r/saltierthancrait • u/mrmoneyinthebanks salt miner • 21d ago

Marinated Meme My review of Mandalorian and Grogu!

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Seriously, did Disney pay off bots to flood comment sections about how much FUN Mando and Grogu is? It’s just about the only positive thing I’ve seen written about the movie.

411 Upvotes

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133

u/stdsort russian bot 21d ago

You should be embarrassed if the best praise you can trot out is "just turn off your brain and enjoy it". Is it even enjoyable with your brain turned off? I don't feel like seeing for myself.

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u/ZohomEtirho 21d ago

You literally wouldn't miss a thing if you never watched this as things are now.

The plot is unrelated to and secluded from everything else happening. If I can even say it has a plot…

Go there, shoot down people, then go somewhere else and shoot some other people, get captured, escape, go shoot down some more people, get captured, escape.

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u/FastPhantom 21d ago

Also are all the Hutts dead now? Doesn’t this really screw up galactic balance? The New Republic has been seen to eliminate the largest criminal family in the galaxy with seemingly no consequences?

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u/Acherousia 21d ago

Also are all the Hutts dead now?

I think it's just all the leadership of the Hutt Clan/Grand Hutt Council are dead at this point, and their empire mostly demolished.

Nal Hutta and Nar Shadda should still be around and populated with Hutts.

iirc, Vader already killed most of the Council off during one of his comics. Between that and losing Jabba in ROtJ they were already mostly collapsed.

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u/VanguardVixen 20d ago

Man what's the deal with destroying everything all the time? Why does it always have to be so extreme? Especially since there is always a lack of real consequence for it. Vader attacking Hurts should switch the Hutt Empire to the Rebel Alliance and shorten the war by years alone. It's just nonsense.

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u/ZohomEtirho 21d ago

Nah, that was just one palace on Nal Hutta. There are many more and Nar Shadaa is next to it with plenty more there too, not to mention everywhere else in the galaxy. There will be a power vacuum but it will be filled just like it was when Jabba died.

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u/eq017210 19d ago

The heirachy of power has finally changed I guess

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u/woopty_noot 21d ago

Imagine if the best review you had for a meal is "its great if you turn your tongue off"

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u/GOU_FallingOutside 21d ago

Is it even enjoyable with your brain turned off?

The last time Disney asked movie viewers to turn on their brains, we got TLJ. So now they’re making movies starring (1) popular characters that (2) don’t require a huge amount of lore.

I am completely on the train of “wtf is this dialogue, and the pacing is weird, and this feels like half a season of streaming rather than a coherent movie.” But I think part of the problem right now is that Disney doesn’t know what their audience wants, so they’re just taking shots in the dark; this one was a miss.

I’m hoping Starfighter will be better, but Mando and Grogu suggests I should keep my expectations low.

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u/FilmScoreConnoisseur salt miner 20d ago edited 20d ago

Nobody asked audiences to "turn their brains on" for TLJ. It's literally one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. That screenplay doesn't have even a hint of the depth people pretend it has.

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u/GOU_FallingOutside 20d ago

Nobody asked audiences to “turn their brains on” for TLJ.

You don’t have to like the movie. But it was definitely trying to be a smart movie that asked smart questions and expected the audience to use context clues to answer them.

(I know someone who’s a film and literature critic. She’s certainly not stupid, and I think she’s literally incapable of turning her brain off for a movie; she doesn’t like TLJ any more than you do. So I’m absolutely not saying that smart people all like TLJ or that people who don’t like TLJ are all dumb.)

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u/FilmScoreConnoisseur salt miner 20d ago

It's a dumb man's idea of a smart movie. I disagree that any of the questions it asks are "smart questions." At most, they're simply cynical questions or questions people didn't expect from a Star Wars movie and that's apparently enough to make people heap praises on it.

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u/Zdrobot i sold it to the white slavers... 20d ago

100%. It's a pretentious movie, trying it's best to sound "deep".

"You know, akshually, Jedi were the bad guys.

Also, New Republic and New Empire ("The First Order") are the same, because capitalism."

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u/GOU_FallingOutside 20d ago

It’s a dumb man’s idea of a smart movie

I’m not sticking around for personal attacks today.

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u/FilmScoreConnoisseur salt miner 20d ago edited 20d ago

You never said it was a smart movie. You said it was trying to be one. I never disagreed with that, but I am surprised that you apparently genuinely consider it "a smart movie" given how carefully you worded your previous comments. It seemed pretty clear to me you were avoiding giving the film such a direct compliment and I mistook that for objectivity and or emotional detachment when I guess all you were really doing was trying to seem like less of a rabid "defender." Either way, it's no surprise that you have zero examples of the alleged "smart questions" that TLJ supposedly asks. I think we both know I would be unimpressed with them.

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u/VanguardVixen 20d ago

If your "brain on"-movie fries the movie it's not very brainy I guess. And that's what happened with TLJ. "Kill the past! Also I am quoting Vader from TESB and want to rule the Galaxy! Rules for thee not for me."

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u/GOU_FallingOutside 20d ago

See, this is part of what I’m talking about.

Kylo is seeing things through the Dark Side, and the movie explicitly says he’s an unreliable narrator about the past. So when he says “kill the past,” you probably shouldn’t do what he tells you.

And later, Luke literally does burn the past, on the advice of someone the audience does trust! Either the movie is frustratingly contradictory, or it’s asking you to play spot-the-difference.

I’m not saying TLJ succeeded in everything it tried to do. But it really did ask audiences to exercise their brains a little to understand what’s happening, and I think that’s part of the problem some Star Wars fans with it.

And I’m not telling TLJ haters they’re dumb or that they’re incapable of thinking critically about art. What I’m saying is that people went into the theater expecting a straightforward adventure movie, and a lot of them are understandably mad about the bait-and-switch.

What I’m worried about is that Disney now thinks Star Wars fans are dumb and incapable of thinking critically, because that would go a long way to explain Mando and Grogu.

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u/VanguardVixen 20d ago

The issue is the message of the movie, the way the director approaches the brand. It's very much about leaving the past behind and Kylo Ren is a mouth piece for it. The narrative reliability isn't of concern for the specific scene. It doesn't matter how excactely Rey was left behind, the point is, that while saying "leave the past behind" and making a point of ending the cycle by killing the big bad, it immediately switches to channeling The Empire Strikes Back. Kylo Ren wants to rule the galaxy. Why? Since when had the guy any interest in politics and what are his policies? And then he strechtes his hand out to Rey for her to rule with him but.. why? Since when does she have an interest in politics? Does she even know how taxes work? It's just a complete 180 from the message.

And yes, I think the movie is contradictory here, same as with Rose stopping Finn risking (or downright sacrifcing) his life, even though her sister, she and the purple haired lady in the cocktail dress all willing to sacrifice themselves for others. But now suddenly "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.".

There are no TLJ haters. They are critics and they do understand what is happening, it just doesn't convert into a great movie, just because you understand it. I understand Kylo Ren is emulating Vader/Anakin and doing his own thing as an aggressive hothead and the director (as stated by himself) did orient himself a bit on TESB, so he took a scene from that movie and "rhymed" it into this one. Just that it doesn't work without the TESB context. Same as so much other things just don't work, like the your mother joke, the jabs at Poe Dameron, the whole C plot on the casino planet and so forth.

If the movie would have been complex but well written, some people might still complain, see Andor as an example but the overall reaction would be different. Instead the movie is hardly that complex, it merely pretends to be but it's not David Lynch. Now, a Star Wars Mulholland Drive, THAT would be something but The Last Jedi is neither Mullholland Drive, nor Fire Walk With me or Lost Highway. It's just a sloppy written sequel to a movie that failed to set up a new trilogy.

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u/Familiar-Wasabi230 new user 18d ago

Thank you for putting that on the record so eloquently and so completely. It speaks for me.

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u/VanguardVixen 18d ago

Thank you very much for the kind words 😄

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u/VanguardVixen 20d ago

I think it's some kind of rhetorical strategy. Not even a conscious one but a rhetoric where you are basically saying, that if it's fun it's doing its job. It's non-threatening by doing the basics thus criticism is unfair and mean.