but is that just a preference stemming from being an asshole? As pointed out, it does appear Luke uses choke once, and it’s pretty easy to imagine how the Jedi mind trick can be used to evil ends.
It’s established in VIDEO GAMES that there is a distinction, but that’s just a game mechanic. It’s a really, really dumb cinematic way of distinguishing between good and evil and takes away from characterization.
I was thinking they were doing A Man Called Horse…which as everyone says, is fine. But dig into it more please. SHOW the two Tuskens we liked the most, the woman and the child. Have Boba go off on an Archer style RAMMMMMPAAAAAAGEEEE!! Instead of having Shand single-handedly do the end of the Godfather…have Boba get a more exquisite revenge against those who betrayed him. And have the Pyke guy strung up for the space buzzards. Or buried in the desert up to his neck.
I mean if you’re gonna do a western, do it right.
Hold on Tex Arkana…Spy Kids is a good movie.
You know the dumbest part of this ‘attachements leads to fear leads to jealousy bullshits’?? The jedi call it ‘attachements’ but refuse to come out and say LOVE leads to the dark side. That ‘love is bad’.
I think the closest they come is Palpatine’s line in Revenge of the Sith:
“The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.”
He doesn’t say exactly what powers he’s talking about, and he might just be gaslighting Anakin in that scene, but it does appear that there are some abilities that you can only use if you’re channeling the Dark Side, or at least, some abilities that you wouldn’t use if you weren’t an utterly evil bastard.
What’s not cool about transition from “Galaxy’s most ruthless bounty hunter” to the honorable and reasonable…whatever a diamyo is in Mos Espa…like a city alderman or something?
I’m wondering if they will put Vanth as the lead in Rangers of the New Republic.
That’s the line I was thinking of, too. Palpatine then goes on to describe the tale of Darth Plagueis, who he says learned how to “create life,” and save those he loved from death.
Anakin, at that point, is suffering from nightmares (almost undoubtedly planted by Palpatine) about Padme’s death, and when he asks Palpatine if he could learn such powers, Palpatine replies, “Not from a Jedi.”
…except that seeing Boba Fett standing next to Din kind of highlights that Boba’s armor is actually kind of like, low-rent? It’s like seeing a Fiero next to a Ferrari. Technically, they’re both cars, but one is just shabby looking next to the other.
Never out-cool your “cool” character if you want them to look cool!
Lucas just grabbed that from Buddhism.