Baby safe in Chow’s capable hands
‘I want to be a good director, not a good female director, not a good Asian director.’
There’s this super-hot sole-parent I’ve been seeing regularly. He’s kind of private. I haven’t really seen his face, and we’ve only hung out four times to date, but I think I might be in love . . . actually, I don’t know who I love more, him or his kid, Baby Yoda.
Oh, did you think I meant, an actual person? That’s funny. No, I meant The Mandalorian, and his green, slightly furry youngling ‘‘The Child’’, aka Baby Yoda, aka the only thing that matters in my life since I became a little . . . let’s say obsessed, with the Disney+ flagship show.
And now, as if I couldn’t love this show more, it turns out the show’s third chapter The Sin, was also one for the feminist record books.
It marks the first time in 42 years that a liveaction Star Wars property was directed by a woman. Namely, Deborah Chow.
It was everything a person who’s obsessed with a show could want.
Chow delivered a pristine episode filled with pathos and action, a balls-to-the-wall blaster fight between a troop of flying Mandalorians and a ragtag group of bounty hunters, and some sweet newdaddy moments between Mando (Pedro Pascal) and the internet’s newest obsession, Baby Yoda.
And it seems like the whole show might be infused with Chow’s cinematic DNA.
Actor Emily Swallow, who plays the Mandalorians’ leader and lore keeper, the Armourer, told Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast that she based her pivotal character’s calm air of authority on Chow’s manner on set.
Chow’s action influences – John Woo’s
Hard Boiled and Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo
– are obvious in the show’s action and overall tone.
She has also directed episode seven and, frankly, I can’t wait to see it.
Before you ask, ‘‘Well, but like, how many male Star Wars directors have there even been?’’, I’ll tell you.
There have been 11, with a couple of them directing multiple films in the franchise.
Creator George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand, J J Abrams, Ron Howard, Phil Lord, and Chris Miller (didn’t finish but it’s the hiring that counts), Gareth Edwards, Rian Johnson, Dave Filoni, and Rick Famuyiwa (who was, incidentally, the first person of colour to direct a live-action Star Wars property).
The dominance of male directors is a problem for Disney because it’s a problem for Hollywood: 79 per cent of all broadcast and streamed TV is directed by men, and yet women make up more than 50 per cent of viewers.
At the movies, it’s even worse.
Of the top 100 grossing movies last year, only 4 per cent were directed by women.
In Rolling Stone magazine, Chow said the significance of her role in the show didn’t even cross her mind until someone on set mentioned it to her.
‘‘It’s ridiculous to think how long it took me to realise that that might be the case. It was the first day of shooting, or right around then, when somebody told me.
‘‘I don’t know how it had not occurred to me.’’ In Vanity Fair, she explained that first or not, she wants it to be about the work.
‘‘I want to be a good director, not a good female director, not a good Asian director. But, by the same token, obviously my career path and the representation is important. It is meaningful.’’
Too right. We can celebrate Chow’s status as the first, without tokenising it. Disney seems keen to sidestep tokenising, too.
The fourth episode was also directed by a female – actress Bryce Dallas Howard directed that one.
Meanwhile, Chow has been given a whole Star Wars spinoff series, based around Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) off the back of her work on The Mandalorian.
And the forthcoming Rise of the Skywalker’s second-unit – the one that traditionally does all the fight scenes and special effects – was
DEBORAH CHOW