The Mandalorian Season 3

Boba Head Blues

The Mandalorian Season 3
Streaming March - April 2023
8 episodes

Okay, so I’m grudgingly watching the third series of The Mandalorian now because I feel like I should go and see the first new Star Wars movie we’ve had in cinemas for a while, in a couple of weeks. According to a work colleague, I also have to try and watch the woman who sounds like a sneeze series too, before I can fully appreciate the new film. So... yeah, I’ll need to try and catch up to that one too but I’m feeling less than optimistic. And I’m warning you right up front here... this is going to be a fairly short review. 

So, all in all, I thought this third season of the show was somewhat better than the last two, despite the fact that my favourite character hasn’t returned because the overly sensitive people at the nameless channel who are producing this show managed to cancel the actress who was the best thing about the show. But I’m not going in to all that rubbish here.
 
Now, maybe it’s because they’ve lost the 1950s-1970s TV western vibe they nicely had going for it in the previous two series and instead replaced it with an overriding story arc, is why I responded to this one more. Specifically to do with the character played by Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck in the modern reboot of Battlestar Galactica) and that kinda held my interest... it’s a way of keeping a few standalone stories in as side mission quests while constantly referring to the overall arc... a bit similar to the way The X Files finally wrecked themselves, when that overreaching arc needed resolving and outstayed its welcome. 

We have The Mandalorian played, as far as I know, by Pedro Pascal and his Lone Wolf And Cub-style sidekick Grogu, played by a bunch of pixels. I say as far as I know because, as is ‘the way’, Pascal never once shows his face in this series at all and two other actors also play the main character. So... I’m guessing that Pascal only provides the voice here but, I may be wrong.

And it’s entertaining enough, I guess. 

There are a few fair bad things about the show... like the longest and most interesting episode about the sabotaged reintegration of a former imperial clone specialist seeming to have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story other than a quick, plug in reference. Thus rendering it a pointless episode with no real punchline other than some clones, which you really already suspected were out there, being introduced literally as a throwaway moment in the last episode, which was already referred to enough in another episode. So... yeah, the most interesting bit of Star Wars in a while got kinda derailed before it had even got a chance to properly shine. 

Another episode starring Jack Black, musical artist Lizzo and Christopher Lloyd, is kind of like an adrenalised version of Franz Kafka’s The Trial but, rather than stay with that concept, just includes too much action and not enough of the main protagonists tying themselves in knots trying to get past the bureaucratic web. So, yeah. I definitely had some issues... not to mention that Grogu kind of plays a secondary role in these episodes. I wanted to see more of him in action than I was getting in this third series. 

But, for the sake of not being completely negative about the way a certain company has bought and managed to completely neutralise anything that was good about the Star Wars brand... there are a few nice things I’d like to shout out about here. 

So we had the mouse robot from the Death Star using the same sound sample, making yet another appearance here (plus it’s brought some friends). And we also had R5D4 from the original Star Wars movie (later renamed Episode IV - A New Hope for the various 1978 and 1979 re-releases) playing a major role as The Mandalorian’s new droid. I still have my old 1978 action figure of this droid up in my loft and they haven’t changed much about the character (it maybe looks slightly less beat up). 

The other nice thing was Mando (to his friends) working his way through a set of delayed opening shield doors and taking out various troopers as he goes. It was done in a slightly different manner but it was a nice nod to the best of the prequel movies, The Phantom Menace... and it allowed for the same sense of frustrated anticipation in the characters watching from the opposite side of the various shield doors. So that was good stuff. 

And, yeah, sorry but that’s me done for this season. I’m kinda hoping both characters meet their final fates in the new movie (death or whatever), selfishly so I don’t have to sit through another season of this show. The House Of Mouse definitely need to calm their Star Wars output down and desist from watering down the franchise anymore, I feel. Just release a new movie every three to ten years may be a better way of continuing the brand. At least that’s how I’d deal with what they’ve done to it. But, hey, I’m sure they’re making more short term money just milking it dry for now so, yeah, you can tell I’m not that optimistic about the Star Wars franchise these days. This is the way.

The Mandalorian Series 2

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian Series 2
2020 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Eight episodes.

Warning: Loads of big spoilers.

Well... I’ve been holding off from writing this review for a week or so* because... Series 2 of The Mandalorian was okay. And that’s all. And that’s pretty much the problem here. When I was a kid and later a teenager, Star Wars was a hallmark for something really special (even the two not so good movies, Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith). If there was a new piece of the franchise coming then it was something to be looked forward to. It was something to set your sights on to get you through the year. And then George Lucas sold it to Disney. For, I’m sure, the best of intentions actually but, well, here we are.

The Disney treadmill got under way with a good start on The Force Awakens but then managed to turn out the somewhat ‘out of synch in terms of continuity’ Rogue One and the disastrous The Last Jedi (which looked really great but completely managed to screw the franchise up completely). When we got to the Star Wars film which did capture a lot of the things which made the originals special without being too ‘in awe’ of the lineage, Solo, the film under performed at the box office... something I personally believe was solely to do with stepped up bad timing and the lack of studio recognition as to how badly people thought previous release was (The Last Jedi). The last movie, The Rise Of Skywalker was pretty good but it spent most of it’s time trying to take away the bad taste of The Last Jedi to the point where it just seemed to jump the shark a little and swerve in a bit of the wrong direction.

And then there’s The Mandalorian. The first season followed it’s old TV western formula and managed to have some really good episodes, tempered with some less than stellar ones. Series Two is, I have to say, more consistent in its tone but, alas, somewhat straddles the line between great and terrible and seems, I dunno, just a little bland and mediocre. It’s a nice thing to watch and that’s no bad thing... but it’s not a great thing to watch, I’m sad to say.

The two main highlights which actually got me bothering to tune into this thing again were the return of two key characters from the main film franchise... Bobba Fett and Luke Skywalker. Alas, although Bobba Fett was played by the actor Temuera Morrison, the person who played Bobba’s father Jango Fett in the aforementioned Attack Of The Clones, he doesn’t make too much of an impact here. Granted, he elevates a couple of the episodes with his presence but ultimately, doesn’t serve much purpose other than to draw the audience interest from the original movies and to have a post credits sequence at the end of the last episode where he sets up a new Bobba Fett TV show.

His sudden reappearance from the dead is never really explained (I think it might have been already explained in some cartoons) and, due to some fast thinking from the writers in terms of the way the story goes in the last episode, he never gets to meet Luke Skywalker so Luke can kick his backside for what he did to Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. I’m guessing that would have taken too long out of an episode to write in and so, yeah, they don’t even try to cater for that confrontation.

And as for Luke Skywalker... well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mark Hamill but this is the worst return of the jedi I could have imagined. They keep his black hood up when he’s lightsabering to death a new squad of battle droids which, frankly, look like they’ve been cribbed from Hammerstein wearing his old war head from The A.B.C Warriors strip in 2000AD comic. Presumably this is to give the effects team less CGI because, when he does reveal his face, they’ve used that technique which is sometimes successful and sometimes not, of making people look like they did decades ago. Alas, here it just looked as fake as the CGI generated Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia from Rogue One. Also, despite ‘The Child’ being an obvious Force user, Luke just seemed somewhat out of place in the world of The Mandalorian, truth be told. At least that’s how it felt to me.

Pedro Pascal and his semi-regular companions were all on top form again but even special guest appearances such as Rosario Dawson and Katee Sackhoff, two very fine actresses, didn’t really distract from the ‘lack of special’. It was a nice and somewhat entertaining show, for sure but... yeah, it feels like Star Wars has really lost its magic since the Disney deal and I do believe that they are going to disprove the old adage “nothing succeeds like excess” next year with a whole host of Star Wars TV shows and another movie which, I suspect, will dilute the brand down even more. I’m trying to stay positive here because Star Wars has been in my life since I was nine years old, when I first saw the original movie in cinemas at the tail end of 1977 but, yeah, it feels like its almost becoming a chore to watch, in some ways. And now that The Child, aka Grogu, looks like he’s departed the series for good (possibly to be slaughtered by Kylo Wren in a decade or so after the setting of this show), it seems to me that the powers that control the current version of the Star Wars universe may be pushing their luck a bit if they are thinking of continuing this for a third season. I guess we’ll see what happens but, believe me, I am sorry I couldn’t be more positive about this latest show. But it just feels like more counterfeit Star Wars to me.

*At time of writing, last year sometime. Sorry, if I could get more excited about it I’d have got it up sooner.

The Mandalorian

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian
2019 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Series One. Eight episodes.

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

Okay, I finally got around to seeing the new Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian and... it’s not too bad. I think it’s weird that the Disney+ channel has only just started in the UK but almost everyone I know seems to have seen it already. I think it’s even stranger now, having seen it, that this is the big ‘blackmail you into signing up for a Disney + subscription’ bargaining chip at present because, frankly, I think people who are signing up just to see The Mandalorian are going to be angry they did so and want their money back. It’s quite good but not enough to warrant any subscription costs, I reckon.

Okay, so, set five years after the fall of the Empire at the Battle Of Endor in Return Of The Jedi, The Mandalorian is about a bounty hunter who is a Mandalorian (I’m not going to explain why he’s a Mandalorian when you may think he’s not in the early episodes because there’s a reveal coming in the last episode in terms of what ‘Mandalorian’ actually means)... so yeah, the same kind of armour as Bobba Fett with a certain ritualistic and almost spiritual adherence to the ‘faith’, for want of a better word, of his fellow Mandalorians (who are rarely seen and live ‘underground’ since certain incidents from their past took place).

And yes, it’s the Star Wars version of a weekly Western TV show we were all expecting it to be. I mean, there’s an argument that the ‘space opera’ genre of science fiction that encapsulates the Star Wars Saga is pretty much a Western to all intents and purposes anyway but this show is, it seems to me, deliberately trying to be like those old 50s, 60s and 70s TV Westerns like Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Virginian. And it does feel very seventies and, well, despite the laser blasts and desert canyons, somewhat less epic and more a chamber version of the Star Wars universe we’ve come to know and, for the most part, love.

The plot all springboards from the specific piece of ‘live cargo’ that the titular bounty hunter is asked to retrieve in the first episode and, form then on, the tale becomes one of a fugitive who is trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities and fellow bounty hunters and keep said cargo free from harm. That’s the plot and it’s very much ‘mission of the week’ territory as The Mandalorian picks up a new job or task leading to the ultimate resolution of certain things in a final episode, where he gathers together the various people he’s met individually in former episodes to help him perform a specific mission.

And there’s good and there’s bad, to be honest.

There are some nice Japanese film culture and manga references in some episodes which, in a way, also contributes to the elevation of the Western flavour of the show. For instance, episode four is an absolutely blatant remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai which, of course, was remade as The Magnificent Seven... but let’s not forget that Kurosawa himself was heavily influenced by the cinema of John Ford, one of the leading directors of the Western genre in his time. Also, in the shots where a certain fifty year old child (you may have heard about him referred to with a thoroughly inaccurate nick-name on the internet) is riding in a kind of ‘hover pram’ or floating crib, it immediately lends the episodes where he is doing this a kind of Lone Wolf And Cub vibe.

There’s also a heck of a lot of obvious but still fun Star Wars references littered throughout... with absolutely gazillions of previously seen alien species (including Nick Nolte as an Ugnaught) and I even think I caught a glimpse of a Rodean... except this time it was red? There are also some nice references leading back to the Star Wars Summer Special (I still need to get a contraband copy of that to watch at some point) and some great cracks, including an expanded joke about the legendary inaccuracy of a typical stormtrooper’s aim when handling firearms. I think my favourite thing about the show, though, was IG-11. When I was a kid, I was always tantalised by IG-88 in The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed here) and it was one of my favourite action figures (even though he literally just stands around in a few shots in that movie). In a few episodes here we finally get to see an IG unit in action and it’s really awesome. Hope they release a figure for that one at some point.

Another awesome thing is a toy which I refused to buy in the 1970s called an Imperial Troop Transporter or some such. My cousin had one but I didn’t want it because it wasn’t in any of the movies and was obviously just a needless accessory that either Palitoy or Kenner had dreamed up to a) part gullible kids from their pocket money and b) ensure those same kids would buy multiple stormtrooper figures to populate it with. Well... showrunner Favreau must have had some fond memories of his childhood toy because they’ve finally put one of these things in a Star Wars show and it looks just like the old toy. So this was nice.

Also, the acting is pretty great. Pedro Pascal does an amazing job considering he is only seen without his helmet for a few seconds in the last episode. And it’s great seeing Carl Weathers and Gina Carano again... not to mention 'surprising', seeing somebody like infamous German director Werner Herzog play a recurring villain. These are all solid, reliable people and you really can’t complain about the cast in this.

However, there are a lot of clunky things as well here... or in light of the recent re-edits to the original movies, maybe I should say MaClunkey things?

For example, the sound design brings back a lot of old favourites (I think the mouse robot is really getting a little overdone now guys) but while it’s nice to hear the carbon freezing sound again in the first episode... it seems completely inappropriate to hear the hyperdrive malfunction sound effect when The Mandalorian can’t start up his ship, the Razor Crest, at some point. Why would that even sound the same?

Another thing that gave me pause to think was a new kind of TIE Fighter which is the standard model that can fold it’s wings up when it comes in for a landing. Seriously? If they had these somehow (after the defeat of the Empire) just five years after Return Of The Jedi then why did they not still have them during The Force Awakens? That makes no sense.

My biggest problem with the show, though, is the musical score. Ludwig Göransson’s music is totally appropriate to the action and has some nice, catchy moments. It’s not sounding anything like a Star Wars score though... it’s a much more modern use of an orchestra and is missing that iconic, 'early German refugees invade Hollywood in the 1930s' sound that John Williams (and a couple of other composers) have used in the movies over the years. It’s something that really lets the side down, as far as I’m concerned and I just wish they’d have gone with a more traditional Star Wars sound here. Because as much as the show tries to assimilate itself in with the much loved saga, the soundtrack is working against it and throwing it all away most of the time. Which is unfortunate... especially since it is very nicely scored and could work on any other generic brand, I think.

And that’s me done on The Mandalorian. This is an okay series but not something, as I said earlier, that anybody is going to be that happy about paying expensive subscriptions for. I’d be quite happy to watch a second series but I’m not so sure I’d bother to rewatch the first, in all honesty. They should have taken my Blu Ray cash when they had the chance. Recommended to die hard Star Wars fans only... or those who don’t have to spend a wadge of cash to get this thing.