Genuinely characterful worldbuilding in the opening of Mandalorian & Grogu?!
I watched the newest bout of regurgitated space opera slop courtesy of the rat with my father as of yesterday - and as much as my strongest opinion on the movie is 'it was fun' the opening sequence was a surprising high point for me. It was the first time I really felt that DisneyWars managed to sell a believable Imperial Warlord in clever and surprisingly subtle ways.
The moment that spawned this thought was seeing what appeared to be Snowtroopers in the dark... and then, when exposed to the light, you realize that they're just white-painted Imperial Army Troopers with face masks. Right away, you realize that this isn't some big-shot Imperial leader, just some guy with military hardware who's the one thing standing between his ragtag band of conscripts and a war crimes tribunal, and trying to mask that fact by making his men into Temu Stormtroopers to try and create the illusion of power and Imperial intimidation. And they sell this further over the fact that he's extorting tribute from a mere handful of towns.
Another wonderful moment was the introduction of the walker - starting with the stamping feet of a chicken walker, you are primed to expect an AT-ST, only for the camera to pan and reveal a Clone Wars AT-RT. Oh, they're broke-broke, huh? A frontier outpost that was still using interwar surplus with an Imperial insignia decal on it. You might argue that the AT-ATs go against that image, but personally I think it works, since the AT-AT is A: a lynchpin of the Empire's image in asserting control over the population, and B: the primary infantry transport and artillery the Empire deploys for combat purposes. Rolling them out to the frontier to assert control after the destruction of the Death Star was probably vital - and a two-bit warlord needs *something* to assert power over 5 townships without having to fight one militia uprising after another. If he didn't have the AT-ATs, he'd probably already be dead.
So as much as the move was the definition of okay, I was impressed at how the movie wordlessly depicted the decay of the Imperial remnant's military power in surprisingly subtle ways.