Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Thoughts on ‘The Jedi’

Welcome back to my commentary series on Season 2 of The Mandalorian; for this installment we’re breaking down Chapter 13 ‘The Jedi’, and I gotta say, while everybody was losing their minds this time around, I really wasn’t feeling it. Call it jumping the shark, but something just felt…off about this chapter, which is profoundly disappointing to me because there was such potential.

A few folks’ comments I saw praised Dave Filoni’s directing in this episode, saying ‘it was just like an episode of The Clone Wars come to life!’ But to be honest, several times this episode I almost found myself nodding off…too many long, lingering shots with nothing happening made it feel very poorly paced.

Right off the bat—literally, just 40 seconds in—we have our first view of live-action Ahsoka…and boy, was I underwhelmed.
I feel like the cold open where Ahsoka picks off mooks in the darkness had the potential to be a really visually-dynamic sequence, but what we get just struck me as humdrum instead of artistic. Considering the murky setting and the lightsabers involved, I think this chapter’s opening could’ve been a great exercise in chiaroscuro as a Lucas-style “tone poem”: make the scene darker, use the lightsabers sparingly, with some mook POV shots as you hear (but can’t see) her getting closer, a snap-hiss and a scream in the distance, then see a dark shape zipping from place to place…in my mind’s eye the scene is way better than what Filoni gave us. The best parts of the sequence are early on, when Ahsoka is obscured or seen in silhouette (in a hood she has a great silhouette), and given the reputation of the character you’d think she would merit a better reveal than what we got: I wish she had been teased early and then been properly revealed later in the episode, but…nope.

Thoughts on ‘The Siege’

Welcome back to my breakdown series on The Mandalorian Season Two. While I’m a bit behind schedule, this time we’re looking at Chapter 12 ‘The Siege’.

Right off the top I feel the need to point out that nothing in this episode resembled a siege. Once the plot kicked in, I actually started getting some serious Rebel Assault II vibes…but levels in that game were either ‘sneak around Imperial base, hide around corners, and point-and-click to shoot Stormies’ or vehicle-based ‘shooting gallery on rails’…so not exactly the most dynamic, compelling, or realistic tone for a TV show to take.

Galactic Style Guide – Shoulders I

Welcome back to the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to create a more authentic ‘outer persona’!
Ever since the days of Ming the Merciless, sci-fi designers have been using a wide-shouldered silhouette to let the audience know a setting is exotic or non-Earthy, and Star Wars has been no different. While I’ve found no specific mention of this design point in comments from costume designer John Mollo, his original designs for ‘girl Luke Starkiller’ show a mantled hood that may have planted the seed that eventually became this prevalent costume element:
DIGITAL CAMERA It’s worth pointing out that even though the very first onscreen SW character (C-3PO) could be said to display a form of this style, it really didn’t kick into full gear until Return of the Jedi, and by the time the Prequels rolled around, giant collars, mantles, and shoulder pads were in full force!

shoulders Ep1 Naboo — **Wide shoulders on pre-Clone Wars Naboo:** Amidala, Sabe; NSF Palace guards, Sio Bibble, Phylo Gandish; Unidentified Theed civilian, unidentified advisor, Hugo Eckener, Horace Vacil, TC-14; civilian prisoners. Note that the entire Naboo Royal Advisory Council and Theed nobles dress pretty much alike.

Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Shoulders I”

In defense of ‘close enough’

Let’s talk about fish-lady sweaters for a second.
When a Mon Calamari showed up in The Mandalorian Chapter 11 wearing an off-the-rack fisherman’s sweater, the community lost no time in memeifying it before hopping on Amazon to snatch up one or two for themselves. I find it encouraging that people are interested in costuming a common civilian for once (instead of the rare-in-universe but over-represented-in-cosplay Jedi/Sith/Mando/bounty hunter ‘player classes’)…but if I was looking to put together a GFFA dockworker impression, I definitely wouldn’t go out and buy the exact onscreen sweater—and not just because they’re probably now very scarce! Here’s why.

Thoughts on ‘The Heiress’

Welcome back to my breakdown of The Mandalorian Season 2 episodes, this time Chapter 11 ‘The Heiress’. I guess I should start disclaiming at the top:
YAR, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. READERS, YE BE WARNED.
When I watched the episode the first time, I was definitely subconsciously picking up on the Apollo 13 reentry sequence vibes…that film is too imprinted on my brain for me to not notice, but I didn’t make the connection for the reason behind it – this chapter was directed by Ron Howard’s daughter. Well then, of course it makes sense she would pay homage to her father’s masterpiece! Some of my friends have also picked up on the Firefly/Serenity vibe of a falling-apart spaceship slowly shedding parts. Seeing as we’ll never get more Firefly, having Firefly stuff in other properties works fine for me.
As the ship is trying to set down on the landing pad, I noticed the sound of the Razor Crest’s engines ‘coughing’ and trying to turn over is the same as Anakin’s podracer in Episode I doing the same thing, which is some nice continuity.

In general, I really like the nautical feeling of this whole chapter. The synopsis was something like “Mando braves danger on the high seas” so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when he arrived at what was essentially a seaport town, it started to make sense, and the latter half of the episode is essentially ‘Mando turns pirate!’ I love all the Mon Calamari and Quarren dock workers, with their waders and knit fisherman’s sweaters! It’s so refreshing to include a location so geared towards the ‘common’, especially as it creates a great opportunity for a ‘GFFA living historian’ to interpret some seaside skills (rope splicing? lobster pot baiting?) in an authentic manner.

Building the Inner Persona: Galactic Proverbs

In this installment of the Inner Persona miniseries, we’ll continue to expand our mental ‘word-hoard’ by adding some proverbs from the Star Wars galaxy- phrases that express a basic truth which may be applied to common situations.
We may take such phrases for granted in our everyday life, but they can really help sell the illusion when speaking in-character!

“If one guy calls you a Hutt, ignore him. If a second calls you a Hutt, begin to wonder. If a third calls you a Hutt, buy a drool bucket and start stockpiling spice.” – CorSec saying (I, Jedi, ch26)

“If the wind no longer calls to you, it is time to see if you have forgotten your name.” – Caamasi saying (I, Jedi, chapter 40)
Continue reading “Building the Inner Persona: Galactic Proverbs”

Thoughts on ‘The Passenger’

Welcome back to my breakdown of The Mandalorian Season 2 episodes, this time Chapter 10 ‘The Passenger’. Overall, this was by far my least favorite episode of the series, and after a single rewatch to collect some more notes for this post, I can pretty confidently say that I won’t be casually watching it again. (My favorite episode, I think, has so far been S01E04 ‘Sanctuary’, which seems to be many folks’ least favorite.)
The episode opens with Titular Mando trucking along on a swoop toting Fett’s armor, when he is ambushed by some frontier trash/space pirates/bounty hunter types. I really liked that they use ye olde cable trap to knock him off the bike (see this old post where I apply some real-world maths and see just how much time you’d need to get such a trap set properly).

Among the ambushers is a guy whose face we never see, wearing a Rebel-pattern arm patch. This style first appeared on Hoth in Episode V, although it has since shown up on troops in ‘Rouge One’. I find it hard to believe that this guy was in the uniformed Alliance military, so it’s likely a case of double-dipping by the costume department I mentioned last episode. Similarly, the bald pirate wears a puffy R1 trooper vest.

Artifact ID: Mos Pelgo silver bowls

While giving The Mandalorian’s season two opener a rewatch I noticed something in the scene where we are first introduced to the Marshal ‘Cobb Vance’. When Vance removes his helmet and sits down, he places the helmet on the table next to a particular style bowl. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it until perhaps a fourth or fifth casual reskim of the episode, had Jon Favreau not lampshaded the helmet with a gratuitous closeup.

This one was a pretty easy identification, since I grew up using bowls just like this for my morning granola and yogurt!

Upgrading the Rebel persona: captured armor #2

While a good partizan should ideally do all their ambushing from a distance, after binge-watching a cool edutainment series on the SOE training curriculum (Churchill’s Secret Agents—highly recommended) this summer, I realized that sometimes up-close-and-personal hand-to-hand combat can’t be avoided. Adding to this realization were nightly examples earlier this summer of my city’s ‘finest’ beating protestors with batons just a few blocks away from my apartment. With these motivations in mind, I started thinking about what kinds of hard kit items I might use to improve my odds in the area of personal defense.

Thoughts on ‘The Marshal’

Since The Mandalorian is the hottest thing in the galaxy right now, and with my queue of current projects winding down and no opportunities for public interpretive events in the foreseeable future, I want to share my thoughts on each episode shortly after each airs. Because…I have thoughts! These won’t be general reviews, but I’m going to try and focus on applying the topics of this blog (character design, material culture, issues of in-universe consistency, etc). Additionally, my research tends to uncover random details which enhance our knowledge of the galactic setting, but which aren’t always meaty enough to merit their own essays; I think Mandalorian episode writeups will be the perfect place to sprinkle these in.
I’ll be discussing topics in the order they appear, so let’s get started!

Since S01E06(‘The Prisoner’), the show seems to have a problem with its male Twi’leks. The size, shape, and angle of the head-tails is all wrong—they’re female-style(ish)—and I think it’s a side effect of the show’s relatively small budget. Since the usual male Twi’lek doesn’t wear a headband to hide the transition between actor and prosthetic, the look requires much more time in the makeup chair; the show’s makeup team have apparently decided it’s simply easier to pop a pair of female-style lekku and a headband on and call it good…but it looks hella weird: