elljawa

Pilot episodes always have some issues with the writing. There is a lot to do in very little time. And this episode does suffer some issues all pilot episodes have. Clunky dialogue on character introductions for the most part

But really, it's so much stronger than most pilots, and the most promising SW show outside of andor in a while. The Jedi are well realized, their relationships fleshed out. The action is fun, I've been wanting wuxia style combat in SW for years. The aliens and droids all look great, and while the CGI isn't mind-blowing, it's adequate

It isn't the second coming of SW, but it's pretty good nonetheless.

The key word here is "potentially"

The Acolyte's first episodes are a pretty strong start. The characterization of the Jedi is strong, very much in line with the order as Lucas described it, and as we saw in the PT.

The only downside is some clunky dialogue. Most pilot episodes have clunky dialogue, to introduce everything needed to the audience, and we usually forgive it because we get 19 more episodes. But with just 8 per season, every episode really counts, and I wish the character introduction to OSHA had better dialogue. Dialogue is better than the PT but that's a low bar to clear.

But really, everything else is strong by SW standards. Not as strong as Andor, but stronger than everything else since Mandalorian season 1. I am excited to see where this leads.

I am willing to cut a lot of slack for an indie film. I know technically, this is more of a fan film than true indie, but the principle is the same. Its a low budget film made outside of the hollywood system. I love that. I respect that.

So when I saw this is a truly bad film, I am not saying its bad in a "oh the VFX dont look like a million bucks" way. I mean its bad in a "has the director ever seen a movie" way

the acting, especially for clark kent, is bad. No charisma, so personality, and barely emoting at all. There are so many trained actors who are seeking some work, the acting here doest rise to community theater levels.

The camera work is sloppy. Again, not in a cheap camera sense, but in a way that shows no understanding of filmmaking. Why are shots framed the way they are? Where is the sense of continuity within a shot? How do they push the story forward

The writing is also very on the nose. No subtlety, no wit, no interesting way to convey information

There is no reason for a fan film to be bad. Its just an indie film that cant make any money. Lots of fan art is great. This isnt.

Sorry for being dramatic, but this show is incredibly frustrating. It's well cast. Well directed. Good VFX and design...

But favreau's writing and show running is bringing the whole show down. Not only does this broadly negate the entire plot of episode one of this season (which is bad when you only have 8 episodes total) but it also fails at actually telling a good cohesive story on its own.

Much like the last episode, none of the events here build on each other. One thing, then another, then another...but none of it happens because of what has just happened. The resulting story feels unmotivated, lacking tension despite there being action

The characters are very dry as well

Better than episode 1 but not nearly as good as season 1.

Good serialized TV writing needs to both propel the story forward and tell it's own somewhat self contained story, with it's own beginning middle and end. It's an art form of its own, distinct from movies.

Increasingly, show runners and fans have described their various prestige TV shows as being like a long movie broken into episodes. As if the art form of TV was beneath them, and their show shouldn't be viewed in the same way. But this truly undersells just how good good TV is, and how challenging it is to execute on it.

Mandalorian started to struggle in this regard with season 2. While season 1 was good (in part due to the smaller concept the show had at that time), season 2 started to struggle with the balance between it's episodic and serializes elements. The result was a show that often felt more like a video game, bits of plot stretched between fetch quests, side adventures for your allies, and things like that. Closer to Skyrim than Breaking Bad or Lost.

It seems that season 3, once again entirely written by favreau without the traditional use of a writers room, is again struggling with this balance. But while at least season 2 had some strong episodic elements, this opener struggled there too. A number of intriguing but ultimately somewhat unrelated events, strung together without much thought or care as to why. It seems that they had a number of threads to set up, and rather than write a proper episode that stands on its own, we got this weird montage of the different threads. The result is an episode that I remember far less than many of the episodes of previous seasons that I haven't seen since they aired

I worry that favreau and filoni have learned the wrong lessons from the last few seasons they have done. The random inclusion of Mando in BoBF seems to have left them empowered, that the star wars fandom is unconcerned with the structure of a TV show so long as we see some shiny new things.

And some of those shiny new things were great! Without being spoilery, the VFX are great, the limited action sequences well directed, and alien character designs stellar. Some fun references to other films and good banter between characters. But it isn't enough to save the show from such a nothing episode

If they end up setting up a great season, then this will be forgotten, but if this is a sign of the sort of storytelling we can expect, than this will easily go down as the most second most disappointing piece of modern star wars media (beating TROS is a consolation prize nobody wants to be proud of)

Reality TV is the guiltiest of guilty TV. While some pretend to be better than others, the appeal remains the same across all of them.

And in that regard, Pressure Cooker is an excellent show. It's structured wonderfully, in a way that has you sinking far more hours at once into it than you would MasterChef or Netflix's other attempts at cooking shows. The food all is shot beautifully. The social element is handled wonderfully too, creating that dramatic element that can be lacking in most other cooking shows

Right from the get go, the lack of a singular judge or host is such a welcome change. Most cooking shows ultimately have some sort of celebrity who ends up being the main draw. Someone like Gordon Ramsay, Alton Brown, Joe Bastianich, or even something like Dan Levy on HBOs brunch cooking show. And while the expertise of a well known or professional chef can be great, these personalities can end up distracting from the main thing we want in a cooking show, which is chefs cooking food. Pressure cooker doesn't have this issue, 100% of the attention can be on the chefs themselves and the food they make

Look, it's still junk food TV, but it's good junk food TV. This is Cape Cod brand kettle chips in a world of Lays.

This is based on watching the first few episodes. I feel the show is showing promise. The pilot itself is pretty rough and awkward, but each episode is getting progressively better as the cast develops better chemistry. It isn't as good as the original show (at least not yet) but it isn't nearly as disneyfied as people have claimed either, of less edgy than the original

My only worry is that, in doing this as a a simultaneous release rather than weekly, and only doing 10 episodes, this could lack the time needed to develop the chemistry it needs, and lack the sort of weekly feedback that allows for a good sitcom to come in to its own. Loads of great shows, especially sitcoms, have a mid first season, but I worry if Netflix has the right environment and infrastructure for this show to hit it's peak

Anyways, when this show works it works quite well. It's done a decent job of reminding me of certain elements and tropes popular in the 90s. A lot of the gags are great (the bit with the pager in the rave episode was hilarious). It's solidly enjoyable, if not yet a classic.

If you told me a decade ago that Tim Burton would direct an Addams family reboot and that it would be so mundane, I wouldnt have believed you. Yet here we are

Look, the cast here is pretty good and the acting is about the same as you might expect in a teen drama, though each member of the Addams family does a good job.

But there isn't much else here to praise.

The pilot it far too long, resulting in a fairly boring episode of TV. It's lacking in any sort of tension, which is a key ingredient of both horror and comedy, the two genres this is working to fit in.

Visually it's broadly uninspired. A few neat choices but most of the set design, costume design, lighting, and cinematography is undistinguishable from any other teen drama.

The characters and their relationships are much in the same vein as everything else. Wednesday herself feels very edgy for the sake of edgy, lacking in any clear motivation for her actions and feelings once the real meat of the episode starts. This is fine for her as part of a broader ensemble, but not as the lead in a show

Notably, on all of these issues, the show is inferior to the very similar "Sabrina" show on Netflix.

The show, especially with Burton directing, feels like it would have excelled with a more satiracle or post modern type approach, like the one he brought to much of his work in the 90s and 00s.

The pilot does not provide a compelling argument to keep watching. If I do and it improves, I'll update the rating.

The first episode I gave a 7 but it was a soft 7. This is a strong 7.

It has more personality and humor. The characters are better realized. Khazad dum is glorious and the relationship between elrond and durin is well done.

It is a little uneven. Not every plot line is as strong as the others. Elronds story and the harfoot story are well done, the others feel a little bland.

I'd be curious to know what was shot on location and what in the studio. Most of the sets are beautiful but a few look a little bit like blue screen. I wish in general fantasy and sci Fi stopped going for the highly artificial HDR look, and instead worked to exploit the limitations of their medium. This show isn't the worst offender (the MCU is) so it's more of a trend I dislike than anything

In terms of quality among fantasy shows this isn't as good as a good game of thrones episode but I liked it more than virtually every other fantasy show, namely the Witcher, that streamers have tried putting out.

This isn't the best pilot of all time but I think it does what it needs to do. This show has a half dozen protagonists all of whom needed introduction. It has lore we need to know. And it still needs to have enough spectacle to keep people engaged.

And it does a decent job of setting all of that up. The pacing is a little wonky, the prologue too long, and lacks in some of the personality I would have hoped for, but it's also gorgeous and well designed and sets up a number of intriguing plot points

Pilots are rarely the high point of a series, but all in all this left me excited for the future of the series. So it did it's job.

It's inevitable that this gets compared to Jackson's LOTR films. It isn't as good. But it wasn't likely to be. Hell, even Jackson wasn't able to follow up his own work all that well.

I would say, this is better than The Hobbit, even if it does lack some of the directorial flair of the film.

Pilots are always hard and usually pretty bad and by that metric,. This is a far better pilot than manh others. Far too much time was spent on a somewhat clumsy prologue, but once it got going it's pretty good

It's more visually appealing than it looked in the trailer. It seems maybe the saturation was closed in the trailer, the show itself doesn't look nearly so digital or artificial. I'm enjoying the lighting and cinematography for the most part. There is one shot of CGI blood splatter on a camera lens that is pretty jarring but not a huge deal

The writing is pretty standard for fantasy. The characters could be stronger. It gets the job done

Looking forward to the rest of this. Time will tell if this pays off for Amazon. I hope it does.

I'm enjoying the series otherwise, but this episode feels superfluous. Some well done action I suppose but that's about it

When you only have 6 episodes each one needs to be tight and important. This wasnt either.

This is probably my second favorite episode of live action star wars television, and stands along with the top tier of clone wars in terms of quality.

Finally some story telling that feels properly rooted in Kenobi's emotions, and a finale that pays off.

Loved the space alien hick with an imperial flag on his truck lol.

Pilot episodes are notoriously bad in most shows.

This episode has some great moments but suffers under the weight of all the storylines it sets up

Still, its above average if not by much.

Should be a 7.5/10

The problem with Kenobi is that, intrinsically, the story was already told. Kenobi's arc felt fully finished. The only story I could only imagine would be a quiet, introspective one of a monk trying to keep faith in the face of all reason to lose it. But a multi million dollar science fiction drama with the vibe of a niche indie film probably was never a likely one for Disney to make.

And so we got this. And on the whole, its good television. The Volume seems to struggle with chase scenes at time, and the first episode suffers from some odd creative choices in balancing hand held with non hand held camera work. There is a kid actor, who acts like a kid actor. And from a canon standpoint, it doesn't really feel like it fits with the broader story we already know.

In another timeline, we probably got that slow burn introspective Kenobi. But the SW fandom, behaving like a bunch of nostalgia obsessed dweebs, make that impossible in this timeline. The people who cry over a CGI Luke with no personality in a story but hated an interesting, human portrayal of him in TLJ. Lucasfilm is listening to its consumers, and you all said you want the easiest, most digestible take on Star Wars possible with zero risks, and that you handle disappointment poorly. So to all the man children freaking out about this show, just know you have only yourself to blame.

But all that said, its fun television. Episodes 2 and 3 have fun action and good plotting. Ewan Mcgregor does a great job, as do most of the other actors. It hits the spot far more often than not. A few of the plot points really do drive home a deeper, more resonate and human story for Kenobi, and do a good job of bridging the radically different PT and OT

So I am enjoying it. I expect I will continue to enjoy it.

Look, very little happens in this episode, and to my understanding the script had even less happen. But Robert Rodriguez is a talented action filmmaker, and his instincts (built by nearly 3 decades of explotation cinema) resulted in a an episode that rose above its shallow script into a real edge of your seat action movie.

When looking at the finale, I encourage people to compare it to this episode for an example of what an action only episode of TV NEEDS to be like to work. By giving Boba, Din, and the imperials their own unrelated goals that drove the action differently, we get an episode with better ebb and flow and more tension than what we got in the finale

This is a season that has struggled with follow through, where characters dont seem to grow episode to episode or emotionally respond to what has happened to them.

Except this episode

The show did a wonderful job of showing both Mayfield's and Mando's hesitations and worries inside of the Imperial base. Mando removing the helmet for the face recognition console definitely upped the emotional stakes, and Mayfield's talk of operation cinder did as well.

These are the sorts of episode Mandalorian should be filled with, which depict the heroes as real people with real struggles and emotions, not just action figures to be manipulated into cool poses.