Latest / Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast / Issue 333: The Baby Yoda Effect

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Issue 333: The Baby Yoda Effect · Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast

0:04
Welcome to the nerd polity. Hi, this is Nick Nastasu, story editor
0:10
on Star Wars, The Clone Wars and Star Wars bad Batch. And you
0:15
are listening to aggressive negotiations. Well, hello, and welcome to aggressive negotiations.
0:29
And I am just one of the hosts here, Jedi Master Matthew rushing
0:32
and coming at you from the chilly corner of hawth and with me as he
0:38
is every single week, the wonderfully bundled Jedi Master John Mills. Yes,
0:45
and in fact, because of the weather, I have figured out a way
0:48
to create a pumpkin spice scent for my lightsaber. So now as we battle
0:54
the forces of evil, we will be treated to the pleasant smell of pumpkin
0:59
spice, since we are getting ready to enter spooky season here in the Star
1:03
Wars galaxy and every galaxy in between. Yes, I'm so excited. And
1:07
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you're listening to this, I hope you're subscribed, so you're getting the show
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as soon as it drops, and help us out with a star rating and
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review over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Now, John, something that you
1:46
had peaked my wiggling green ears about right before we started recording, was this
1:52
idea of the Baby Yoda effect. You called it, yes, and you
2:00
know, of course the Mandalorian coming along on the air a few years back
2:04
now and just shocking everybody where You've got this character that we all affectionately know
2:09
as Baby Yoda, even though his name is Grogu. And how now,
2:15
when it seems like Star Wars does not have something like that, people tend
2:20
to get like, I guess, frustrated or they're they're not quite sure to
2:25
do with themselves. And I was really intrigued by this idea. And so
2:30
first I'd love for you just kind of expound even more of what you were
2:32
thinking of when you were talking about this idea of the Baby Yoda effect,
2:38
the whole idea of the Baby Yoda effect, is that, Like you said,
2:40
you have this big reveal when you start the Mandalorian and everybody goes,
2:44
oh my gosh, wow, there's another Yoda and he's a baby wow.
2:47
And it became a big cultural moment. People loved baby Yoda, people had
2:54
stickers, People who didn't even watch the show, who knew who baby Yoda
2:59
is was and everybody still says, no, his name is Grogu and everybody
3:04
says, yeah, whatever, baby Yoda. And ever since then, we've
3:07
had a number of shows and reactions to those shows among the fan base I'm
3:12
not talking about outside among the normies. I'd say that Star Wars fever has
3:16
calmed back down to the state that longtime fans are used to it being,
3:21
which is it's in the cultural consciousness, but it's not appointment viewing for everybody
3:29
across the viewing spectrum right now. Right it's settled back into where it always
3:35
has been, which is not a bad place. But it has crossover appeal,
3:38
but it's not on fire. It's not like an MCU type of thing
3:42
where it was a thing that everybody cared about, or seemingly everybody cared about.
3:47
And I'm just saying that with this effect. I say that it's probably
3:54
created something of a subconscious expectation among viewers that every series will have some component
4:04
like that baked in. And what we're finding is no Grogu was a once
4:11
in a Star Wars generation type of thing. The reveal that Sabine was training
4:16
to be a Jedi was greeted with a murmur. Overall, it seemed where
4:21
people just started arguing about whether that was okay or whether they were good with
4:25
it. Instead of saying, wow, I didn't expect that, they all
4:29
said, So, I don't know how I feel about that. I don't
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know if they were going for a Baby Yoda effect or if they've just been
4:36
trapped by the magnitude of the first one. Yeah, I mean, I
4:41
think it's a great question. I have one back for you. So,
4:46
when we think about the idea of Baby Yoda being introduced into the show in
4:54
the first place, why do you think they went that route other than that,
5:00
you know, Jon Favreau had this idea of you know, having this
5:05
this character. But do you do you think in some ways that it was
5:11
specifically done as a way to draw people into the show, because you know,
5:16
without that character, for anyone who isn't a longtime fan of Star Wars.
5:25
What else would they necessarily be drawn into the Mandalorian about? Because I
5:31
don't know what else would catch their fancy. You know when you you kind
5:35
of just mentioned instead of being the uber fan, just kind of the normal
5:39
everyday viewer say, you know, you like to use the example a lot.
5:44
I think in it rightly, So you know, of your wife,
5:46
who's you know, not somebody who's super into Star Wars or whatever, would
5:48
there be anything with with somebody like her that would draw her into the Mandalorian
5:55
if it wasn't there? Honestly, I can say no. I think that
6:00
when Luke showed up that she was pleased to see that. That was a
6:04
pleasant surprise for her. But you had to get to that point, whereas
6:09
with Baby Yoda, that was that immediate shock, and I think that created
6:15
the momentum for somebody like her. And I think it, I mean,
6:19
as we sit here talking about it, though, I wonder in a sense
6:24
if Star Wars finds itself a victim of this sort of effect, going all
6:30
the way back to the original series, the original trilogy as its name,
6:34
with the reveal of I Am Your Father, right that became a thing that
6:39
for three years. For those of you listening that are too young to remember
6:42
that time period, Oh, it was obsessed about was he telling the truth?
6:47
Was he lying? Is it real as it false? Is at this?
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Is at that? But nowadays you look back on he was like,
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yeah, it's obviously he's telling the truth. But then when you got to
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the prequels, the question of Anakin lineage his father was a big question,
7:02
and then we found out that he was a miraculous birth and the effect was
7:08
more along the lines of what we're seeing with Sabine training to be a Jedi.
7:13
It was immediately arguing about whether they liked the idea. And then so
7:17
maybe I don't know, maybe I'm off base, Maybe it's not the baby
7:20
Yoda effect, Maybe it's just in jail. I'll still stick to that as
7:24
a phrase. But do you think that Star Wars has victimized itself with that
7:28
since the beginning? You know, there there is this effective if we want
7:32
things to surprise us, you know, and just do something different. And
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I think, you know, one of the things that I think the baby
7:44
Yoda effect is actually a good way to put it, because you know,
7:46
when you think about that character, especially in Star Wars. You know,
7:50
we only have one other character like that before, it was Yaddle, and
7:54
we knew nothing about her until Tales of the Jedi, and so this is
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this is something that which is so special, so different that it really would
8:03
capture your imagination. And the same way I think, you know, when
8:09
you you think all the way back to where you are in the original trilogy,
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nothing I think really at that point is more unexpected than for Darth Vader
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to be the father of this character that you love. You know, the
8:28
greatest evil in the universe is the father of the greatest good in the universe.
8:33
And I almost wonder if if it's not just necessarily the baby Yoda effect,
8:39
but if we've just been so accustomed to our entertainment trying to almost like
8:46
shock value us, you know, yeah, and then when the shock doesn't
8:50
really live up to us, or it's like, you know, I think
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you're bringing up the Sabine thing is such a such a perfect thing right now,
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because yeah, I do feel like, unfortunately, instead of people being
9:03
like, oh, this is awesome, this is so cool, I wonder
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how this is all going to play out. You know, it's immediate like
9:09
kind of complaints about like how does this fit in? And I don't understand,
9:13
and it's you know, one, we're also talking about things that are,
9:16
you know, just happening, and you know, the show's not finished
9:20
yet, so you know, let's judge things when they're actually complete. But
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two, it just seems like, unless it's like the miraculous everything else,
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we're just so ready to like poo poo on that's new, and I don't
9:39
I don't really understand that. I don't. I feel like I'm rambling,
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but you know what I'm saying, Like it's like I don't get why we
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can't just enjoy things anymore. Now you know what, you're not rambling,
9:50
and now the conversation gets bigger. And I think that's good because I think
9:54
you're absolutely right in this sense that we you have all become accustomed to this
10:03
dopamine rush that's almost drug like, it's like a sugar rush. Every time
10:07
a series comes out, like Stranger Things comes out, and everybody's gotta watch
10:11
everything and shotgun it and watch the whole thing right away, or there's some
10:16
new thing that people have to experience. And I think that there is a
10:22
fleeting sense of enjoyment. Like speaking as somebody who was a heavy, heavy
10:30
cigarette smoker back in the day, not anymore, thank goodness, but many
10:33
years ago. The reason that the amount of cigarettes you consume increases is because
10:41
one isn't enough anymore. It's worse than pringles. You just got to keep
10:46
going and that high lasts less. And people may want to shrug and say,
10:54
oh, aren't you overstating it, but no, you get a high
10:56
from cigarettes. It's a different kind of high than doing other drugs, but
11:01
it gives you a jolt. And the whole reason it calms your nerves is
11:05
because you're training your body to rely on something. And I think that's the
11:09
case, is yes, in addition to the baby Yoda effect, we live
11:13
in a place where, a place and time where the rush has gotten so
11:20
frequent and so pronounced. We always need bigger and we need stronger, and
11:26
it never lasts as long as we think it should. Example, who's talking
11:31
about Barbenheimer anymore? That was all the raids for a long time. Wasn't
11:33
a hashtag Barbenheimer all over the place. Now it fades into the mists as
11:39
everybody awaits what's the next big rush? I'm gonna get And this isn't old
11:45
men yelling at the clouds thing. This is simply a function of how much
11:48
content is being shoved at us constantly and our desire to our fomo basically fear
11:58
missing out. Yeah, no, I that that's that's right in some ways.
12:01
And you know, I think, you know, this is I like
12:05
the way you're going with that, because I do think this is a larger
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conversation of we have gotten so used to consuming and then leaving and consuming and
12:15
then leaving. You know, we're we're not ready for things to just stay
12:18
and linger in any way. Just when I think about, you know,
12:22
something like Tales of the Jedi, or when I think of, you know,
12:28
what they're doing with Ahsoka, it's it feels as though it's very deliberate
12:33
in what they're doing and why they're doing it. You know, it was
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one of the complaints many people had about and or they felt like it was
12:41
too slow. By the time you get the end, you understand why they're
12:46
spending the time and the places that they do, right, And I think
12:50
that that's kind of what this show is doing. The same thing. Heck
12:56
could be said for The Mandalorian. Many people were complaining about different Mandalorian episodes,
13:01
you know, in the first couple of seasons, and then you know
13:05
by the end of the series, you're like, oh man, that's how
13:07
that fits in. And this goes all the way back even to Rebels.
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I remember complaining in the first season of Rebels about things myself and then having
13:18
them come back to play, either in that season or in future seasons,
13:22
like they go back to that they use what they've put out there, right,
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And so honestly, for me personally as a fan, as content moved
13:35
from film to television, I've learned more and more that I have to take
13:43
each episode in some ways with a grain as salts until the entire season is
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out, and then I can actually truly feel like I can judge something because
13:52
these seasons are really ark long stories. Even the Mandalorian was like that season
14:00
one, season two, season three. They're all of these arc long stories
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that I think have to be kind of judged together. And I think we
14:11
as fans are just so used to having immediate answers right now, and I
14:15
think maybe it's not the Baby Yoda effect, it's the Netflix effect where you
14:18
could binge an entire season in one sitting, and like then nobody talked about
14:24
it anymore, And all of these shows are kind of retraining us how to
14:31
sit and enjoy things. You know. However, I'll say that it's also
14:35
a structured data effect, or you could call it the Google effect, because
14:41
with search engine optimization, everybody noticed over time that if you structured your data
14:48
in a certain way, you got into the results. You know, you
14:54
got higher in the results, the bots favored you. And the joke now,
14:58
of course, is you know, where's the best place to hide a
15:00
body? The second page of Google results. So I think where you can
15:07
go with this is, yes, I agree with you with a Netflix binge
15:09
thing, but even that, I think is just an extension of the always
15:15
online bullet point effect. How many times you go to a news article and
15:20
it's a news article, let's see two thousand words. But what they do
15:24
is they take it and they give you three or four bullet points, and
15:26
you read the headline, you read the bullet points, you walk away.
15:30
You don't care what's in paragraph twenty anymore. Right to get to what you're
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talking about, Just give it to me. I want to I want to
15:35
pick it up, I want to leave I just want to get through here
15:39
super fast. I want to consume as quickly as I can and then spin
15:41
it back out or judge it harshly. I'm thinking, as you're talking,
15:46
think back to when the majority of people kind of got their entertainment from something
15:54
like a novel. And in a novel, you're not going to get all
15:58
the questions answered right away. You have to wait for the revelation to come
16:03
as you keep turning the pages. And as the pages turn, you get
16:08
more and more about the characters, You get more and more about the story,
16:12
you get more and more about the plot, depending on what type of
16:15
plot it is, right, you know, And every type of book has
16:18
a different type of plot, and so you kind of go in knowing what
16:22
to expect, you know, from a mystery or a romance novel, or
16:26
a sci fi book or fantasy or something like that. They all have their
16:32
different ways of working. And I think, you know, one of the
16:34
things about Star Wars, right is it definitely has its own way of working.
16:41
And the films have a different way of working than the television shows now
16:45
especially, And so I think what we're seeing in the way in which modern
16:53
especially television is telling its stories. It's much more a novel approach. And
17:00
I don't mean that as you know it's special. I just mean that we're
17:03
going almost back to the idea of consuming storytelling in the way that you would
17:10
as you read a novel. You get a little bit of information parsed out
17:15
throughout each episode, and that then builds into a hole building on that idea.
17:22
Because we talked about how like with Star Wars, over time we sort
17:26
of like re embrace the serial yes, where that the cowboy would you know
17:30
he'd fall off the cliff and then you found out he didn't fall off the
17:33
cliff next week, And that's where episodic television basically its roots come from,
17:37
because TVs were, you know, perfectly suited for that and everything. But
17:41
I like the fact you bring up books because of the fact that people will
17:47
often with a series, and I'm guilty of it too, for instance,
17:52
Book of Boba Fett. Now, I wasn't a huge fan of the show.
17:56
I'm still not a huge fan of the show. Yeah, there were
17:59
things that did well and there were other things where I just didn't understand why
18:03
it was doing what it was doing. Right. Setting that aside, these
18:07
chapters are, in fact more like reading a book to your point, and
18:15
it puts me in mind of the fact that I just read the sequel the
18:18
book, the novel that's the sequel to Michael Mann's nineteen ninety five crime thriller
18:22
epic Heat. It's called Surprisingly Enough Heat too Shocker Shock. Sorry spoilers ahead.
18:30
But as it jumps around there, there were a couple of times where
18:34
I was reading the book where it would flip and the chapter would end,
18:40
or the chapter would keep going longer than I thought it was going. I
18:41
was like, oh, we're still here, what's going on? And then
18:44
at the end of it all it comes together and I my mind was blown,
18:48
and I said, oh wow, oh kay, I see where this
18:52
all came together, and where it was headed, and what I didn't see
18:55
and what I did see, and all of those sorts of things. Maybe
19:00
that's the key, is that we should be looking at these like chapters in
19:03
a book as opposed to episodes in a grand saga, where I think it
19:11
would be interesting as a thought experiment. Let me see what you think of
19:15
this. Neither one of us have the time to do this, but wouldn't
19:18
it be an interesting thought experiment? To go back to Lucas's six films in
19:23
the Star Wars Galaxy and and instead of doing what fans do where they recut
19:29
Obi Wan Kenobi from six episodes into one two and a half hour movie,
19:34
but go and cut those up and see how we would turn those into episodes
19:42
into like six episodes. Wouldn't that be a neat thought experiment to break it
19:47
up like that, because we'd be we'd be dealing with the same question of
19:49
where do you put the chapter break, where do you put the cliffhanger,
19:55
where do you put the resolution, what's the reveal? How are you going
19:57
to approach this thing? That would be a really neat thing to do well.
20:02
And I mean, honestly, it's not surprising that we're talking like this.
20:07
I think about these shows specifically. I mean the Mandalorian literally calls itself
20:17
chapter one chapter two, like you know, so I think that there is
20:22
a reason that they're doing this. You know, I think Ahsoka, you
20:26
know, the episodes are part one and part two, and you know that,
20:30
so they're part of a greater whole. And therefore, I think what
20:38
I'm seeing is is that you know, even for myself, Look, I
20:42
love like everybody else. I enjoy having things as quickly as possible. It's
20:48
a frustration of mine in the sense that I wish I wasn't like that.
20:52
I want to be more patient, but I want to get back to the
20:56
fact for myself where I can just sit and enjoy something, you know,
21:04
where I can just sit back and allow it to entertain me, allow it
21:10
to show me new things, and not have to like feel like I need
21:15
to nitpick and whatnot every little thing until you know, the full season's out,
21:21
you know. And and the difference here is is that, you know,
21:25
so I'm on TFM talking about to Star Trek a lot, and we've
21:30
been, you know, just finished doing Strange New Worlds, which has returned
21:34
Star Trek to a much more episodic feel. Even though there is serialization that
21:41
goes along throughout each episodes, there's a thread running through the episodes are meant
21:45
to stand more alone. I think, you know, that kind of storytelling
21:48
is great too. But what we're seeing here, especially you know, past
21:52
the Clone Wars, is that the series that Star Wars is doing our long
22:02
form storytelling like the novel, like we mentioned, you know, whereas The
22:07
Clone Wars was an anthology series. You know, you can watch it,
22:12
you know chronologically. We've talked about that before, and that works. You
22:15
can absolutely do it. But it's an anthology series. You're meant to jump
22:19
around, and whereas all of these other series, it's it's not about that
22:25
type of bite size entertainment. It's meant to be enjoyed altogether. And so
22:32
I don't know, I'm I'm actually really thankful that these shows have started coming
22:37
out this way so that I am forced to just sit and enjoy that.
22:44
I'm forced to just be able to watch the episode, contemplate it, kind
22:49
of think about it, maybe go back and watch it again before it comes
22:53
you know, it comes back the next week, and really just gonna moule
23:00
over it and kind of get to dare I say, enjoy the episodes or
23:07
even just spend the time to go back and rewatch it and say, you
23:10
know what, even if it didn't work for me on the first pass,
23:12
let me give it another and see if I just wasn't in the frame of
23:17
mind to see it. How many times if we watched all the way up
23:18
to films. Yeah, I always cite one of my most famous personal examples,
23:25
I despised the movie The Shining by Stanley Kuberck for decades, and then
23:32
I rewatched it and I said, you know, many decades i'd seen it
23:34
before. It wasn't like I saw it once and walked away. I saw
23:37
it a few times. I was like, this just doesn't work for me.
23:41
And then I watched it one more time and I said, oh my
23:44
gosh, I get it. I love this. It's fantastic. Yeah.
23:48
Is it possible that you just need to give yourself that opportunity to come back
23:52
and try it again. I would say that sometimes your criticisms might be reinforced,
23:57
like us with the series, Yeah, very open about that. We
24:02
went back, we rewatched it, and it still didn't work as well as
24:07
we thought it could have. Well, and the same thing you know,
24:10
happened for me, just you spurred my mind a film where that happened to
24:15
me. I for the longest time thought that I hated ET, and then
24:22
I went back to ET and I rewatched it a couple of years back,
24:26
and it hit me completely different. And I love that film now, partly
24:33
because you know, I realized the thematic elements that he's working with. Spielberg,
24:38
you know, always been talking about his parents divorced since it happened for
24:42
him, and it hit me very hard, you know now, being a
24:48
person who's experienced that with my own parents, and so, you know,
24:52
I think that you're absolutely right. You know, our first reaction of things
24:57
isn't always the one that's going to be right. And many times, a
25:03
lot of times, you know, whether it's with Star Wars or lots of
25:07
other things, it's like I need to be able to sit with it,
25:11
and then I need to be able to watch it again and I can actually
25:12
really feel like I have a full opinion because you know, I already know
25:17
what to expect, and then I can just I feel like I can judge
25:18
the thing based on itself and not maybe my own expectations, you know.
25:22
So yeah, I mean, I just think it's an interesting thing to be
25:26
able to talk through as a fan, because you know, Star Wars isn't
25:30
the only fandom we struggle with this with, but I think Star Wars definitely
25:37
a lot more than other fandoms especially seems to suffer from this where it just
25:44
seems like how fast can I be to get my reaction out? How can
25:48
I get my little bite size reaction out on Twitter. It's going to light
25:52
it up, you know, and instead of just like mulling things over and
25:56
thinking about things like I think I've tweeted maybe a couple of things about Asoka,
26:02
and when I was watching the episode, it's like, I tweeted,
26:04
Ahsoka is great, like that was oil. Like I don't have massive thoughts
26:11
yet, mainly because I'm still waiting. But you know, I don't feel
26:17
the need to just get out there and let my opinion be known until I
26:22
feel like I have something very substantial to base that opinion on. So well,
26:27
I'll tell you what is substantial is the amount of hate mail that you
26:30
get every time you do share that opinion. So if people want to send
26:33
you more of that, where can they find you online? Well, I
26:36
love that that social media is pretty much that's the reason that that exists these
26:41
days. And so you can reach out to me on Twitter, Instagram,
26:42
Letterbox from Pharaoh under the name att Rushing zero two. You can also find
26:47
me here on the network on another show that is completed. I did that
26:49
with rough a coffin and we talked about every single chapter of the Harry Potter
26:52
series, one chapter at a time. You can also find me on the
26:56
TFM network. We've got the six h two Club, where we're talking about
26:59
all the franchises we love, and then I've got literary tracks the orb Warp
27:03
five, Artificial Tango and Saddle Up. But John, you know, maybe
27:07
people actually wanted to be nice to you on social media, just to you
27:12
know, change things up. Where could they find you? Well, you
27:15
can find me as Kessel Junkie out there on the wilds of the Internet,
27:19
and heaven knows, I don't think I am controversial, but whatever, give
27:25
it time. You can find me over on letterbox and Twitter from time to
27:30
time, those sorts of things. And you can of course find me here
27:33
on the network, co hosting a show with Darren Moser and Tristan Riddell which
27:37
is focused on hold on your Hats movies called house Lights, where we look
27:41
at the works of directors and different themes and those sorts of things. But
27:45
I'll tell you what, I think that the Pitchfork Torches crowd might be closing
27:52
in on the temple here, So Master Rushing, I think it's time to
27:53
close these negotiations, John, negotiations are clothes. Join the revolution, Join
28:04
the nerd party