Yet another "Meh" episode with goofy, banal characters, executed tepidly. But most worrying of all is the seeming drive towards finding some way to legitimize the ad hoc nonsense pulled out for the last minute release Exec-edit of Rise of Skywalker Palpatine.
I never once felt our 'heroes' were in any danger as they continued to mow down multiples of their number of apparently untrained goof troop soldiers. To be honest, I started feeling bad for the imperials! That's not supposed to happen!
Now, IF they (whoever had actual ultimate say in the pacing and script of this episode) had broken it up a bit, and slowed the breakneck action into blocks of recognizable, thought-out strategy, it would have had some tension. But even then, we're talking about one (1) walking hero badass who at least has the benefit of having bolt-deflecting 'beskar', one old man who essentially operates as a bounty clerk, and one washed up ex-soldier who has clearly spent her post-service off time assaulting the space Western version of Twinkies. I don't want to pick on Gina, and I liked her character at first, but she's just not believable here. Yeah, she's Big, but she's also very flabby and struggling to hustle from one blocking point to the next in every active scene. What happened to actors training for action roles? I'm not advocating for the type of truly unrealistic and unhealthy measures that Cavil went through by dehydrating himself for a bath scene in that Witcher show, or even the bulking he did for that show (since it didn't even fit the character), but I expect supposed martial expert super people to be in better shape than my scrawny sedentary physique, not considerably worse. Believably deliver a haymaker? Sure. Dodge blaster shots? Ha!
Lastly we have the annoying non-entity bounty-- now defacto slave-- blue guy showing that Lucasfilm aren't afraid to dump their entire alien effects budget on crap characters every episode, while the leaks have already shown me how (predictably) awful Ahsoka's makeup and prosthetics look.
And speaking of makeup. Again. All the women's makeup is a garrish and obvious caked-on mess that clashes as badly with any sense of fantasy or character trait as the lack of color grading for the towns in this show to look like a fantasy setting. They matched Carl Weather's aging complexion well without the makeup being overly obvious or garrish on my 4k copy of the show (though no makeup at all would have been better) so why are they afraid of showing any of the actual skin on any woman's face? If you're that afraid of acne scarring then use grime and dirt. Everything else looks like that in this show!
They also clearly hadn't planned out for the show to have a-- much less a major --imperial base on whatever this planet's name is. This is perhaps the most worrying thing so far, because it's exactly what made the entire Disney "trilogy" the unmitigated mess that it was. They retroactively made plot holes in the show's comparatively Excellent opening 3-episode pilot arc. What happened to plotting things out ahead of time? And what happened to having actual great directors (Deborah Cho) direct the episodes. I'll even take Taika back at this point, as long as he leaves his idea of humor at home.
Storm troopers are ruined in this show. Even Gideon hasn't been shown to be an actual threat, and they're probably waiting til the season finale to even put the heroes in a bad situation. This is going to be the season 3 finale of Rebels all over again, only without the much better Obi-wan & Maul scene from the penultimate episode.
Review by LNeroBlockedParent2020-11-30T22:14:21Z
Yet another "Meh" episode with goofy, banal characters, executed tepidly. But most worrying of all is the seeming drive towards finding some way to legitimize the ad hoc nonsense pulled out for the last minute release Exec-edit of Rise of
SkywalkerPalpatine.I never once felt our 'heroes' were in any danger as they continued to mow down multiples of their number of apparently untrained goof troop soldiers. To be honest, I started feeling bad for the imperials! That's not supposed to happen!
Now, IF they (whoever had actual ultimate say in the pacing and script of this episode) had broken it up a bit, and slowed the breakneck action into blocks of recognizable, thought-out strategy, it would have had some tension. But even then, we're talking about one (1) walking hero badass who at least has the benefit of having bolt-deflecting 'beskar', one old man who essentially operates as a bounty clerk, and one washed up ex-soldier who has clearly spent her post-service off time assaulting the space Western version of Twinkies. I don't want to pick on Gina, and I liked her character at first, but she's just not believable here. Yeah, she's Big, but she's also very flabby and struggling to hustle from one blocking point to the next in every active scene. What happened to actors training for action roles? I'm not advocating for the type of truly unrealistic and unhealthy measures that Cavil went through by dehydrating himself for a bath scene in that Witcher show, or even the bulking he did for that show (since it didn't even fit the character), but I expect supposed martial expert super people to be in better shape than my scrawny sedentary physique, not considerably worse. Believably deliver a haymaker? Sure. Dodge blaster shots? Ha!
Lastly we have the annoying non-entity bounty-- now defacto slave-- blue guy showing that Lucasfilm aren't afraid to dump their entire alien effects budget on crap characters every episode, while the leaks have already shown me how (predictably) awful Ahsoka's makeup and prosthetics look.
And speaking of makeup. Again. All the women's makeup is a garrish and obvious caked-on mess that clashes as badly with any sense of fantasy or character trait as the lack of color grading for the towns in this show to look like a fantasy setting. They matched Carl Weather's aging complexion well without the makeup being overly obvious or garrish on my 4k copy of the show (though no makeup at all would have been better) so why are they afraid of showing any of the actual skin on any woman's face? If you're that afraid of acne scarring then use grime and dirt. Everything else looks like that in this show!
They also clearly hadn't planned out for the show to have a-- much less a major --imperial base on whatever this planet's name is. This is perhaps the most worrying thing so far, because it's exactly what made the entire Disney "trilogy" the unmitigated mess that it was. They retroactively made plot holes in the show's comparatively Excellent opening 3-episode pilot arc. What happened to plotting things out ahead of time? And what happened to having actual great directors (Deborah Cho) direct the episodes. I'll even take Taika back at this point, as long as he leaves his idea of humor at home.
Storm troopers are ruined in this show. Even Gideon hasn't been shown to be an actual threat, and they're probably waiting til the season finale to even put the heroes in a bad situation. This is going to be the season 3 finale of Rebels all over again, only without the much better Obi-wan & Maul scene from the penultimate episode.