The Mandalorian Season 2

[Mechalich]

Spoiler

Show

I don't think it has a lot of plotting problems, but I wholly agree on the tracking fobs. They shouldn't have had them to start with; they're bounty hunters, not the main characters in Mandalorian: The Game playing on Easy mode.

Some sort of futuristic tracking technology makes sense in the contact of Star Wars, at least for fugitives who have previously been in the custody of the authorities. I mean, various governments use tracking devices on prisoners - like ankle monitoring bracelets - right now. The fobs appear to be a short-range device that keys of some kind of biosignature possessed by the target. They probably don't work if you don't know what star system your target is in. This actually helps justify why the Mando says he has to keep moving fast to avoid detection - if he stays in once place long enough tracking fobs become effective.

It seems, well, extremely unlikely, that anyone involved in the Mandalorian had the power to prevent the President of Lucasfilm from visiting if she wanted to.

Jon Favreau has a lot, and I do mean a lot, of leverage with Disney higher ups through the Marvel franchise and also through Jungle Book and other projects. While something like a formal ban from the set would never happen - no one would put something like that in writing - Favreau absolutely has the power to play hardball office politics with regard to a project like The Mandalorian if he wants to. After all, while Kathleen Kennedy may be his boss on paper, Favreau is significantly more famous (playing Happy Hogan in a bunch of Marvel films does wonders for a director's public visibility) and significantly popular with the relevant fan groups. This becomes doubly true if Kennedy is a lame duck in her current position (her contract ends in 2021, so far there has been absolutely no public mention of any sort of extension) or if Disney has any desire or hope of getting Favreau to actually direct a Star Wars feature film at some point in the future (which, let's not kid ourselves, of course they do).

I have no idea what the actual working relationship between Favreau and Kennedy is like or how contentious it might be, and the truth is probably impossible to discover given that it is absolutely in Disney's interest to minimize such things publicly, but the bottom line is that if Favreau and Kennedy had a hugely public fight over the direction of the Mandalorian as a show, Favreau would almost certainly win the public opinion battle. That gives him implicit authority to push back hard against any suggestions from above that he doesn't like.

[Peelee]

Some sort of futuristic tracking technology makes sense in the contact of Star Wars, at least for fugitives who have previously been in the custody of the authorities. I mean, various governments use tracking devices on prisoners - like ankle monitoring bracelets - right now. The fobs appear to be a short-range device that keys of some kind of biosignature possessed by the target. They probably don't work if you don't know what star system your target is in. This actually helps justify why the Mando says he has to keep moving fast to avoid detection - if he stays in once place long enough tracking fobs become effective.

It would make sense, if such people being tracked had a tracking device on them (which we see work effectively in S1E6). But just being able to track based on who they are? Silly.

Jon Favreau has a lot, and I do mean a lot, of leverage with Disney higher ups through the Marvel franchise and also through Jungle Book and other projects. While something like a formal ban from the set would never happen - no one would put something like that in writing - Favreau absolutely has the power to play hardball office politics with regard to a project like The Mandalorian if he wants to. After all, while Kathleen Kennedy may be his boss on paper, Favreau is significantly more famous (playing Happy Hogan in a bunch of Marvel films does wonders for a director's public visibility) and significantly popular with the relevant fan groups.

Disney: "Well, Kathleen Kennedy produced E.T. Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Twister, and The Sixth Sense, and executive/associate produced Poltergeist, The Goonies, the entire Back to the Future trilogy, and Schindler's List. But Jon Favreau played Happy in Iron Man, so that works out about equal, right?"

I'm not saying that Favreau doesn't have his own chops (and deserve them) behind the camera. I am saying that I sincerely doubt that Disney thought "they are both enormous players in Hollywood but Kennedy wasn't onscreen in The Avengers so sucks to be her."

[Mechalich]

Disney: "Well, Kathleen Kennedy produced E.T. Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Twister, and The Sixth Sense, and executive/associate produced Poltergeist, The Goonies, the entire Back to the Future trilogy, and Schindler's List. But Jon Favreau played Happy in Iron Man, so that works out about equal, right?"

I'm not saying that Favreau doesn't have his own chops (and deserve them) behind the camera. I am saying that I sincerely doubt that Disney thought "they are both enormous players in Hollywood but Kennedy wasn't onscreen in The Avengers so sucks to be her."

The general public doesn't know who Kathleen Kennedy is. They wouldn't recognize a picture of her. The role of producers, while fundamentally important to film making on the business side, simply isn't a very public one. It's actually the case that the majority of people who know anything about Kathleen Kennedy in the general public are hardcore Star Wars fans who loathe her (and have been calling for her to be fired for years now). By contrast, Favreau has a much higher public profile and is generally well thought of by fans in the greater nerd culture and film buff sphere.

It doesn't matter what Disney thinks internally or what Kathleen Kennedy's actual producing chops are with regard to a fight in the court of pubic opinion. What matters is what the perception is and what the approval or disapproval of fans will have on the bottom line. Kathleen Kennedy has an immense, and by all accounts well-deserved cachet with career Hollywood insiders and old hands in the business. That's the kind of reputation that allowed her to bring in someone as high-profile as Ron Howard to try to save Solo at the last minute. That's important, but it doesn't play well publicly. With regard to Star Wars Kennedy also managed to acquire, in the eyes of a very significant segment of the fandom, responsibility for many of the failures (whether real or perceived) of the Sequel Trilogy, in large part because she went with a multiple director approach. If Abrams had directed all three films and they'd all been awful he would be the focus of fan ire and Kennedy's position would be stronger, but that didn't happen, and Kennedy made a point of defending directorial choices in the ST rather than taking the option to throw Rian Johnson under the buss, which served to push the buck up to her.

Ultimately the point is that if, and I'm not saying this happened just evaluating the hypothetical, if Favreau got annoyed with some suggestion from Kennedy regarding the Mandalorian Season 2 he absolutely has the power to go over her head to Bob Iger or some other high-level Disney exec and say 'I'm not doing the show unless Kennedy backs off' and win. Would that involve burning some bridges? Yes, it absolutely would, but it still could happen, and if Kennedy is leaving Lucasfilm ten months from now, the number of fiery spans is considerably reduced.

[Peelee]

The general public doesn't know who Kathleen Kennedy is. They wouldn't recognize a picture of her. The role of producers, while fundamentally important to film making on the business side, simply isn't a very public one. It's actually the case that the majority of people who know anything about Kathleen Kennedy in the general public are hardcore Star Wars fans who loathe her (and have been calling for her to be fired for years now). By contrast, Favreau has a much higher public profile and is generally well thought of by fans in the greater nerd culture and film buff sphere.

It doesn't matter what Disney thinks internally or what Kathleen Kennedy's actual producing chops are with regard to a fight in the court of pubic opinion. What matters is what the perception is and what the approval or disapproval of fans will have on the bottom line. Kathleen Kennedy has an immense, and by all accounts well-deserved cachet with career Hollywood insiders and old hands in the business. That's the kind of reputation that allowed her to bring in someone as high-profile as Ron Howard to try to save Solo at the last minute. That's important, but it doesn't play well publicly. With regard to Star Wars Kennedy also managed to acquire, in the eyes of a very significant segment of the fandom, responsibility for many of the failures (whether real or perceived) of the Sequel Trilogy, in large part because she went with a multiple director approach. If Abrams had directed all three films and they'd all been awful he would be the focus of fan ire and Kennedy's position would be stronger, but that didn't happen, and Kennedy made a point of defending directorial choices in the ST rather than taking the option to throw Rian Johnson under the buss, which served to push the buck up to her.

Ultimately the point is that if, and I'm not saying this happened just evaluating the hypothetical, if Favreau got annoyed with some suggestion from Kennedy regarding the Mandalorian Season 2 he absolutely has the power to go over her head to Bob Iger or some other high-level Disney exec and say 'I'm not doing the show unless Kennedy backs off' and win. Would that involve burning some bridges? Yes, it absolutely would, but it still could happen, and if Kennedy is leaving Lucasfilm ten months from now, the number of fiery spans is considerably reduced.

So the point is that Kathleen Kennedy is so unknown to the general public that, despite being the President of Lucasfilm, she was not allowed to be involved in a Star Wars project because of the public sentiment? The same public that by and large has no idea who she is?

That's certainly an interesting theory.

ETA: Five years ago, the general public wouldn't know who Harvey Weinstein was. They would not have recognized him in public. None of that would have had any effect on how influential he was, because that's not how Hollywood works. That's not how companies in general work.

[Mechalich]

So the point is that Kathleen Kennedy is so unknown to the general public that, despite being the President of Lucasfilm, she was not allowed to be involved in a Star Wars project because of the public sentiment? The same public that by and large has no idea who she is?

Kennedy's role or non-role in The Mandalorian has nothing to do with public sentiment. Public sentiment has everything to do with Jon Favreau's ability as the director and showrunner or the Mandalorian to buck control by Kennedy, his nominal boss, if he wishes. There's no allowed involved. No one is writing orders banning Kathleen Kennedy from the set of Mandalorian. This is all about who has leverage in internal office and production power struggles irrespective of official positions within the company.

ETA: Five years ago, the general public wouldn't know who Harvey Weinstein was. They would not have recognized him in public. None of that would have had any effect on how influential he was, because that's not how Hollywood works. That's not how companies in general work.

The relative influence of actors and directors had a massive influence on how much control they had to cede to Harvey Weinstein (and Miramax generally) on any given project, and almost certainly on whether certain projects got greenlit at all.


Directors fight with producers/executives all the time we just usually only find out about it during the rare cases that it escalates to someone leaving a project or a project being killed. Kathleen Kennedy successfully fired Lord & Miller as directors for Solo in 2017 over the usual 'irreconcilable creative differences.' Her position was significantly stronger at that time and Lord & Miller are significantly lower profile than Favreau. Also, with two seasons in the books there's already a commitment, executive control of creators always diminishes over time in long-running successful projects. If she fired Favreau for the same reason - essentially refusing to bend the Mandalorian in some direction she mandated - the fan outcry would be insane (and, let's be honest, horrible and unworthy and absolutely out of scale with the real life importance a space fantasy TV series, but that's fandom these days). There would be a massive campaign to fire Kennedy, rehire Favreau, and have Bob Iger publicly apologize. Boycotts would be threatened, youtubers would burn Baby Yoda merc in vids, and the controversy would probably move beyond the realm of entertainment news to feature on the major news networks.

This would obviously be terrible for Disney, so it won't happen, and because everyone knows it won't happen this increases the independence of the creative team. That doesn't mean Kathleen Kennedy is getting banned from a production set, but it does mean Jon Favreau could say something to her in a closed door meeting along the lines of "Look, we've got a really busy filming schedule and executive visits disrupt that, so it'd be better if we keep our meetings in office rather than on set for a while," and that she would feel obligated to respect that. That's hardly 'banned' but I can absolutely see how it could move through the rumor mill and onto youtube with that interpretation.

[AdmiralCheez]

Regarding the tracking fobs, I seem to remember way back in the old days of the Star Wars Galaxies MMO, bounty hunter players could buy and use class-specific probe droids that would seek out their target and ping the direction they were in as long as you were on the same planet. I feel like if they mentioned droid trackers or some kind of other device, like biosensors in doorways or something, that could tie in to the tracker fob network, it would be more believable. But as is, those things are just a little too powerful for my taste.

I mean, even Darth Maul used tracker probe droids in Phantom Menace. Surely they could have done something similar here?

[Peelee]

Kennedy's role or non-role in The Mandalorian has nothing to do with public sentiment. Public sentiment has everything to do with Jon Favreau's ability as the director and showrunner or the Mandalorian to buck control by Kennedy, his nominal boss, if he wishes. There's no allowed involved. No one is writing orders banning Kathleen Kennedy from the set of Mandalorian. This is all about who has leverage in internal office and production power struggles irrespective of official positions within the company.

A.) To the best of my understanding, Kennedy is not his nominal boss. Kennedy is his boss, full stop. He could go over her head, as she not the top of the food chain, but that would not make her nominal.
2.) This entire idea is predicated on the idea that he became so upset at his boss, who directly gave him the show he's working on, for vague reasons, that he had her banned from interaction with the show. This has come from zero reputable sources except people who blame her for movies they did not like.

You'll forgive me if I dismiss any such claims on their face. The alternate, of course, would be for me to begin making up my own wild claims with no solid basis based on my personal feelings towards specific pieces of media, because at that point why the hell not.

Directors fight with producers/executives all the time we just usually only find out about it during the rare cases that it escalates to someone leaving a project or a project being killed. Kathleen Kennedy successfully fired Lord & Miller as directors for Solo in 2017 over the usual 'irreconcilable creative differences.' Her position was significantly stronger at that time and Lord & Miller are significantly lower profile than Favreau.

Or, her position was significantly strong because she's the President of Lucasfilm.

[Sapphire Guard]

Spoiler: MANDALORIAN

Show

Tracking tech itself is a problem only because it takes a big chunk of the skill out of bounty hunting.

But why this is a plot problem is that we know that the Yodaling can be tracked by it. And yet in Episodes 7 and 8 the plan is to pretend that Yodaling is in his floating crib, when that is very easily disproven if anyone in that town has a Yodaling fob, of which the Imperials have at least one and everyone in the bounty hunting guild was given one. Said town is the local headquarters of the bounty hunting guild.

It never comes up, because the writers wrote themselves into a corner and had to forget the tech existed in order to not break the story.

The reason for the fobs is so Mando can identify his target without knowing anything about it, preserving the Yodaling reveal, without thinking ahead to how that affects the plot later on.

It's a massive and basic failure in plotting the story.

[Hopeless]

sort of like a similar problem this season.

Spoiler

Show

Adding a line where Greef Karga arranges for whatever Baby Yoda had been tagged by to be safely removed and left in the crib to fool any fobs on Navarro.
Thus when those scout troopers notice that friend of Din's riding away carrying something they get orders to intercept discovering he's carrying Baby Yoda and return with the child but don't notify Moff Gideon so he knows where the child is unless I missed that revelation in chapter 8?

Regarding this season they only needed the Frog Lady to use her makeshift translator to reveal she did notice the missing eggs and used the Razorcrest's sensors to find that spa so she could double check the canister by hand thus explaining that scene and eventually that Baby Yoda using the force to discern which eggs he could consume without harming the viable ones.

Same sort of problem

Well anyone want to guess where they go from here?

Spoiler

Show

Will Din leave Baby Yoda with Ahsoka and its revealed he still has the tracking beacon so Moff Gideon easily locates them on Corvus?

Or will Moff Gideon deploy the Dark Troopers?

Or should that be AND...

[Wraith]

Spoiler: What happens next?

Show

I feel confident in saying that Mando will probably not hand the Child over to Ahsoka, for a variety of reasons.

Primarily because he's about to find out that "the race of sorcerers... called Jedi" is not in fact a race but a creed, just like being a Mandalorian. This presents two problems; Ahsoka isn't a Jedi so she couldn't take the Child in that respect, and also because the Child has not been inducted into the creed so it isn't a Jedi either. They're not "it's people" in any sense of the word.

So far he has been preparing himself to return the Child to what he has been told are the enemies of his people because "it's the right thing to do", but if the kid isn't a Jedi then it will mean that he's handing an innocent over to his 'enemies' instead. I don't think that will happen.

Whether or not he decides to expand his search to finding the Child's race, or by deciding to see it raised as a Mandolorian instead (it's an orphan rescued by a Child of the Watch after all, so why not?) I'm not sure. He'll probably attempt the former and change his mind at some point I imagine, since that's a reliable cliche.

Short term... I expect that Din will meet Ahsoka, find out that Jedi aren't what he thinks they are, and then the Death Troopers will burst in and finally get their hands on the Child so that Mando has to team up with his inherited enemy to perform a rescue, because Ahsoka would want to see successfully force-sensitive Storm Troopers even less than he would.
This will be how Din crosses paths with Gideon again and gets to see the Dark Sabre for the first time - probably getting his ass kicked until later, when he calls in the Night Owls for backup as he now knows where Bo'Katan can find her nemesis.

Just a guess, of course.

[Tyndmyr]

It seems, well, extremely unlikely, that anyone involved in the Mandalorian had the power to prevent the President of Lucasfilm from visiting if she wanted to.

Spoiler: Mandalorian

Show

Mando has significant plotting problems, to be honest. They introduce that tracking fob early on, and then have to completely forget about it because it's story breaking once it moves beyond the early episodes, because it means Baby Yodaling should've been easy for Gideon to find in the finale.

That's a very basic failure.

Eh, I have a counter-argument for that.

Spoiler

Show

Mando is very familiar with such tracking, and knows best how to avoid it. In particular, he keeps moving frequently, and may have some countermeasures. This doesn't entirely address it, because the show doesn't show what those countermeasures might be, but if anyone would be familiar with the bounty hunter tracking system, it would be bounty hunters. It also doesn't seem that non-bounty hunters have access to that system.

Disney: "Well, Kathleen Kennedy produced E.T. Jurassic Park, The Color Purple, Twister, and The Sixth Sense, and executive/associate produced Poltergeist, The Goonies, the entire Back to the Future trilogy, and Schindler's List. But Jon Favreau played Happy in Iron Man, so that works out about equal, right?"

I'm not saying that Favreau doesn't have his own chops (and deserve them) behind the camera. I am saying that I sincerely doubt that Disney thought "they are both enormous players in Hollywood but Kennedy wasn't onscreen in The Avengers so sucks to be her."

Associate producer credits mean pretty much crap nowadays. It's a role given out extremely commonly, and often to people who didn't touch the film at all, but may have helped in other ways, such as providing money.

You've also got to consider that many of those credits are shared. Jurassic Park was a great film, but she wasn't the sole producer. Kennedy was a protege of Spielberg, and Spielberg was quite successful. That gave her career a big launch, but without him, she hasn't been nearly so successful.

And that list is old. Hotness in hollywood is extremely often influenced by recent successes, with multi-decade old things getting a lot less buzz. If your last four films are flops, that's a rough stretch even for someone who did great in the eighties and early nineties.

So the point is that Kathleen Kennedy is so unknown to the general public that, despite being the President of Lucasfilm, she was not allowed to be involved in a Star Wars project because of the public sentiment? The same public that by and large has no idea who she is?

What recognition she has is almost solely in relationship to the failed movies. This *is* recognition, but a lot of that sentiment is negative.

And it's not so much that she's actually not allowed, as that hollywood politics are a thing, and a formal position isn't everything. I'm sure she had formal power to go wherever, but in practice, it does not appear that she was personally heavily involved in the Mandalorian, while she was involved at least with the promotional side of the films, participating in photo ops with the cast and such.

A.) To the best of my understanding, Kennedy is not his nominal boss. Kennedy is his boss, full stop. He could go over her head, as she not the top of the food chain, but that would not make her nominal.
2.) This entire idea is predicated on the idea that he became so upset at his boss, who directly gave him the show he's working on, for vague reasons, that he had her banned from interaction with the show. This has come from zero reputable sources except people who blame her for movies they did not like.

Chains of authority are more rigid lower in society. If you're working retail and you're late for shift without calling in, your boss will probably be grumpy and get on you. At higher tiers, the talent is often less replaceable than management, and management requests are literally that. Top tier actors and directors wield a great deal more power than even most folks working similar jobs.

This ain't walmart, and it doesn't work on walmart rules.

[Dire_Flumph]

Eh, I have a counter-argument for that.

Spoiler

Show

Mando is very familiar with such tracking, and knows best how to avoid it. In particular, he keeps moving frequently, and may have some countermeasures. This doesn't entirely address it, because the show doesn't show what those countermeasures might be, but if anyone would be familiar with the bounty hunter tracking system, it would be bounty hunters. It also doesn't seem that non-bounty hunters have access to that system.

Spoiler: Just to be safe, talking about episode 1, season 1

Show

According to the info on tracking fobs on Wookiepedia, they are short range, but have all the subjects biometric data in them, and that's what they use to track and confirm targets. So depending on what "Biometric data" is tracked, something in that data would have to be altered on the child (stims that affect his heart rate or body temperature in a non-intrusive fashion for example).

Really this was just bad planning on the writer's part though, not thinking through how this affects the setting they're writing in, which is likely was why it was dropped. I think we should just take the MST Mantra and assume the tracking data from the fob is now somehow invalid.

Sort of like Hyperspace Tracking (quickly exits.....)

[Peelee]

Eh, I have a counter-argument for that.

Spoiler: Kathleen Kennedy

Show

Associate producer credits mean pretty much crap nowadays. It's a role given out extremely commonly, and often to people who didn't touch the film at all, but may have helped in other ways, such as providing money.

You've also got to consider that many of those credits are shared. Jurassic Park was a great film, but she wasn't the sole producer. Kennedy was a protege of Spielberg, and Spielberg was quite successful. That gave her career a big launch, but without him, she hasn't been nearly so successful.

And that list is old. Hotness in hollywood is extremely often influenced by recent successes, with multi-decade old things getting a lot less buzz. If your last four films are flops, that's a rough stretch even for someone who did great in the eighties and early nineties.



What recognition she has is almost solely in relationship to the failed movies. This *is* recognition, but a lot of that sentiment is negative.

And it's not so much that she's actually not allowed, as that hollywood politics are a thing, and a formal position isn't everything. I'm sure she had formal power to go wherever, but in practice, it does not appear that she was personally heavily involved in the Mandalorian, while she was involved at least with the promotional side of the films, participating in photo ops with the cast and such.



Chains of authority are more rigid lower in society. If you're working retail and you're late for shift without calling in, your boss will probably be grumpy and get on you. At higher tiers, the talent is often less replaceable than management, and management requests are literally that. Top tier actors and directors wield a great deal more power than even most folks working similar jobs.

This ain't walmart, and it doesn't work on walmart rules.

Spoilering mine, for length. Generally, I'm familiar with all of that (even though several parts are debatable). My overall point is that Kathleen Kennedy is not middle management who doesn't know what she is doing. She has a lengthy record of successful and influential work spanning four decades and occupies a high-level management position (again, President of Lucasfilm). The only theories I have seen suggesting she is being blockaded out of her own company's show in the second season despite not being blockaded out after the first season which has been massively successful, by the show runner that she hired going over to the CEO of Disney and issuing an ultimatum, are entirely coming from people who didn't like the movies after the Disney purchase.

Such theories are on the same level as articles from the National Enquirer (or The Sun for those across the pond). The sequel trilogy was hot garbage, yes, but buying into wild claims about the inner workings of Lucasfilm and Disney internal corporate business and politics is a bridge too far for me.

Wookiepedia

Wookieepedia. 2 E's.

[Fyraltari]

Sort of like Hyperspace Tracking (quickly exits.....)

That hasn't been dropped, though?

[Peelee]

That hasn't been dropped, though?

No, but it's a good twenty or so years out by The Mandalorian's timeline.

[Dire_Flumph]

That hasn't been dropped, though?

It hasn't been mentioned since though, even in Episode IX when it really should have been (either the filmed version, or the original Treverrow treatment). Edit: I don't recall them mentioning it at all in Resistance Reborn either.

Spoiler: Episode IX

Show

Example, when the Falcon escapes from the First Order, Hux mentions he disabled the "impeders", but not tracking. Which would have been a pretty important consideration.

The fact that they didn't even try to justify not having it in this film means they are likely just ignoring it from this point on.
Edit: Even Wookiepedia's list of mentions of Hyperspace Tracking only lists Episode VIII and the Rogue One mention. None of the EU works have acknowledged it since.

I'd be shocked if anyone brings it up again.

[Petrocorus]

Spoilering mine, for length. Generally, I'm familiar with all of that (even though several parts are debatable). My overall point is that Kathleen Kennedy is not middle management who doesn't know what she is doing. She has a lengthy record of successful and influential work spanning four decades and occupies a high-level management position (again, President of Lucasfilm).

A lot of your points are right, but i'd like to point out that, AFAIK, during her successful career, she was never number 1, always someone else's number 2.
Maybe she reached her level of incompetence as president of Lucasfilm, and the higher-ups at Disney are now understanding it.

I heard the same rumors that she was banned from the set of Mandalorian, whether they are right or false, i won't surmise.

But i also heard rumors there war some kind of cold war inside Lucasfilm and that some people were struggling to get Favreau to be the next president of Lucasfilm.
Once again, i won't judge the level of veracity of this. But given the movies were not as successful as could be expected (and i stand by this point), that a lot of fans are blaming her, that some parts of merchandising have been declining in sells since late 2019, and that her contract end in 2021, it is plausible the higher-ups are considering it.

[Peelee]

I would have no problem with Favreau running Lucasfilm (and would be excited for it). I just put zero stock in those "internal war" rumors.

[Fyraltari]

It hasn't been mentioned since though, even in Episode IX when it really should have been (either the filmed version, or the original Treverrow treatment). Edit: I don't recall them mentioning it at all in Resistance Reborn either.

Spoiler: Episode IX

Show

Example, when the Falcon escapes from the First Order, Hux mentions he disabled the "impeders", but not tracking. Which would have been a pretty important consideration.

Spoiler

Show

There's the whole hyperspace chase scene at the beginning.

[Peelee]

Spoiler

Show

There's the whole hyperspace chase scene at the beginning.

I am upset that you reminded me about that scene. Just, like, in general.

[Dire_Flumph]

Spoiler

Show

There's the whole hyperspace chase scene at the beginning.

Spoiler: Lightspeed Skipping

Show

1. Is a completely *separate* mess as far as the rules of hyperspace go.

2. Doesn't follow any of the rules of Hyperspace tracking set up in the Last Jedi, so I'm not sure why you think it's an acknowledgement of it.

3. It's not clear what the hell is actually happening in that scene *at all* or how to square it with how hyperspace has been shown to work in any prior movie.

4. "Lightspeed Skipping" will probably also never be mentioned again in the canon.

I am upset that you reminded me about that scene. Just, like, in general.

A-men!

[Fyraltari]

Spoiler: Lightspeed Skipping

Show

1. Is a completely *separate* mess as far as the rules of hyperspace go.

2. Doesn't follow any of the rules of Hyperspace tracking set up in the Last Jedi, so I'm not sure why you think it's an acknowledgement of it.

3. It's not clear what the hell is actually happening in that scene *at all* or how to square it with how hyperspace has been shown to work in any prior movie.

4. "Lightspeed Skipping" will probably also never be mentioned again in the canon.

A-men!

Spoiler

Show

Well, it's been a while but doesn't that scene consists entirely of the Falcon jumoing from planet to planet with FO ships in hot pursuit? To know where they are they'd need to track them, no?

[Dire_Flumph]

Spoiler

Show

Well, it's been a while but doesn't that scene consists entirely of the Falcon jumoing from planet to planet with FO ships in hot pursuit? To know where they are they'd need to track them, no?

Honestly? It's hard to say. Here's why:

Spoiler: My analysis of Lightspeed Skipping vs Hyperspace Tracking

Show

We see the Falcon go into the Jump Streaks, then the Hyperspace Swirl, then a few seconds later back to real space. The first jump has them pointed towards what looks like space before jumping. On subsequent jumps we skip the few seconds and they're just instantly somewhere else. Audibly, the only reference to what happens is that Poe calls it "Lightspeed Skipping".

Problem: Hoo boy, where to start. Hyperspace isn't teleportation. In every other instance that's not a video game, Hyperspace trips take at least several minutes at minimum and implied to be on the order of hours or days. If one were to try to reasonably fit this into how we've seen this work before then, the conclusion is that they're jumping a very short distance (Especially since there's no talk of calculating Hyperspace routes and Poe seems to be eyeballing it). Given the direction the Falcon is pointing in on the first jump, I'd assume they jumped to a moon around the planet they were on or some similar distance. Therefore Hyperspace Tracking wouldn't even be necessary at that point. Regular sensors would do the trick just fine.

The problem is, the FO TIEs following them aren't even "tracking" them. They are jumping at the same time and arriving at the same time. This is what I mean by I have no idea what's going on here. The only thing that makes any sense is that they hacked (sliced?) into the Falcon's navicomputer and were pulling destinations the same time the Falcon was making them. But again, that would be different than the tracking we saw in the Last Jedi.

In the Last Jedi, we have a grand total of one instance where we saw tracking in action, but the Resistance fleet jumped, and it was at least several minutes later (enough time for Hux's emasculating call from the boss to explain about the tracking) before the First Order fleet jumped to follow. I take this to mean that "Hyperspace Tracking" is a combination of hyper-acute sensors being very accurate about the jump vectors, followed with powerful brute-force number crunching to get a very accurate guess where they went. It doesn't track with the Ep IX opening at all.

[Peelee]

Honestly? It's hard to say. Here's why:

Spoiler: My analysis of Lightspeed Skipping vs Hyperspace Tracking

Show

We see the Falcon go into the Jump Streaks, then the Hyperspace Swirl, then a few seconds later back to real space. The first jump has them pointed towards what looks like space before jumping. On subsequent jumps we skip the few seconds and they're just instantly somewhere else. Audibly, the only reference to what happens is that Poe calls it "Lightspeed Skipping".

Problem: Hoo boy, where to start. Hyperspace isn't teleportation. In every other instance that's not a video game, Hyperspace trips take at least several minutes at minimum and implied to be on the order of hours or days. If one were to try to reasonably fit this into how we've seen this work before then, the conclusion is that they're jumping a very short distance (Especially since there's no talk of calculating Hyperspace routes and Poe seems to be eyeballing it). Given the direction the Falcon is pointing in on the first jump, I'd assume they jumped to a moon around the planet they were on or some similar distance. Therefore Hyperspace Tracking wouldn't even be necessary at that point. Regular sensors would do the trick just fine.

The problem is, the FO TIEs following them aren't even "tracking" them. They are jumping at the same time and arriving at the same time. This is what I mean by I have no idea what's going on here. The only thing that makes any sense is that they hacked (sliced?) into the Falcon's navicomputer and were pulling destinations the same time the Falcon was making them. But again, that would be different than the tracking we saw in the Last Jedi.

In the Last Jedi, we have a grand total of one instance where we saw tracking in action, but the Resistance fleet jumped, and it was at least several minutes later (enough time for Hux's emasculating call from the boss to explain about the tracking) before the First Order fleet jumped to follow. I take this to mean that "Hyperspace Tracking" is a combination of hyper-acute sensors being very accurate about the jump vectors, followed with powerful brute-force number crunching to get a very accurate guess where they went. It doesn't track with the Ep IX opening at all.

Tl;dr - J. J. Abrams has zero sense of scale.

[Fyraltari]

Honestly? It's hard to say. Here's why:

Spoiler: My analysis of Lightspeed Skipping vs Hyperspace Tracking

Show

We see the Falcon go into the Jump Streaks, then the Hyperspace Swirl, then a few seconds later back to real space. The first jump has them pointed towards what looks like space before jumping. On subsequent jumps we skip the few seconds and they're just instantly somewhere else. Audibly, the only reference to what happens is that Poe calls it "Lightspeed Skipping".

Problem: Hoo boy, where to start. Hyperspace isn't teleportation. In every other instance that's not a video game, Hyperspace trips take at least several minutes at minimum and implied to be on the order of hours or days. If one were to try to reasonably fit this into how we've seen this work before then, the conclusion is that they're jumping a very short distance (Especially since there's no talk of calculating Hyperspace routes and Poe seems to be eyeballing it). Given the direction the Falcon is pointing in on the first jump, I'd assume they jumped to a moon around the planet they were on or some similar distance. Therefore Hyperspace Tracking wouldn't even be necessary at that point. Regular sensors would do the trick just fine.

The problem is, the FO TIEs following them aren't even "tracking" them. They are jumping at the same time and arriving at the same time. This is what I mean by I have no idea what's going on here. The only thing that makes any sense is that they hacked (sliced?) into the Falcon's navicomputer and were pulling destinations the same time the Falcon was making them. But again, that would be different than the tracking we saw in the Last Jedi.

In the Last Jedi, we have a grand total of one instance where we saw tracking in action, but the Resistance fleet jumped, and it was at least several minutes later (enough time for Hux's emasculating call from the boss to explain about the tracking) before the First Order fleet jumped to follow. I take this to mean that "Hyperspace Tracking" is a combination of hyper-acute sensors being very accurate about the jump vectors, followed with powerful brute-force number crunching to get a very accurate guess where they went. It doesn't track with the Ep IX opening at all.

Spoiler

Show

Travel time seems to be dependent on distance, even in hyperspace, maybe jumping to planets orbiting neighboring stars would be almost instantaneous. It seems to me that "lightspeeding skipping" is just a way to say "go in and out of hypersapce in very quick fashion several time in a row", let's not forget that "hyperspace jumping" and "lightspeed" are used interchangeably throughout the franchise. The FO was slower in TLJ but that can be easily explained by the the fact that they needed to co-ordiante the jump of an entire fleet (including gathering non-hyperspace capable vessels, such as most TIE) not a single squadron.

Tl;dr - J. J. Abrams has zero sense of scale.

Sense of scale has always been optionial when it comes to star wars. It really has never been hard sci-fi.

[Peelee]

Sense of scale has always been optionial when it comes to star wars. It really has never been hard sci-fi.

It doesn't need to be hard sci-fi to have a sense of scale. Or keep to an already established sense of scale. "Pilot is better than every other pilot ever including Jedi and also the new death star is also a planet and also it can shoot across the galaxy and also it can shoot a bunch of targets at once and also this one guy can react faster than the speed of light and also... "

That's not "Eh it's not hard sci-fi". That's ****ing ridiculus.

And hey, if yiu want more evidence, Abrams also took on the Star Trek universe, which is supposed to be hard sci-fi. And would ya look at that, no sense of scale at all.

[Fyraltari]

It doesn't need to be hard sci-fi to have a sense of scale. Or keep to an already established sense of scale. "Pilot is better than every other pilot ever including Jedi and also the new death star is also a planet and also it can shoot across the galaxy and also it can shoot a bunch of targets at once and also this one guy can react faster than the speed of light and also... "

That's not "Eh it's not hard sci-fi". That's ****ing ridiculus.

And hey, if yiu want more evidence, Abrams also took on the Star Trek universe, which is supposed to be hard sci-fi. And would ya look at that, no sense of scale at all.

Since we were talking about speed and distances and such, I assume that was what you were referring to. An area in which SW has sorely been lacking since always. SW's worldbuilding has absolutely no scale; 10,000 Jedi and 1,000,000 clones (with 200,000 more on the way) being all that a galaxy needs is another example. While a setting does not need to be hard sci-fi to care about these kind of things, it needs to do so to be hard sci-fi, hence my comment.

The problem you ascribe to Abrams (which is true insofar as the sT is concerned, I can' talk for the rest of his fimography) sounds more like a power escalation issue to me.

[Peelee]

Since we were talking about speed and distances and such, I assume that was what you were referring to. An area in which SW has sorely been lacking since always. SW's worldbuilding has absolutely no scale; 10,000 Jedi and 1,000,000 clones (with 200,000 more on the way) being all that a galaxy needs is another example.

SW worldbuilding did have scale. It's just the sequels (and prequels, as you point out, but it's not as constant in the prequels) ignore the previously established scale. Lucas ignored his own scale with the ridiculous clone trooper counts. Abrams ignored established scale is many, many more things (this being unrelated to power creep).

Even the movies I like such as Rogue One, fall prey to this and I have complained about it. But there's a differenve between doing it a few times and doing it constantly. Abrams figures if it's worth doing, it's worth doing incessantly. Ignoring scale in his Star Wars movies is like lens flare in his Star Trek movies. Sure, it's a thing that people do. But he never stops doing it.

[Petrocorus]

Tl;dr - J. J. Abrams has zero sense of scale.

In his defence on this particular point, SW hyperspace speed had been more dependant on the requirements of the plot than on distance between planets since at least the prequels.
TCW has a good number of episodes where hyperspace travels look quasi-instantaneous, or at least fast enough that travelling from the outer rim to Coruscant is a matter of minutes. Rebels has a few.

JJA certainly pushed it up to eleven, and the scene doesn't make sense anyway (jumping in the middle of a city in itself), and is inconsistent with what we've seen of hyperspace so far, but SW writers in general have a very bad sense of scale.

And hey, if yiu want more evidence, Abrams also took on the Star Trek universe, which is supposed to be hard sci-fi. And would ya look at that, no sense of scale at all.

Yet Star Trek already had an issue with distance and speed before the reboot. Albeit to a much lesser degree than Star Wars.

[Mechalich]

In his defence on this particular point, SW hyperspace speed had been more dependant on the requirements of the plot than on distance between planets since at least the prequels.
TCW has a good number of episodes where hyperspace travels look quasi-instantaneous, or at least fast enough that travelling from the outer rim to Coruscant is a matter of minutes. Rebels has a few.

Hyperspace travel is like transferring data over the internet, it's not how far you're going, it's how good of a connection you have. Specifically, how stable and well-known is the hyperlane you're traveling. The most recent episode actually spoke directly to this, with reference to major hyperlanes of the galaxy during the classroom scene.

You can travel from Coruscant to the Outer Rim very quickly, if you're just going straight down the Hydian Way from Coruscant to Taris for example. It's when you jump off the major hyperlanes and putter around from one little known star system to another that things take forever.

JJA certainly pushed it up to eleven, and the scene doesn't make sense anyway (jumping in the middle of a city in itself), and is inconsistent with what we've seen of hyperspace so far, but SW writers in general have a very bad sense of scale.

The real issue with Abrams' actions is that he disregarded established information about scale (and honestly, everything else). The OT, admittedly, doesn't think about scale very hard, though it does occasionally throw out some appropriately sized-numbers - the discussion of the probe droid operation at the beginning of ESB, or when Leia talks to Lando about Cloud City's political status. Early on in the EU no one was really sure how to make the scale of the galaxy work properly, and because of the way the EU exploded as a hot commodity following the publication of the original Thrawn trilogy suddenly a whole bunch of writers and comic artists and game designers were all working in the same universe at the same time with very limited source material to work from and very different ideas (many of the Bantam Spectra EU novels were all commissioned at once and written by authors who did not even know what had happened in other books that supposedly took place before theirs in the timeline).

However, overtime work by various authors and creators and lore people involved in EU publication figured out a rough scale for the franchise, one that got more or less canonized in Zhan's Hand of Thrawn duology - published all the way back in 1997 - and mostly maintained thereafter (yes the number of clones given is too small, but it's easily rectified by stating that 1 'unit' is not equal to 1 clone, something that everyone except Karen Traviss accepted as obvious). Even wildly disparate properties like TCW and SWTOR manage to represent a fairly similar feeling of galactic scale.

Abrams (and also Johnson) chose to ignore the build up of understanding that had percolated through the fandom over decades about how things in Star Wars worked, most of which was still canon after the Disney takeover because it was either explicit or implicit in the structure of TCW. Honestly, I really suspect that neither or them actually watched the show prior to writing the ST, and the seem to have no familiarity with broader EU material at all.

One of the great things about The Mandalorian is that Dave Filoni clearly understands the EU in great detail, and while he doesn't treat it as sacrosanct and definitely changes things to suit his tastes when bringing them into the Disney canon (this includes things from the Disney canon EU too, like Cobb Vanth's backstory), this depth of understanding helps to preserve things like scale and tone as definitively Star Wars.