Synopsis
(No spoilers I promise)
Set in the Star Wars universe, a bounty hunter finds himself protecting a rather unusual baby from an alien race from the Empire.
Review
(May contain minor spoilers)
A Mandalorian walks into a bar…
…and beats up a load of guys. Without breaking a sweat – well okay, we can’t see his face or body so that’s a lie but it just seems that way. My point is, we’ve seen this many times on TV shows/films, a man walks into a bar, someone looks to start a fight with them, the man beats up the guys and it’s game over. This is also how episode 1 of The Mandalorian starts – sorry if I gave away a spoiler there. To add in a few more spoilers (don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to know), the mandalorian dude gets into a few more scrapes, has some conversations with people that you might not necessarily understand all of what was said, and gets his bounty. Well actually, I think he got more than he bargained for with the bounty but that I’m not going to spoil.
Spoilers are over. I have only watched the first episode so I’m hoping that the mandalorian doesn’t continue as a Gary Stu (think male equivalent of a Mary Sue) type character and that we start to see his flaws, vulnerabilities and some of the emotions that he clearly suppresses. There were certainly hints that there a more layers to the mandalorian. There is a lot of scope for a vast range of weird and wonderful characters so I’m also hoping for a lot of new and interesting ones plus lots of subplots, twists, and scrapes that don’t always turn out as predicted. I’m intrigued enough to watch the next episode especially given the ending of episode 1. I’m also guessing how hard it must be to play a central character whose face we can’t see. You’d probably think it easier as you don’t have to worry about facial expressions but I think it must be harder to convey what a character is thinking/feeling with just using body language. It does seem harder to connect to a character without a face!
*UPDATE*
I’ve now watched the first four episodes – thanks for releasing them once a week Disney+ and stopping people who’ve paid their subscriptions from being able to binge watch this – and it does get better. Okay so there’s still the cliches and tropes but this mandalorian guy does start to flesh out a bit into more of a normal human being – but is he a human being, I’m only guessing he is. WARNING – MINOR SPOILERS. He even almost has a love interest – is it possible to fancy a guy who you’ve only ever seen in full on armour including a helmet that covers all his face? He almost gets bested by a woman, and top marks for not casting some skinny twig of a girl who we then have to believe is very strong, no they actually cast a woman who looks like she is actually that strong – Gina Carano. Turns out she is a former MMA fighter and actually can really kick ass. SPOILERS OVER. I do have questions though, like does it not get a bit sweaty in that helmet? Surely his vision is impaired and his hearing even more so? Does he not get one heck of a sweat rash? He can’t even wipe away sweat that has run in his eye because “it is the way”. Well there you go. The Mandalorian so far consists of one-off stories with the main storyline running through them and is so far worth a watch.
