If there's one spoiler-free word to describe episode 1 of The Mandalorian, the Star Wars live-action TV show now available on Disney+, that word would be "cinematic." Jon Favreau, more of an auteur director than a showrunner, has given us what feels very much like the first 40 minutes of a Star Wars movie that will last about six hours in total. This is both good and bad news.
The good: every penny of the $100 million Disney spent on this series looks like it will be seen on the screen. The Mandalorian is visually stunning, with seamless special effects, high-contrast shots that sear themselves into your memory, and clever set pieces galore. Fans of Star-Wars-is-a-Western theory will go hog-wild since Favreau is genuinely trying to give us his best Sergio Leone impression. Only it's Sergio Leone with landspeeders and aliens and carbonite-frozen criminals. Oh my.
The bad: but it's not really an episode of TV drama? Really, this is only a bad thing in as much as we've been trained to expect TV episodes to have dramatic structure within themselves. Epic series that tell an ongoing story week to week, like Game of Thrones, are at their most satisfying when they offer a beginning, middle, and an end to each chapter, cliffhanger notwithstanding.
For all the blaster fire, the pace is slow, almost stately.
The Mandalorian episode 1, however — as unnamed as its title character — is all beginning. For all the blaster fire, the pace is slow, almost stately. The show takes its time and doesn't care whether you're hooked or not, which is kind of refreshing. There are a handful of attempts to leaven the mood with humor, but they are all brief. For the most part, this show takes itself very seriously.
Which is fine when you're practicing the hypnotic immersion of watching a movie (or binge-watching a series), but may be a tad frustrating given that Disney+ intends us to watch The Mandalorian on a week-to-week basis.
This week, we were given plenty of time to appreciate the howl of the wind on these spartan, janky old outer-rim planets. Very unusually for Star Wars, there is little else in the way of soundtrack; at times it almost feels like music has been excised. You get the feeling there should at least be an echoing whistle and the clanging of a church bell, but then the Sergio Leone homage would be too on the nose.
A few words about the setup: In the years following the fall of the Galactic Empire, Pedro Pascal's helm-shrouded hunter is given a bounty by an old Imperial character (Werner Herzog, chewing so much scenery that I hope Disney bought him a new set of teeth). The Mandalorian accepts, rather too readily, and off he goes to another dusty broken-down planet. We follow his movements with nary a break.
I won't spoil any of those movements except to note one unfortunate fact. The Mandalorian spends the hour meeting a series of gruff men — and just one woman, who says little and remains helmeted. Come on, guys, it's 2019. (We know there are some badass female characters about to enter the story, played by Gina Carano and Ming-na Wen; here again, TV episode structure would have required their earlier introduction.)
There is, at least, a cliffhanger, and wow, what a cliffhanger. It comes out of left field and is not something Star Wars fans expected to see in this context, or ever, but it is guaranteed to make their jaws drop. I am beginning to see why Disney refused the usual practice of giving TV critics advance screener copies. The urge to spoil is strong with this one.
But a cliffhanger does not necessarily a satisfying ending make. Like the rest of the show, this one felt like the beginning of something — a twist halfway through the first act that changes your sense of what you're watching.
So, as long as you go into The Mandalorian merely expecting the first chunk of a roughly six-hour film (we don't know yet how much the length of episodes will vary), all will be good. Favreau is a good long-game storyteller, as the fact that he kicked off the MCU with Iron Man attests. Now let's see where he's going with this thing.
