Carl Weathers directed a decent episode of The Mandalorian for last night, the latest in a season that continues to outperform the previous season. Weathers returns as an actor, too, reprising his role as Greef Karga, though he's not as good as he was in the Taika Waititi directed finale of last season. Actually, Cara Dune (Gina Carano), is the character with the vast improvement in this episode.
I didn't really like how the scene introducing her in the new episode is disconnected from the rest of the episode. We see her, now a "Marshal", beating a bunch of alien thugs to retrieve some stolen items. As an action scene, it was okay, though it had that beyond-cliche shot of her hitting someone behind her with her elbow at the end of the fight like an afterthought. That felt cliche when Legolas did it in The Two Towers twenty years ago.
That scene and the one at the end, where a New Republic officer tries to recruit her, felt like they were tacked on by someone who decided the episode could be a backdoor pilot for a Cara Dune series. And I can see how such a series would be good. I found Carano's performance dreadfully dull last season but she seems to have improved a bit--maybe she's taken some acting classes. And her muscles even look a bit bigger.
This past week, people have been talking about how George Lucas has started talking at length about his original plans for the sequel trilogy. His description of a post-Return of the Jedi galaxy in which crime lords are filling the power vacuum left by the Empire is actually pretty close to what we're seeing on The Mandalorian this season. I'd heard rumours that Jon Favreau was trying to honour Lucas' original vision, now I'm starting to hope they're true. I just wish Dave Filoni didn't have to be involved. I'm hoping the episode he wrote and directed for next week will be good, especially since it looks like the one that will introduce us to a live action Ahsoka, but Filoni's track record, particularly when writing for Ahsoka, has been pretty dismal. At least Rosario Dawson is the kind of performer who can make even bad dialogue sound good.
Anyway, the Carl Weathers episode last night did a good job establishing Din (Pedro Pascal) as a badass, despite a really cute opening where he unsuccessfully tries to get Baby Yoda to help him fix his ship. Comedian Horatio Sanz returns as Mythrol to be the cowardly comrade to make Greef and Cara look more badass so that they, in turn, can make the Mandalorian look like the ultimate badass when he saves the day. That's strategy. Even if the end was predictable, it was still nice, though not quite strong enough to prevent Sanz's character from disappointingly overwhelming a scene here and there.
The Mandalorian is available on Disney+.
Twitter Sonnet #1415
Restricted tracks repeat a training song.
To count the ample ham, a sandwich fell.
There's nothing down to make the apple wrong.
The ring repealed a rusty chapel bell.
A final point's divided twixt the eyes.
A button nose engaged the engine tongue.
Conveyor belts produced some saltless pies.
And here the iron shape was loudly rung.
A stronger Hulk conducts the spider home.
The muscles green with holding fists convene.
The time it was to brush the curly tome.
And here the fighting ghost would eat the bean.
The double engine drove the bird to space.
A hundred eyes were sunk inside the face.
No comments:
Post a Comment