Review: "The Mandalorian"

[Steve Timko]

Verizon gives me bonuses when I pay my smartphone bill on time. Two months ago Verizon gave me a $3 Starbucks discount coupon. I logged in again on Sunday, hoping to snag another one. Instead, I found out I have a free one-year subscription to Disney+. That’ll show me for not allowing Verizon to send me any promotional emails.
I promptly download the Disney+ app and perused the show selection. The movies are impressive. There’s movies I still haven’t seen, including “Frozen” and the original “Lion King.” The series selections are less impressive. Jeff Goldblum is interesting so I suspect his documentary series will be interesting (the first one I’ve watched, on basketball shoes, was good, not great).
But I decided to take the plunge on “The Mandalorian.” The first episode is fantastic. It’s the best “Star Wars” product since “The Empire Strikes Back.” Writing credit goes to Jon Favreau. He’s a talented guy, but I’m guessing there were a lot of fingers in this writing pot. Past “Star Wars” movies have hinted at being the new western movies. “The Mandalorian” jumps right in. There’s little doubt about it. When the Mandalorian creeps up to look over a ridge, it’s a scene from any number of John Ford or John Wayne movies. The Manalorian speaks with a Clint Eastwood growl. A scene in the penultimate show is straight out of “Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid.” Not all are allusions to westerns. Another scene is a throwback to “Return of the Jedi” with essentially the same payoff.
I was happy to see Gina Carano in the film. She is part of the Carano family that owns casinos in Reno (and elsewhere now), although her time in Reno was limited. She’s more a product of Las Vegas and Texas. She had the starring role in Steven Soderburgh’s “Haywire” in 2011 and she was not up to the task. Carano was quite wooden. Among her other films were “Deadpool,” which wasn’t much of an acting challenge. She’s grown and shows much greater range of emotion in “The Mandalorian.”
The special effects are generally first rate, although there were a few places where they seemed to be cutting corners. When “Howard The Duck” came out, George Lucas talked about the importance of getting the eyes right in non-human characters. He didn’t do it with the duck, but Baby Yoda is well done. I wonder how many millions of dollars of profits they lost by not having a Baby Yoda doll for sale at Christmas.
I liked the humor as well. The discussion of bored Imperial Troopers was a great touch. And the droids/robots were often good for laughs.
IMDB lists a second season coming some time in 2020. I look forward to it.

[Kevin M.]

I still haven’t made up my mind about this series. It really is in many ways a remake of “A Man Called Hawk,” the “Spenser For Hire” spin-off about a stoic loner, a gunfighter with a moral code, who shoots a lot and doesn’t talk much. It is also very much a sci-fi western hybrid, two genres I greatly enjoy if done well (full disclosure, I liked “Cowboys and Aliens”). 

But there is no story. Guy finds kid... guy looks after kid. That’s it. There is no ethos... “this is the way” is so vague it fits literally every possible usage. “That’s what she said” has more subtext. There is some clever dialogue by the ancillary characters, and Baby Yoda, aka The Child, is precious, but that’s all masking the fact that from the start of the season to the end, there is little narrative moving things along. And ultimately that’s what did in “A Man Called Hawk”... you can’t explore an enigma without him ceasing to be an enigma, so all that’s left are fighting and killing, with a few bits of banter tossed in for fun. 

I’m addressing the negative stuff first, because I want it all out on the table. Ultimately I was ticked off that Disney ceased the planned Boba Fett movie, and this is likely as close as we will get to a furthering of that character... unless he is burped out of the Sarlac pit. While Jedi and light sabers must always remain at the center of the Star Wars universe, there is room for side stories. For instance, I greatly enjoyed “Rogue One”... more than I expected to, and more with each rewatching. And maybe as I digest this series, I’ll appreciate it more. The casting is decent enough (I mean, Bill Burr?!), and the effects are on par with major theatrical releases. The music is... well.. it is not John Williams, and I get that modern movies don’t have the sorts of orchestral nuance that Williams did better than almost anyone in cinema, but the best thing I can say about this score is that it gets out of the way. 

So, yeah, I can’t decide whether I like this series. But I liked it enough to watch all the episodes, and I will probably watch them again. But there are problems with it. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[David Bruggeman]

I didn't know Carano's Reno ties, but recognized her from her days as a mixed martial arts fighter.  She fought in the days before the UFC had a female division.  While I can't disagree with Steve on her acting in "Haywire," I felt she did extremely well with the action.

There are many other, better-known actors featured in The Mandalorian (Werner Herzog's voice is all over some of the promos, Giancarlo Esposito mentioned he was in it while on Conan, and I've seen glimpses of Carl Weathers and Ming-Na Wen). Maybe Favreau had to spend some money on casting that could have gone to the effects?

David

[Steve Timko]

MINOR SPOILERS

Kevin, of all the people on this group who would have problems with the plot, I would have put you last. "The Mandolorian" is straight out of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey circle.

The reluctant call to adventure. The Bounty Droid is a threshold guardian/trickster who helps the hero across the threshold. Rescuing Baby Yoda is the theft of the elixir. The resurrection is the understanding his destiny is to continue to protect Baby Yoda and perhaps get him back to his people.

George Lucas was heavily into Campbell but this is maybe the closest to the Campbell tradition.

The casting was excellent, yes. Bill Burr was great as a thug. Amy Sedearis as the eccentric spaceship repair mechanic was inspired. Crazy and a soft spot for Baby Yoda.

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[Kevin M.]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 10:31 PM Steve Timko <steve...@gmail.com> wrote:

MINOR SPOILERS

Kevin, of all the people on this group who would have problems with the plot, I would have put you last. "The Mandolorian" is straight out of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey circle.

The reluctant call to adventure. The Bounty Droid is a threshold guardian/trickster who helps the hero across the threshold. Rescuing Baby Yoda is the theft of the elixir. The resurrection is the understanding his destiny is to continue to protect Baby Yoda and perhaps get him back to his people.

George Lucas was heavily into Campbell but this is maybe the closest to the Campbell tradition.

But has the hero transformed? We don’t know what he was before, and we don’t know what he is now. If The Child is The Grail, then the journey (Apple autocorrect kept capitalizing Journey... big fans of prog rick) was over before the first episode credits. Only by the last episode of the season did Mando commit to an actual journey. 

As I said, I dwelled in the negative in my comments, mostly because I wanted to flush it out for myself. But as I saw it, Mando had no story arc... merely a straight line. Some things happened in each episode, but nothing that altered the principal characters. Suffice it to say, I’d like to see more plot in season two. 

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Kevin M. (RPCV)