The Mandalorian

[IcEBuRN]

12 hours ago, GwiDan said:

This is the way.

This is the way.

 

EDIT:

Check out the detail in the face, and the lighting round the neck/chin and stuff. The difference is subtle, but you gotta bear in mind he only had the original shitty job to work with.

 

 

[IcEBuRN]

I'm going down a rabbit hole now. This one is ace. Not surprised they scooped this guy up!

 

 

[Harsin]

I know I'm deeply in the minority on this one from the original Rogue One thread but I find the whole practice of digitally resurrecting dead actors utterly ghoulish, just recast.

 

Robin Williams saw the way was wind blowing, apparently he left behind strict instructions to try and stop them using his image in that way.

[JohnC]

New episode of The Gallery out, about making the last season 2 episode.

[Festoon]

On 29/07/2021 at 13:03, IcEBuRN said:

I'm going down a rabbit hole now. This one is ace. Not surprised they scooped this guy up!

 

 

 

It's very impressive, but he is deepfaking over the preexisting CGI work, which does make the process a whole lot easier. Still very good though 

[monkeydog]

Interesting that they explored deepfake but ultimately went with Lola.  

 

I can't help but think that the best results will probably come from The Irishman's head and neck replacement with Deepfake on top.

 

Dave Filoni talking about the build up in the final episode made me want to watch it again.  They totally landed "no, they can't possibly be doing that" with me.

[Tempy]

Also interesting that they used another piece of software (Respeecher) to artificially create a young Mark Hamill’s voice. This was based off feeding in lots of archive recordings and other sources. Didn’t even know that tech existed.

 

For me it didn’t 100% sound like him though.

[MardiganX]

All the talk of tech and data and archives and software was great, but the bits about how they had to build every aspect of Luke’s return from the moment the X-Wing appears to him dropping the hood is where the real credit should be going. The choices they made for what to show and when, how to have characters react, etc. is more impressive than any special effect could ever be.

 

@monkeydog I was the exact same when Filoni was talking about that build up. Even thinking back to my first viewing of the episode I can remember how I felt all the way through, when I dropped on my knees, when I got choked up and when I shouted “Holy fuck YES!”. I said it when I came in here still shaking from the episode and I will say it again… I’ve never felt like I did during that episode while watching anything and I doubt I ever will again. It was simply breathtaking!

[JohnC]

Great Scott, Christopher Lloyd will have a guest role in season 3.

[drmick]

3 hours ago, JohnC said:

Great Scott, Christopher Lloyd will have a guest role in season 3.

 

As a Klingon?

[JPL]

The ManDeLorean.

[WibbleWorldGiddy]

Back to the Star Wars Trek

[JohnC]

Coming back in February. Katee Sackhoff also confirmed to return.

[Benny]

[papalazarou]

Very bad cam but here is season 3 trailer while it’s up EDIT...... and link is now dead 

 

Spoiler

it looks like (from the trailer anyway) that they are possibly setting Bo katan up as the antagonist this season

 

[Festoon]

On 19/03/2022 at 16:23, knightbeat said:

Back to the Star Wars Trek

 

Space Track

[Jamie John]

I've just finished watching the final episode of series 2 and thought the series overall was great, better than the first, even. At the end of series 1, when Mando was tasked with taking Baby Yoda back to the Jedi, I rolled my eyes, as up until that point the show had been set in the Star Wars universe but was more or less entirely divorced from the Jedi vs Dark Side stuff from the films, which I thought was the best thing about it; it was essentially a space western in a cool setting, without any of the Skywalker guff weighing it down. Having a clear goal for the protagonist, however, made the second series more focused: this time, Mando was on a quest with a definite destination in mind, as opposed to just taking odd jobs here and there, like in series 1 - now, he had a purpose. The production values and polish in this series seemed a lot better, and the stakes were a lot higher throughout with no filler episodes.

 

That being said, I was really enjoying the series 2 finale up until Luke was revealed. If the people in that video posted above had done the de-aging on Hamill, then I may have found it less distracting, but what they had in the actual programme just looked really cheap compared with the VFX they had used elsewhere. Why did it even have to be Luke, anyway? Couldn't they have got some other Jedi to collect him? Why drag that character in, with all his baggage? It just seemed like arbitrary and blatant fan service, something which, up until this point, the show hadn't pandered too in such a direct way. And now that it is Luke who's taken him, it raises lots of other questions, like how come Luke never mentioned baby Yoda in The Last Jedi? Is Mark Hamill going to appear, de-aged, in series 3 to give us some insight into what he's been up to with the child since the events of TLJ? And I thought, according to the sequel trilogy, Luke had hung up his lightsaber and disappeared off into the middle of nowhere, anyway, not wanting to do with anything Jedi-related, especially a smaller and slightly less wrinkled version of his deceased Jedi master?

 

Perhaps I need to give the ending a bit more time to settle, but my immediate take was that they botched it in the final ten minutes of the finale, which was a real shame afte the preceding 40 minutes had been pure bang. I'm a bit dubious about series 3, too, now that Mando's quest is complete, but I really like his character, and Pascal's performance, and I'm looking forward to seeing tensions rise between him and Starbuck.

 

4/5 from me.

 

(It's also remarkable how much better this is than Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that's coming from someone who likes Obi-Wan Kenobi.)

[Lorfarius]

6 minutes ago, Jamie John said:

ay. And now that it is Luke who's taken him, it raises lots of other questions, like how come Luke never mentioned baby Yoda in The Last Jedi?

 

It's set after the films, Luke is trying to find his way in the universe with Yoda and his father gone.

[Jamie John]

4 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

 

It's set after the films, Luke is trying to find his way in the universe with Yoda and his father gone.

 

Sorry - I'm not sure what you mean. I thought this was set after the events of Return of the Jedi, before the events of The Force Awakens? (And, in turn, The Last Jedi, which is, chronologically, the next time we actually hear from Luke).

[Darwock]

Also it sounds like you haven’t watched Book of Boba Fett - there are two episodes of that which are actually episodes of The Mandalorian and continue the story.

[Darren]

Luke set up a Jedi academy between the films. It’s where he was training Ben Solo and was the setting for their confrontation (as shown in the TLJ flashbacks) that set Ben on the path to the dark side. And from Mando S2 we now know that Grogu was Luke’s first apprentice.

 

Luke didn’t mention Grogu by name in TLJ just like he didn’t mention any of the others he was training, but there’s no inconsistency.

[El Spatula]

It'd be a bit odd if he did, and is completely irrelevant to The Last Jedi. Why would it even come up?

[Jamie John]

7 hours ago, Darwock said:

Also it sounds like you haven’t watched Book of Boba Fett - there are two episodes of that which are actually episodes of The Mandalorian and continue the story.

 

Nope - I'd heard it wasn't great. Are the two episodes you mention the first two episodes, or are they interspersed throughout?

 

7 hours ago, Darren said:

Luke set up a Jedi academy between the films. It’s where he was training Ben Solo and was the setting for their confrontation (as shown in the TLJ flashbacks) that set Ben on the path to the dark side. And from Mando S2 we now know that Grogu was Luke’s first apprentice.

 

Luke didn’t mention Grogu by name in TLJ just like he didn’t mention any of the others he was training, but there’s no inconsistency.

 

Thanks - that makes sense.

 

24 minutes ago, El Spatula said:

It'd be a bit odd if he did, and is completely irrelevant to The Last Jedi. Why would it even come up?

 

The child is exceptionally strong with the force, even as an untrained infant, and he's an almost unique lifeform (orange Jedi lady says she's only known one other like him). Plus, he's a facsimile of Yoda. While I agree that his character isn't relevant to the plot of TLJ, the fact that he's now Luke's responsibility still raises some awkward questions in my mind, which could have been mitigated if it wasn't Luke who collected him. But who knows? Maybe in season 3 we'll see him and Hamill again and the gaps will be filled in a bit more.

[Darwock]

6 minutes ago, Jamie John said:

 

Nope - I'd heard it wasn't great. Are the two episodes you mention the first two episodes, or are they interspersed throughout?

 

 

Not the first two, no. I think it’s episode 5 that is 100% Mandalorian - picks up from where we last saw him in his own show (and Boba Fett’s storyline isn’t even in it) - and then the remainder of the series is a bit more muddled together. You’d probably need to watch the last three to be up to date with Mando and Grogu.

 

Quote

But who knows? Maybe in season 3 we'll see him and Hamill again and the gaps will be filled in a bit more.

see above

[Alan Stock]

I ended up binging the entire Mandalorian series on holiday last week. The hype was real, this show was awesome. I couldn't stop watching. It feels like Star Wars in the right way unlike the bore fest that is Obi Wan Kenobi. The Mandalorian is very entertaining, the characters are likeable, there's lots of original ideas and nice little details. The action is good and the effects tremendous, I simply can't tell half the time what is practical and what is CGI (or a combination of the two), and that's great. Even the side characters are good, my favourite being the 'I have spoken' guy.

 

Of course Baby Yoda is amazing, so it will be interesting to see if its quite as appealing moving forward, but in plenty of episodes Baby Yoda was hardly in them and they were still good so I have high hopes. I also really liked that it's set in a period of time that as a fairly casual Star Wars fan I don't know much about, so the world building stuff was really cool with the remnants of the Empire and the consequences of the events of the original trilogy. The references both visual and spoken to the movies weren't poured on too thick and I think the balance between 'seen it stuff' and new stuff was just right. And the bounty hunter wild west format just works so well in the setting of the Outer Rim, with a new adventure every episode. It has a compelling through-plot but even without that you want to keep watching just to see what adventure, locale or interesting character is going to be next. The music's also great, the main theme was stuck in my head for days after, and I really like that they went away from the classic orchestral themes, there's even proper tense action music with drums in there.

 

As a tangent for Star Wars fans:

After watching Obi Wan Kenobi after the Mandalorian and being thoroughly disappointed, when browsing recommendations about the best Star Wars content out there I was reminded about the Clone Wars series. I had heard it was quite good before but dismissed it as being for kids and put off by the setting (post episode 3 with droid armies etc). However its one of the highest rated if not the most high rated Star Wars content out there, with some people saying its the best Star Wars product to date. Apparently it gets really good as it goes on. On reading about it I discovered the main showrunner was the guy who runs the Mandalorian, so immediately I thought I should give it a shot.

 

So I have started watching the Star War: The Clone Wars from the start. Episodes are only about 25 minutes long and are very much in the Saturday cartoon format, short adventures with longer throughlines, featuring Kenobi, Anakin and other characters from the prequels, as well as a host of new faces. I'm nearly finished the first season and its been quite entertaining. What it nails even with its fairly limited animation is the Star Wars feel, the sound and music are spot on, lots of lightsabre action and ship battles. Its not especially deep but it does have its character moments. There are some scenes that feel like they could be straight out of one of the movies, and altogether its already better fun than the prequels.

 

Looking forward to seeing how it develops, its definitely got a classic light Saturday morning cartoon series feel to it but I can see the potential it has to get better, and some things they are already nailing. Its also not afraid to kill characters off and has some darker material in it, and its fun to see Anakin and Kenobi's relationship outside of the movies, and in fact they have way more personality in this series. For those craving more Star Wars maybe Clone Wars is a place to start, a good show to have on in the background, and if I get further in (could take a while - 22ish episodes per season!) I will post somewhere here about my thoughts.

 

Also I don't know if this was part of the reason for choosing this Star Wars time period for an animated series, but its total genius. One of the factions is droids, who all have standardised designs. The other faction is clones, who are all just literally one dude (with different hairstyles, armour etc). So from a production point of view they saved themselves a shitload of work from day 1. The thousands of clones you see and hear in the show are all voice acted by the same guy  - now that's value!

[Mogster]

17 hours ago, Alan Stock said:

So I have started watching the Star War: The Clone Wars from the start.

You might not mind if you've just got it on in the background, but the episode order for The Clone Wars is really, really weird. There are episodes in season 3 for instance that are set before episodes in season 1, and which directly set up events in those episodes. It's so messed up that there is an official chronological order on StarWars.com:

 

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-clone-wars-chronological-episodeorder

 

Someone advised me to watch season 7 in order though, which I agree works better and doesn't really affect anything either way.

[Hanzo the Razor]

20 hours ago, Alan Stock said:

Also I don't know if this was part of the reason for choosing this Star Wars time period for an animated series, but its total genius. One of the factions is droids, who all have standardised designs. The other faction is clones, who are all just literally one dude (with different hairstyles, armour etc). So from a production point of view they saved themselves a shitload of work from day 1. The thousands of clones you see and hear in the show are all voice acted by the same guy  - now that's value!

 

That was a tradition started by the billionaire George Lucas while making Attack of the Clones. All of the Clones in Episode II and III are CG. 

 

For such a wealthy man he is a penny pinching fucker. Watch him sweating over the $70,000,000 budget for The Phantom Menace in The Beginning documentary. He probably had it hanging out of the back pocket of his tight fitting jeans but don't be spending it on the most anticipated movie in film history!

[Alan Stock]

6 hours ago, Mogster said:

You might not mind if you've just got it on in the background, but the episode order for The Clone Wars is really, really weird. There are episodes in season 3 for instance that are set before episodes in season 1, and which directly set up events in those episodes. It's so messed up that there is an official chronological order on StarWars.com:

 

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-clone-wars-chronological-episodeorder

 

Someone advised me to watch season 7 in order though, which I agree works better and doesn't really affect anything either way.

 

But as they were made in that order, isn't that the intended viewing experience? Or do you think its worth actually following the chronology?

 

Back on the Mandalorian, it turns out there's a bunch of stuff in the Mandalorian which has come direct from Clone Wars, some examples being the bounty droid model and those awesome mounts with the huge mouths, and I'm only just starting season 2 of Clone Wars.

[Mogster]

7 hours ago, Alan Stock said:

But as they were made in that order, isn't that the intended viewing experience? Or do you think its worth actually following the chronology?

It's definitely worth following the chronological order. I wouldn't usually bother with watching shows in weird orders, but The Clone Wars doesn't really make sense if you don't.

 

It's not ruinous to watch it in release order, just a bit confusing when you run into an episode that sets something up, only to be followed by something completely different with no explanation because the setup was for an episode two seasons earlier.

 

It also jumps around the timeline quite a bit with no real indication that it's doing so, which can be a bit jarring.

[Garwoofoo]

I'd agree with all of that, we watched the whole thing in chronological order and it was perfect. Release order would have been bizarre.

 

I'm genuinely surprised Disney+ haven't offered it as a recommended viewing order in the app itself, though I guess it only really affects the first three seasons. From about halfway through S3 it settles down into a more conventional structure.