Sunday, February 23, 2020

Rebels: "Heroes of Mandalore: Part Two" (Ep. 4.02)

-- "A Mandalorian with a jet pack is a weapon."

This is an episode that is a bit difficult for me to review.
On the one hand, it's a fine and good episode in the same vein as all of Rebels, all of Star Wars, in fact. It's exciting in all the ways Star Wars is exciting.
However, it fails in the same way much of Star Wars does in really making the characters have real stakes in the game. The most notable exception to this was Rogue One.

Maybe I've said this before, but Lucas' original idea for Jedi was that the Falcon wouldn't make it out of the Death Star explosion at the end of the movie, hence Han's "funny feeling" comment before they go off to Endor. But Lucas had a change of heart and decided that that would end the trilogy on too much of a down note, and he wanted it to be a full-on happy ending, so Lando and the Falcon come spewing out of the fiery explosion of the Death Star.

In much the same way, the tragedy at the end of part of of this two-part story is rolled back as we discover right away that Sabine's mother and brother did not die from the Empire's powerful new weapon. Just everyone else did. I feel it robs the story of its emotional impact. But I suppose it is a show that is supposed to be kid friendly, which is why so many of the stormtroopers throughout the series escape with their lives rather than being killed by the rebels. You can't have your heroes indiscriminately killing the bad guys.

Yeah, I'm in a bit of a mood after watching this one.
And I haven't talked about the deus ex machina ending.
I'm also not going to.
bah


"Mandalorian? I don't want to be a Mandalorian."

"It's time for you to prove your loyalty, not just to your family, but to all of Mandalore."

"It was a series of bad decisions, okay?"

"Don't move!"
"Oh, I'm movin'."

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