I'm beginning to think the writing team only had three good episodes in them. Getting predictable and drawn out.
This episode literally felt like a PARODY.... That is not a good thing
I usually do not watch TV episodes till after the credits roll but there is actually an after credits scene here that noone should miss!
I f*king cried, Luke at the end & R2 ?! best episode ever. This even tops the sequel triolgy for me. You know, this even makes 2020 a good year. 10/10
The dragon (magic carpet) Ride scene was hilarious and unecessary. The only thing that was missing was "a whole new world" playing in the background
I don't understand why they'd do young Ahsoka and not have Ashley Eckstein as the voice. Even this version doesn't match the plucky Clone Wars version. Whole thing still feels like a fan film still to me. Love Filoni but this series been so underwhelming for me.
Massive Star Wars fan but honestly end up looking forward to the credits so I can put something else on.
ahhh, the olde hide child in trenchcoat trick! that can fool anyone on any military base.
There is no way Sabine went from struggling to pick up a lightsaber to throwing a grown ass man that far within minutes
Gosh, the writing for this show is so utterly dreadful.
Personally, I don't understand all the hate around this final installment in the series. I thought this was a pretty good Indiana Jones movie, all in all, and I've watched them in the theater since they first came out (except this one).
Yes, the beginning has some de-aging and it's not great - but you get used to it pretty fast and I was seeing old Indiana Jones in no time. Yes Harrison Ford doesn't do his own stunts anymore but he's pretty old to be jumping horses through downtown New York. Lots of CGI in this one, but that's where we are today - you don't see hardly anything but CGI these days so why should this film be any different?
The story is pretty outlandish, but then again the first one that everyone loves had spirits jumping out of an mythical box so you have to suspend your disbelief if you want to watch shows like this.
If I were to rate this in the series as a whole:
#1: Raiders of the Lost Ark
#2: Last Crusade
#3: Dial of Destiny
#4: Temple of Doom
#5: Crystal Skull (mostly because Shia LaBouff sucked)
I get that some people, particularly with Temple of Doom, will disagree with my ranking but they are mine, not yours.
I went Into DoD with a ton of trepidation, all I heard was how bad it was in places like Trakt, but in reality it surpassed my expectations by a pretty large amount. They had a nice nod to all previous characters (except Brody, that was disappointing to me - I know the actor is dead but a mention would have been nice). I think this was a good final movie for Indie.
As always the soundtrack of this show is out of this world. It really does wonders to the mood of the episodes.
I don't really know what's going on with Cody but I hope that he will reunite with Rex, becacuse I want those two to become friends again. And I also hope that they won't try to redeem Crosshair because I think he's beyond redemption at this point. Especially after this episode where he basically commited a war crime.
A great fun episode, and Omega continues to be endearing with her endless optimism. Also delighted to see Rafa and Trace back and maybe now people will finally start to see how great they are!
Interesting ending moment, my first thought was Ahsoka but I guess that wouldn't make that much sense... would it?
[7.3/10] Let’s get the big thing out of the way first. This Ahsoka takes some getting used to, at least for folks who’ve seen her for ten seasons in various other television shows. She looks right. She moves right. She even does some traditionally awesome Ahsoka things.
But she doesn’t sound the same. Her mannerisms are different. And the result is that, for longtime fans at least, she doesn’t feel right. That’s on me, not on the show. Dave Filoni both wrote and directed this episode, so it’s not as though this is coming from an artist who doesn’t know the spirit of the character. Likewise, there’s differences in vocal tones and speech patterns between tons of characters in live action versus in animation, so this should be no different. But for me at least, it made it hard to connect with a familiar character in an unfamiliar guise. I imagine if we continued with Ahsoka in some form or fashion, that would dissipate as we get used to her in the role, but for now, it’s a little jarring.
That said, I like how Filoni and company use her here. For one thing, they make her a total badass. The sequences where she goes against the Magistrate’s various troops are pretty fantastic. In the opening sequence, she almost feels like a supernatural attacker in a horror film, emerging from the shadows to take out unsuspecting victims. Likewise, when she returns to lay siege to the compound, the way she darts in and out of view, taking out baddies, just like the loth-cat she uses as a distraction, makes her seem scary good at what she does.
In the same way, I liked the Lady Snowblood-esque duel between her and the Magistrate. The combination of Ahsoka’s white lightsabers vs. Morgan’s beskar spear in a temple-like setting was quite cool and artsy. My one complaint is that, as cool as the Wild West standoff between Mando and the Magistrate’s lieutenant was, particularly with the twist, they cut back and forth between the two scenes too often for my tastes. The editing interrupted the rhythm flow of the saber fight, which weakened what could have been an even cooler standoff.
That said, I do like how the show threads the needle on one of the trickier questions here which is, how do you not feel like the series is just stalling forever until Mando finds a Jedi versus come up with a good reason why the Jedi wouldn’t just take Baby Yoda from Mando and remove one half of the major draw for the show?
The answer, at least here, is intuitive. Baby Yoda has attachment, specifically to Mando as a surrogate father. Ahsoka herself has seen what strong force-sensitive individuals with attachments can become, “even the best of us,” so it makes sense that she would fear what The Child might become if she were to start training him now. She feels a lot like Yoda on Dagobah arguing with Obi Wan over whether to train Luke, which feels right.
I also like the scenes where she tests him. I’ve said before that one of my favorite modes on this show is just Mando as the dad to a curious toddler. There’s something very sweet about the way Ahsoka can’t get The Child to move the stone, but that Mando’s developed a connection and understanding with him, as father and son, to where he can get the li’l tridactyl to take the throttle knob from him. It’s even cuter how enthused and proud of the kid he clearly is after Baby Yoda does it. Ahsoka’s rejection of the training opportunity works as a subtle affirmation of the bond Din and Grogu have formed, and that’s really heartening, with hints that Ahsoka thinks being in Mando’s loving care is really what’s best for The Child and maybe even something she senses as what the kid really wants.
That’s the other thing -- there’s a lot of lore and teases in this episode! We learn Baby Yoda’s real name! (Grogu? Really?) We learn that he was trained in the Jedi temple, spirited away after the Clone Wars, and that he has a spate of darkness in his memory after that. We find out that Ahsoka is hunting Grand Admiral Thrawn. We see Morai the owl! We get a hint as to another Jedi temple to visit in the hopes of giving Grogu a spirit vision akin to Ezra’s! There’s a lot of added details here, some of which are intriguing or cool, some of which make me raise an eyebrow, but all of which are at least significant.
I also like the design of Corvus and the compound. There’s a plain sense of have and have nots, with oppression in between, without anyone having to say it. The family-friendly crucifixions along the way are a nice design touch that conveys the cruelty of the magistrate. And even just having Michael Biehn’s second-in-command mercenary guy in play helps add flavor to this one.
Overall, this episode failed to live up to my expectations for seeing Ahsoka in live action and for having one of, if not the, greatest character in all of Star Wars interacting with Mando. But the truth is that those expectations were likely impossibly high, and what we got here was still plenty good.
lol I have forgotten how bad the writing was ever since they ran out of book material
Baby Yoda is fun and all, but this episode's premise is so overused it's painful to watch. Plus all the other plotholes:
- why does the Mandalorian seem to forget that the kid is being tracked (clearly there's no way for him to remove whatever they're using to track him or he would have done it already…) so why does he think he can find sanctuary by being in the middle of nowhere? (one reasonable theory is that the fobs are short range, so you would need to know what planet the target is on in order to track it with the fob)
- why does he leave his ship unattended again, given that in a previous episode it was ripped apart by scavengers? His plan was to go to this farm for a few months and just leave his ship alone in the middle of a forest that whole time? (maybe he got some upgrades? Or Jawas are more resourceful than the locals on this new planet?)
- I want to lay low so I'll just keep wearing my highly conspicuous armor, and engage in combat with some raiders that clearly have connections without making sure to wipe them out completely?
- (and what's stopping the raiders from returning?)
- "I can never remove my helmet in front of people and haven't shown my face since I was a little kid." then immediately removes his helmet while standing in front of an open window while facing a crowd of people (also I really want to see him eat in public — is there a flap that can flip up? Does he use a straw? The world needs to know.)
- Instead of doing a bad job of sneaking into the raiders' camp, almost getting yourself blown up by your explosive, and running back to get the farmers' village destroyed, why not just look around a bit and find the AT-ST and destroy it first, or better yet commandeer it and use it to kill all the raiders? Oh right, Disney. Slaughtering raiders is a no go? (or maybe the writers were ignorant and thought the AT-ST was a droid instead of a transport?)
- Their plan centers around the AT-ST walking in the mud, which is clearly a bad plan because of the range of its guns. Oh but now someone is shooting at them from the pond so of course it's time to go walking into the trap. Oh but she managed to get a shot through the eye hole so the plan wasn't really necessary after all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- The Mandalorian's initial refusal to help, followed by his acquiescence was way too easy, and then they say they can't do it because they have a tank, but are again easily convinced to help. Quick montage showing almost nothing, and bam next day they're ready to take on an army.
This is some extremely lazy writing.
Plus the first female character who shows her face in the show turns out to be pretty much a nothing character with zero personality and is probably not going to show up again.
All of the acting was terrible.
I've enjoyed most of the show so far, but this one was a real dip for me.
This one's more of a filler. A bit too convenient and predictable. I mean, you know what was going to happen. I really like that they adressed things like Mando eating. But is there a story with Omera? She's too good a shot to have been a farmer her whole life. Maybe she came there for sanctuary, too ? I wonder if that will be adressed later. Still, great production value and the battle at the end was really good.
[6.0/10] This was a real step down from prior episodes. So much of The Mandalorian has been remixing classic Western tropes, and “Sanctuary” is no exception. The idea of the mercenary/ronin coming to a tucked away village, defending it from some aggressors, and finding themself unexpectedly attached, is a well-established one. (see also: Shane, Yojimbo, a middling episode of Star Trek: Enterprise).
But whereas the prior episodes of this show have taken those familiar stories, melded them with the Star Wars universe, and elevated them with a less is more approach, “Sanctuary” comes off like an episode of any old Saturday afternoon adventure serial. The villagers that Mando saves barely have personalities. He and his local crush have insta-love for reasons that go entirely unexplained. And the show awkwardly makes it seem like Mando wants to settle down here, without really doing the work to establish why.
That’s the main thrust of the episode. Mando is just looking for someplace to hide. He reluctantly takes a job in exchange for shelter. It turns out to be more difficult than he thought, and he has to teach the local how to fight, but at the end of it, he finds himself attached, in more ways than one. That’s not a bad blueprint for an episode of a quasi-ronin show, particularly when it’s punctuated with the reveal that him settling down like that is a pipe dream so long as he’s protecting Baby Yoda. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
For instance, one of the strengths of the show so far has been its shorter runtimes, not stretching the story out to fill time. But here, everything felt so rushed, particularly Mando’s friendship with Cara Dune and his affections for the steely single mom he finds in the village. Given that the emotional impact of this episode rests on him feeling a connection to this place, the fact that the show either just assumes a chemistry and connection that doesn't really exist on the screen, and haphazardly yadda yaddas Mando getting used to this kind of life (a montage might have been life), really weakens the overall goal of “The Sanctuary”.
It’s also the weakest episode we’ve had acting-wise. Pedro Pascal still does great work here, but his village paramour is a forgettable nothing. Cara Dune is a more interesting character, particularly with the idea that she’s a former Rebellion soldier lying low after peacekeeper life didn’t agree with her, leaving her on the run for her own reasons. But MMA star-turned-actor Gina Carano is hit or miss in the role in her first episode. A lot of the Star Wars dialogue about aliens and whatnot can sound hokey, and a lot of the rah-rah action liner stuff is tricky to pull off, and Carano’s shaky at both in the early going.
So what’s good here? Well, the visuals here still manage to impress. The production design on the remote village is superb, marrying the cinematic iconography of Vietnam movies, with the otherworldly blue fish and circular designs that characterize the Star Wars franchise. By the same token, the Imperial Walker’s red eyes peeking through the trees in the forest is an eye-catching image. Plus, Baby Yoda continues to be the most adorable thing on television, with his village kid friendships and mischievous ship-side button-pressing each being utterly delightful.
That said, a lot of this episode is centered on hand-to-hand combat, whether it’s the semi-meetcute between Mando and Dune, or the locals fighting the raiders with big sticks, and the fight choreography and shot selection leaves both feeling somewhat flat. (Though the fight at the raiders’ camp fared a little better) The unfortunate truth is that both the uptempo action-y sequences in this film, and the quieter, supposed-to-be heartening scenes both felt off, with flat framing and moves in the former, and bad dialogue and performances in the latter.
Overall, this is the first miss for The Mandalorian, which is almost inevitable for a show still finding its voice, but which seems that much more glaring given how good the show’s been up to this point.
That Baby Yoda is too damn cute!! OMG I laughed so hard when he pressed the button after being told not to touch anything.
It looks great, better than anything on the recent trilogy. The lore is building up and the acting is on the dot. My only problem is the pacing and that the damn episode is too short. I was expecting a 1 hour show, but this is shorter even than network television prime time shows.
[6.7/10] Underwhelming finale. Again, the only thing I really liked here is Tam’s choice, which is a little unexpected, but has meaning because it’s both a tough call and one that’s well motivated. Tam is turning her back on her friends, but those same friends also lied to her, and the First Order is offering her the chance to have her dream, something Yeager didn’t seem particularly energetic in delivering. It’s a hard thing to watch because Kaz and Yeager clearly care about her, but it’s understandable, which gives it some power.
That’s more than I can say for the rest of the episode. The good guys flushing stormtroopers out of airlocks is fine but not especially exciting. The dogfights and Kaz blowing up the red first order trooper from the first episode is generic and not particularly satisfying. And there’s a fair amount of the usual capering and sneaking around without anything to distinguish it.
Even the blast into outer space, which should be the highlight set piece, is surprisiingly languid. They try to include Big Damn Hero moments for Hype/Aunt Zi and Synara, but it feels shoehorned in. And the whole “who knows where we’re going?” thing feels like a cop out. Hell, Kaz seems barely moved by the fact that his family is dead.
Overall, this is a thud of an ending to a disappointing first season of this show. I’m a big fan of what the Star Wars team has accomplished on the animation side of things, but in its first season at least, Resistance lacked the stakes of The Clone Wars and the engaging character beats of Rebels. In season 1, it’s just another generic kids show, which feels like an insult to the powerful, even redemptive storytelling that Dave Filoni and company delivered before.
THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN
dennis really is a bastard man and i've missed him
also y'all they had an orgy with the dennis doll.... wild. this ep was a lot
Loved the film but the god awful disco soundtrack is horrible. I love Bowie but even that was distracting.
I am going to read the book now....does it mention disco ?
WTF? Is this pretentious bullshit for real?
A little (way) over the top, and I'm not sure if it is canon anymore (or if it ever was) now with the introduction of the Clone Wars animated series (that I haven't seen at this point).
It's quite good however - from an animation and cinematography point of view. Much more interesting and enjoyable than the clusterfuck prequel movies themselves and quite possibly my favorite piece of Star Wars fiction so far.
I wish they would follow the book, rather than buy the rights to the book, then throw it all away and just make up new stuff which is apparently what they have done.
I liked how there’s a character who ignores safety protocols while working on a fire burning in on a ship in space, and her name is OSHA.
I think this will be a show I don't really look forward to watching. Also you really gonna name someone OSHA same as Occupational safety and health administration? That bothers me.
Why did Huyang have a spare kyber crystal on the ship? Why Ezra didn't use the Force to build his new lightsaber? Why didn't Morgan recover from her superficial belly wound like Sabine did with her impalment through internal organs? Why Ezra kept wearing his stormtrooper helmet when he escaped the Star Destroyer? Why Ahsoka and Sabine don't use the Perguls that go back to their galaxy, the same ones the nightsisters' ancestors used to get there? Why Trawn has such a positive outlook on life even when things don't go his way? Why Hera changed her orange pants to the brown ones that hides her butt in that one and only scene in the court martial? Why Anakin doesn't pull Ahsoka and Sabine back to the world between worlds and transport them back to their galaxy? Why people like the stuff Dave Felony writes?
Can’t wait for the epic fight between Fiona and Papa Smurf.
This is not the way... this is the destination. This is new-generation Star Wars at its finest.
David Filoni is living his best life.
Can you imagine if Filoni had been in charge of Obi-Wan? Maybe they would have bothered to de-age Hayden that time.
I cannot wait to see the reactions to this one (Kyle Katarn is going to have a conniption fit), and I cannot wait to laugh at all the low ratings and negative comments. Wonder what straws they're going to grasp at this time...
Edit: Personal attacks it is. :expressionless:
