sholio | The Mandalorian

Crossposts: https://sholio.livejournal.com/932685.html

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movies:star wars

The Mandalorian

I never managed to make a proper post about this show, but I'm finding that this is one of those shows that I like more and more as it settles more deeply into my head. It may not have ended up being something I want to write a lot of fanfic about, but I truly enjoyed this show and I enjoy having it as part of my mental landscape.

Yes, my Star Wars tag continues to be inaccurate.

Fic rec:
Pressure Valve by

seascribe. 4300 words, mature-rated, Mando/Cara fuckbuddies/friendship fic with sex and feels. This fic is a delicious combination of blowing-off-steam sex and gradual emotional intimacy and conflicting social norms; it is nothing like a typical romance arc and is very them.

A not-at-all comprehensive and fairly spoilery list of things I liked about this show:

• CARA CARA CARAAAAA. ♥

• The grimy, make-do, decades-post-revolution atmosphere of the show. I love that the post-revolution Republic is kind of a mess. I love that Werner Herzog's speech about wanting to resurrect the Empire ~~because at least they made the trains run on time~~ to bring back order is actually valid -- and also wrong, and I think the show makes it clear that he's wrong, but I also felt like it was an accurate portrayal of why someone might continue to think that way, rather than just having the neo-Imperial faction as cartoon baddies; of course it sounds good if you never experienced the bad side of it, and now you're living in this violent shithole world where the over-stretched new Republic can't really get much done.

• And I also loved that we got a sympathetic character who fought on the Imperial side, and found out his reasons for doing that, and got to see his interactions with someone (Cara) who fought and bled on the Rebel side. And then there are most of the other main cast, who just don't really have a stake in it one way or the other.

• In general, I really loved how lived-in this world felt. I loved the dirty armor on the Stormtroopers, the fact that we saw villages and farms and mended, make-do tech. I was talking elsewhere about how this felt like the first movie in the franchise, in the best way - the fact that it's not as slick and shiny as we've come to expect from Star Wars. It's a little bit rambling, a little bit messy. We saw kids and families and livestock as well as mercs and bounty hunters, and neat little bits of repurposed tech like the fishing robot in the fish-drug village. This version of the Star Wars universe wasn't as polished as the movie 'verse, but I loved it for that, because it felt like a place where people live.

• I love that none of these people are supermodel pretty and most of them are over 40. They look like the washed-up remnants of a revolution who are still kicking around in the messy post-revolution world. And when we finally find out what Mando looks like under the helmet, he's not a squinty-eyed Clint Eastwood but just an ordinary guy. They're all just ordinary people, and not even ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, but just people doing their best in a bunch of bad situations. They're the extras in some other, more Hollywood-esque movie, given their own story.

• I love that this is a 'verse where people bleed and die, and the heroes do things like stab people in the face, because that's the kind of universe they live in and the kind of people they are. (I do have Feelings and Thoughts about the relative weight given to various deaths - the disposability of the Stormtroopers, for example. But that's a side tangent. In general, I like that this is an Everyone Can Die universe; the victories are sweeter for it.)

• BABY YODA. I really appreciate that, even though he's not really like a normal baby in that he almost never cries or needs to be changed or fed, the question of Where Is The Baby and Who Is Taking Care of the Baby was central to the show, and was usually attended to. I also really appreciated the background element of people who were very much not baby people being competent and not sitcom-inadequate at taking care of a baby if it was thrust into their arms and left there.

• I appreciate this show making me feel so many things about a guy who is 99.9% represented by a goddamn helmet. I also like the slow burn on Mando as a character (I was talking to

sheron about this, actually) - episode 4 is the one that tipped me over into love for both the show and the hero, and part of that is because, for me at least, that's the point when you really catch onto how lonely and isolated he is, and how he's slowly, very slowly, rebuilding connections to other people after the absolute hell he's been through. The PTSD flashbacks were nicely done too, I think.

• Side note of A+ for ethnically accurate casting with his parents and young!Mando.

• I also really enjoyed the general theme of antagonists or at least ambiguous allies becoming actual allies. Carl Weathers' character got a very nice arc. (I also have fond memories of that actor from a different show back in the 90s.)

I am there for season two and I hope it doesn't break my heart. ♥

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In general, I really loved how lived-in this world felt. I loved the dirty armor on the Stormtroopers, the fact that we saw villages and farms and mended, make-do tech. I was talking elsewhere about how this felt like the first movie in the franchise, in the best way - the fact that it's not as slick and shiny as we've come to expect from Star Wars. It's a little bit rambling, a little bit messy. We saw kids and families and livestock as well as mercs and bounty hunters, and neat little bits of repurposed tech like the fishing robot in the fish-drug village. This version of the Star Wars universe wasn't as polished as the movie 'verse, but I loved it for that, because it felt like a place where people live.

This is the thing that makes me really enjoy the show. It's lived in, and it feels real and it reminds me of the original movies!

Also, I'm with you on episode 4 driving home the realization that he's super lonely and baby Yoda is not just a selfless rescue on his part but also fulfilling a very human need in him. In general, this felt like a show about humanity and human resilience and I always like that :D

I think it was actually you pointing out your dawning realization of his loneliness in that episode that made me realize I had the same experience, though at the time I had just parsed it as part of really falling in love with the show in ep. 4. I still think it's my favorite episode in the series; I loved seeing some normal people in the SW universe, loved Cara, loved the Mando and baby stuff in that episode, and just kind of generally loved that Star Wars finally managed to take us to a nice place where we might want to spend time for a little while.

Yeah, exactly, this is the first time in a while that I feel like I might like to read some fic for this universe, because I want to spend time there; it feels real. (Doesn't hurt that I'd love to read more about Cara!)

even though he's not really like a normal baby in that he almost never cries or needs to be changed or fed

LOL yes, I know he's not like a human baby at all (force choking! giant alien bovine levitation! floating bassinet!) but I kept thinking "this baby is too quiet" and "does this baby never need to be changed??" Not as plot holes or anything (I don't mean that to sound critical!), but I'm just used to babies going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH whenever they want/need something. I don't think he was ever very loud? (Could that maybe be partly separation from his species? I was thinking he was a clone or something, omfg it's too sad if he was also ripped away from parents.)

Altho they totally nailed that moment when you think the baby is FINALLY tucked in and now you can go do something non-baby-related and then you look down and the baby has materialized by your side and is looking up at you expectantly all ":D? :D?" I swear they can teleport.

Edited 2020-01-19 17:09 (UTC)

Altho they totally nailed that moment when you think the baby is FINALLY tucked in and now you can go do something non-baby-related and then you look down and the baby has materialized by your side and is looking up at you expectantly all ":D? :D?"

YES THEY DID NAIL IT. xD I loved that.

I generally think of his quietness, as you said, not as a plot hole, but because he's an alien; he's not any more human than a giraffe or a dolphin, so he's not necessarily going to act any more like a human baby than a giraffe baby or a dolphin baby. Actually, that's another thing I felt like the show did pretty well, was the sense of alien-ness - it wasn't just accidental baby acquisition, but acquisition of a really WEIRD baby!

He is such a WEIRD baby! He cracked me up floating along in his bassinet. I also loved Cara's "noooo I don't do babies" and holding him like he was a bag of groceries.

THE FLOATING BASSINET IS GREAT. It took me awhile to realize that Mando was controlling it and not that the baby was floating it with his mind.

I also really loved Cara's NOOO BABY and then actually ending up being pretty good at it. Actually, in general that was one thing I liked about the show, that most people were pretty competent with the baby when it came right down to it. I mean, it helped that it was a really easy baby. But I liked that incompetent-with-babies was not, in general, played for laughs in a sitcom kind of way; they might not be used to babies but they are competent adults and can pick it up as they go along! (Mando really did have a steep learning curve at keeping the baby away from anything shiny/breakable/dangerous, though. Heh.)

Aww, I did think it was a Force bassinet! I guess that would be letting the baby having a little TOO much control though.

Agreed on all counts! Particularly the run-down look of everything and everybody--it was always my favorite aspect of the first Star Wars movie, and I am so glad to see them double down on it.

In fact, that was my baseline for Star Wars vs. Star Trek, back in the day, the worn-out/dirty sci-fi vs. the shiny/clean sci-fi. (I love ST, don't get me wrong--it was just a quick taxonomy in my head for their respective look and feel.) But over time, the Star Wars movies seemed to slide much too far toward a generic shiny/clean, and lose their grip on a tone that I always thought set them apart in an interesting way.

So I'm thrilled to see it reappear in The Mandalorian, and not just a quick toss of fake-dust over the sets and props, but as a bone-deep feeling in the places, the people, and the things.

It's sort of like... sometimes a modern movie set in 1938 will only give a passing thought to what it means to be in 1938, and have all the cars and the clothes and the styles be exactly from 1938. But that's not how life and society go at all--there are always old cars still tootling around, someone still wearing the clothes and hairstyle from five or ten or more years ago, hand-me-downs everywhere. And taking that into account in a fictional portrayal not only feels more real, but as you mention, it can be used so well to tie in to the politics and the culture and the characters you're looking at.

The repurposed tech and hand-me-downs - YES! That's so true of past eras, and I think that was one of my favorite things about this show, the way that you see things like broken/scavenged stormtrooper armor and an AT-AT that's been sitting in the woods for decades. The whole thing had a very worn-down, make-do kind of feeling, very integral to the whole thing, as you said, and not just a few items artfully grimed up. I actually kinda want to do a rewatch just to pick up on more of the background worldbuilding details, which they seem to have spent a lot of time on.

I also generally prefer a grimier, more broken aesthetic to something shiny and clean and new. It's actually one reason why the recent MCU movies have been less to my taste than the more urban-noir tone of the TV shows.

I also generally prefer a grimier, more broken aesthetic to something shiny and clean and new. It's actually one reason why the recent MCU movies have been less to my taste than the more urban-noir tone of the TV shows.

This is very interesting, because I 100% appreciated the grimy, realistic feel of this show but I am definitely into the more urban, shinier, cleaner MCU feel overall. It just needs to not feel generic (as we've discussed the more recent movies feel) but overall, the SW universe is a place I like to visit, but the more polished up-kept environment (e.g. the universe of AC for example) is where I like to live.

I like that people have different tastes in this kind of thing! There's also a certain amount of ebb and flow to it for me, too - I think right now I'm feeling a little burned out on bright/shiny and much more interested in run-down/grimy. But I think in general I'm more interested in rundown/make-do settings than shiny/clean/pretty settings.

It does depend on the aesthetic, though. I mean, just to name two, I really deeply love the general aesthetic of both Agent Carter and Black Panther, which are of course very different, but also very clean and bright and shiny - but I think one thing that makes both of those work for me as well as they do is that they really commit to their setting; it's a cleaned-up version of the real world, but they really throw themselves into filling it with details and richness and internal consistency. So that's another thing that goes a long way toward selling me on a setting (and I feel that The Mandalorian also does that with its post-apocalypse world).

Yes, the richness of the environment that sells it to me as a real place is so important to me to.

And for me it also ebbs and flows and definitely I appreciated the Mandalorian world more because it was different from the recent stuff.
It's something I like to play with in fic, to take a generally clean/groomed character into an environment that's dirty and grimy and make them deal with it as part of the story; I think that really gets the reader involved too. (Possibly because we project on how we'd deal with it if we were there, and that's interesting to our brains)

Oh yeah, that's a good point - I also really love that contrast, particularly characters whose lives are neat/tidy/clean being forced into the grimier and more imperfect side of the world.

I loved that in TFA, where Finn goes from this very shiny totalitarian sterile world (with Phasma ~~my girl~~ in her literal mirror armour) to that moment where he's walking along after the crash literally dropping off the pieces of his armour/former life. And of course there's the whole opening sequence with Rey, where her whole life is about salvage.

Edited 2020-01-20 20:08 (UTC)

I really enjoyed the Mandalorian, too :) I agree, the lived-in universe atmosphere was great, and I loved Cara.

With Baby Yoda, not acting like a human baby can be explained by the fact that he's (apparently) fifty years old - we don't actually know the extent of his current cognitive abilities, which I'm curious about. Especially early on I thought that him being small and mute probably leads to many people/species thinking him a lot younger and more helpless than he is.

Oh yeah, I mean, his species apparently ages very slowly, but I didn't consider it a plot hole so much as just that he's an alien; he's no more going to behave like a human baby than, say, a dolphin baby or a giraffe baby. And yeah, I agree that we don't know how mature he really is, or how much he takes in. Actually, along those lines, one thing I found really interesting about the show is that nobody knows what he is - it had never really occurred to me that the only person who's seen Yoda AT ALL since Anakin was a young man is Luke, and even before that he was kind of an anomaly, so while we recognize a Yoda when we see one, they don't! They can tell he's a baby something, but most people aren't even sure if he's a "people" baby or a pet. So not really knowing whether he's on the mental level of, say, a one-year-old or a ten-year-old human also goes along with that.

Yeah I loved that nobody knows what it is! (We can't assume it's a he XD )

That's a really good point. :D

Well, it's only been, what, 30 years since the rise of the Empire?, so I'd be surprised if there weren't people who remember the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order. And I am surprised that apparently nobody knows what his race is called? Are they that isolated/secretive? We don't know how he(for convenience's sake since iirc the show uses it) came to be discovered/found.

Well, I assume a big part of it is that they're out in the boonies and most people around here probably didn't pay much attention to politics in general, except as it affected them, and then it's been a generation - and a generation with a lot of upheaval too. He might be more recognizable in, like, a major metropolitan area on an industrialized world; clearly at least SOME people in this 'verse know who/what he is, even if the main characters don't.

I always thought when Yoda says "My home this is!" in ESB that he is from Dagobah? (Lord, those SW names....)

These are basically the same reasons I've enjoyed the show so much too. The lived in, make-do feel of the tech just works so well, and I'm constantly amazed at how good the show has been in getting me to care about a character who hardly talks and isn't even able to use facial acting to convey meaning. I don't know that it's been a great show, exactly, but it's been a deeply satisfying and fun to watch show.

I don't know that it's been a great show, exactly, but it's been a deeply satisfying and fun to watch show.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to sum it up! There are definitely plot holes (how the heck do the locator beacons work? WHY DIDN'T ANYONE CHECK THAT MOFF GIDEON WAS DEAD?!) but the show in general is so enjoyable and satisfying that I really don't care. Which honestly is writing goals. <3

I thoroughly enjoyed the Mandelorian, it's such simple, fannish storyline.

But

But... it occurs to me that Baby!Yoda The Child^TM could have mentally manipulated Din Djarin into caring for him.

Ha, that's a good point, and it hadn't occurred to me.

... I think it doesn't bother me in the way it would with an adult character, though - because if you think about it, ALL babies do this (and puppies, and kittens), except on an evolutionary/hijacking-your-brain's-wiring level rather than telepathy. If the baby is doing this, it's almost certainly happening on the level of instinctive wanting to be loved and cared for, rather than being intentionally manipulative, and that's kind of just normal baby behavior, except normally they do it by looking cute and making cute noises and generally making our brains respond to them because we're wired to.

I had to think all of that out while writing it down, because normally I would have a very strong knee-jerk NOPE to that kind of thing, but in this case even if he IS doing that, I think it's analogous enough to a normal baby's behavior not to bother me.

(Also, he doesn't seem to do it to everyone -- e.g. if he was trying it on the Stormtroopers, it didn't work -- so even so, it's either that he thought Din Djarin seemed like good parent material, or Din is just THAT susceptible to a slight push on the parent part of his brain.)

ALL babies do this (and puppies, and kittens)

//looks at Tiny Evil Kitten (now almost 10 years old!), who successfully conned us into rescuing her off the fire escape, paying for an expensive life-saving operation, and who woke us up at 3 AM the other night because T had given her half a can of tuna for dinner and it was all gone and she WANTED THE OTHER HALF NOW

I have no idea what you mean!

OMG https://twitter.com/BLOODTHRSTYXBBY/status/1203791998513057792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/cupcakekitty27/status/1204287499977146368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Din sees the baby and he's immediately its protector. I understand that the Mandelorian culture is all about protecting kids. And to be fair, I'm all about protecting the kid (any kid) and hope I everyone else is.

but thinking if Baby!Yoda is force coercing

The scene in the penultimate ep... or final, where the stormtroopers have The Child in a haversack and they are chatting, they deliberately don't open the bag (and then they get their finger bit). I don't expect the fascist Stormtrooper or an Empire commander to be responsive to a baby anything, specially an alien baby. But have the stormtroopers been told not to engage? There was kill order on the bounty hunter acquisition chip. Don’t engage with the mind manipulating force sensitive.

In all honesty if Baby!Yoda is force coercing it spoils the whole story *g* Luckily Cara isn't that fashed about the baby. I consider this evidence that The Child^TM isn't using its skills to brainwash its protectors.

it's interestingly, deliberately manipulative. The creators made The Child absolutely adorable. I have watched this series and actually COoooooed on seeing Baby!Yoda. I mean 10/10 to the creators.

I personally feel like I've been manipulated *g*

it's just that cute.

it occurs to me that Baby!Yoda The ChildTM could have mentally manipulated Din Djarin into caring for him.

LOL, my husband was SURE that Baby Yoda had whammied Mando into being his daddy. He also pointed out Baby Yoda has the classic "evolved cute" look, with fuzz, oversized head, big eyes, &c &c).

Oh, I was just rereading this and thought of this post!

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/star-wars-cover-story

But in a way that’s the whole point: you’re out there so the world can get up in your grill and make its presence felt on film. “It’s the things that you can’t anticipate—the imperfections,” says Oscar Isaac, who plays the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. “It’s very difficult to design imperfection, and the imperfections that you have in these environments immediately create a sense of authenticity. You just believe it more.” When Isaac arrived in Wadi Rum for his first week of shooting, Abrams had set up a massive greenscreen in the middle of the desert. “And I was like, ‘J. J., can I ask you a question? I notice we’re shooting on greenscreen.’ And he’s like, ‘So why the hell are we in the desert?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ And he said, ‘Well, because look: the way that the sand interacts with the light, and the type of shots you would set up—if you were designing the shot on a computer you would never even think to do that.’ There’s something about the way that the light and the environment and everything plays together.” It’s that something, the presence and the details and the analog imperfections of a real nondigital place, that makes Star Wars so powerful.

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The Mandalorian

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