The Mandalorian is the kind of content you lean in to. Lately we are fashioned to sit back, relax and enjoy our content. To sit cozy in our couches and recliners, snuggle up and let the experience over take us. Every now and then I fancy being entertained, when the content is easily digestible. I like it even more when the content is good. When I mean good, I mean really good. So good that I will lean forward, arching out of my seat so I can see closer, finer, and immerse myself entirely to the images upon the screen. Episode One of The Mandalorian held my attention for the entire 40 minutes and never let go. It only drew me in deeper, making me want to know more, while at the same time, blasted my mind completely into the cosmos, capturing my imagination in the same way as when I was ten years old and sat in a theatre to watch Star Wars for the first time.
Before I knew anything about Jedi or the Force, all I could fathom and experience was the aliens and worlds of The Phantom Menace. Regardless of what predicates opinion about that film, generationally two different feelings were felt - love and hate. Those who had never seen Star Wars before, and loved what they were seeing, and those who hated that what they were seeing wasnt like the first time they saw Star Wars. I was of the former, and I didn't care, because all I wanted to be was Anakin Jaywalker flying a podracer across a distant planet on the other side of the galaxy. The bar was set on not only what entertainment, film and a cinematic experience can mean to me, but also my desire and connection to a fantastical world far from our own. I was thrust into hyperspeed bound for space, and I never wanted to go home.
The Mandalorian has brought me back to reliving that kind of love for movies. Capturing a world of mystery and intrigue, that of depth and substance, grit and glamour, a packaged experience of overwhelming joy and excitement without holding back, pulling me in closer to what I cannot begin to comprehend, wanting to know everything but nothing at all. Simply to allow this art to exist in it's majestic ability to turn me on. This is what good content does. Jon Favreau and Disney + have struck gold, providing a form of storytelling so compelling and luminous that everything before it becomes a blur, a faded memory of the past, reaping the fresh rewards of what is new, what is to come, and what will never go away. The infinite has been unleashed and great creators are at the fold of something truly special.
Every frame of this pilot episode is beautiful. A picturesque immersion into a Star Wars Universe foreign but familiar. New and old faces scattered across planets we have never been too but accept as lore for it is now and it is timeless. A period of quiet rebellion, the calm before the storm. Beautifully lit deserts and detailed designs of streets, cantinas and bazaars with a multitude of stories scattered in each shot seen. This is the wild west for cosmic gangsters, and the Mandalorian is the Lone Gunslinger, a man on a mission, a man of purpose and will, that gets the job done looking so damn cool as he does it. The western hero, an eastern archetype, a protagonist that teeters on the edge of a coin, right and wrong has no place in this world, only survival; the job; the bounty; the prize. Whatever it is we will lean in to find out, we will wait and we will pace ourselves because home entertainment never looked so sweet.
Favreau has brought storytelling to the basics, the old fashioned mythology of One on a quest. A query to the mystery that demands a place in history as there have been only few that have lived up to the caliber of pure enchantment. A character that acts upon instinct, cunning and pure gut, the rogue one that dares to be bold, and in so doing become the story that Legend is made of. We once called him Boba Fett, Han Solo, but now he remains simply as The Mandalorian, and it is The Bounty Hunter we've always wanted, and all we’ll ever need for a long time.
