The Mandalorian: Lessons Learned
To be honest the first time I heard about The Mandalorian I was skeptical. I felt like Disney really dropped the ball with the new trilogy. Sure expectations were high and difficult to meet, but as we have seen with The Mandalorian it is possible to meet these expectations while carving out a nuanced storyline in the Star Wars universe. The impression I got from the new trilogy was that Disney thought the old (old characters like Luke/Leigh, old storylines like the DeathStar Version 3.0 AKA StarKiller Base or the Jedi vs. Evil 2.0 in the final battle) would be enough to carry the movies. Disney believed that the universe created by George Lucas could do the heavy lifting and all of the fans would flock to these movies simply because we love the universe and the characters. Arguably Disney had a right to believe this, their Marvel franchise was a great hit and was built on creating lovable characters that made fans scream when they jumped onto screen. In buying LucasFilms Disney thought they purchased a “pre-made” cinematic universe and all that was left for them was to rehash characters and locations in perpetuity.
When The Mandalorian came down the pipeline I thought Disney was about to do this again. Given the popularity of the Mandalorian storyline in Star Wars The Clone Wars TV Show, Disney was looking to rehash the storyline for a quick buck. A couple of years later, I stand corrected: it seems Disney is learning from its failures while boldly entering new territory that has implications for all shows coming down the pipeline in Disney and other studios. In this post I’ll cover some thoughts I had about The Mandalorian. Warning SPOILERS AHEAD.
It’s not always about the large stories
Up to now when we think Star Wars we think battles on the galactic scale where hundreds of nameless soldiers face off in exotic locations like the sandy beaches of Scarif or the endless deserts of Tatooine. I mean that’s what Star Wars is right? No one wants to see a smaller story, we all come for the epic battles between Jedi and Sith.
Star Wars The Clone Wars began exploring a concept that would serve centrally in The Mandalorian: you don’t always need lightsabers, Jedi, or Sith to tell a good story. There were many episodes of The Mandalorian where it was just Mando and Baby Yoda on a small story with a new character. For example there was the frog lady trying to save her embryos or the old-western sherif who needed help with a Tusken Raider problem. Neither had any epic lightsaber duels, but rather, served as important character building so that when a lightsaber, Jedi, or Sith show up they serve as natural extensions to the character and story rather than defining points to the whole arc. This is something that the new trilogy tried, but hopelessly failed to do.
The Mandalorian is the story of a Mandalorian and baby Yoda just trying to make their way in a galaxy in flux. It has nothing to do with a Skywalker or the Rebellion or the Republic, it’s just two characters living their life. And that’s okay, audiences much rather see a heartfelt story with developed characters that live in their favorite universes and not multi-million budget set pieces and battles. Sometimes, it’s the smaller stories that land the largest punch. Bravo Disney.
Movies and Shows CAN Mix
Up to now there has been some unspoken rule that characters introduced and developed in movies, especially franchise carrying names like Iron Man or in this case Luke Skywalker, can only appear in movies. These names are too big to appear in something as inconsequential as a show. If some of these characters do appear in a show it would often be a recasting of a character, never the actor that played the character in the blockbuster movie. This rule mainly applies to live action shows (Star Wars The Clone Wars did include many iconic characters, but it was animated so different story).
And for this reason I always felt like live action spin offs of large cinematic universes were fun but cheap in a way. Sure I would get to see Daredevil kick-ass in the streets of New York, but I would watch knowing I would never be able to see Daredevil on the big screen played by Charlie Cox or ever expect to see Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. stroll into a coffee shop on Fifth Avenue.
The Mandalorian spun this paradigm on its head. When that X-wing fighter flew into the hanger, I instantly thought it was Luke Skywalker, but I could not believe they would actually bring him back in the show. I thought, as many others did, they probably recast a younger version of Luke as to not break the unspoken rule of brining original actors from large blockbusters to TV. When Luke took off his robe and I saw it was the computer generated young Mark Hamill I instantly felt relieved. Finally, the investment the audience made into the Mandalorian was rewarded. The appearance of Mark Hamill was a sign to the fans that the days of this arbitrary separation between TV and Movie was over. Our favorite heroes from the movies CAN appear in shows and what we see happen in shows can have serious consequences and representation in movies to come.
With this in mind I am excited about all the other Disney shows coming down the pipeline. What next? Will we see Black Widow played by Scarlett Johansson and Thor played by Chris Hemsworth in Loki? Will Captain America make an appearance in Falcon and Winter Soldier? What about the Obi-Wan show!? And the return of Hayden Christensen!?!?! Definitely an exciting time to be a Star Wars fan.
Is it all too much?
As the second season went by and various callbacks were being made it occurred to me there were two types of audiences watching this show. One type of audience member has seen all the movies and watched Star Wars The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. For these audience members one of the largest moments in the whole season was not only Luke’s return, but also the reveal of Ahsoka and the reference to Grand Admiral Thrawn. Arguably this reference has larger implications for Star Wars than Luke’s cameo as it introduces the possibility that Ezra is still alive, a potential plot point to explore in Ahsoka’s series. Then we have the other audience member who has just seen all the movies. For these people Luke’s return and maybe Boba Fett (if they bought into the Boba Fett hype) was the large points of this season and Ahsoka was this new obscure character they had to catch up on by reading IGN or other news networks.
As more and more Star Wars content is added this separation will only get worse, forcing all these new shows to figure out how many references they can make to past shows and films before they loose the majority of the target audience. Disney would argue that this is good as it will convince people to subscribe to Disney+ and use the service to catch up. However, this is a steep ask given how many other shows there are out there both in Disney’s ecosystem with all the Marvel shows and in other studios. There are only so many hours in a day in which we watch TV and Disney can’t expect audience members to sink endless hours on these shows.
Now, one can argue that The Mandalorian is special. This show perhaps was the “Big Bang” of the Star Wars TV show era in the sense that this season’s job was to introduce characters and scenarios that would lead to the other shows. These other shows would be more self-contained, only exploring single characters and stories and leaving callbacks and references to a minimum. Another option would be to build the explanation into the show itself, allowing the show to give audiences the necessary context before launching into the main story, sort of like a nuanced flashback or exposition. However, even this option has limited effectiveness. For example, it is only after watching Ahsoka grow through the clone wars and rebels into the warrior that she is now that audiences can truly appreciate the character. This is not something one can get from a minute long exposition sequence. Regardless only time will tell how this all plays out. In this era of streaming and big studios these problems will only become more common.
Conclusion
2020 has served only to accelerate the adoption and promotion of streaming. As the future of movie theaters are in question, studios are looking to shows to make ends meet. The Mandalorian is a step in the right direction in how these shows can expand on existing franchises in a meaningful way. However as we saw with the new trilogy there is a fine line between expanding on a franchise and just rehashing it with limited effect. For now I am hopeful and am excited to see what will come next to this galaxy far far away.
