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Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Welcome into the Ringerverse. This is, of course, the Ringer's Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. We are Steve, the architect, almond, the builder, and tinkerer of things. Jomie, the algorithm, the algorithm, the explainer, a dinner on, Mr. Margaritaville. You've got questions, he's got answers. Old Man Van, he of the receding resurgent hairline. Coke Baby Chuck, the 24-karat closer.
Together we are known as the Midnight Boys. We'll be right back after this. Follow us on socials, The Midnight Boys Pod on Insta and TikTok, at Ringerverse on Insta, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. Jomie? We're having a lot of fun on there. Thank you guys for following. Continue to follow The Midnight Boys and Ringerverse on socials. It's going great. Appreciate all your support.
We're also on YouTube. Like, comment, subscribe. What are you doing? What's with you this morning? I'm sorry. You good, man? You want to talk about it? Passionate. You can watch every Midnight Boys and House of R episode on YouTube.com backslash at Ringiverse and also on Spotify. Programming reminders. Okay, on Tuesday, the House of R gives you their summer hypermeter.
Now, what kind of things go into a summer hypermeter? Guys. Well, all the stuff that's coming out this summer, we got the Odyssey, you got Spider-Man. Let's do our quick, let's do, so we're going to do a quick hype meter. And it's going to be guns up, guns down. Okay. All right. Let's go. Call them out, Jomie. Spider-Man. Guns up. The Odyssey. Guns up. Street Fighter. Guns down.
Oh, that's tough.
Guns up, down? Guns up, down?
Up or down?
It could go either way. Mortal Kombat set a weird precedent where we're like, could it be better than Mortal Kombat?
Guns up. Guns up. House of the Dragon.
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Chapter 2: What are the reactions to 'The Mandalorian and Grogu'?
The Clone Wars stands one for better and worse, where it's like Radha, correct me if I'm wrong, is the first character, was like an original character that they created for the movie. He's a little baby. He is a baby, yeah. Embo is a character from the TV show, The Twins, Adam Arkin in Clone Wars.
And I think watching this, I'm like, oh, the reason I call this a children's movie is because a lot of the writing and the dialogue does remind me of an episode of Clone Wars. This is a lot of Dave Filoni's original characters. It's told in the middle of a story, so you don't actually have to push the Star Wars narrative forward that much.
So what I was left with watching this is I'm like, well, I think it pushed Grogu as a character forward. I don't know if it did the same thing for Mando. I almost think like Mando as a character was a little bit in stasis. And it speaks to me volumes that the best part of this movie does not have Mando in it at all. It is basically a silent film with Grogu.
And that to me was just like, this could have just been a 20 minute short film. And I would have been even more, like I wanted more of that section when Grogu's trying to save Mando.
Mando's an interesting place in this story. Yeah. Number one, Mando's an interesting character. You can't see his face. Yeah. Right? And we see his face. Every time we see his face, we know something bad has to happen, so we can't see his face. He's also an interesting place from a story perspective because all of the Mandalorian lore that surrounded him has been thrown off. Yep.
The Darksaber thing. Oh, God. All of that stuff is gone. So then the question becomes, now, what is his main driving force? What gets him up to shine his armor in the morning? It's obviously being Grogu's dad, which you see in this movie. But what I will say that they did do with the character is they've essentially made him a part of the New Republic, right?
They don't go hard in on that because I think they want the freedom to not have Mando care about anybody's one specific cause, but to know that he is aligned with them for Mandalorian is interesting. I don't know that we've seen one like that. No, I think you're completely right in your assessment because we spent, again, not to harp back on it, but season three was
all about the Mandalorian and, like, what it means to be a Mandalorian and, like, that specific group of people, and it did not work, like, at all, right? And so at this point, it's like, advancing Grogu makes a lot more sense in this part of the story because they haven't figured out the Mando part of it. They haven't, right?
I think they might have been, like, this... The Mandalorian lore... honestly scared people. Where I'm like, as much as I did want them to push the narrative forward in Star Wars, I was happy that we weren't in Darksaber territory.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Grogu's character development?
I don't know, man. I think that's a bit of like, I'm thinking about Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness when I hear that. It's like, we go there, we're like, oh man, there's going to be all these people in the movie, and we leave the movie, and we're kind of like, eh, that's not what we wanted. I think that's on us, right? That's on us to manage our expectations.
Halfway through the movie, I'm sitting there, I'm like, Like, he mentions, like, the Gunrunner, right? Yeah. That comes in, and I'm like, do we know a Gunrunner? It's like, who's it going to be? Like, who's going to come out of that ship? And then it's nobody. It's just a robot. I'm kind of like, oh, they're not doing this. Uh-huh. They're not doing it. Yeah.
Like, it's not happening in this movie. I think that's fine. I think that's good.
But you want to know what Star Wars does it well, though. Not to bring it up, but I'm like, oh, Andor... does the great thing where it's just like, instead of doing like the Easter egg shit, we are going to make you care about the characters that we have on screen so much that you're like, no, no, no, no. This is about them. This is their world.
When I was watching Mandalorian Grogu, they still are doing like Zeb is a perfect example where if you're going to put Zeb in this film, we don't really get a sense about how that relationship came about. And we never actually get any sense of how, how the Mandalorian and Zeb, what their relationship is to each other.
It's just kind of like, if you watch Rebels, you're like, oh, I know that character. And I was just like, oh, I would have likened more of a beat to just be like, okay, what is this ship like? What is this new crew? What is this new team? And it is just kind of like, all right, here's a little cameo for you. Because Zeb pops in and out of the movie
without really doing anything he is there to pick up Mando and drop him off yeah he's just the chauffeur so that's the thing about oh my bad no no no you got it um like that's the thing about Andor is not you know Andor is a very desperate story and so when you make something like really desperate we talked about this kind of with the villain thing right um
we talk about like which maybe we didn't talk about this did we talk about this the villain thing we might have talked about that after the movie what conversation was that okay so I was having a conversation with people about like what makes a good villain right yeah and I thought I almost brought this up on the podcast we didn't talk about me talking to Jason Isaacs No. Okay.
No, you have mentioned this, though.
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Chapter 4: What are the standout moments from 'The Mandalorian and Grogu'?
We haven't talked about the goddamn terrifying snake dragon. Dragon snake. That was sick. The dragon snake. The poison. The poisonous, all of that stuff. There was plenty of things that happened in the movie, plenty of action, like Mando clearing out the entire club where he fucking knocks the guys worn off and stuff like that.
I like him driving. Dropping the salt in the drink. That was great.
There's plenty of stuff in this movie that happens that is a lot of fun. Scorsese's great. What happened? Martin Scorsese's great. Martin Scorsese's great. I don't want the money. I didn't tell you anything. He's funny in the movie. There's plenty of stuff in the movie to enjoy. I personally totally agree with the fact that that it feels like a television episode. Totally agree.
Not just one, but four. I totally agree with the fact that it feels like a television episode. I think to our larger conversations regarding Star Wars and fandom, um, you know, we litigate trailers based upon, oh, this is what we do now. The movie, before the movie comes out, we litigate trailers based on how we feel about the trailer.
We litigate trailer, how the trailer looks, how the casting it is, the this and the this, this and the that. And then we wonder why we can't fall into the movie anymore. Like, and it's not, it's still on the storytellers to make the story into something.
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Chapter 5: How do the characters of Din Djarin and Grogu deepen the Star Wars narrative?
But I will say that We can take a step back and breathe a little bit. This Mandalorian here, this character, Din Djarin, this character, this Mandalorian character, deepened the entire world of The Mandalorian for Star Wars live action. Through this character, we learned about the... Well, in live action, Justin. In live action.
We learned about sects. Clone Wars. Clone Wars and Clone Wars.
Yeah, it deepened things. Yeah, but in live action, for a lot of people who weren't on... We learned about... the creed, we learned about all of this. We saw somebody break all of the rules of his life to go and adopt a son and go around and choose that son over his creed. We watched that son shirk the Jedi and all of that stuff.
The world building that has existed to Star Wars prior to this has deepened the relationship of these two characters. Because Grogu doesn't just exist as an orphan, who Din Djarin picked up somewhere, Grogu is the orphan that rejected Luke Skywalker and the Jedi.
Din Djarin is the Mandalorian that rejected his creed and his past and who he was and being the wielder of the Darksaber to be a father. All of that foundation to me is the reason why these characters work together. And that's the end of my checks that I'm getting from Disney. No more for Michael Mouse? No more for Michael Mouse.
I just think, like, I came away from it, and it's not going to change the world. No, yeah. But, man, we can have fun with Star Wars. Like, the movie will give you permission to have fun.
It really does suck that almost every Star Wars thing becomes an existential, like, what's the state of fandom criticism, and why can't Star Wars just be fun again and stuff like that?
I mean, they did that in 2019.
They've done it forever, almost always since The Last Jedi and even before.
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Chapter 6: What criticisms are made about the current state of Star Wars films?
But this is like, it's a whole meta conversation. For sure. About how we talk about these things and how we watch these things. Because last year they came out divisive. They tried to go back. And it's probably single-handedly pro-Star Wars. I would go farther than that. I think it broke all of nerd media. I agree. We don't talk about these things normally anymore. I agree.
I think that single thing plus all of the putrid, woke, fucking... Not woke, but the people who hate woke. Oh, anti-woke. The anti-woke, all of that stuff. Sure, sure, sure. I think we in the dirt. Yeah. I think we in the dirt. And it sucks that it always happens when a Star Wars thing happens.
But I also just think this is... This is a business decision where I think Disney especially and a lot of these other companies were like, you guys want all of this all the time. And I think it cheapens Star Wars when... It cheapens Star Wars when we got too much of Star Wars. Whereas just like...
Yeah, the amount of movies they were pumping out and the amount of TV shows they were pumping out and getting Star Wars and streaming, it just, of course, people are going to complain about it more because it just becomes something that's constant. Same thing with Marvel. Marvel doesn't feel as special when you get... a new Marvel show every quarter.
I think the feeling that Star Wars and the MCU and DC are trying to recapture, it felt really special when we got a Star Wars movie because we didn't get that many of them. And it felt really special to get an MCU movie when you only might get one every year. When you're getting two every year and three or four shows...
And in a way, how cynical of us is it to be like, oh, so this is what you do with your first Star Wars movie after all this time? Make a fun and easy and breezy thing that's easily watchable for everybody to not be mad at? What the fuck?
If the movies was good, they can make six of them. Exactly. That's exactly what it was. Because in 2017, what did we get? We got... We got Thor, we got Thor Ragnarok. Then in February, we got February, 2018, we got Black Panther.
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Chapter 7: How do the hosts rank 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' among other Star Wars films?
And then in April, 2018, we got Infinity War. We was not like, man, this movie's coming out. Yeah, yeah. But here's the thing. And by the way, just to let you know, All the stuff that you're saying about the rarity of Star Wars movies is cool. That's true. But the prequels came out. George did what he wanted to do on the prequels. He told the story that he wanted to.
Maybe George told a story from a directing and from a writing standpoint that was maybe past his expertise at that point in his career. But he made the movies he wanted to make with the CGI that he wanted to use. And people still went nuts. We just didn't have Twitter.
like yeah like like people people know but here's the thing we were pissed off about one movie now we are pissed off about a movie and a tv show it is like people are mad at the acolyte but they're also mad at last jedi but they're also mad at this and i was just like yeah it's i actually don't think that it is as long as the movies are good no one would care because it's like i don't think you can make
this amount of movies and them all be good because it's really really difficult not only to make a movie but to make a movie about these beloved characters it just it's not like right it's it's nearly impossible which is why when they make a bad one it behooves you not to take it so personal because because because he's right because like because he's right he's right
You make three movies, and then you wait 30 years to get three more, right? When the three came after that, it took us a while to even get into the fact that they was bad. We didn't even believe the fact that a Star Wars movie could be bad. Could be bad, yeah. You know what I'm saying? And then I'm still not sure about how I feel about Phantom Menace. I can't look at it as bad. It's too much.
Really? Yeah, it's tough. It's tough for me to look at it as bad. The experience around going to see it, what happens in the Duel of the Fates to Charles' point. There's so much stuff that's happening. I was with Marie Routt. We were watching the movie. I had already seen it, and I just remember her going, how are they moving so fast? And I just laughed. I was like, they're using the force.
And she was like, what is the force? I was like, okay, time to shut it up now. Respectfully. Respectfully. I don't talk to women like that. So all of that stuff is difficult, but I understand that. But if you make more of the stuff, yes, more of it's going to be bad. More decisions that are going to be made that are not going to fly with you. I indict myself...
These things are storytelling decisions that either you love or you don't love. What they can't be every time they're not right is an affront to your childhood or a sign that this stuff needs to exist in a very specific bucket. The MCU, maybe not Star Wars, but the MCU was at its peak before television. Television, to Charles' point, still has a lot to prove, but the MCU, to its point, was...
you
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