6 ms·

Why do people like the Mandalorian? It's really just not that good. The action sequences are very low quality. The writing is fairly mundane faux-gritty tropes.

Why do people like the Mandalorian? It's really just not that good. The action sequences are very low quality. The writing is fairly mundane faux-gritty tropes. Would people like it if it didn't have the star wars backdrop? Does the star wars backdrop even make that much sense? I know this one won't bother many people but I particularly hated their depiction of the bounty hunter droid, which was orders of magnitude more competent than any other droid in the universe. Droids in star wars aren't immaculate AI like other Sci Fi. I hated that they used this as a plot point.

pmlnr 6y ago
It has that feeling. It's a western. It's simple. And it's awesome too look at it: the way it was shoot - with the huge screens as background - it feels and looks REAL, so finally it's not CGI. Augmented reality, one could say.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  To each their own. I thought it was a really poorly executed western. The episode where he does the prison break was particularly shoddy. The unreal stuff was cool, but that doesn't seem like an important factor.
musingsole 6y ago
I share your questions on the show's quality. I ultimately chalked many things that made me tilt my head to some idea of the show's 'style' and decided to re-suspend my disbelief, but still. On the bounty hunder droid...what about it came across as an immaculate AI? It had machine-precision with firearms and apparently a pretty interesting social-relationships module, but the re-training montage showed a lot of it's limitations.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  > It had machine-precision with firearms Mostly this. Star wars droids don't have machine precision. They don't 360 no scope everyone in a room and easily win 10:1 battles without taking any cover. The bounty hunter droid is far more competent than any human in a fight in this series, which feels wrong given these mandalorians are supposed to be legendary bounty hunters or something. I'm sure someone's ready to jump in with extended universe stuff to prove me wrong, but let's caveat that by noting Luke nullifies black holes in that series, so the similarities between power levels are hardly apples to apples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMQUTOh_AsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMQUTOh_AsQ
  - dhagz 6y ago
    I think this is one of those "rule of cool" things. Though I will say, sure IG-88 may have been better at shooting accurately, but his response to being surrounded in the first episode was to initiate a self-destruct. Whereas you have Mando showing some higher-level thinking and turns an "unwinnable" fight into a winnable one.
  - asdff 6y ago
    It kinda undermines the premise of General Grievous too imo. The reason that he was so powerful was because he was a cyborg, with machine precision but also organic strategy making that made him far stronger than any droid.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Star wars don't have powerful droids? Really? Looking at the first movie (phantom menace). There are super powerful droids with double guns and shields https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Droideka https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Droideka The only reason the main characters don't get obliterated is because they are master jedi who managed to deflect a few repeated hits and then barely slipped away and escaped. The next episodes 2 and 3 largely feature battle droid https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/B2-RP_battle_droid https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/B2-RP_battle_droid that are owning the battlefield. They're again not killing everyone because they only show up in battle against highly skilled jedis and in the full scale battle between armies having rockets and much stronger weaponry.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      They have plenty of powerful droids. But those droids win by virtue of sheer firepower, shields, and numbers. You don't get the sense that they're individually more competent than a human. They're just soldiers that happen to be robots. 1-3 is generally not aligned with 4-9 either way and this series takes place in 6.1. If we're in a world where the "robot advantage" exists, you'd have to question why humans pilot the ships, or man the turets, or what not.
coryfklein 6y ago
Because that's what people like sometimes. I don't want every show I watch to be this cerebral reinvention of theater, sometimes I just want to sit back and enjoy some comfort-food eye-candy. The Mandalorian fit this perfectly for me.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sequoia 6y ago
People like the Mandalorian because they like Star Wars and they want more Star Wars CONTENT. If you like Star Wars, and you like CONTENT, you'll like Mandalorian: bona fide Star Wars Content.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  I only like it because of Baby Yoda
thrownaway954 6y ago
"Why do people like the Mandalorian?" two words... baby f*cking yoda. seriously, i have tons of friends who hate star wars but love baby yoda and they watch it for the cuteness. if there is one thing that disney knows how to do is to create a story around a product, that product being baby yoda. netflix isn't even in the same universe as disney when it comes to content creation.
gknoy 6y ago
> Would people like it if it didn't have the star wars backdrop? Does the star wars backdrop even make that much sense? The bulk of the plot would work fine if it were space-bounty-hunter-with-angry-people-after-him, plus friends and a macguffin. Star Wars flavoring seems like the main way that this differentiates it from Cowboy Bebop (space bounty hunter in the solar system, hops between planets...). A big part of why the show is good is the mysterious "what's under the mask" aspect. We've had Boba/Jango Fett for decades, but it's really neat to see the expansion of this lore about the mandalorian culture -- why they always stay masked, etc. SW nerds like me often find lore tidbits delicious. The Mandalorian also happens to have ridiculously good production values compared to most shows -- I'm watching a movie in serial form. (See also Altered Carbon.) It also has interesting characters that I am curious about (both heroes and villains), with backstories I'd like to hear more about. THAT part doesn't need to be Star Wars. It could be samurai, or space privateers, or drama on a space station (DS9), and as long as it's done well, I'll want to watch it.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  > See also Altered Carbon Well at least there's consistency. I thought Altered Carbon (the live action netflix version) was terrible too! For similar reasons. Really poorly executed action scenes. Underdeveloped drama.
beisner 6y ago
Baby Yoda.
phamilton 6y ago
Would people like Mad Men if it were in today's setting? Setting is a big draw. I don't just watch Don Draper and Pete Campbell be petty, I escape to the 1960s and experience the ups and downs (more downs honestly) of the time period. Likewise with the Mandalorian. A bar fight is a bar fight, yet the opening scene of the Mandalorian is a bar fight in the Star Wars universe, with a different set of rules and personalities. Being immersed in that itself is fun, it's why Galaxy's Edge at Disneyworld is so great. The fact that it has enough of a plot to be interesting sort of just seals the deal.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
> hated their depiction of the bounty hunter droid, which was orders of magnitude more competent Reminds me of the badass maintenance droid in Rogue 1. On a second viewing I said, "Wait... WTF? Why did the Empire ever bother with stormtroopers when this one droid is 10x smarter and stronger than a squad of them?" This revelation basically ruined the movie for me, and to some extent the universe, although that was already a garbage heap at that point.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  The movies have forgotten they are fantasy, and come to the conclusion they are Sci-Fi. The worst moment, by far, was in the 2nd of the latest trilogy, when the chinese girl (Rose?) monologues about how the real evil in the world was greedy war profiteers and evil capitalists. ffs. This is a universe in which the more powerful faction outwardly identifies itself as the Dark Side, fueled by the power of Hatred, and known for destroying planets at a time. (although the real worst part was, surprise, 100,000 star destroyers, all of which can destroy planets)
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    >When the chinese girl (Rose?) monologues about how the real evil in the world was greedy war profiteers and evil capitalists. Don't forget that the inclusion of the evil capitalists was in the context of subplot which contributed absolutely nothing to the main plot. They really shoehorned that garbage in there.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Well, the Last Jedi was a special kind of awful, made by a guy who apparently hated Star Wars and had a strong political agenda. AKA: "One of these things is not like the others." It's so far removed, that even Jar Jar Abrams (destroyer of franchises) tried to fix it. I don't consider TLJ "canon," to use the lingo.
      - krapp 6y ago
racl101 6y ago
Baby Yoda bro. He or it is so captivating. We don't know what it's gonna do.
troutwine 6y ago
I like westerns. The action sequences are generally low quality, the writing leans on gritty tropes and they’re often just not that good but I like them. I like Star Wars. It’s action scenes are generally poor and the writing is stereotyped and the movies, more often than not, are bad but I like them. I like Star Wars the Western. It’s exactly what I want out of the loner ambiguous good guy narrative crossed with space monk/wizard galaxy.

pmlnr 6y ago

It has that feeling. It's a western. It's simple. And it's awesome too look at it: the way it was shoot - with the huge screens as background - it feels and looks REAL, so finally it's not CGI. Augmented reality, one could say.

klmadfejno 6y ago
To each their own. I thought it was a really poorly executed western. The episode where he does the prison break was particularly shoddy. The unreal stuff was cool, but that doesn't seem like an important factor.

musingsole 6y ago

I share your questions on the show's quality. I ultimately chalked many things that made me tilt my head to some idea of the show's 'style' and decided to re-suspend my disbelief, but still. On the bounty hunder droid...what about it came across as an immaculate AI? It had machine-precision with firearms and apparently a pretty interesting social-relationships module, but the re-training montage showed a lot of it's limitations.

klmadfejno 6y ago
> It had machine-precision with firearms Mostly this. Star wars droids don't have machine precision. They don't 360 no scope everyone in a room and easily win 10:1 battles without taking any cover. The bounty hunter droid is far more competent than any human in a fight in this series, which feels wrong given these mandalorians are supposed to be legendary bounty hunters or something. I'm sure someone's ready to jump in with extended universe stuff to prove me wrong, but let's caveat that by noting Luke nullifies black holes in that series, so the similarities between power levels are hardly apples to apples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMQUTOh_AsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMQUTOh_AsQ
- dhagz 6y ago
  I think this is one of those "rule of cool" things. Though I will say, sure IG-88 may have been better at shooting accurately, but his response to being surrounded in the first episode was to initiate a self-destruct. Whereas you have Mando showing some higher-level thinking and turns an "unwinnable" fight into a winnable one.
- asdff 6y ago
  It kinda undermines the premise of General Grievous too imo. The reason that he was so powerful was because he was a cyborg, with machine precision but also organic strategy making that made him far stronger than any droid.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Star wars don't have powerful droids? Really? Looking at the first movie (phantom menace). There are super powerful droids with double guns and shields https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Droideka https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Droideka The only reason the main characters don't get obliterated is because they are master jedi who managed to deflect a few repeated hits and then barely slipped away and escaped. The next episodes 2 and 3 largely feature battle droid https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/B2-RP_battle_droid https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/B2-RP_battle_droid that are owning the battlefield. They're again not killing everyone because they only show up in battle against highly skilled jedis and in the full scale battle between armies having rockets and much stronger weaponry.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    They have plenty of powerful droids. But those droids win by virtue of sheer firepower, shields, and numbers. You don't get the sense that they're individually more competent than a human. They're just soldiers that happen to be robots. 1-3 is generally not aligned with 4-9 either way and this series takes place in 6.1. If we're in a world where the "robot advantage" exists, you'd have to question why humans pilot the ships, or man the turets, or what not.

coryfklein 6y ago

Because that's what people like sometimes. I don't want every show I watch to be this cerebral reinvention of theater, sometimes I just want to sit back and enjoy some comfort-food eye-candy. The Mandalorian fit this perfectly for me.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sequoia 6y ago

People like the Mandalorian because they like Star Wars and they want more Star Wars CONTENT. If you like Star Wars, and you like CONTENT, you'll like Mandalorian: bona fide Star Wars Content.

arthurcolle 6y ago
I only like it because of Baby Yoda

thrownaway954 6y ago

"Why do people like the Mandalorian?" two words... baby f*cking yoda. seriously, i have tons of friends who hate star wars but love baby yoda and they watch it for the cuteness. if there is one thing that disney knows how to do is to create a story around a product, that product being baby yoda. netflix isn't even in the same universe as disney when it comes to content creation.

gknoy 6y ago

> Would people like it if it didn't have the star wars backdrop? Does the star wars backdrop even make that much sense? The bulk of the plot would work fine if it were space-bounty-hunter-with-angry-people-after-him, plus friends and a macguffin. Star Wars flavoring seems like the main way that this differentiates it from Cowboy Bebop (space bounty hunter in the solar system, hops between planets...). A big part of why the show is good is the mysterious "what's under the mask" aspect. We've had Boba/Jango Fett for decades, but it's really neat to see the expansion of this lore about the mandalorian culture -- why they always stay masked, etc. SW nerds like me often find lore tidbits delicious. The Mandalorian also happens to have ridiculously good production values compared to most shows -- I'm watching a movie in serial form. (See also Altered Carbon.) It also has interesting characters that I am curious about (both heroes and villains), with backstories I'd like to hear more about. THAT part doesn't need to be Star Wars. It could be samurai, or space privateers, or drama on a space station (DS9), and as long as it's done well, I'll want to watch it.

klmadfejno 6y ago
> See also Altered Carbon Well at least there's consistency. I thought Altered Carbon (the live action netflix version) was terrible too! For similar reasons. Really poorly executed action scenes. Underdeveloped drama.

beisner 6y ago

Baby Yoda.

phamilton 6y ago

Would people like Mad Men if it were in today's setting? Setting is a big draw. I don't just watch Don Draper and Pete Campbell be petty, I escape to the 1960s and experience the ups and downs (more downs honestly) of the time period. Likewise with the Mandalorian. A bar fight is a bar fight, yet the opening scene of the Mandalorian is a bar fight in the Star Wars universe, with a different set of rules and personalities. Being immersed in that itself is fun, it's why Galaxy's Edge at Disneyworld is so great. The fact that it has enough of a plot to be interesting sort of just seals the deal.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

> hated their depiction of the bounty hunter droid, which was orders of magnitude more competent Reminds me of the badass maintenance droid in Rogue 1. On a second viewing I said, "Wait... WTF? Why did the Empire ever bother with stormtroopers when this one droid is 10x smarter and stronger than a squad of them?" This revelation basically ruined the movie for me, and to some extent the universe, although that was already a garbage heap at that point.

klmadfejno 6y ago
The movies have forgotten they are fantasy, and come to the conclusion they are Sci-Fi. The worst moment, by far, was in the 2nd of the latest trilogy, when the chinese girl (Rose?) monologues about how the real evil in the world was greedy war profiteers and evil capitalists. ffs. This is a universe in which the more powerful faction outwardly identifies itself as the Dark Side, fueled by the power of Hatred, and known for destroying planets at a time. (although the real worst part was, surprise, 100,000 star destroyers, all of which can destroy planets)
- marcusverus 6y ago
  >When the chinese girl (Rose?) monologues about how the real evil in the world was greedy war profiteers and evil capitalists. Don't forget that the inclusion of the evil capitalists was in the context of subplot which contributed absolutely nothing to the main plot. They really shoehorned that garbage in there.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Well, the Last Jedi was a special kind of awful, made by a guy who apparently hated Star Wars and had a strong political agenda. AKA: "One of these things is not like the others." It's so far removed, that even Jar Jar Abrams (destroyer of franchises) tried to fix it. I don't consider TLJ "canon," to use the lingo.
    - krapp 6y ago

racl101 6y ago

Baby Yoda bro. He or it is so captivating. We don't know what it's gonna do.

troutwine 6y ago

I like westerns. The action sequences are generally low quality, the writing leans on gritty tropes and they’re often just not that good but I like them. I like Star Wars. It’s action scenes are generally poor and the writing is stereotyped and the movies, more often than not, are bad but I like them. I like Star Wars the Western. It’s exactly what I want out of the loner ambiguous good guy narrative crossed with space monk/wizard galaxy.