30th October 2020 (Released 30th October 2020)
Chapter 9: The Marshal (Written and Directed by Jon Favreau)
It what has to be one of the fastest turnarounds from Season 1 to Season 2 in history, the first episode of Disney + hit Star Wars series dropped today. But did it live it to the hype, expectations and good will that the first season built? And is this the way forward for Star Wars? The answer, at least in my gaff, is yes. Right off the bat, the series shows us how to do television. With a recap done in echoing voice-over rather than individual scenes and dialogue re-ordered as is the usual manner for episodic entertainment, Mandalorian sets out to do it their way. It's difficult watching Star Wars now and expecting new ideas, as so much of the universe is tied to a core through line of Empire bad, family with Force powers good. Which is fine. I watched and enjoyed Star Wars for over 40 years now. If you don't get what it's about, maybe it's not for you. But what this show has proven is that it can be entertainment with both classic touches and motifs as well as new ideas. And this season opener hammers that point home wonderfully.
For a start, it is Star Wars in every conceivable way Even the episode itself being No.1, but titled Chapter 9: The Marshal keeps up with the confusing SW sequencing! It takes from George Lucas' original vison, adding and enriching the world-building he set in motion. The planets Mando visits on his new quest to reunite his charge, the mysterious Child - with his own kind – are lived-in, dirty. Things don't work as they should. Watching Mando walk through what is clearly a bad part of town, with the walls sprayed with graffiti and a hundred eyes of hungry creatures staring out from the darkness, puts us firmly in a 'modern' setting. He even ends up watching a deathmatch in a boxing ring between two Gamorreans, something that feels like it's right out of a early '00s crime-thriller. It's the Star Wars equivalent of the cop going to a strip bar for information. We're soon treated to a display of Mando's badassery, a trait inherited from Boba Fett's on-screen appearances. There's an inherent cool to characters that rarely reveal their faces and do everything in a minimalist, confident style. To borrow a phrase about another cool character, we like the Mandalorian because he's the best he is at what he does – only what he does isn't very nice.
THE ALLIANCES THE MANDALORIAN MAKES ARE UNEASY BUT FUN
We're soon heading back to Tatooine and treading some familiar Star Wars ground. Not in the setting but the western antecedents that so much of modern American myth springs from, with The Mandalorian searches for... another Mandalorian. One who can help him get the Child to his people. Here is where we most feel the thrill of early Star Wars – the possibility that somehow Boba Fett survived the Sarlacc pit in ROTJ and is now stalking the streets of a Tatooine mining town. I won't give the game away here, but you'll be pleased with the results. We tread familiar ground for the series in other ways too. This episode plays on the season 1 encounter with the Jawas, killing a creature for them so he can get something he wants. But it's also on Tatooine that we see the most character development for Pedro Pascal's masked warrior. First there's the fact that his primary mission has changed, with protecting the Child being priority number one. Then there's his more relaxed attitude towards droids. But most of all you see it in his willingness to be the one that makes the plans to save the day but understands that he doesn't always have to be the one to execute those plans. It's better to give others the sense of achievement and responsibility than to be the knight, riding in to kick ass. The alliances he makes are less uneasy and more fun, especially with Favreau at the helm of this episode. His lightness of touch is evident from the get go and it really makes the show work. He finds the perfect balance between grim n' gritty and triumphant fist-pumping joy.
As always, having Timothy Olyphant show up makes the show better. His casting is a nod to the western myth, what with Deadwood and the superb Justified under his gun-belt already. It's his scenes that also bring up some interesting points about the post-Empire SW universe. With the Galactic Empire now in tatters, the outskirts of the universe have become lawless playgrounds for other types of evil, namely the capitalism associated with mining. It's a nice thread that speaks to the strange situation that people under occupation sometimes find themselves in and that for all it's evil, the Empire was in fact a giant bureaucracy that knew how to protect the money. It allowed some criminality for its own purposes, it was quick to stamp out threats that might affect the cogs of the giant machine turning. Whilst one can never find comfort in fascism, it's an interesting notion for the show to play with. The VFX are as always on point, with the scope and size of the show increasing but still packing a ton of incident and action in a scant 50 minutes. The unreal engine works overtime to give us a wider universe now, with the action feeling real and solid. All in all, a great opener. Here's hoping that this is the way for the future of Star Wars.