Embo is in this. Yes, him, with his dog Marrok...

And really his "episode" should have been called "Embo's Aura Farming".

He doesn't have a single speaking line, but it was so sad how he did what Mando's job used to be, in character and narratively too, and how it was in no way used to reflect anything against Mando. It was just "what if we have this cool dude be in it too, since we need a strong guy to capture Mando?"

They had a fight scene at the end, some sort of hand to hand scrape, and the entire time I was thinking of the Feyd-Rautha vs. Paul Atreides fight in Dune 2, that looks so scrappy and real and has no score and is insanely tense... Meanwhile Mando is clearly fighting someone who is full CGI, and it's intercut by 3 Hutts wrestling like fat slugs struggling against each other over a cabbage leaf. All in this lightless brown sludgey environment and I was just...

So underwhelmed.

The entire time I felt like I was seeing the lesser, uninspired version of something that's already been done. The film did worse than stagnate, it took the franchise several step backs.

It takes you for a fucking idiot at times. Rotta the Hutt, the principal side character, who has more lines and screen time than Zeb or Sigourney put together, introduces himself with a long ass monologue stating 1/his family history and trauma 2/his current situation 3/his hopes for the future 4/his entire moral system 5/how he's different from his dad Jabba and doesn't want to be rescued.

It was an enormous dump of the "tell" you hear about in this thing called "show don't tell".

I thought they were taking us for toddlers, but then Mando goes to visit a local crimelord, and this guy peddles SALT. LIKE HIMALAYAN ROCK SALT, TABLE SALT!!!! And we're told it's because it's valuable... Politicians on this world restrict it. So it costs a lot......... Mando says "it's worth nothing where I'm from" and then.. and then he gets given a big salt rock and tosses it.

You have to understand. At NO point does the movie try to tell you this world is restricted. There are no embargoes, no blocades, no nothing. There is space traffic. There is absolutely no restriction on mando's movements, and nothing stopping people from going on a weekend trip to some nearby planet and returning with a lifetime supply OF MOTHERFUCKING SALT.

So then I was like Ooooooh they literally expect very small babies in the cinema, even though it's rated 12+. OK.

But then Mando and this white serpent you've seen in the trailer fight it off for honestly too long (mediocre ass scene cribbed from Avatar 1 and its thanator) and, I shit you not... Mando is shown sinking into DEEP waters. We see him underwater. We see a pit full of roots going DOWN. Then he claws his way up... stands up... and walks around? Without fumbling or losing his balance? On what? Roots???? That he can't see?

We get numerous underwater shots that reiterate there is a huge deep pit, but the next moment, Mando will be STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WATER PIT with water up to his knees and you're like ...???

Like please understand that the huge snake and Mando exist there a couple metres from each other in magical waters that are just the right depth for the shot needed.

Here is my mouse painted rendition of a cutout of this scene, with the walls in brown, the roots in black, and the thing at the top the big hole he was dropped from (Hutts truly are one note and have never evolved past the creature pit concept).

When Mando needs to drown he does, and when he needs firm ground, he suddenly gets it.

So not only do Favroni think we're 12 at best, they also think we're dumb.

If you think you're going to get some wholeseome dad-child interraction btw, let me tell you...

There's a scene in the middle where grogu has to look after mando in a swamp. It's what people mean by the cute grogu Swamp scene online. He has to care for Mando, who is poisoned and out of it, and himself.

He builds a mud hut over him (without instruction or anything, like a beaver using pure animal instinct to build a dam, as someone so gracefully put it on twitter). And this lasts for DAYS.

Then evetually a swamp guy gives grogu the antidote because the plot must go on... Next day grogu wakes up alone in the mud hut. He goes out and we see Mando rise from some bushes ((my immediate thought was he was taking a dump after days of holding it in since he spent like a week on his back without moving))

And he looks at grogu (with helmet on ofc)

((who sheltered him from robots, fed him clean water, built him shelter and force shoved him under it, found food and ate on his own, and saved his life with a miracle cure, and basically fended for himself in the Hutt world's swamp for DAYS))

and Mando goes:

"hey buddy.... ... ... The old care for the young... and the young care for the old... this is the way"

And then they leave. That's it that's the scene.

It had the emotional depth of a papercut. I was staring on, just, baffled, confused. It was the perfect emotional set up. Perfect moment for a tear jerk or an acknowledgement of some kind, that Grogu passed some real milestone, or should be proud, or anything. But nope.

Also no need for food or water after starving for a week being fed swamp water, it's right into an action scene like Mando is a plastic figurine being smaked around by Favroni. No time for feelings, no time for dialogue!! it's time for action, dun dun DUN!! Cue the epic Mando Music, yeehaw!!

He gets his old rifle back (and has a new razor crest too, because he's going back to the roots the fans loved), and then he goes to kill the hutts!

And as the New Republic arrives to reinforce him, I can't stress this enough... he orders a strike on his own location, AFTER the crime lord Hutts are gone. On a Hutt city habitat. A "palace" full of droids he's dispatching with ease and CIVILIANS we were shown earlier.

And the New Republic does it. They just bomb an entire building full of innocent civilians after the main criminals are already dead.

The reason they do it? Sigourney tells Mando: "yeah this imp talked and you are right, the hutts were selling our info to the imperials and double crossing us. they betrayed us"

EXCUSE ME????? How do the evil Hutts BETRAY YOU?? How are they getting info that you didn't just give them? Were you doing deals with the Hutts and TRUSTING THEM???? Is the New Republic course of action when known criminal syndicate sell their intel to COME BOMB THEM??

Like what type of 12yo is this film actually aimed at?

Anyway, i didn't care much for any of it. I could harp on about it, but I won't. Yes, it's insulting to your intelligence, cheap, emotionally manipulative and yet can't pull a single honest emotion out of you, but Disney has, indeed, done worse.

Oh yeah, and BTW they establish IN SPEAKING that Rotta the Hutt is most likely going to take care of Grogu after Mando dies. They were made aggressively close to each other and friendly, and there's an explicit scene where the bad guys go "Hutts live hundreds of years like Grogu does. So who will look after him when you are dead, mando? After you die we'll take Grogu and torture him" (I swear it's that dumb) and it felt so heavy handed... I can't believe it though... Rotta the Hutt and grogu adventure? Yeah miss me with that shit lol