Tag Kuiil

Catching Up With The Mandalorian – “Chapter 8: Redemption”

Rob Siebert 3 Comments

The Mandalorian, season 1 posterSERIES: Star Wars:  The Mandalorian
EPISODE: S1:E8 – “Chapter 8:  Redemption”
STARRING: Pedro Pascal, Giancarlo Esposito, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Taika Waititi (Voice)
WRITER: Jon Favreau
DIRECTOR:  Taika Waititi
PREMIERE DATE: December 27, 2019
SYNOPSIS: Trapped, the Mandalorian and his allies struggle to keep the child out of Moff Gideon’s hands.

***New around here? Check out our Star Wars review archive!***

By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

Taika Waititi, who directs this episode, and is also widely known for directing Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder, serves as the voice of IG-11. Fitting, as this episode is a big one for the repurposed droid.

That scout troopers punching the child in the bag is one of those things that makes you hate the bad guy, but where you also can’t help but laugh a little. What can I say? It was funny. As was the target practice bit moment later.

This episode is the first time we hear the Mandalorian’s given name: Din Djarin. Not the worst name, by Star Wars standards. “The Mandalorian” has more mystique, of course.

The appearance of the super battle droids in the flashback sequence was a nice touch. It set the period.

It was pretty bad-ass to see IG-11 riding through that town on a speeder bike, twin guns blazing. Question: If his new base function is to nurse and protect, why does he bring the child into a town occupied by Imperial troops? Granted, none of them can shoot…

It’s funny to me how none of the stormtroopers can hit a target, as this episode makes light of. But when the episode needs him to be, Moff Gideon is a crack shot.

Din Djarin, The Mandalorian, Redemption, Pedro Pascal

I’d never seen or heard of Pedro Pascal prior to The Mandalorian. So what he looked like was news to me. He didn’t necessarily look how his voice suggested he looked. But that’s not a good or a bad thing, per se.

The armorer tasking Mando with reuniting the child with its own kind was a great hook for season two. As the last of the Jedi, the obvious implication was Luke Skywalker. Or perhaps Ahsoka Tano. But we couldn’t have realistically expected to see either of them…could we?

The big moment in this episode is when IG-11 sacrifices itself to save the rest of the group. I’ll say this much: The episode does a great job making us care about the repurposed robot, which we didn’t see again until the previous episode. It feels genuinely sad as he walks through the lava.

Something I appreciated about this group mission as opposed to some others we see in Star Wars is that there were consequences and casualties. Kuiil and IG-11 didn’t make it, and Mando was wounded to the point that he wouldn’t have survived if left to his own devices. The bad guys come off threatening and dangerous even in defeat.

Mando taking on Moff Gideon in the TIE fighter was a cool climax for the season. Suitably suspenseful, as you’d expect a man in a jetpack trying to take down a plane to be.

Din Djarin, The Mandalorian, Redemption

The one thing I didn’t like about this episode was how rushed everything was after said climax. Mando literally lands from taking down the TIE fighter, and everyone announces what they’re going to do going forward. Felt uncharacteristically clumsy.

The revelation of Moff Gideon with the Darksaber at the end was a fun little moment. Star Wars geeks knew what it was, obviously. And those who didn’t know would come to know as the series progressed.

Disney bet a lot on this first season of The Mandalorian. The first episode premiered with the launch of Disney+, so it was a great added incentive to give the service a try. But beyond that, it set the standard for all live action Star Wars TV projects to come. And thankfully for the fans, that standard wound up being pretty high. The Mandalorian season one isn’t just great Star Wars television. It’s great television, period. It’s compelling, intriguing, gorgeous to look at, and perhaps most importantly, very accessible to those not well-versed in Star Wars. (I’m trying to get my parents to watch it to this day.)

All in all? It was a home run for everybody involved.

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

Catching Up With The Mandalorian – “Chapter 7: The Reckoning”

Rob Siebert 1 Comment

The Mandalorian, season 1 posterSERIES: The Mandalorian
EPISODE: S1:E7 – “Chapter 7: The Reckoning”
STARRING: Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Werner Herzog, Nick Nolte (voice)
WRITER: Jon Favreau
DIRECTOR: Deborah Chow
PREMIERE DATE: December 18, 2019
SYNOPSIS: The Mandalorian recruits help to take down his former client.

***New around here? Check out our Star Wars review archive!**

By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

The objective in this episode is to neutralize Mando’s former client, played by Werner Herzog, thus ensuring the safety of the child. Herzog’s character is only known as “the client.” He gets no name, no backstory details, nothin’. That’s not to say we need a lot in that sense for this character. He shows up, serves his purpose, and exits at the natural time. The fact that (and the way that) Werner Herzog plays him is enough to make him memorable. It would just be nice to have something to call him other than “the client.”

Even years later, I can’t decide if it’s a little too convenient that the people Mando recruits for the mission just happen to be the ones he’s recently met during the events of the show. Obviously I get it in the sense that they’re telling a story, and it might be a little late in the season to be introducing new allies. It just feels a little, well…convenient. You’d think he’d have some other contacts or comrades, not unlike the lot we met in “The Prisoner.”

After picking up Cara Dune, they travel to Arvala-7 to meet with Kuiil. When he sees the child, Kuiil remarks, “It hasn’t grown much.” How much time has passed since the last time these two saw each other? A few months, maybe? How much did Kuiil expect the kid to have grown?

We see Kuiil has repurposed IG-11 as a sort of butler/protector. It definitely makes sense that someone as small as Kuiil would want a guardian of sorts. He’s apparently very resourceful, but doesn’t seem like a fighter.

Mando and Cara pass time aboard the ship by arm-wrestling. Even with a Force-powered little goblin on my side, I don’t think you could pay me to wrestle Gina Carano. I base that purely on the size of her arms compared to mine…

Nice little monologue by Werner Herzog’s character about what life was like under Imperial rule as opposed to what things have been like since “the revolution.” Great insight into his character, his privilege, and his justification for the horrors of the Empire.

We meet Moff Gideon in this episode, played by Giancarlo Esposito. I mention this in a future review, but I’ll say it here too: Moff Gideon really wants to be Darth Vader. He’s got the black armor, the cape, his own personal TIE fighter. I wouldn’t be shocked to see he had a black helmet laying around somewhere.

In our final shot of the episode, we see that the speeder bike troopers have killed Kuiil and taken the child. Kind of a shame to see Kuiil go. But like the client, he arrived and left the story very naturally, and was memorable in his own right. I couldn’t have asked for much more from him.

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

Rob Watches The Mandalorian – The Genius of Baby Yoda

Rob Siebert 2 Comments

SERIES: The Mandalorian
EPISODE: S1:E2. “Chapter Two: The Child.”
STARRING: Pedro Pascal, Misty Rosas, Nick Nolte (voice)
WRITER: Jon Favreau
DIRECTOR: Rick Famuyiwa
PREMIERE DATE: November 15, 2019
SYNOPSIS: After the Razor Crest is stripped for parts by jawas, Mando must retrieve a bargaining chip in the form of a beast’s egg.

By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

The child, a.k.a. Baby Yoda, is a stroke of genius. Walk into a Target, Walmart, or Costco these days and you’ll see why. His diminutive size and not-so-diminutive cuteness appeal make him a marketing gold mine. In the grand tradition of Star Wars merchandising, his visage begs to be put on clothes, posters, and of course toys. Frankly, I’m shocked we didn’t see more Baby Yoda merchandise as the first season was in progress. That’s a giant missed opportunity you’d never associate with a titan like Disney.

But at the same time, Baby Yoda teases at answers to questions Star Wars fans have had for decades: What species is Yoda? Why are there so few of them? Did something happen to them? Did they get wiped out? Are they somehow tied into the Jedi and the Force? When you add it all together, Baby Yoda has that rare combination of geek appeal and corporate appeal.

Indeed, the jawas are back. I remember seeing an “Offworld Jawa” action figure in stores, and wondering what the deal was. The irony is if you came into this episode as a relative newbie, you wouldn’t think they were offworld, i.e. not on Tatooine. Sadly, Arvala-7 is yet another indistinguishable desert planet.

The sequence with Mando chasing the sandcrawler reminded me of a level from Super Star Wars, the old Super Nintendo game. You play as Luke, climbing all over the thing and slashing at jawas with a lightsaber. That’s basically what Mando is doing here, sans lightsaber.

In terms of the Kuiil character, voiced by Nick Nolte, it’s funny to me how once you know what a voice actor in question looks like, you sometimes start to read their face into the character. For instance, Kuiil looks like Nick Nolte to me, even though they objectively don’t share many features.

“I’m a Mandalorian. Weapons are part of my religion.” I love that line. It’s my favorite in the series thus far.

The hero fighting a big monster is a recurring theme in the George Lucas Star Wars movies. You’ve got the snow monster in The Empire Strikes Back, the rancor in Return of the Jedi, the arena monsters in Attack of the Clones. Depending on how liberal you want to be with the concept, you can extend it to various other moments in the Star Wars saga.

Odd as it sounds, I appreciated how muddy Mando got during the fight with the… *checks Wookiepedia*…mudhorn? That’s the name they came up with?

Anyway, the mud added a bit of a grittier texture to the whole thing. I can’t imagine it was fun to film. But it was appreciated.

So Baby Yoda uses the force to lift the mudhorn into the air so Mando can make the kill. Obviously, this only lends credence to the theory that Yoda’s species is somehow linked with the Jedi and the Force.

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