Why Baby Yoda Had To Be So Cute
The Child // Why Did I stop Watching Pixar films?? // Second Channel // Another Round
Hi, Thomas Flight here- I make video essays about film and TV. This is where I write once a month about visual media, share additional background on my recent video essays, and recommend a piece of film or TV I’ve recently enjoyed. If you’re interested in keeping up with my work and what I have to say about visual media, please consider subscribing, if you haven’t yet.
Welcome to “Half-Baked” the new segment of the newsletter where I summarize essay ideas that I kicked around and then abandoned.
Baby Yoda’s cuteness is a bit of a meme at this point. I think there are a lot of reasons the kid really grabbed and resonated with people. The secrecy, the remix of another familiar character, the novelty, and tangibility of such a brilliantly designed and animated puppet, and maybe madman/filmmaker/actor Werner Herzog enshrining the puppet in legend by saying it “brought him to tears” on the set of the show. But there’s also the fact that he’s just darn cute.
It’s easy to be cynical and think that the motive behind creating such a cute character and placing him front and center in Disney+’s flagship show was all about marketing and toy sales. And while Disney’s marketing and merchandising wings are now having an absolute field day with the kid- I think his old man/baby adorableness was actually necessary to the show working.
To understand why we just have to look at the show’s protagonist- basically, a voice coming out of a stiff metal man. Mando’s face remains hidden and therefore portrays no emotion, and the voice acting largely plays on the gruff, stoic, cowboy tropes of bygone westerns. And yet- we need some way to understand why this guy, who’s all business and grit, is bending over backward to help the child and developing an emotional bond with him along the way. That’s a hard sell that when the character’s visible face is a shiny piece of metal.
But for the audience- one look at Baby Yoda and we get it. Who among us wouldn’t bend over backward to help this kid and form an emotional bond with it along the way?
So unlike Episode VI’s much-maligned Ewoks, The Child’s cuteness isn’t just an arbitrary property. If instead of an adorable, cooing bundle of The Force, Mando was carrying around a Lizzard-Child that the audience didn’t feel immense sympathy for upon first glance, I think the emotional core of the show wouldn’t have worked.
That’s about all I have on that, and my confidence that I’m right is low, but that’s why this is half-baked and not a full video.
This month I covered how Pixar uses lighting to help tell the story in Soul. I really enjoyed Soul. I had kind of stopped paying attention to Pixar a few years ago when they were mostly producing sequels, so I was happy to see they still have some great original work up their sleeve. (After watching Soul, I went back and watched Inside Out, which I also loved).
If you’re interested in learning more about what cinematography is like at Pixar, this video is really interesting and informative and played a key role in my research.
I also made a video on my second channel, Thomas Flight On Screen, about some of the thematic similarities between Soul, and another film I love, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
Which Bring Me To An Announcement
Speaking of my second channel, I’ve been posting stuff there occasionally for a few years, but this year I’ll be experimenting with posting more content there. I plan to post a mixture of more relaxed videos talking covering film and tv, and longer-form discussions with other creators and filmmakers. In the first discussion, I talk with Jackson from Skip Intro, about the weird ways that COVID-19 is starting to manifest in Network TV.
We’re planning to do another video this month, so if you want to see that when it comes out, head over there and subscribe.
Recommendation- Another Round
Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (2020) - generates most of its humor and anything interesting it has to say, by taking its seemingly ridiculous premise extremely seriously. Four friends, who all teach together at the same school, decide to follow the advice of a Norweigan Psychiatrist who once said that a human is born with a blood-alcohol content deficit of -0.05 (he’s a real guy btw).
The four friends decide they’re going to put this theory to the test by maintaining a blood-alcohol level of 0.05 (only during work hours), and they approach this experiment with the utmost sincerity. Vinterberg takes the same approach to the story and filmmaking. The film itself is quite funny, but it quickly morphs into a fascinating examination of alcohol and its complicated relationship with people and culture.
One of my favorite foreign films from 2020, if you haven’t seen it and it sounds interesting to you, go check it out. (Mads Mikkelsen crushes it as usual, and the film’s soundtrack is great as well).
That’s all for this month. Sorry for being a day late on the draw, I spent a lot of time in January catching up from the holidays, doing business admin, and wrapping up loose ends from our recent move so it’s been a hectic month. I hope everyone is staying safe and doing well.
Always,
TF