Friday, August 13, 2021

Derivative concerns

I mentioned recently that I was a few episodes into the first season of The Mandalorian and finding it enjoyable enough.

Maybe I was just tired last night (I did fall asleep briefly during it), but I found episode 4 was causing me to reconsider - this show seems to just be Westerns I've seen before set in the Star Wars universe.   Oh, there's a little bit of novel mystical cult thrown into it, and a cutesy baby Yoda, but I'm starting to resent the derivative aspects too much.    

Is this a sign of old age?   I mean, it's not as if the very first Star Wars movie wasn't derivative too - but it did seem that the way different old elements were thrown into the mix (especially, in my opinion,  the non denominational mystical religious bit) had given rise to something novel.  Then Empire Strikes Back deepened the best part of it, and after that the series mostly got stuck in various repetitions on the same narrative theme.  Well, I suppose you could say the prequels tried to do something a bit different - but they were botched in their own special way.

And I still agree thoroughly with this assessment I noted in 2019.   If only Lucas had got the Force right... 

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