This week filled in some of Baby Yoda’s back story and offered yet another thrilling aerial chase. Then another.
Season 3, Episode 4: ‘The Foundling’
One aspect of the Baby Yoda special effect that has been hard to get used to is how weightless the character often seems. Granted, the little guy is … well, a little guy. But whenever Grogu jumps around or Din picks him up, it feels a bit like one of those TV scenes where someone pretends to drink out of an empty coffee cup. It disrupts the suspension of disbelief, if only for a moment.
I mention this only because aside from Grogu flipping around like a thumb toy, this week’s “Mandalorian” episode is a fine showcase for how the character’s overall design works a rare kind of magic. “Realism” has never been the goal with characters like Grogu. Instead, watching slick-looking science-fiction characters interact with tiny puppets or actors in big, bulky costumes recaptures the spellbound feeling of watching old children’s shows, like “Sesame Street” or the work of Sid and Marty Krofft.
The big set-piece in the middle of this episode plays like an technologically advanced version of classic kiddie television. The sound of pounding metal at the Armorer’s forge reminds Grogu of when he was forced to flee Coruscant during the violent purge of the Jedi Temple. Escorted by Master Kelleran Beq (played by Ahmed Best, best-known in “Star Wars” circles for his controversial voice and motion-capture performance as Jar Jar Binks), Grogu zips through Coruscant’s traffic-ways and train tunnels, past Monument Plaza to a rescue ship, all while being chased by relentless hordes of Stormtroopers.
The sequence is thrillingly reminiscent of one of the best scenes in “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones,” where Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi thwart an assassination attempt and pursue the killer through Coruscant’s vehicle-packed airborne roads, moving in multiple spatial dimensions, through the x-, y- and z-axes. The action is heightened by Grogu’s scrunched, saucer-eyed face, filled with awe and fear.
Grogu’s physical presence also functions superbly well in a smaller, more comic sequence at the episode’s start, when Din encourages him to plunge into the Mandalorian training program by challenging the foundling Ragnar Vizsla (Wesley Kimmel) to combat. Ragnar chooses to battle with darts, so Grogu gets fitted with a ridiculously cute little cuff, containing three projectiles. He then proceeds to humiliate Ragnar, thanks to one of those fake-looking weightless leaps.
As has been the way so far this season, “The Foundling” tells two stories, with the Coruscant flashback holding down the middle of the chapter, flanked by a daring rescue mission. After Grogu defeats Ragnar, the boy is snatched away by a giant flying creature, very similar to one of Earth’s prehistoric pterosaurs. He is then taken to its home to be fed to three hatchlings.
Ragnar’s ward/father Paz Vizsla (voiced by Jon Favreau and embodied by Tait Fletcher) is distraught; but Bo-Katan reassures him that they can reach the peaks where the creature has its lair. Echoing Luke Skywalker when he compared blowing up the Death Star to shooting womp rats on Tatooine, Bo-Katan says, “These are no higher than the peaks of Kyrimorut. I used to climb them in basic training.”
And so they climb, in heavy armor, arriving just when the mother bird is regurgitating Ragnar. What follows is another exciting aerial chase and battle, which ends when the big bird gets eaten by a dinosaur turtle — the same beast that interrupted Ragnar’s creed ceremony in the season premiere.
This episode’s director, Carl Weathers, and the “Mandalorian” team of designers and effects artists effectively emphasize the size disparity of all these animals, aliens and humanoids. The large flying monster is felled by an even larger water monster. The hatchlings are brought back to the Mandalorian covert, where they dwarf their captors. At the start of the episode, Grogu is fascinated by what looks to be small moving rocks, which turn out to be scuttling crabs. Who is big, who is small, who is friendly and who is a threat … It is all a matter of perspective.
Still, before it becomes clear that Grogu is playing with crabs, it appears briefly that he is using the Force to move these objects around in the sand. This serves as a reminder that the Mandalorian’s new trainee just left another training program, with the Jedi. As the Armorer gifts him with a new chest-plate, she says, “You will grow into this rondel as you grow into your station.” Part of the whole Grogu mystique is that we never fully know what he is thinking. But I do wonder: Does the kid ever get tired of devout spiritual/military organizations telling him what’s what?
This is the way
It is always nice to see Best, who had a rough time with “Star Wars” fans during the Jar Jar days. He also plays Kelleran Beq in the children’s game show “Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge.”
There was a fair amount of confusion and frustration on social media after last week’s episode. To some extent this is understandable, given that the long detour through Coruscant’s current political situation was so unlike “The Mandalorian” norm. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see so many people dismiss “The Convert” as pointless. It seems clear to me that Dr. Pershing and Elia Kane are going to be important players later this season, at which point understanding what they have been through may matter a great deal. We will see.
On the other hand, for the past few weeks I have been certain that a major story line this season will involve Din — swayed by Bo-Katan’s skepticism — questioning the Mandalorian lore and codes. Instead, this week Bo-Katan embraces the imagery of the Mythosaur when the Armorer replaces her broken shoulder-piece; and she seems open to the Armorer’s theory that she merely saw a vision of the great beast in the Living Waters. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Bo-Katan is walking the path toward become a true believer.
How do the Mandalorians eat without removing their helmets? We have an answer: They do remove their helmets, just when they are totally alone. (The next question we need answered: How long before a Mandalorian takes a ride on one of those giant baby birds?)
Source: Television - nytimes.com
