Baby Yoda and The Dark Crystal showed the appeal of puppetry in an entertainment landscape of mediocre CGI

The Hollywood Reporter

Disney+'s The Mandalorian and Netflix's The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance's use of puppetry showed that "rubber-and-fabric practical effects will almost always have a greater emotional impact than plasticky digital ones," says Robyn Bahr. "Puppetry reminds us we're fallible," adds Bahr. "Practical effects are imperfect and vulnerable; they expose the seams of creation openly and proudly. It takes human hands to sculpt a rubber face, to sew feathers on a baroque gown, to pull the rods on a little body and make it smile. Animatronics bring warmth and vibrancy. It doesn't matter if you can enliven every follicle on an animated creature's head if you cannot detect light in their eyes."

ALSO:

• Why doesn't The Mandalorian address Baby Yoda's diapers?: "The Mandalorian is uninterested in diapers, and so Mando gets to be a very particular image of fatherhood: the guy who doesn’t have to sweat the small stuff," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "As a bounty hunter, Mando is constantly beset by laser pew-pews and ravenous beasts — life, after all, is hard. But his life as a parent is unsullied by any of the details that make parenting hard. That stuff, I guess, is too boring to be in a Star Wars story. But its absence means that the central relationship of the show feels threadbare."
• Presenting an unofficial Baby Yoda coloring book