You don’t need to be a Star Wars fan to love The Mandalorian
New viewers thinking about watching The Mandalorian, a live-action Star Wars series set to debut on Disney+ tomorrow, might be intimidated by the denseness of the megahit franchise’s sprawling universe, which has been expanding ever since Star Wars: A New Hope hit movie screens in 1977.
Producers are here to ease those worries, assuring people that The Mandalorian is an old-fashioned gunslinger western at heart, and that nobody needs to know what planet Luke found Yoda on (Dagobah, for the record) to enjoy it. “It’s an invitation into [Star Wars] in a very pure way,” producer Jon Favreau (Iron Man) told The Los Angeles Times: “It’s the first time since Episode IV (A New Hope) where it’s inviting people into a whole new cast of characters that doesn’t require any prerequisite understanding of the world.”
The titular character in The Mandalorian (played by Pedro Pascal, who Game of Thrones fans as the cranially challenged Oberyn Martell) is a wandering bounty hunter looking to get his job done with a minimum of fanfare, but we suspect he keeps landing himself in hair-raising situations.
The Mandalorian is set just after the monumental defeat of the evil Galactic Empire in Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. According to Favreau, the wide-open nature of life after the collapse of the repressive regime gives everything a wild west feel. “What would really happen with a strong, tyrannical central government disappearing?” he asked “At first it’s wonderful, because it’s freedom. But then sometimes freedom gets sloppy. Like after the fall of the Roman Empire, a lot of the world descended into darker times. So it was interesting to explore what the Star Wars version of that would be.”
Cara Dune (Gina Carano) in Lucasfilm™s THE MANDALORIAN.
Writer and executive producer Dave Filoni (Star Wars: Rebels) also stresses how uniquely The Mandalorian’s story and world were designed, and how the show is more reflective of the original movie’s Saturday matinee vibe than anything that came after. The Mandalorian is inspired by samurai films and old-school westerns where wayward warriors drift through relatively “lawless” frontiers, set in worlds where the boundaries of light and dark are less pronounced than in the Star Wars movies we’ve known. “George [Lucas] taught me first and foremost that you have to have a good story with characters you believe in,” Filoni said. “There were no Star Wars fans when Star Wars first came out. That wasn’t even a thing.”
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The Mandalorian also stars Carl Weathers (Predator), mixed-martial artist/actress Gina Carano (Deadpool), director/actor Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man), Nick Nolte (The Prince of Tides), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) and Thrones alumni Natalia Tena (Osha). After tomorrow’s premiere, the second episode will air on Friday, November 15, with each of the six remaining episodes from the first season dropping every Friday thereafter until the season finale on December 27.
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