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#but holy shit. both positive and exasperated. mostly positive tho
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it's really sad, actually:
the lord of the rings was made into three (really good) films, even though each book could have easily held three on its own - like nerdy people like me who love to nitpick on details notice (especially me who misses all my favourite scenes that had to be cut short for cinematic value or whatever).
but the hobbit, a single book, was really unnecessarily (and honestly really badly) expanded into three films - and there is so much included that never happened or is straight up ridiculous and doesn't feel like middle earth anymore At All.
while i totally understand the choices made about lotr (or most of them, stickler for details that i am) and love the films, i have absolutely no clue what they were thinking about the hobbit. why include characters and storylines that never existed? there is so much to work with already! besides the fact that it is a single book and sort of a prequel to lotr and not cut out to last for three films in the first place.
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vaguely-concerned · 3 years
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The Mandalorian Chapter 11; the rewatch edition
I have found a bit more enthusiasm for this one on the rewatch, so here goes!
- din snapping ‘I’m trying my best here!’ in a vaguely annoyed tone as his entire ship is going up in flames around him because he mostly doesn’t get angry as much as sulky... the height of cinema 
- I love frog husband’s clothes, because they’re in a very similar style and colour scheme to frog lady’s but also incorporate the knitwear we see on the people of trask, so it both underlines his belonging with her and implies that he’s been on this moon for quite a while, they may have been apart for some time  
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especially his scarf is a darling detail and there’s a bit of contrast in texture to it next to his wife’s, it’s nice. he’s wearing a similar kind of vest to what we see on the fishermen later, too 
- I think my favourite part of this entire episode (well second after din cradling the baby against him after nearly drowning) is just the design and Vibe of the planet and especially this harbour
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for one I LOVE that it’s shown that even in the middle of the day it’s dark enough that the electric lights are still on when it’s overcast (it reminds me a bit of norway during the winter, actually, when dawn just never quite breaks and then slinks off in embarrassment before it’s even noon). and there’s also the... sails? nets? hanging around looking almost like flags, which are very Aesthetic but god knows what they’re for. maybe for drying fish on in the summer? 
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I think the building in the distance behind frog husband’s back here is a lighthouse? or it could be one of those towers for loading you see when they scout out the empire ship too, I suppose!
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and one for my strange obsession with Texture on this show: these fabric-covered crates!!! they look exactly as dingy and moldy as you’d expect them to be in this climate, I wonder what they’re for (& I vaguely want to touch them) 
- from the sound of it din’s vibroknife is uh ‘on’ when he pokes the squid thing, and he also goes for the tentacle the furthest away from the baby <3
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proof the calamari flan have been scratched up a bit during all that time in din’s pockets! (the attention to detail in this show sometimes istg) 
- this is 100% me reading too much into things again, call the overthinking police I’ll do my time meekly lol, but the boat looks a little bit like the mudhorn signet from this angle: 
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again din keeps his hand on or sooo close to his blaster in this entire scene, he knows this is sketch as all hell 
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a) once again I want to praise the effects team for how GOOD the aliens look in this episode holy shit and b) the hell is this dude wearing on the straps of his overalls tho 
- the dude mando (axe woves) uses his little... wrist launcher thing to shoot with to finish two off the fishermen, so my theory that they can be loaded with other things than the whistling birds for slightly less effective use (maybe without the level of honing we’ve seen din’s be able to do?) is looking good!
- din actually has quite good form when diving into the water, I’m guessing he can swim at least tolerably when not in full armour, being stabbed at from all directions, having just had his son eaten by a sea monster and also being trapped in with said sea monster (I’m a strong swimmer and I can tell you that there’s a reason they make you swim with clothes on from time to time to see how hard it is, it sucks. with metal plates strapped all over you as well? yeah good luck) people don’t tend to hit the water that gracefully without some kind of training in my experience lol. might be some of the training with the jet pack has carried over too, considering he throws himself off that cliff in chapter 12 with similar confidence?
it’s interesting that they’re once again showing us a threat where the armour doesn’t help and even hinders him. we’re so used to the ways it can make him near-invincible, but it can also drag him down (literally, in this case. aha ha ha. well if I’m not here for my own entertainment then what am I here for honestly)
- din’s voice sounding like he’s just on the verge of crying as he cradles the baby (and the sound he makes as he realizes the baby’s alive) is my kryptonite, turns out. fucking breaks my heart into tiny pieces every time, I would die for this man and he wouldn’t let me
- in support of din’s paranoia: so far this season we haven’t been able to go five minutes without someone talking about peeling the precious beskar off a mandalorian corpse, I can see why his mind was primed to move in one particular way there
- I think the fabric of din’s cape has been treated with something that makes it waterproof; the water seems to pearl on top of it rather than soak in! can you imagine how heavy it would get if it did absorb water tho christ
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(a bit hard to see at this size but that’s what it looked like to me close up anyway! could also be that it’s wool and that’s why it looks that way but I prefer an elaborate sci-fi explanation here, because it doesn’t look particularly weighed down afterwards) might also explain why he doesn’t seem worried about it catching on fire when he uses the jetpack haha, maybe this is something the mandos do with fabric they’re going to use for a long time 
I also enjoy part of the gambeson/undersuit thing poking up from under the shoulder pauldron and cape; I think this is about as disheveled as we’ve seen him since immediately post-mudhorn 
- the sound mixing in this scene, where din’s breathing is layered a bit over everything else so you almost feel like you’re in the helmet with him listening to what the others are saying........ oh my GOD, it embeds you so deeply in his POV but so subtly 
- not to be biased or anything... but din and the armorer’s armour design is so vastly superior to these guys it shouldn’t even be a competition lol 
din looks like an honest to god knight in shining armour except also sci-fi western and the armorer looks like a fucking war goddess from a time beyond memory; the clone wars mandos look like high end cosplayers (eh maybe it’s just my dislike for the boobplates that has me so 😒 lol. also a lot of dudes were very shitty about that whole thing and I don’t say anything but the ‘vaguely-concerned will remember this’ telltale message pops up in the corner every time) 
moment of saltiness over: I do like the differentiation between their individual character designs 
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the differences in body type and helmet design is nice! they look like a unified team, but with individuality. I suspect the ladies have those belts and their armour plates on the hips instead of the front of the thighs to emphasize the ‘female’ silhouette, which. okay fine whatever
- bo katan looks very pointedly down at the baby after saying ‘a group of religious zealots who want to return to the ancient ways’ which makes me VERY nervous for reasons I can’t quite articulate
- the mournful guitar version of the mando theme as din watches the sunset...... hmmmmngh (this might be some Symbolism happening to us folks strap in for the identity crisis he still hasn’t processed) 
- I Cannot get over din being so unimpressed by and uninterested in bo katan’s ‘retake mandalore’ sales pitch from literally the first moment dfhasdkjfhsad sorry lady kryze this man just does not do main quest shit, he’s all side quests all the time and that’s why I love him  
- as someone who after chapter 8 wrote a whole-ass fic that was wholly & exclusively about din telling the baby he’ll always come back for him... some of the shit he’s been saying this season does feel like it’s been written to mercilessly victimize me, personally and specifically 
- guessing this structure in the background is the traffic control tower! doesn’t really matter, I just thought it was neat
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- this part of the soundtrack is called ‘ship o hoj, mandalorians!’, which I found incredibly charming haha (it’s ‘ship ahoy’ except how you write it in swedish, good one herr göranson)  
- bo katan is vague about who exactly the new mand’alor would be if they took back mandalore to begin with, she doesn’t specify she is planning to be the ruler until she’s already got din on the ship and in no position to refuse to help. gotta respect the grift at least lol  
I do love her voice, though, it reminds me a bit of jennifer hale as shepard
- “I need to get back to my ship, with the foundling” your honor I uh love him so fucking much 
- frog lady stroking the baby’s back a bit as she holds her hand behind him to make sure he doesn’t fall backwards while playing with the tadpole ;___________;
and also frog husband and frog lady reaching out to hold hands and frog smooching as din and yodito leave ;____________________________________________;
- when din says the exasperated “mon calamari. unbelievable” line, the baby makes that little blowing a raspberry sound he does as if to agree ‘uh-huh unbelu -- unbelly -- unbelievable dad smh’ and it is very very adorable 
- there’s quite a bit of Stuff in the concept art that didn’t make it in this time around; I wonder if maybe they cut some stuff for pacing or whatever and that’s why this episode is so short? water leaking into the cockpit of the razor crest, something that looked a bit like whaling going on on the docks and more spaceships taking off (maybe there were originally meant to be some smaller ships defending the big empire one?), there’s quite a bit here  
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