Review of The Mandalorian on Disney+

"Watching it, I felt like I had a little room to dream once more."

One of the advantages of having been creeping around on this planet for a while is you get to be wryly amused by the things that take some people – by which I mean younger people – by surprise.

One such occurrence was the recent Twitter infodump by Disney+, in which the new streaming service revealed the magnitude of titles from the Mouse House vaults that would now be available to anyone who shelled out the subscription fee.

Seeing viewers whose knowledge of the Disney brand began with the animated Aladdin and ended with the live-action Aladdin scratch their heads in bewilderment at distinctly naff family entertainments like The Apple Dumpling Gang or Bedknobs & Broomsticks certainly prompted a chuckle or two, but also served as a vivid reminder that the bulk of Disney’s content for a good few decades was absolute dreck, the kind of stuff even its target audience of tykes recognised was a bit weak.

(Full disclosure: I actually paid good money to see A Spaceman In King Arthur’s Court, AKA Unidentified Flying Oddball, in a cinema way back in the day. I was a kid. Kids often aren’t that discerning.)

Disney+ tweeting about its wealth of content was also a reminder that the studio’s embrace of slightly more adult content in the mid '80s under its Touchstone imprint and its animation resurgence in the ‘80s and ‘90s with the likes of The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast and The Lion King was one of the great comeback stories in Hollywood history.

I mean, with Disney now holding the paper on everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the entire 20th Century Fox library of films, it’s staggering to imagine there was a time when it was basically the entertainment equivalent of a second-rate day-care centre.

But that was then, this is now and Disney has a friendly but firm grasp on a large wedge of the show business. Figures out of the US claim that upwards of 10 million people signed up for Disney+ within a day of its launch, with the company’s number crunchers estimating sign-ups of between 60 and 90 million worldwide by 2024. They’re signing up for non-stop animation. They’re signing up for superheroes around the clock. Someone is surely signing up for A Spaceman In King Arthur’s Court. And one would hazard a guess that a lot of them are signing up for Star Wars. Not just the existing episodes in the saga, and the adjacent spinoffs, but the new stuff. New stuff like The Mandalorian.

I’d written a large chunk of this column having seen only the first episode of this eight-episode series, which takes place between the events of the original trilogy (A New Hope to Return Of The Jedi, that is) and the latest trilogy (which began with The Force Awakens and will conclude with The Rise of Skywalker) and follows the adventures of a bounty hunter, played by Game of Thrones’ Pedro Pascal, playing his dangerous trade in a lawless galaxy after the demise of the Galactic Empire. And that chunk was, well, let’s say uncomplimentary. Here’s a taste of my initial thoughts:

Having said all that, first episodes are notoriously tricky – you’ve got to put in the grunt work of establishing character, setting and tone, build up a little momentum and make sure the viewer is hooked enough to stick around for the next episode and the ones that follow that.

The Mandalorian had a bit of a head start in that it takes place in a universe with a history and mythology that’s familiar to a lot of folks. But Star Wars is an empire unto itself now – it has been for quite some time – and when something gets that large and lucrative, it becomes too big to fail. Something upon which a bottom line is heavily dependent cannot allow for too much weirdness or experimentation or risk. It has to deliver.

For me, that was the disappointing aspect of The Mandalorian’s first episode. Like the new Star Wars trilogy (and to some extent the side projects like Rogue One and Solo), it had a crisp, hospital-corners professionalism that didn’t allow the viewer the ability to venture outside its borders. There was no room to dream (it did, however, have legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog, merrily steering into his side hustle as a supporting actor whose severe accent and distinctive diction are equally effective in both comedic and sinister roles. He’s a treat as the unnamed client who sends the Mandalorian on his quest).

The second episode, however, offered something different. Not wildly, but noticeably. Liberated from the constraints of setting the stage and the scene, it told an engaging stand-alone story that was clearly part of a bigger picture and deftly explored the personality of the Mandalorian, presenting him as well-versed in the art of violence but far from unbeatable, short-tempered but good-hearted beneath it all, driven and determined but open-minded. (I was getting Indiana Jones vibes from the character, and Pascal’s subtle physicality – really his only means of expression as the character never removes his helmet – reinforced that.)

Most pleasingly, though, it stripped things down, telling a tale that felt faithful not only to Star Wars but the stuff that perhaps influenced Star Wars – I’m not the first person to name-check the Lone Wolf and Cub series in discussing The Mandalorian, and I sure as hell won’t be the last – and that touched on a feeling that I believe is central to the saga’s ongoing popularity and success: the way it feels like part of a storytelling tradition that spans time, distance and culture, that informs and inspires and infuses creativity and gives rise to something new. Watching it, I felt like I had a little room to dream once more.

And if that doesn’t float your boat, it also has the cutest little critter that Star Wars universe has ever presented. If you’re across social media, you’ve probably already seen it. Tune in anyway.