THE MANDALORIAN
SHOW 2019 AVAILABLE 24 MARCH DISNEY+
The Star Wars universe is expanding as Baby Yoda finally lands on our shores!
CUE OPENING CRAWL… ‘It is a dark time for the franchise. The Last Jedi did boffo box office, yet haters pursued it across the internet. But at least people went to see it, which is more than you can say for Solo. Meanwhile, The Rise Of Skywalker was branded “a billion-dollar disappointment”. And yet… Star Wars has established a new subscriber base on streaming platform Disney+. Fans, obsessed with The Child, have dispatched thousands of memes into the far reaches of your social-media feed...’
Following its US launch last November, The Mandalorian, created by Jon Favreau, finally swaggers onto our shores. Frustrating though the wait has been, its belated UK debut could be seen as good timing, from a certain point of view: the premise feels like a 40th-anniversary fanfiction tribute to The Empire Strikes Back. Imagine Boba Fett and Yoda buddying up and having adventures all over galaxy! With Boba’s fellow bounty hunter IG-88 doing more than just standing still!!
But there’s more to The Mandalorian than what-if whimsy. The eponymous character, his unexpected ward, The Child (aka ‘Baby Yoda’ - he’s 50 years young) and assassin droid IG-11 may share their silhouettes and certain attributes with earlier Star Wars icons, but they soon carve their own niches. Introduced as something of a Mando With No Name, lead actor Pedro Pascal readily taps into Boba Fett’s feted air of mystery. He says little, but means what he says. He’s money-motivated and armed to the teeth (assuming he has any under that helmet).
SHOCK PUPPET
Yet he also has a sense of honour and a deep, at times touching respect for the tenets of his ‘tribe’. Basically, he’s a more soulful breed of badass. True, there’s a bit of Jango Fett in his emerging parental sensitivities – but Episode II’s father-clone bond (“Get ’im, Dad!”) has nothing on the mostly non-verbal connection between Pascal and puppet, which delivers heart and laughs (every cockpit scene is a keeper).
The Child itself is a saucer-eyed enigma wrapped in an adorably oversized robe. He’s the show’s crowning technical glory, a seamless mix of (mostly) animatronics and CGI. His infant-accurate reactions and unpredictable actions are ample substitute for any Yoda-esque profundities or zingers. And without any Jedi mastery, his toddling vulnerability allows for moments of shock as well as ‘awww’. The third corner of the Empire-love triangle,
IG-11, is another big FX win, the static model from 1980 brought to life with dizzying Terminator-like tendencies.
Taika Waititi is at his most dryly comic as the droid’s voice; he’s also one of the eight-episode series’ seven directors (small-screen Star Wars veteran Dave Filoni helms two instalments, including the slow-burn, big-reveal opener). Waititi’s season finale is a belter, unleashing spectacle on land, on lava and in air. While the action here is especially intense and explode-y, production values are blockbuster-level across all episodes. It’s taken four decades for Star Wars to reach live-action TV (give or take a couple of Ewok specials), so it gratifies to see the far-away galaxy retain its customary lustre. The occasional greenscreen glitch aside, The Mandalorian easily rivals Game Of
Thrones for cinematic impact involving unconventional warfare and fantastic beasts (Chapter 2’s rhino-like Mudhorn is a standout).
HE FLUTES, HE SCORES
Still, for all its scout walkers, sandcrawlers and sweeping locales (this being Star Wars, no one’s ever more than 50 yards from a forbiddingly barren landscape), The Mandalorian feels bracingly small. Favreau’s show is set five years after Return Of The Jedi, as the New Republic is rebuilding the galaxy after the Emperor’s (apparent) death – but that’s mostly by the by. It doesn’t share the same sense of galactic consequence as series like The Clone Wars and
Rebels. Rather, it’s one of the few Star Wars narratives to feel genuinely character-driven. Ludwig Göransson’s terrific score is a key asset in dialling down the epicness, its flute-driven, future-western mood a departure from John Williams’ full-orchestra grandeur.
Several episodes are self-contained, involving straightforward quests/goals/ MacGuffins. The itinerant, ‘another week, another adventure’ vibe is perhaps why some have drawn comparisons with ’90s adventure serials like Xena and Hercules. Yet The Mandalorian doesn’t go in for the same level of tongue-in-cheekiness. If the tone isn’t quite as gritty as the first Stormtrooper-helmets-on-sticks trailer hinted, it’s still on the dark side; scum and villainy far outweigh uncomplicated heroism.
The show also makes for supremely easy viewing. With only two of the eight episodes exceeding 40 minutes in length, it’s a brisk opening season, generous with hair-trigger action and light on the political or mystical gubbins that have sometimes stifled the saga. Even the most throwaway instalment - ‘Sanctuary’ - is a fun callback to the franchise’s Kurosawariffing roots. But The Mandalorian is less about the past than a template for the post-Skywalker future, lean, mean and adorably green. It seems apt that The Child’s anti-grav crib is ovoid in shape, while one episode centres on the quest for a treasured egg: no doubt about it, this is Star Wars reborn. Matthew Leyland
‘IT GRATIFIES TO SEE THE FAR-AWAY GALAXY RETAIN ITS LUSTRE’