Baby Yoda’s Choice

This to me, is both stupid and funny.

I like Star Wars on the whole and indeed never missed a movie…completely.   I actually love the very first two movies but found Return of the Jedi to be pretty unsatisfying in many respects.  I admit I kind of walked away after Attack of Clones.  It wasn’t a good movie and the “love scenes” took cringe to levels unseen in science fiction and that is saying something. Although nowhere near as bad as the ones in Revenge of the Sith, which I only ever saw on TV.  I didn’t read a lot of the Star Wars books.  So, while I was aware of a lot of the characters in the EU, I certainly wasn’t invested in them.  And I really don’t give a crap about the Filoni-verse.

I only saw the Third Trilogy so I could drag it on my blog and that was such low-hanging fruit, the grass was touching it. 

I am not saying any of this to establish myself as a superior being, or to look down on the people who deeply love Star Wars.

I’m just saying this is where I stand with the franchise.  The first two Star Wars movies were excellent, but they were a group effort.  Lucas’ ego drove away the team that produced them. And when he tried to do it all by himself, he delivered vastly inferior results.  And of course, the Third Trilogy was a franchise-destroying train wreck.  That is where I am with Star Wars.

Which is why I was taken off guard by the violent reaction of the nerds who genuinely love this franchise more than life itself.

The Book of Boba Fett, that everyone seemed totally ambivalent about has suddenly and quite accidentally drawn a line in the sand.  A huge bunch of people has lost their minds over which path Baby Yoda will choose.  

For some reason which eludes me completely, they are convinced that they have been presented with a binary path.  Some kind of mental gestalt has taken place and they have collectively declared that if Grogu picks the lightsaber, then the Third Trilogy is banished from canon.  But if he chooses the armor and becomes a Mandalorian then the Third Trilogy is in stone and “we are all walking away from Star Wars forever and this time we really, absolutely and totally mean it.”

The passion, anger, and frustration appear to be quite real.

I think the reason this developed was that Favreau and Filoni made the huge mistake of building a Jedi temple that looks like the one that was burned in The Last Jedi.

I am quite certain that F&F are under orders from on high to avoid doing anything that will look like they are shredding the Third Trilogy canon.  Disney hates trouble and if LucasFilm does something that clearly negates the Reyloverse there will be a Twitter meltdown and trust me on this one, Hollywood is terrified of Twitter Stans. There are only four kinds of people on Twitter; Boomers, Stans, Journalists, and Hollywood.  I have very little doubt that the reason the Third Trilogy became the road-apple it did, was because Kathleen Kennedy spent all her time on Twitter and was constantly hearing from the Young Folks what Star Wars needed to do to stay relevant.

I’m equally sure Favreau and Filoni hate the Third Trilogy but orders are orders, so they keep providing little clues here and there that, that is the future.  It’s probably why they had some vague clone shapes in the Mandalorian that looked like Snoke and made the new Jedi temple look a little like the one that got destroyed in TLJ. 

But this time F&F blew it. I’m sure they forgot all about Kylo supposedly being Luke’s first student, however, if Grogu is the Luke’s firstie then the entire Reylo timeline is negated… Apparently. Like a holy war getting set off by two different interpretations of a single bible verse.  Favreau and Filoni have found themselves on an unexpected collision course with the fans they have been quietly championing.

They went too far in their hints.  R2D2 turning himself off was a big reminder of the Third Trilogy. Combining that with the appearance of the temple has sent the established fans off a cliff.  They are demanding that Baby Yoda take the lightsaber.  Which is going to be a train wreck.  

Disney wants as much Baby Yoda as possible, they want him on Disney Plus but they can’t do that if he stays with Luke.  Deepfake is nowhere near good enough to have a series starring a double with a de-aged Mark Hamill face. The tech just isn’t there yet. The director spent all of Luke’s screen time trying to avoid Luke’s face when he was talking.  

Mando’s new fighter clearly and obviously has a Baby Yoda rumble-seat, which means the scripts are already written. And since Favreau was apparently doing something in Georgia, they may have already started shooting the third season of the Mandalorian. Episode 5 didn’t come out of nowhere; in fact, it’s pretty obvious that it came out of a completely different show.  

The real and fundamental problem isn’t Baby Yoda’s Choice it’s Disney’s Choice.  The established fans have suddenly declared with one voice, “we want a clear and unambiguous de-canonization of the Third Trilogy, and we want it next Wednesday or we are out for good.”  And for once I think they are serious.

Disney on the other hand wants to keep kicking the can down the road for as long as Earthly possible. 

Unless Favreau can avoid answering the question Luke asked, somebody, is going to have to learn to live with disappointment.