Bad Writing + Bad Acting = Bad Show. The Mandalorian: Critique / Criticism.

the mandalorian bad writing
bad acting bad show i realize how unwelcome this critique this commentary will be i realize that a great many of you will hit the thumbs down button and close the window on your computer before you even heard two or three minutes of what i have to say so judiciously i'm opening the video by discussing the action sequences and the action sequences matter even if this tv show were supremely philosophically stimulating if it had the most impressive intellectual content imaginable or we've had the greatest emotional gravitas imaginable in the characterization of writing the plot the action sequences would still matter can i ask you in the audience those of you who are inclined to hit thumbs down and close the window can i ask you to recognize that objectively the action sequences are terrible objectively the hand-to-hand combat would not measure up to a hong kong kung fu movie made in the 1970s i would make the further claim that these action sequences don't even work as well as the batman tv show from the 1960s consider very briefly the three images i have on screen here the female mandalorian shimmies down the side of the spaceship she's like a little kid going tobogganing she slides down behind this armed guard who is an adult male in full armor now they chose to cast a relatively small man so that he's not towering over this diminutive woman they must have intentionally cast someone who'd look about the same size and what does she do she doesn't pounce down on this guy she doesn't land on him with her full body weight having been above him she doesn't shoot down at him she doesn't land on him with a spear there are a million ways to block this scene she doesn't do something clever showing that she's aware of the weak points in his armor that she's aware of some subtle way no no no she shimmies on down and then stands there toe-to-toe with this guy she slams her petite feminine forearm down on the two hands that he's holding a rifle with look at that frame one and he throws the rifle away it doesn't make any sense kinetically it doesn't make any sense it does not look like a smaller weaker person disarming a larger stronger person who is wearing armor you can you can try this out in the living room guys have your girlfriend strike your two hands holding a rifle with with the fleshy soft part of her forearm with this motion she's not she's not throwing her full body weight forward nope there's nothing behind it there's no force there on the stormtrooper just throws his gun away then what's her next move she twists around this is like a disco move and she strikes him with her elbow her elbow is not armored whereas his chest is she places her cloth clad elbow her soft fleshy elbow down on the the breastplate down in the middle of his chest and that just wipes out this fully grown adult man heavily armed with military training that is the end of the fight it's over ko one elbow to the center of the chest armored chest the middle what is this armor made of how is it possible that there's this amazingly fragile soldier on duty here and even so haven't we lost a chance here to characterize the hero the person we're supposed to be sympathizing with this mandalorian and blue orange haven't we missed a chance to show that they're clever they're extraordinary they're strong to show us how they overcome amazing odds how is it that they do the impossible and the answer is they just do the impossible because of plot armor because of bad writing [Music] i want to be clear that i'm not contrasting realism to a lack of realism you could have a dreamlike surreal universe in which these things make sense the role of the storyteller is to make that compelling to the audience you could tell me that this woman is so supernaturally strong that she's completely self-confident walking into a heavily fortified military installation and with her bare hands punching out everyone you can sell that to the audience you can make that a compelling part of her characterization and then the actor can perform that role accordingly or or you can represent this person as vulnerable as desperate as trying to save her homeworld as trying to overthrow a military regime with just two or three of her friends where she can't possibly win and then you can show us how it is out of that desperation out of whatever intellectual resources she has she comes up with a brilliant scheme a strategy something that makes us cheer for her as the underdog there are all of these possibilities and more but what we're being presented with here is none of them what we're being presented with simply is bad writing so this is not a plea for realism the approach doesn't have to be realistic but in a sense there has to be an approach is season two episode three the first act three out of these four characters in armor became fully submerged in water in the scene they dove into the ocean they're dry they come out of the water and they're they're not even dripping wet most of the armor you can see is cloth look at that they're basically wearing like a you know cloth military uniform underneath these few pieces of of plated armor right the mandalorian himself has a cape on the cape is bone dry on the bottom left corner of the screen you see that none of them are dripping wet this is worse than xena warrior princess if xena jumps into the ocean if xena jumps into a lake she comes out wet and it's not just that this is a poorly blocked action sequence it's not just a continuity error which of course in part it is in terms of characterization story plot and the more meaningful sub-basement of what it is we're witnessing here how are we supposed to imagine these people as anything more than video game characters if they just materialize out of thin air in the middle of the ocean were these characters living in a cave in poverty were they hunted and persecuted were they living in opulence and wealth because one of these characters bokotan is basically like a kind of aristocrat are they living like aristocrats in exile are they friends with the local government are we supposed to imagine that these are people enduring terrible hardship who now have resolved to risk their lives taking on an impossible task just these three people who seemingly have no equipment and no great fortune behind them these three people are gonna conquer an army and and conquer a planet they're gonna change the not just one world but the fate of many worlds where does this confidence come from are they lunatics should we regard them as eccentric or insane how are we in the audience supposed to feel about them when they just materialize out of thin air dive into the water come up dry and then both in terms of the script and acting there's just a total lack of in that sense characterization behind them are these supposed to be characters that are in their own universe the equivalent of the una bomber if you forgot who the unabomber was he was a terrorist who basic people would say he lived in a cave he actually lived in a small shack in the middle of the forest are these madmen on the fringes of society claiming that they're going to do the impossible and should we regard what they're saying is possible or are these characters like superman out of the comic books where for whatever reason they are just in their own physical bodies so extraordinarily powerful that it's entirely reasonable for them to think that they can unassisted take out a whole army unit this kind of question of what are we supposed to believe about these characters what is the meaning and significance of their plot it is tightly woven into the way the action sequences are blocked so the fact that the action sequences are garbage is in a meaningful way connected to the bad writing and bad acting that makes this a bad show [Music] um having made my case for the close relationship between the action sequences and any kind of political or philosophical meaning in this plot i think it'll be much much easier for me to convince you that there's a similar relationship between world building and any political or philosophical significance to the plot the primary fact we're introduced to in this universe from season one episode one is that justice is done by private contractors by bounty hunters who carry with them this tiny device that allows them to find anyone anywhere we also see that this universe has police and prisons and that in fact the bounty hunters hand over apprehended criminals to these police officers and prisons and yet everyone in this universe is willing and eager to commit murder to commit massacres in broad daylight with many witnesses and no fear of the consequences not even the consequences for their professional reputation or business now i am not making a case for realism i'm not demanding realism some a filmmaker could create a science fiction universe in which everyone just considers it normal to walk into a bar and massacre a bunch of people now that could even be a kind of politically interesting science fiction part hey what if in the future everybody is just cool with murder everyone's just cool with people mask each other what would that world be like to inhabit but that's not the world we're being presented with in the mandalorian in this bizarre self-contradictory internally inconsistent way we're presented in a universe that not only has law and order but where our main character our protagonist is himself part of the escutcheon of law and order he's an enforcer he's a bounty hunter he we see him turning people into prison we see him dealing with the cops and yet we also see the patrons of a bar in the very first episode standing around silently in a state of total indifference as one of the bar patrons is going to be murdered believe it or not for the the value of his body parts on the black market and the bartender is cool with this everybody else in the bar is cool with this in scene after scene including here where um the heroic blue armored mandalorians show up and just massacre a whole bunch of people on this dock why because those people in the dock were daring to complain that they had already massacred their friends and relatives on a fishing boat which apparently they're completely entitled to do with no consequences and nobody is going to put out a bounty and hunt you down for massacring these guys on a on a duck no there are no consequences for you but if anyone else commits a murder or a crime then the mandalorian himself is going to carry this tiny portable device that lets him find any person located anywhere in the universe effortlessly he can find you anywhere on a huge planet he can find you from one star system but nobody can find him when it's convenient for the plot anyone can find anyone instantly and when it's convenient for the plot nobody can find anyone it is actually world breaking and the world building here it makes no sense it invitates any possible politically or philosophically coherent narrative even if it is one dealing with justice and injustice and as i've said our main character however brutal his history may be which is constantly alluded to he is ultimately working in law enforcement so in closing the video i just want to say this does have consequences for me after the most recent episode of the mandalorian i cancelled my subscription i subscribed to disney plus in the first place as explained in earlier video because i'm learning chinese and i assumed that when they promised something like 13 languages would be provided in both uh translation and subtitles you know both dubbed voices and subtitles for every movie that i was going to be able to use disney plus to study and practice chinese that turned out to not be the case i stuck around for a little while because it seemed to me that season one of the mandalorian was setting up some kind of interesting philosophical statement some kind of interesting political commentary maybe too with presenting this person who's you know trying to live a life defined in terms of a code a code of honor and dignity and it goes around telling people this is the way it's now very clear in season two that no this is episodic trash and in all the ways that matter has to be said it's really much much worse than tv shows from the past that we now look back on as kind of childish like xena warrior princess [Music] that's right crawl crawl for your stinking life having used the word childish i'll just remark i think it would be a really interesting creative challenge to make a tv show like this that is intended for children and again having just looked at a few clips of xeno warrior princess now it's kind of amazing what a high level of violence was considered appropriate for children in the recent past it shows her slitting people's throats and what have you it would be an interesting creative challenge if the writers directors and actors knew that this was for children but as with batman superman spider-man many many things what they end up creating here is something that's neither appropriate for children nor sophisticated enough for adults they end up in this strange intermediate situation of producing a cultural product that can only possibly appeal to incredibly childish adults [Music] you