For those of you that have just
returned to civilization after spending the last few years living on a desert
island and befriending a beach volley ball, Disney just launched its own
streaming service, Disney+. We can talk about how this new model of every major
film studio and/or cable network having their own streaming service is
inherently unsustainable another day. As part of the release, Disney premiered its
latest entry in the Star Wars mythos, The Mandelorian. The story follows
a Mandelorian bounty hunter whom gets wrapped up in a situation far, far larger
than he probably could have ever imagined. Let’s get to it.
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| Boba Fett, eat your heart out. |
This story takes place about five
years after the fall of the Galactic Empire. Things are a bit… unstable, which
is pretty common after major political upheavals. I assume Luke and Leia and all
their friends are busy rebuilding the Jedi Order and the Galactic Senate, so
odds are we won’t be seeing them. Which is convenient, given how the last few
years have been. The story proper opens to a bar scene, where several aliens
are prepping to torture a blue alien for not paying off his gambling debt. In
walks The Mandelorian. I do hope they reveal what his bloody name is soon, as typing
Mandelorian over and over again gets kind of tedious. Anyway, the Mandelorian
draws the attention of everyone in the room. You don’t see many folks dressing
in the Mandelorian style anymore. The goons try to pick a fight with him, the
Mandelorian ignores them until they try to touch him. Never. Touch. A. Mandelorian.
What follows is one of the most one-sided barfights I’ve seen in a while. He
kills them all, one dude even gets sliced in half by a door, and then approaches
the blue guy. Yeah, turns out Blue Face had a sizable bounty on his head, and the
Mandelorian is here to collect. Blue Guy tries to talk his way out of it, but the
Mandelorian just tells him “I can bring you in warm. Or I can bring you in
cold.” Bad ass!
After an uneventful speeder ride
back to Mandelorian’s ship, which ends with the ship being attack by a massive
walrus looking beast that he has to tase to make it let go, they fly off into
the wild black yonder. The Mandelorian isn’t much of a conversationalist, nor
does he seem too concerned with keeping Blue Guy imprisoned, so Blue Guy asks
to use the rest room. What a shock, he’s actually looking for the escape pod.
He sees that the Mandelorian is a collector of weaponry and… carbonite… slabs…
The Mandelorian sneaks up on him, grabs him and tosses him into a portable
carbonite freezing chamber. Dude could have probably just forced him into the
pod as soon as the super-walrus was taken care of, but there you go.
He arrives home and meets with his
bounty hunter guild contact, Apollo Creed. Sorry, sorry, he’s just played by
Carl Weathers. He’s actually named Greef Karga. The Mandelorian asks if they
have any other high paying contracts, but Karga only has jobs that won’t even
pay for the fuel to get to the star systems in question. Karga tells him that
he does know of one… under the table contract to take. Somebody is willing to
pay big bucks but isn’t willing to go through the direct channels. The Mandelorian
takes the pass Karga offers him and goes to meet with his potential client.
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| These two have a weird but fun chemistry. Shame what happens to IG-11 |
While we can’t see his face through
the helmet, but I have to imagine that he was quite shocked to see that his
client’s guards are some incredibly dirty looking Stormtroopers. The client,
played by Werner Herzog, wants the Mandelorian to take care of a fifty-year-old
target. Not sure how that could be, considering the Empire was less than thirty
when it fell, unless Palpatine had an eye on this target when he was still just
Supreme Chancellor. Who knows? Anyway, the Client seems to not care what
happens to the target, but his science advisor Dr. Pershing is quite insistent
that the Mandelorian brings the target back alive. The payment is going to be
in Beskar Steel. The metal has some kind of significance to the Mandalorian, or
so the Client seems to hint at. The Mandelorian takes the job.
He takes the Beskar steel bar that
he received as a down payment to a secret forge. There, a mysterious
Mandelorian called the Armorer takes the bar and forges it into a new pauldron
for him. While they don’t say it, the way the scene is shot makes me think
forging Beskar steel is something akin to sacred amongst the Mandelorians. He
takes the new pauldron on his right shoulder and takes off.
The Mandelorian flies out to
Arvala-7, a desert planet to take out the target. He’s almost immediately attacked
by some local fauna, Blurggs. He’s almost torn to pieces by two of them, but is
saved by Kuiil, an Ugnaught moisture farmer. Oddly, this Ugnaught goes against tradition
and instead of talking in oinks and grunts, speaks with Nick Nolte’s voice.
Neat. Kuiil takes the Mandelorian home and explains a bit about his target.
Namely that the target had been on Arvala for fifty years and no one has ever
gotten close enough to nab it. He offers to take the Mandelorian to the temple
where it is held up, provided that he can ride a Blurgg. Apparently, the way is
too treacherous to go on foot. And somehow the Mandelorian’s ship won’t do… because
reasons.
After a failed first attempt to
mount, he’s able to get on the beast and they get on their way. The Mandelorian
goes on ahead by himself, only to find out that another bounty hunter beat him
to the punch by like five minutes. It’s an IG model, IG-11. It’s the same model
as the robot bounty hunter from Empire Strikes Back. The two team up,
and are able to kill all of the guards. They make their way inside and find… a…
baby… Yoda? Holy Crap! I was originally not going to spoil that, but the
internet circulated this little guy’s image faster than rumors of the latest
Marvel movies. I’m not sure if he realizes how big a deal this little guy is,
but he knows it’s a big enough deal that the Mandelorian shoots and kills… er
deactivates IG-11, to keep the reward for himself.
I really liked this show. It has a real
western vibe to it that I really dig. I blame my father and his love of John Wayne
films for that. A lone gunslinger trying to find his way in an unforgiving
world, I just eat it up. Pedro Pascal, the titular Mandelorian does an amazing job
in his role as the stoic Mandelorian bounty hunter. All we really learn about him is that he seems
to have an issue with droids, and he was a “foundling” amongst the Mandelorian.
I believe this means that he’s not a Mandelorian by birth but by upbringing. But
I’m not sure what the rules are in the post Episode 7 Star Wars expanded
universe. They threw out a LOT of the old rules when they decided that only the
movies and a couple of the TV shows are canon. I imagine that it’s incredibly hard to really
act when your face is covered 100% of the time, but Pedro does his damnedest. He’s
a solid fighter in most situations, but I get the sense that he hasn’t spent much
time roughing it on less civilized planets. Or maybe he was just having an off
day when the Blurgg’s snuck up on him. Some of the effects are kind of so-so,
but the show overall makes up for it. The story, I think, will be one of the
highlights of this new Star Wars era. Or at least I’m really, really, really
hoping it will be. Don’t drop the ball, guys!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31782049
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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