Star Wars The Mandalorian - Review

The full season of the first ever Star Wars live action TV series has completed and Season two has been announced, so now we must see how it all played out. In an era where fans are louder than ever, can a show that had hype beyond compare, piled upon it, exceed the expectations that many had, or do we all have a bad feeling about this?

The Mandalorian is a bit special in that it is the first live action show, yes, (we are not counting any tv guest appearances, sorry Muppets) but it is also the first show set in the space between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, a gap of almost 30 years, at least as far as the timeline goes. This large gap, has started to be filled in with the events of the recent trilogy and that of the animated show Resistance, but an entirely new cast of characters, in locations new to the universe, mean that we can ignore almost anything we think we know and just enjoy the story being told, but that is where things fall apart. The overarching plot is not bad, in fact how it ends fits the tone of the story being told, the problem is that all the little parts that make it up are a hodgepodge of quality and it severely detracts from the plight of the Mandalorian. Of course, the story is just as much about The Child, as it is Mando, but given how little information is discovered about it during the season, any growth the character has, is tied directly to the events it finds itself in.

Those events range from expected, to totally pointless and very rarely do they go past that, the problem is that most of the events fall into the latter group and hardly ever stray into anything grander. One of the episodes is about how Mando finds a planet with limited contact with other Systems, low technological abilities and no impact from any form of government, but of course as something has to go wrong, it results in a band of thieves giving grief to some locales and Mando helping train them up to fight. The issue with this, it is a common theme in most shows and movies, is that there is no incentive for Mando to help to this extent, even Cara Dune, the ex-republic shock trooper agrees, yet with some honeyed words and bashful eyes, we get a montage of training. The entire episode feels rushed and while there is a wicked shot of an AT-ST coming through the trees, there pacing is so off that by the time the episode ends, I was honestly confused as to what had happened, the time frame it took and why it all occurred. There are some episodes, that do have moments of amazing, Mando discovering that The Child can do something odd, or as we know it, using the Force was amazing, but as they are few and far between, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Looking at the cast that the show has, there are some really strong choices there, Pedro Pascal is fantastic as the titular character, and while we see his face in the final episode, he manages to become the character in very little time. From the walk to the motions, each action he takes, shows why the Mandalorians should be feared, of course that one moment when he attempts to leave town with The Child, just puts a massive underline on that statement. The rest of the cast varies from episode to episode, but the two main constants are Carl Weathers and Gina Carano, playing Greef Karga and Cara Dune respectively, both characters offer opposing view points for the Mandalorian, Greef as the local contact for the Bounty Hunter Guild is all about getting back into the game, where as Cara is more about staying out of fights. There are a host of additional characters that make either a single appearance or recur a few times, that help make the world a little more fleshed out, I can say that Jason Sudeikis is in there, but you likely wont know it, but other actors like Ming-Na Wen and Natalia Tena feel wasted in their roles, but given how their characters end up, seeing them again is possible.

For all the fun characters and odd ones, there are some really odd choices and the two most confusing ones appear in the same episode. Bill Burr is a comedian who can be hilarious at times but casting him as a no-nonsense soldier is hard to swallow, even when the rest of the group is solid. The other odd choice is that of Matt Lanter as the New Republic Ship Pilot, now his face is not one that many will notice, but his voice is well know to Star Wars fans already, as he voiced Anakin Skywalker in The Clones Wars animated series. He is a solid actor, but now has the credit of being among only a handful of actors who have played multiple roles within the saga, including Mark Hamill, Warwick Davis and series creator Jon Favreau.

As this is Star Wars, there are many planets to visit and the series does a great job of taking us to places new and while some, like Navarro, do feel like other places at times, but they each hold their own as new and fun locations. There are planets that we visit once, before never seeing it again, at least for now, but others we keep coming back to and the quality in them is the same, exceptional. The planet where the locals are trained to fight could have easily been used as the centre point for the entire series, such was the attention to it, but it is only there for one singular episode and one scene later on. In addition to the planets, we get new droids, new looks for classic types we know and of course, ships, plenty and plenty of new ships. The Razorcrest, the ship of The Mandalorian, is basic and falling apart, but has a charm about it, the fact that almost all the shots of the ship are that of an actual model, shows the dedication that the team had to making it fit within the Star Wars universe, even the Tie Fighter, something we see a lot of at the end, has a few new tricks, but still fits right in.

As a series, Star Wars has always been known for pushing special effects forward, most of what we see on screens today, can be traced back to the folks that worked on the original movie that released in 1977. The same holds true today, the visual effects are amazing, baring a few shots from the first episode, in fact the quality seemed to get better and better as the episodes progressed. I know that they were using some new technology to make the show, but whilst watching it, I never felt that I was seeing something new, I was just watching Star Wars, which means the effects did the right thing and moved into the background, letting the story be the star. Sound wise, the new score from Ludwig Göransson was amazing, that main tune alone invokes a western feeling, but those overly romanticised tunes that we know from Star Wars are not present, sure you might catch a few notes that remind you of a tune, but that is it. Göransson has done amazingly well, coming from his work on Black Panther, you might think there would something similar between the two, but you would be wrong, it is all new and I love it.

Each episode has moments of greatness, but there are far to many moments where things make little sense, which is a massive anchor around the series. There could have been something truly amazing here, but it just takes too long to pull itself together, there are some amazing moments early on, but far to often there is little happening. The problem with it is simple, we don’t know the characters and while we might know the grander world they inhabit, we don’t know their local worlds, so there is nothing there to ground us to their situations either. We get more new characters in this single series than the third trilogy provided us and while some of them are clearly sticking around for season two, most were one shots, or killed with one shot, leaving them to be nothing but filler.

Star Wars is a vast universe of stories and getting more stories is something I am always on board for, I had just wished we got to know the character of the Mandalorian a little more, before we were thrown on the adventure he was. Season Two should help flesh out some of the character more, plus start to show some of the wider galaxy and I am crossing my fingers for it to do better than the first season.