FOR A FEW CREDITS MORE
THE MANDALORIAN is the ultimate space Western. And we’ll challenge you to a showdown at sundown if you disagree
GEORGE LUCAS’ GALAXY far, far away has always gone a little bit West. From the frontier-saloon styling of the Mos Eisley Cantina to Boba Fett’s unmistakable Spaghetti flavour (right down to his poncho-like cape and the Clint Eastwood squint of his visor), the Western has been in the saga’s postmodern mythical mix since its inception. But it has never been so obvious — essential, even — than in
The Mandalorian.
The setting is pure Wild West. Not only because it skims around the scummy, villainous Outer Rim, where neither Empire nor New Republic are able to impose law and civilisation. But also temporally. The Western era is very narrow, very specific, briefly emerging from the chaos and rubble of a vast, intense Civil War. Ring a bell?
The show’s hero, or rather anti-hero, is a Western archetype clad in beskar. He’s even occasionally portrayed by Brendan Wayne, grandson of John Wayne, who doubles for Pedro Pascal. But that’s circumstantial; really it goes deeper. Like the cowboys of Western myth, the
Mandalorians are specialised professionals whose way of life is vanishing. Like the eponymous hero of 1953 ur-western Shane, they are treated with cautious respect, welcomed only for as long as their deadly skills are required.
Mando himself is a highly capable, laconic loner, drifting through dusty, scuff-edged frontier towns and bringing a modicum of relief and progress to their beleaguered residents — even if his motives appear, on the cold, hard surface, strictly selfish. “The image of the Mandalorian is a deconstructed version of Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name,” confirmed show creator Jon Favreau — a filmmaker who’d already dabbled in sci-fi/western mash-ups with 2011’s Cowboys & Aliens.
Instead of a six-shooter, Mando packs a blaster pistol. Instead of a Winchester 1866, he wields an Amban sniper rifle. His fibre-cord whip is basically a high-tech lasso. And if the character’s physical resemblance to the poncho-wearing gunslinger of Sergio Leone’s arid West somehow isn’t enough to convince you, then consider this: in each of his three movies,
The Man With No Name actually had a name. And in the film which presented him as a bounty hunter, For A Few Dollars More, that name was Manco. That’s right. Just one letter different.
Of course, another important influence on the show, and on Lucas before it, was samurai cinema. Mando is as much an Akira Kurosawa ronin as he is a Sergio Leone gunslinger. But chanbara and Westerns entwine like the double helix of Star Wars DNA. If Mando is The Man With No Name, then he is also Yojimbo. If Season 1 episode ‘Sanctuary’ channels The Seven Samurai, it also evokes The Magnificent Seven. Still, due in no small part to the predominating choice of vista, the Western half of that helix feels the stronger. Vast, stark and inhospitable, a key location is Death Valley, whose sunbaked badlands played host to countless oaters, including John Sturges’ The Walking Hills, Henry King’s The Gunfighter
and John Ford’s 3 Godfathers.
The last of these movies is particularly notable, in that it involves a rough trio of cattle rustlers (among them Brendan’s grandpappy) who become reluctant guardians to a baby. No bounties for spotting the connection there. In fact, The Mandalorian is almost as replete with Western deep cuts as it is Star Wars-lore Easter eggs. Mando’s taming of the blurrg in the first episode is straight out of The Big Country. The guest star of Season 2 opener ‘The Marshal’ is Deadwood sheriff Timothy Olyphant — clad in Boba Fett’s distinctive beskar, no less — while that chapter flagrantly equates Tatooine’s Tusken Raiders with Native Americans.
Even the end credits are Westerninfluenced. As Ludwig Göransson’s low-slung theme (inspired by Ennio Morricone) plays, we’re treated to a slow montage of concept-art stills: a perfect match for how late-’60s TV show The High Chaparral plays out.
Just two seasons in, it already feels like there’s hardly a Western trope untouched by The Mandalorian’s gauntlet. In fact, with the genre now so rarely explored (if only Godless hadn’t been a limited series), let’s go one further: this show ain’t merely the ultimate space Western. It’s the best Western, full stop, in town right now.