I have been into Star Wars since the original movie came out in 1977 and have seen all the subsequent movies. Mind you, I have not been as obsessive about it as some people. I have not read many of the books and have not seen all the animated versions. I have watched the recent The Bad Batch that is filling in some details of what happened between episodes three and four, but have not worked through all seven series of The Clone Wars. I saw some of that when my son watched them and caught up on the final season before watching The Bad Batch to get some context. In the last few years we have had several live-action series. The Madalorian was the first of these.
Possible spoilers below.
I just finished off season three. I was trying to avoid spoilers before I saw the finale, but it seems some people did not think much of it. I thought it wrapped things pretty well, but my expectation may be different to theirs. It started with main man DinDjarin being labelled an apostate to the Mandalorian creed for having removed his helmet. He has to go to Mandalore to redeem himself and that planet plays a big part in this season.
The season has a larger scale than previously with lots of Mandalorians from different factions. His Imperial foe Moff Gideon is still out there plotting.
The third episode had a bit of departure by taking us to capital planet Coruscant where former Imperial staff are being rehabilitated by the New Republic. There we meet a couple of characters we saw some time ago, but I struggled a little to remember exactly what part they played. Although interesting I felt this diversion did not add a lot to the story.
Another time they go to a wealthy planet where Jack Black and Lizzo are in charge with Christopher Lloyd running security. Lizzo took a shine to Grogu, aka The Child, aka Baby Yoda. Grogu has a fair bit of action this time as he has developed his force powers thanks to some training by Luke Skywalker (seen during The Book of Boba Fett).
The last couple of episodes set the scene for the climax that involves some big battles. I will not spoil the ending.
When they had scenes of lots of Manalorians zooming around with their jet packs I was reminded a bit of this classic. The effects are better now, but then they do not have Brian Blessed.
If you have the time you can watch loads of videos that analyse every detail of each episode pointing out references to other parts of the Star Wars canon. I do not see that as essential, but the producers obviously wanted to put in some treats for the real addicts. There were references to some characters who did not even appear on screen. Despite not knowing all that I enjoyed this season. It retains some humour, although some characters are just too earnest and some are a bit cheesy. It keeps moving along without getting too buried in details with lots of action in each episode. They must have had plenty of budget for effects. It will be interesting to see where they take it next, but before that we have more shows coming up. I think the next one is about Jedi Ahsoka, but there is also another series of animated stories in Star Wars Visions due in May the Fourth (appropriately). One of those is from Wallace and Grommit producers Aardman. Then there will be more movies with the first in late 2025.
I do wonder if you can have too much of a good thing. I know George Lucas had some plans beyond A New Hope, but could he have imagined it would go so far? Now Marvel have gone even further when it comes to number of movies, but then they had decades of comics to draw from. Now and then it is nice to watch something that stands on its own and is not a remake. At least we are getting value from our Disney+ subscription. At the weekend we watched Amsterdam which is a quirky period piece with some basis in history.
One constant of Star Wars are the Stormtroopers as cannon-fodder. They do seem to be there mainly to get killed and you have to wonder about their motivations. We did see a little of their background in The Force Awakens, but otherwise they barely register as actual people. I still think this fan film does them some justice.
Has Star Wars been a big thing in your life? Are you hungry for more?
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