"The Mandalorian" First Impressions

Supposedly Lucas himself invented the name,
so sadly not an instance of EU daydreaming "gone on".

Talking about Star Wars on the internet at any time since about 1999 on virtually any platform, let alone a small personal blog, is little different to standing on your verandah on a hot summer night in the tropics and trying to out-chirp the cicadas, but one has to write about what takes one's interest in the moment, and while I'm sure it would be enormously more productive for me to review, I don't know, some small independent project in need of love and attention (like The Siècle podcast or something), I just watched the first three episodes of Disney's new effort to please developmentally-arrested dudebro fanboys and didn't mind it, so let's talk about The Mandalorian.

Squeeze his legs together and he fires.

Of time of writing there are three episodes (or "chapters") of The Mandalorian out, and of course YouTube is awash with, spoilers beware, videos about the significance of aliens of a certain variety, references to the Prequel Trilogy and the cartoons, the old Extended Universe and anything else one would care to imagine, but the question which is of most important relevance is why the show seems to be decent. At the very least it's worth considering what the explanation is for the tone and style of the show and what it seems to have been designed to resonate with.

This blue dude looks like he should be studying
with Wesley Crusher at Starfleet Academy.

Probably the most obvious reason I can think of is that it has some very reliable people behind it. Jon Favreau, as writer-producer, has always been very good at making "solid" entertainment: not necessarily mind-blowing, but rarely (in my experience) too annoying or dull either. Along with Favreau are creative types like Dave Filoni, who ran Clone Wars and Rebels, and Christopher Yost, who wrote The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which for three-quarters of its existence was a very consistently enjoyable Marvel superhero cartoon with clear storytelling for kids and lots of references and fan-pleasing for nerds.

"Uh... streets in The Galaxy are built to a template,
like kit homes."

And I think this speaks volumes about what The Mandalorian is, and why it seems to have struck a chord with Star Wars fans: it's a live-action kids' cartoon with cinematic production value and a "Mature" rating. It's essentially a realisation of the dream of any kid who's thought, "I wish that thing from my childhood could be brought back in a way where I wouldn't be embarrassed watching it as an adult" (in my case it would probably be Inspector Gadget or something). The Mandalorian is basically a kid playing with his Boba Fett action figure with a slightly different coat of paint and a Star Wars visual dictionary lying open on the floor. The only difference is that this has more explicit murder, abduction, unethical scientific experiments, massacres and war trauma. But at the end of the day it's just kids' TV for adults.

Everyone's already even made the
Rick & Morty reference.

None of this is a point against The Mandalorian. Star Wars has always been a family-oriented concept, and I think unashamedly playing around with the setting in a way focused on the franchise's core strengths (in the Originals) of likeable characters, fun action and cool designs is entirely appropriate. On that note, however, character is probably where the show could stand to develop further. While the titular protagonist benefits from an expressive physical and vocal performance, a lot of his appeal seems to rely on him looking "cool" onscreen, along with having a token tragic backstory as every Star Wars protagonist has, and this could become uninteresting if not handled well. It remains to be seen.

"Where's my eye?"

I enjoyed the first episode of The Mandalorian and enjoyed parts of the second and third ones. The first episode's strengths came from some effective narrative choices not made elsewhere. For instance, the title character simply zaps a big monster rather than fighting it to get his ship away from the ice planet, and teams up with the IG droid without much fuss, something making it a bit less predictable than the following episodes. My biggest gripe is some of the fan service (see alien mentioned above and a certain previously-uncommon bounty hunting tactic) and the fact that I'm not too intrigued yet about where the story is going. I'm mostly just in it to see Star Wars-y stuff happening on the screen with the camera focused on a guy who has a cool helmet. Hopefully the helmet isn't still the most memorable thing after all eight episodes are done.