Tag Jango Fett

The Essential Clone Wars: “The Mandalore Plot”

Rob Siebert 2 Comments

***I must confess that, despite being a huge Star Wars geek, I have yet to see the landmark Clone Wars animated show in its entirety. I’m aiming to rectify that to a large extent here, as we look at pivotal episodes of the series in, “The Essential Clone Wars.”

Star Wars The Clone Wars The Mandalore Plot, Duchess SatineSERIES: Star Wars: The Clone Wars
EPISODE: S2:E12 – “The Mandalore Plot”
WITH THE VOICE TALENTS OF: James Arnold Taylor, Anna Graves, Jon Favreau, Corey Burton, Greg Proops
WRITER: Melinda Hsu
DIRECTOR: Kyle Dunlevy
PREMIERE DATE: January 29, 2010
SYNOPSIS: Obi-Wan reunites with an old friend to solve a mystery on Mandalore.

By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

Episodes like “The Mandalore Plot” expose a problem with the show: Obi-Wan’s costume. For whatever reason, characters like Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka appear in the same singular outfit episode after episode. That’s not a drastic problem, as they’re Jedi and virtually always wear similar outfits. But for Obi-Wan it’s a problem, as they opted to put him in battle armor for his singular outfit. That works fine for battle sequences. But this episode starts with a diplomatic mission to Mandalore. As such, the armor is inappropriate. Obi-Wan really should have been in Jedi robes, akin to what he wears in all three prequel films.

Making the Mandalorians their own society of super commandos presents a problem: It devalues Boba Fett and Jango Fett, as we now virtually have a planet full of characters that all have similar costumes and gadgets. Considering what pivotal roles Boba and Jango have in the saga at large, I would have deemed that unacceptable, regardless of whether that’s how the Mandalorians were originally conceived.

Star Wars The Clone Wars, The Mandalore Plot, Pre Vizsla

What’s more, it’s a problem that Star Wars wasn’t able to even try and solve until more than a decade later, when we got to The Mandalorian. When we get to “The Tragedy” in season two, we’re able to see how Boba Fett’s fighting style is much more brutal than Din Djarin’s, and presumably the rest of the Mandalorians. I’d still prefer Boba and Jango had the whole helmet and jetpack M.O. to themselves. But that helped.

On the subject of The Mandalorian, the man who would become its showrunner, Jon Favreau, plays Pre Vizsla. I’m not enamored with that casting choice, though. Maybe it’s the stark contrast of his nasally American accent against the ones James Arnold Taylor and Anna Graves give to Obi-Wan and Satine. (I say that as a guy with a nasally American accent. It’s not an insult, I promise.)

The Clone Wars is a kids show, right? At least in theory? I say that because it’s not often you see a suicide on a kids show. We hear the sound of his body hitting the ground and everything. I ain’t mad at it. I’m just saying you don’t see it often. If ever…

Before strapping Obi-Wan into that Adam West Batman style death trap, the Death Watch soldiers thought enough to take Obi-Wan’s lightsaber. However they apparently didn’t think to check him for communication devices. Bad form, gentlemen.

Email Rob at primaryignition@yahoo.com, or check us out on Twitter.

Rob Watches The Mandalorian: From Animation to Live Action

Rob Siebert 1 Comment

SERIES: The Mandalorian
EPISODE: S2:E3. “Chapter 11: The Heiress.”
STARRING: Pedro Pascal, Katee Sackhoff, Mercedes Varnado
WRITER: Jon Favreau
DIRECTOR: Bryce Dallas Howard
PREMIERE DATE: November 13, 2020
SYNOPSIS: Mando meets a trio of his own kind, and winds up taking on the Empire once again.

By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

This episode requires a decent amount of exposition, only some of which we actually got. Katee Sackhoff’s character is Bo-Katan Kryze. Long story short, her sister was the duchess of Mandalore. Thus, her trying to get the Darksaber. 

“The Purge,” meanwhile, was when the Empire killed most of the Mandalorian people, forcing the survivors into hiding. All this stuff was covered between the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoon shows.

I’m fairly certain this is the first time we’ve seen an ocean dock in live-action Star Wars. It makes for a different vibe. I like it. That’s one of the things that’s been so great about The Mandalorian. It shows us the Star Wars universe from different angles.

When Bo-Katan dropped out of the sky, Mrs. Primary Ignition exclaimed: “It’s a lady Mandalorian!” I’m hoping there were a lot of little girls in the audience saying the same thing.

There’s been a lot of talk about what a “true” Mandalorian is. We know Jango Fett and Boba Fett weren’t. And now we get talk that Din Djarin isn’t. Can we maybe get some clarification on this issue? I’m a Star Wars geek, and even I’m confused….

I was curious to see how they’d credit WWE’s Sasha Banks, who plays Koska Reeves. They used her real name, Mercedes Varnado. Which makes sense, of course. I’m not the world’s biggest Sasha Banks fan. But I was proud of her for this. She even got a decent number of lines and wasn’t just a muscular body in the background.

Even after all this time, I’m still getting used to Star Wars music that isn’t a classical score. Case in point, the sort of industrial-style beat they had going during the action sequence aboard the Imperial ship. It works. It’s just not traditional Star Wars.

Hey! Stormtrooper! When you see a grenade rolling toward you, maybe…I’unno…kick the damn thing away instead of staring down at it like a friggin’ nincompoop!!!

And there it is. Destination: Ahsoka Tano. Here’s my question: Katee Sackhoff voiced Bo-Katan Kryze for the cartoons, and now she’s playing the role live. Did they even ask Ashley Eckstein if she wanted to play Ahsoka? Nothing against Rosario Dawson, of course. But it seemed like Eckstein was up for it. Yes, Dawson is a renowned on-camera actress, as opposed to Eckstein who’s more famous for voice acting. But Eckstein had a hand in the creation of the character. She should have had the chance to play Ahsoka if she wanted it.

Email Rob at primaryignition@yahoo.com, or check us out on Twitter.

A Review of Star Wars: Blood Ties – Jango and Boba Fett – Father and Clone

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Star Wars: Blood Ties - Jango and Boba FettTITLE: Star Wars: Blood Ties – A Tale of Jango and Boba Fett
AUTHOR: Tom Taylor
PENCILLER: Chris Scalf
COLLECTS: Star Wars: Blood Ties #1-4
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics
PRICE: $14.99
RELEASED: April 27, 2011

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

Does EVERYONE in Star Wars have daddy issues? Luke’s got them, Boba Fett’s got them…

Blood Ties dives into some of the unseen backstory between Boba Fett and his clone/father Jango. Evidently Jango was into tough love. In this issue, he sends a massive beast after his son, telling him: “Bring back a tooth.” But things get more complicated when Jango’s next bounty turns out to be one of the clones that were created using his DNA (see Attack of the Clones). The results of this confrontation will effect Boba years later when he meets this clone’s son, whose name is Connor Freeman (Get it? Free man?).

Star Wars: Blood Ties #1, Chris ScalfFirst and foremost, I LOVE the art in this story. Chris Scalf captures the faces of Jango and Boba Fett almost perfectly, and he’s great at drawing all the weird aliens, creatures and locations in the Star Wars universe. The colors are perfect too. The art makes it seem like you’re watching supplemental material from one of the films. As far as I’m concerned, the more I see of him down the line, the better.

Blood Ties is pretty much what you’d expect, with a few nice twists. There’s a pretty nice moment where Jango Fett pulls a blaster on his prey, and sees he’s been hunting a man who looks exactly like him. There’s something you don’t see every day. The way he ends that confrontation might surprise some.

Whether a reader will like Blood Ties likely depends on whether they like their Boba Fett pre or post Attack of the Clones. George Lucas himself once said that Boba Fett is popular because he’s mysterious in that old western, man-with-no-name kind of way. That element of the character is still there, but Fett isn’t as mysterious as he used to be. We know one of his weak spots, and he’s been humanized a bit. Personally, I think this weakens the book’s ending by making Fett seem like a bit of a softy at heart. You can call Boba Fett a lot of things, but soft-hearted isn’t one of them. Though I suppose one can argue that nobody’s a hard ass ALL the time…

Star Wars: Blood Ties, A tale of Jango and Boba Fett, image 2The ending left me unsatisfied. This is one of those stories that ends simply because the action stops. I’d like to think this isn’t entirely Taylor’s fault. Creators only have a certain number of pages to work with, and it seems like they simply came up a little short. I figure two more pages would have done the trick.

The book also pulls a bit of a fast one on you by making you think Boba Fett is the narrator. When we find out he’s not, it’s something of an eye-roller. At least in my case. When you think your narrator is a bad ass bounty hunter, almost anyone else is a letdown by comparison.

For what it is, this book is okay. Just okay, though. It started out pretty hot, but cooled significantly after the second issue. You can’t deny the art is fantastic. But the story left me wanting more, and not in the “can’t wait for the sequel” kind of way.

RATING: 5.5/10

Image 1 from tomtaylormade.com. Image 2 from starwars.wikia.com.

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