Mandalorian S3 Review - A Bizarre Fan Fiction

I haven't made a YouTube video for a while I expected my next one would have been on a different topic but after finishing Mandalorian season 3 I honestly have so many thoughts I just needed to format them into something firstly let's just go over what I thought of the first two seasons so you have some context spoilers for the whole show by the way season one was really good a few bumpy episodes here and there but mostly a very fresh thing to come out of Star Wars very welcome after the rise of Skywalker most episodes followed the same structure Mando goes somewhere because he needs something they say only if he does something for them he does it gets the thing and then leaves it really only deviated at the end when the plot revolved around grogu or baby Yoda's we knew him back then nearly getting captured by moth Gideon however the structure worked as each episode's Quest was quite engaging had its own set of characters to follow as well as some development for din himself almost felt similar to the arcs and Clone Wars season 2 was similar but ramped up things a little we now have an overarching plot of returning Goku to a Jedi while following the established episode structure this time with the addition of familiar faces from the Clone Wars and the original trilogy this was a nice bit of fan service but importantly it didn't feel forced as each appearance made sense within the story and it was handled organically The Only Exception you could claim could be luke turning up to save the day but to be honest I would give them a pass on that one I mean logically he would be the Jedi to collect grogu in his time period And honestly isn't it just great to see Luke Skywalker as we expected him to be after Return of the Jedi The Last Jedi was just a complete character assassination no matter how well it was written but that's another topic for another day not giving a pass to that CGI or deep fake Luke though like sure it got better but just recast a look-alike actor it would look so much less robotic anyway going into season three I was hopeful but not super confident it was going to be any good the same team that was behind the last two seasons had since made the book of Boba Fett and that was just terrible I'm quite surprised they decided to release such a show but either way they did it now here's Mando season 3. the immediate thing I noticed when watching was the change of Direction and structure some episodes followed the established episode structure but for the most part each episode seems to be doing its own thing while this in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing it was was the overall direction that left me confused Not only was it a different direction but sometimes a lack of one before both seasons centered around DIN and Kroger following them growing attached to each other while also for din finding out why Goku is important and what to do for him now we left off season two with them saying that goodbyes and Goku reuniting with the Jedi in season three the two has since been reunited we'll talk about that later though but since the show has already wrapped up the story about those two together there isn't really an obvious Direction you can take the story in that revolves around them I feel the writers knew this and decided on a completely new overarching plot for the season however it's not made clear what this plot is until about halfway through the show the first few episodes just show us some events unfold with this Castle characters with no clear direction of where it's going at first it seems the goal was to return to Mandalore so didn't take a bath to be redeemed for removing his helmet not an amazing goal but alright but then we're done with that by the first two episodes so one quick run-in with the Empire back to Camp I guess then we have what felt like a bootlegender episode following one of the side characters and background characters from the last seasons that's not necessarily bad thing is probably setting up some sort of plot point but we don't revisit the events that happened on Coruscant for the rest of the season just some nods that tie in with what's happening later in story then we have a clear fitter episode that involves rescuing a Mandalorian kid from a dragon which I don't really see what this episode achieved the episode did include a flashback for halberg who survived Order 66 which I will again touch on later but for now isn't really relevant to anything and then there is an episode that sees the mandalorians fight off Pirates which allows them to move house because they were getting eaten a lot on that last planet finally in this episode do we learn the goal of the Season which is to unite the Mandalorian factions and retake Mandalore tick has an awful amount of time to get here now I know some people will defend this by saying that there doesn't need to be a clear direction as the whole point for it is to be a mystery but that's not really the problem here mystery is fine but the first half of the show lacked the feeling of any sort of clear climax possibly on the horizon it's important for a season of a show to give at least hints of some kind of climax to give the audience a sense of progression with each episode building towards it I'm not a writer but I do feel this is a pretty essential when writing a show unless you focus your story around the unpredictability specifically which is definitely not what they're going for here speak of what they're going for what they are doing is pulling references left right and Center [Music] one of the biggest and honestly strangest problems with the season is the quantity and intrusiveness of references all these references to past Stars media are intense and more than simple Easter eggs although there are still plenty of those the most obvious example is the events that took place in the book above Affair this has already been talked about at length online even before the race is season 3 but we're now seeing that putting all the important events in the episode 1 recap does not fix the issue I've already seen mentions online and even see myself that people who have not watched the Pokemon Buffet are confused why grogu's now backward din or other small things like where's the new ship came from it really was a weird decision to have all these important plot points at a different show that on the surface doesn't even seem related then they're all the more minor references like the Easter eggs I mentioned episode 6 especially had a lot of them like with the droids and the speech downloads character gave them Count Dooku poor dude didn't even know he was Palpatine's puppet these don't really hurt the show but it does feel a little over the top even if I do like to put in my screen saying I got it I got it I knew what the talking about suddenly I do think the sequence of Goku surviving Order 66 was a bit strange on the one hand it was nice to see actually how he was saved and it was awesome for the Jedi who saved Goku to be played by Ahmed best dude absolutely deserves the honor however I do think the whole choreography of the sequence could have been better the Clones are just kind of standing around and the Jedi just kind of walking into the Blaster shots the speeder Chase was cool but this not was not needed and look not a valid point but if we're going all in on references why not have Commander Fox with the other crossover guards at the end that'd just be neat you know however the minor references certainly were not the main issue in fact the show made a much bigger mistake than the book of Boba Fett tie-in there were already plenty of references and nods to the Clone Wars and rebels in previous Seasons but now elements from those shows have become essential plot points so if you're not familiar with all the details from those shows or maybe you just don't remember certain elements you could feel quite Lost In The Season's Story I mean let's just take a quick look at what you should know let's see here okay uh in Clone Wars Boca town was part of a terrorist group called deathwatch who believed mentalor should turn sold worry ways okay okay the leader was pre-visler who wielded the darksaber which was originally made by the first and only Mandalore in Jedi and where he died it was stolen Jedi Temple and uses symbol for leadership in the Mandalorian culture Death Watch decided to team up with the resurrected Darth Maul they decide to collect all the crime organizations and they had to run to launch a stage attack Mandalore where that's what can appear as Heroes yeah Darth Maul portrayed them won The Dark Secret combat books I wasn't happy she did the siege of Mandalore with the Republic and took over the planet the Empire came along she was knocked out of leadership and the meant to learn named Saxon took over he was later killed by the Mandalorian family called Ren and the leadership was handed back to Bogota Lord the dark saber recovered from mole and the rest is all told in the last two seasons of Mando so I hope you remember all the details right yeah good point I'm trying to make is that they are now alienating probably half of War Of Their audience for example I watched season 3 with my dad are you winning son who's very much a casual stylist fan I suppose to me who can identify a blaster by the sound it makes and gets quite upset when the wrong sound effect is used for one my dad grew up with the original trilogy wasn't a fan of the prequels loves Rogue one and liked Endor and the previous two seasons Amanda he definitely is not going to watch seven seasons of Clone Wars in four seasons of rebels so for him and similar fans all the important pieces of context are missing which at best makes the story less enjoyable but worse makes no sense at all the strangest thing about this though is that the creators behind the show clearly think there is enough there for the audience members who have not seen the animated shows to get what's going on this is pretty much confirmed by Dave filoni when he was interviewed about the Ahsoka trailer many Rebels characters appeared in the trailer and he was asked if you need to watch Rebels before watching Ahsoka here's the clip you have to have seen Clone Wars to understand asoga no you don't have to have seen that does it help will you know more and understand more sure so filoni and likely the rest of the team Pine Mando ahsoko Etc I think they have done enough to give context when in reality I don't think that's the case and not necessarily against having stories that are interconnected with the animated shows I like those shows and I think Ahsoka being a direct follow-up to them it makes sense that you have to watch those shows before watching Ahsoka however the Mandalorian was clearly a hit with both hardcore and Casual fans alike would it make sense to keep the show in a direction that is new for both audiences so everyone can enjoy it if not even that they could have just relied Less on what came before to tell this story and on that point I think they are very clearly telling another story in the background of the season [Music] foreign [Music] let's think back to the original six seasons of Clone Wars one of the tasks the show kind of had to accomplish was make the prequels work even if they looked on more fondly today the prequels were very much disliked when they released and look let's be honest they were kind of executed poorly despite their good story and really cool lightsaber fight sorry seriously they're so cool the Clone Wars helped flesh out that story the characters and the world of the prequels which greatly boosted the films for example making Anakin an enjoyable protagonist fleshing out his character made his eventual fall to the dark side more believable and tragic helping with the World building humanizing the Clones was a great decision that made the original faceless Army compelling and made the Galaxy feel like it had so many characters that this war was affecting this sort of approach to the prequel films was a great idea and I think it's now fully obvious that they're doing something like it again I already thought this in the previous seasons of Mando but season three definitely confirms it they're trying to make the sequel Trilogy work the Imperial group was a man named hux the development of four sensitive clones and even guards from the last did I it's very clear that they want to make the sequels feel better connected with the rest of Star Wars and I have quite conflicting feelings on this I mean on the one hand I respect them for trying to make it work having made one Trilogy work better doing it for the other is a neat idea however I also feel they're attempting an impossible task like one of the reasons the Clone Wars was able to do this in the first place was due to the underlying story of the prequels being actually good and quite layered the sequels on the other hand have the opposite problem they're well executed apart from episode 9 but the overall story is pretty appalling I mean the stories were very surface level with no underlying theme to this Trilogy and it wasn't connected like at all you can add context so it feels less jarring but I'm not quite sure how they are going to achieve this fully although I will say it has made me very intrigued what they're going to do next to help accomplish this goal it'll probably be the main reason I check out the Ahsoka show to see how thrawn fits into all of this however I feel that's part of the problem though I shouldn't want to watch a show based off what I think they're gonna do to make plot points work it should always be for the Intrigue of the characters which brings us neatly into the final section regarding Mando season 3. [Music] the first thing to address here is that bogoton slowly became the protagonist this season instead of Dinan grogo the excuse for this is probably going to be that the show is called the Mandalorian and she is a Mandalorian so why not well okay I would prefer the show to continue the established western style with din but if we're going to do it this way you really need to commit to it I say this because to me it seems that having bogoton as the main character was the direction they wanted to go but were too worried audiences wouldn't like the lack of attention on dinner grogo what this creates is a weird Middle Ground where neither set of protagonists feels as if they're being fleshed out within the season focusing on didn't grogu for now like I said before they don't really have a story to tell about them now the most we've got is this occasional subplot of Jin teaching grahu how to be a Mandalorian but there aren't enough scenes or struggles to get invested in this it was also the fact that grogu got to inhabit the corpse of it 11 that allowed him to be more active and vocal with his yes and no buttons but that's far as that got explored honestly if you removed grogu from the season entirely you would need very little rework for the season to play out the same it makes me wonder whether the decision to reunite Goku within in the book Boba Fett was a later decision and they had to change the script season 3 later in the writing process there is a good chance he's only still here because he's marked both aspartin himself the only character-focused storyline we got revolves around him taking the bath of forgiveness or whatever it was called it wasn't very substantial and after it's done and he's kind of just there throughout the rest of the show tell you along with whatever is happening I can only really think of the scene where he was mean to the droids in episode 6 as anything that felt like more personal having no overall development Journey for what were your two main characters who still play a predominant role in the story was quite the mistake and loses a lot of investment audiences may have moving on to Bogota this is where they tried to focus their efforts on doing a character Arc but honestly it feels they just failed from what I can gather bokuton's story is to gain the confidence to lead the Reclamation of Mandalore by accepting and moving on from her past mistakes problem is I really don't feel that this is shown well as all the scenes that are depicting this personal struggle are heavily inconsistent for instance scenes that showed us struggles well were the ones where she was alone were the thought and we got to see how she acts sitting next to din unconscious after seeing the mythosol wondering what it meant or sitting around a campfire alone feeling the isolation that comes within this cult those were some good scenes however then you have the ones that were way too direct a bit of show don't tell going on here she is very blatant with her thoughts relaying them to din both on the Pod going to the mandalorians and then the Mando pirate ship with them skis yeah the problem with these two scenes and throughout the season is that she feels like she only has two emotions is either getting the job done serious time or I'm not sure I can do this sad time there's a real lack of emotional range and insight to who she is as a person and what she's been through which doesn't really make the character very believable and that's the thing if you've seen clone wars and Rebels then you do know what she's been through not only is none of this communicated in the show both for clothing in the audience and displaying how it's affected her but reveals that there's plenty of material here to make her very compelling but it's not utilized properly you have a character from a Royal bloodline who rejected the society she was born into and her sister who followed it joined a terrorist group to restore the old ways becoming the leaders number two then having that leader and the sister you still cared for being slain by a Sith Lord and that's just in the Clone Wars it really is a shame that her character was put into the spotlight only for her not to receive the appropriate amount of development to be a compelling protagonist it is shocking to me that the same show that managed to have us heavily invested in a man that rarely ever shows his face for two seasons didn't manage to have any interesting character stories at all in its third this season really didn't live up to what came before it just is such a letdown just like all the other Disney plus Stars shows I mean in what world is a show about Cassian and or infinitely better than both Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi not trying to put Endor down at all it was amazing but like seriously and now the Mandalorian season 3 can just join book above a fair and everyone can know it is media that had so much potential but it was just so poorly handled I can't say that I actually hated watching it like I did with the other two shows it was at least entertaining from a lore perspective but that really shouldn't carry your show it should be a bonus so if you're looking for a good Star Wars show I say go watch Star Wars resistance that's the good stuff it's just kidding what gender I'm just assuming resistance is bad I haven't watched it um but and it was very good so go watch that bye [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause]

Channel: GAMER H2

Views: 12,995

Keywords: mandalorian, star wars, video essay, review, fan fiction

Id: -OuPxdKKt_0

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023