*SPOILERS* - The Mandalorian Thread - *SPOILERS*

I’ve finally finished The Mandalorian and to be honest, I may be the only person in the world who thinks this, but I found it a bit rubbish. It had its moments, but at best it was a poor imitation of things that had been done better in other aspects in Star Wars or TV/Movies in general, and at worst it was just plain boring.

I think my main issue with the show comes down to the fact that for me it just lacked energy. I think the biggest culprit for that is probably the sheer amount of padding that was involved. Each episode is 40 minutes, and it very much seemed to me that they did not have enough content to fill each episode. Just count the amount of times across the series which just features him in the cockpit pressing buttons and doing naff all else. Whenever they travel somewhere you can be certain that they’ll just spend a little longer showing them in transit than necessary. Conversations seem to suffer from the same as well – they seem to spend an awful lot of time saying very little, half of which not at all relevant to anything. At one point the filler extends to an entire episode. Chapter 5, which I personally found the dullest of the lot, had literally no bearing on the story whatsoever. As demonstrated by the fact its events just happen to be omitted from any story so far recaps afterwards, they could have cut the whole thing out and the story would be no different for it. Chapter 6 is similar in that regard, although it at least had a few other redeeming features that made for a more interesting watch.

Another issue I found with it was the fight scenes. Now in this aspect I at least acknowledge that there are limitations when it comes to live action and what you can achieve with that, so it was never going to be as good as some of the stuff you’ll find in animation. However the other Star Wars films still prove that live action can produce engaging and entertaining fights, so the Mandalorian’s lack of such seems hard to justify. In close combat things just seem to devolve to clunky wrestling matches and gunfights, while not exactly terrible, are definitely not enough to carry the show in any meaningful way. The two exceptions are with some of the stuff in Chapter 6, and whenever the IG droid was featured. For the former though, one major issue at least for me was that I had just finished the Bad Batch arc from the new series of Clone Wars, and everything about that Chapter that was done well had been done far, far better in the aforementioned arc, so it ended up feeling like something of a cheap knockoff. For the most part, given that the Mandalorians are supposed to be the ultimate warrior culture, and this is the standard they’ve previously set, it was more than a bit of a disappointment for me. This is what a proper Mandalorian should be like in my opinion:



Perhaps my biggest issue for the series though is with the characters. For the majority of the series, it’s just Mando and Baby Yoda on their own, and neither of them are especially talkative. As a result, you just end up with long periods of silence which just add to the points where it seems quite dull. To be fair, given what he has to work with in terms of how to express himself, Pedro Pascal does a phenomenal job of giving the character at least some personality. But at the end of the day, his expressiveness may be good relative to what he has to work with, but it isn’t enough to make it good in of itself; the whole silent gunslinger thing is cool at first, but there’s only so many “character demonstrating looks over his shoulder at the child” moments you can endure before you just want to scream at them to get on with it. That being said, it could have worked really well had they had a more talkative crew to pick up the dialogue slack, but instead he’s lumped with Baby Yoda, who’s cuteness doesn’t carry him anywhere near as far as what the makers were clearly hoping. Even when they are joined by others in the last two episodes, none of them are particularly interesting or entertaining to watch, with the exception of the IG unit. In both the fight scenes and conversation, it seemed to be the only real source of energy, and when it was on screen it was actually fun to watch. So clearly they had to kill him off at the end. To be fair, the Ugnaught character was also fairly interesting and his death scene was well done, but they didn’t really develop his character enough and besides, the series has enough emphasis on laconic types as it is. I think it says something about the importance of dialogue and how much the show suffered from its lack that the opening scene of Chapter 8, which consisted of two guys we’ve never met just sitting and having a conversation, was more entertaining than anything else in the series.

To be fair to the show, some of my issues with it may be related to the other Disney+ stuff I’ve been watching alongside it. I’ve almost finished the final series of Clone Wars, and frankly, it was always going to seem a bit crap in comparison. Animation has got much higher potential than live action for a lot of the aspects that I found lacking, and Clone Wars has had the benefit of a long time to really develop its characters. That being said though, it doesn’t get it off the hook. It’s a bit like having a drawing competition between two right-handed artists, only for one of them to decide to draw with his left hand instead. Yes, that artist had a harder job creating his drawing, but at the end of the day, while he did the best with what he could, it doesn’t change the fact that his drawing’s still s***, and the other one most definitely isn’t. And as the likes of Rogue One and all the other Star Wars film, along with the vast myriad of other live action TV proves, the Mandalorian wasn’t even doing the best it could with the format anyway.

So I may be the only person on the planet that thinks this, but because of the aforementioned reasons, my ultimate verdict on The Mandalorian was that was just a bit s***.

TL:DR If you have Disney+, do yourself a favour and just watch Star Wars The Clone Wars instead.

 

The best two things that Disney Star Wars has produced:

1. The Vader scene at the end of Rogue One
2. Baby Yoda

It's slim pickings ladies and gentlelizards.

 

I don't watch this guy's videos, but I might start. He makes some good observations and it's pretty funny.

Overall, I enjoyed The Mandalorian, but I agree that it's a bit soft in spots. In contrast to Flash Gordon specifically, The Mandalorian reminds me more of the episodic shows from the 80's-90's, like The Incredible Hulk, The A-Team, MacGyver, or Xena. The hero(es) go to some place and get into a fix. Either they cleverly figure a way out, or the helpful character for that episode lends a hand. Plus, I agree with @Aginor. I think the show is supposed to be a little sparse and slow in homage to the "Lone Gunslinger" or "Man With No Name" style of stories. I wonder if Disney would consider Genndy Tartakovsky (ala Samurai Jack) to write/direct some episodes? The lone, quiet wanderer seems like his sweet spot.

The Critical Drinker makes another point with the comparison to Farscape, or maybe even Firefly. Both are good shows (Farscape running for many more seasons), and arguably stronger than The Mandalorian. As much as I hate to say this, but I worry that might have something to do with the Star Wars world being limiting to stories. I just mean that SO MANY people (including fans) have such an idea as to what Star Wars should be, that it's hard to do something original or "outside the box" and not have it cut to ribbons. Or they just subvert our expectations...

 

Probably a more entertaining character

 

More entertaining than Baby Yoda?