"This is the Way."
Hello everyone!
Switching it up a little this Saturday, because really, how could I not?
I may be doing this a few upcoming Saturdays as well because there's been some really great things on television that I couldn't fit into my Talkie Tuesdays, but I just might be able to find them a place on Saturdays!
I am, of course, talking (among other things) about His Dark Materials, the first season of which concluded just before Christmas.
I'm undecided if I should do an episode by episode recap of those, or just a general Saturday one, so I'll figure it out eventually.
First, however, it's time to travel to a galaxy far, far away.
The Mandalorian raced out the gate as strong as it could possibly be, gained momentum around all the tight corners, and finished off with an explosive bang.
Second, no, I have not yet seen The Rise of Skywalker. I plan on doing it, but not quite yet.
Third, and probably the most important thing:
I am, as you may have deduced, a Star Wars fan. I am not, however, going to cram this space up with arguments about the Legends and DisneyCanon. I'll probably go over that one a bit more in detail in some other post, but suffice to say that I've done my research. I know what George Lucas said on record about all this stuff. For now, I'll direct you to this article, and leave it be.
And fourth ... man, do I love this show!
The Mandalorian landed on my radar completely at random when I was doing my yearly show schedule (I watch a lot of shows, okay? I need to have them lined up), and it sounded familiar enough that I said to myself 'You know what, I may check it out'.
So I did.
The Mandalorian follows the story of a lone bounty hunter, aptly named Mandalorian, or Mando for short, since sightings of these armoured sentients are fairly rare at this point in time (the story happens 5 or so years after the events in Return of the Jedi). He's a do-and-do-not-babble type of guy, because he really only speaks when he needs to, and conserves both word numbers and air while he's at it.
𝅘𝅥𝅯 I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, I'm a long long way from home ...𝅘𝅥𝅯
He's a member of the Bounty Hunter Guild, run by Greef Karga, who is, as we later learn, a disgraced Magistrate, which is something that I hope they explore in following seasons, since fans are SUPER curious what could have happened to disgrace him; but back to Mando, he's the best of the bounty hunters because he gets the job done.
And it's why Karga offers him an assignment that nobody's ever completed.
It'll pay well - the Client (a creepy ass old dude who looks like he's salivating at just the thought of the end result, ick) has a bunch of Beskar metal lying around.
Beskar being the traditional material Mandalorian armour is made of, Mando agrees, and heads off into the unknown.
On the planet where he's going to find his target, he befriends Kuiil, played by Nick Nolte, who explains he'll help Mando since there's been no peace from the moment the thing has arrived on the planet (he also doesn't hesitate to rub Mando's nose in when the poor guy can't ride this weird ass creature that keeps throwing him off). So off they go, and Mando quickly realizes he's going to have to be extra fast, because there's a bounty droid on-scene, shooting its way towards the building - and the Target.
Teaming up with the IG unit, Mando gets into a shoot-out, but they eventually wrap it up and figure, well, we have this laser canon, why not take the door down with it?
Dada?
They do, and find themselves faced with their 50-year old Target - who just so happens to be of the same race as Jedi Master Yoda, meaning it ages differently and is still pretty much a baby/toddler when IG wants to shoot it. Interestingly enough, while Mando's orders were to bring it in alive or dead, the IG unit was told to shoot it on sight.
But since this is the moment when the show unofficially changes its title to The Dadalorian, Mando shoots the droid instead, and takes the child with him.
Note on droids: Mando really doesn't like them. Why? Because an army of Separatist droids tore up his home planet and killed his people. He only survived because the Mandalorians arrived to shoot anything metal, and he was then adopted into the Creed.
This should pretty much be the end of the adventure, but it turns into a misadventure when Mando runs into Jawas at his ship, or what's left of his ship, so he's now stuck on this planet until he can rebuild it; so he goes back to Kuiil, who takes him to the Jawas, which is a much more successful meeting than Mando's original chase, and the little critters demand he bring them The Egg.
Eggo? Sure, why not eggo.
Only this eggo is a Mudhorn eggo, and Mando gets himself tossed around more than any rodeo rider until the child uses the Force (not that Mando knows it's the Force) to stop the rampaging animal, then keels over and snores until the next episode when the ship is already in space again.
Do we even need a subtitle?
Of course the first thing the baby does then is go for a round ball on top of one of the levers, something Mando doesn't compute, since he's on his way to deliver it to the Client, but you can see he's having second thoughts since he tries to find out what's going to happen to the baby but gets no satisfactory answer.
And while hearts around the world break as the baby's wheeled away, crying back for Mando, he takes the Beskar and goes to have his armour forged, so he can then strut around all shiny-looking.
Also to go back and rescue the baby from the Client's clutches, having decided that he made a big, fat mistake leaving it there in the first place. He does get the baby - with the rather disturbing intelligence that the ex-Imperials want to extract something from said baby and the doctor barely prevented it from being killed on the spot - but he gets himself into a tight corner because the Guild is alerted that the Target is at large again, so they all come after Mando.
This might have been the end of our brave, lone gunslinger, even as the baby cooed up at him for saving its life (momentarily), but the Mandalorians reveal themselves, having stayed in hiding all this time but unable to leave one of their own out to dry, so Mando's able to get off-planet, baby in tow. He also gives the baby the ball from the lever to play with, because he's learning. This solo dad gig is hard, man.
Especially with a toddler on the control board, pressing all kinds of buttons even after you specifically tell them NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING (psych! says every toddler ever).
You may be cool, but you're not Mando holding his Baby Yoda cool.
Mando goes to hide out on the planet Sorgan, where he hopes he'll be able to lay low for a couple of months with the child, and in theory this works as Sorgan is a rural sort of planet with no real industrial centers, but they have other issues.
Namely, there's this tribe that keeps raiding and stealing from the natives, so the natives approach Mando to help them with the issue after he's already decided (post-meeting former shock trooper Cara Dune, who was introduced via tribute to Gina Carano's MMA days as she kicked Mando's butt) to leave. He reconsiders when he learns he could stay in this remote village, so he picks up Cara and they head into the unknown.
They think they have some easy work ahead of them, and honestly it SHOULD have been easy peasy, lemon squeezy - except Mando sees the prints of an AT-ST, which makes the job ten times harder, but some persuasion later (during which our lone wolf is leaning back against a wooden hut and conserving his verbal barrage) he and Cara find themselves solving the problem.
Well, in a fashion, which includes them both nearly drowning and being exploded, but hey, all in a day's work, right?
Afterwards, Mando plans to leave the baby on Sorgan since a life with him is no life for a child, and the planet would be good for the kid. It might have been good for Mando, too, exposed during a crack in his voice when speaking to a woman that MIGHT have been a happier ending for him, but he can't take his armour off as per the Mandalorian Creed, so there.
𝅘𝅥𝅯 Can you paint with all the colours of the wind?𝅘𝅥𝅯
He also can't follow through with his plan because another hunter tries to take out the baby, so Mando has to take the child with him yet again.
DUH, you silly Dadalorian.
But that does mean they need some money after their ship gets busted, which is how, as seems to be inevitable for any Star Wars action, we all end up on Tatooine and the Mos Eisley Cantina, where Mando agrees to help a junior would-be bounty hunter catch an assassin - though if we could have more scenes where Mando watches the kid make a fool of himself, like with the Tusken Raiders, that would be cool, too!
Ming-Na Wen's assassin does end up in their hands, but she lets slip who Mando actually is, and what kind of reward the kid would be getting by bringing him to the Guild - which only hastens her death, and it's a shame! She would have been a fantastic asset, I think.
Anyway, some threats and junior carelessly carting the baby around later, Mando outsmarts him and kills him, pays the mechanic who was fixing his ship (and babysitting the baby), and heads off again.
More galaxy-hopping later, and Mando finds himself with a crowd he used to run with back in the day before the Guild, and they have a job for him: they're going for a New Republic prison ship, something Mando vehemently tries to argue against, but like a pack of unruly teenagers trying to be smarter than the one friend with a brain (hint: they aren't), he gets roped into it anyway. It doesn't help that the Twi'lek character played by Natalia Tena kills the only human on board, against Mando's wishes.
We really need to work on your aim, dad.
Nor does it help that the others know about the baby (and they DROPPED THE BABY, TOO!), which ramps up Dadalorian's anxiety, especially when it's revealed the 'rescue' mission is actually a 'get rid of Mando' mission, as they switch him out for another Twi'lek who was in the prison cell.
Mando being Mando, however, escapes, rounds up all the stragglers and locks them in a cell together, and shoots the droid left behind on the ship just as it's about to kill the baby (and the baby hilariously looks at its little paw, wondering if the Force did that).
That bad decision over with, Mando makes sure the New Republic finds (and destroys) the illegal location where the misadventure started from, and is cruising through space again when he receives a message from none other than Greef Karga, who tells him his planet has been overrun by Imperials, and that they could be mutually beneficial to each other if Mando returns with the baby in tow.
Mando, not being completely stupid, decides it's a good idea to try and get rid of the Client, since it would probably help with taking the bounty off the baby, but he also goes for some backup: he picks up Cara and Kuill, along with the reprogrammed IG unit, and learns that it's not a good idea to even pretend he's in some sort of trouble, because during an arm-wrestling match with Cara, the baby misunderstands what's going on and starts to Force choke her.
None of those present has any idea what the deal is, but the time for figuring it out is short since they're already at their destination, and meet up with Karga, who also brought some of his hunters along to the meet.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Thankfully, since it's the more the merrier when their camp gets attacked at night by Mynocks, who injure Karga. No medicine seems to be working until the baby comes over and uses the Force to heal the poison from his wound (as a spoiler for Episode IX); Karga then shoots the hunters he brought with him, explaining that it was all a trap for Mando, but the truth - as Mando figured out earlier - is the Client has to go.
So they're all going to go in, with Kuill on his way back to the ship with the baby; fingers and paws crossed, they can kill the Client and be done with it.
Of course, nothing is EVER easy in a Star Wars setting, because while the Client DOES end up shot - none of our heroes do the deed, as it's another Imperial, who shows up on the scene with more Stormtroopers, a personal guard of black troopers, and background knowledge on all of them, including that Cara's home planet was Alderaan (it of the explosive fame from A New Hope) and Mando's real name, Din Djarin.
And while they're having a semi-pleasant conversation about their impending demise, Kuill gets killed by two Stormtroopers who snatch the baby, but end up getting beat up by the IG unit when it comes to rescue said baby. It also rides a speeder bike into town, shooting anything in white armour and giving the kid its first joyride, joining with the rest of the motley group as they're trying to access the sewer system to escape with the help of the Mandalorians.
Do we want to ask ... ? Probably not.
Moff Gideon - our Imperial, who should have been executed for war crimes but obviously managed to escape - then sends in a big bully with a flame thrower, who gets himself cooked when the baby uses the Force to turn the flames right back around on him; unfortunately by this point, Mando's critically injured, and gives his Mandalorian pendant to Cara, telling her to hightail it out of there.
A little argument with the droid later, during which said droid points out it's not a living being and therefore can show us Pedro Pascal's face under the helmet, Mando gets some healing bacta infusion and is dragged into the sewers, where the group run into a pile of Mandalorian armour.
Not the Mandalorians, you see. Just their armour.
The Armourer, apparently the only one alive in the place, explains the Imperials came after the Mandalorians revealed themselves to help Mando; she hopes that some of their people might have escaped off-planet, but isn't sure. She also forges Mando's signet - the Mudhorn he initially refused - and tells him the child he's been protecting is now a foundling, and officially in his care until it either matures, or is returned to its people.
She also tells them about the Jedi, the old Force-users, while she's at it, but it's a bit confusing how Mando understands the tale as it looks like he thinks the baby's people are the "sorcerers", not that anyone with a high enough Midi-chlorian count can learn to BECOME a Jedi.
Anyway.
Say something about my outfit again. I DARE you.
Gifting Mando a jetpack (something he's also wanted for a while), the Armourer stays behind, and takes out a number of Stormtroopers while she's at it, because being badass is awesome.
Meanwhile, our group follow the underground lava river until its exit, where Stormtroopers are waiting for them, but not to worry - remember that annoying self-destruct protocol the IG droid bugged Mando with in the premiere? Calculating the odds of survival to nil if that isn't initiated, the droid hands the baby over to Mando, makes him promise to keep it safe, and heads off to its explosive demise, leaving only Moff Gideon and his TIE fighter to deal with.
Mando clumsily uses the jetpack to take care of him, then takes the child and leaves the planet yet again for his new mission, with Karga's promise that he'll have his pick of jobs in the Guild whenever he returns, and Cara hanging back to be Karga's enforcer, with some stability back in her life, and camaraderie.
But wait! It's not over yet.
While the Jawas are busy pulling the TIE fighter apart, Gideon cuts his way out - yes, CUTS HIS WAY OUT, using a BLACK LIGHTSABER! Aka the DARKSABER, which just so happens to be a Mandalorian relic.
So, for next season, OK Corral between Gideon and Mando, anyone?
Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuun!
The name's Djarin. Din Djarin.
Action-packed, emotion-inducing, and at times rather appropriately hilarious, The Mandalorian manages to do what it seems the Sequels failed to: Star Wars fans around the globe are largely united in their belief that this show restores some hope that the franchise isn't quite dead yet (except for those individuals who claim knowing that Pedro Pascal plays Mando is a spoiler, even though he was announced in November 2018 ...). With Ewan McGregor returning as Obi-Wan Kenobi for a series focusing on HIS character as well, there is DEFINITELY still hope!
Of course, there are also some confusing elements in the show proper.
For example, the Force and Force-users. Understandably, the Jedi have been eradicated since the actions of Revenge of the Sith, and roughly twenty years later, Luke and Leia start their campaign against the Empire. With the show taking place five years after Episode VI, this means the Jedi have been extinct for roughly 30 years (give or take, this is VERY rough math). This also means that there are characters who have no reason NOT to remember the Jedi - and the Force they used. But barring that - how can anyone not know or remember Darth Vader and his all-time favourite trick, Force-choking someone? Certainly, there may have been planets on the VERY Outer Rim, or literally in the middle of nowhere, that were unimportant and largely by-passed by the Republic and Empire both, but there must have been rumours about Vader. Come on! He terrorised the galaxy for 25 years, ain't nobody gonna tell me there were places his name wasn't whispered in fear!
So that's a little confusing, but alright. I can deal with it. There's probably some explanation, right? Right.
What do you mean there's no more choccy miwk?
Interestingly enough, this math of mine also means that, assuming Mando goes by the age of his actor, he was born and raised in the Old Republic, and his planet was razed during the Clone Wars, as it would make him around 10 when the Mandalorians rescued him. Food for thought!
But I'm really excited to see what they do with Darksaber now that it's been revealed, though, because it was first wielded by the person who would become the first ever Mandalorian, and he was also a Jedi - the saber was then kept at the Jedi Temple after this guy's death, until it was stolen by the Mandalorians and became a symbol of leadership. Darth Maul got his hands on it for a while, until it was again retrieved by another Mandalorian, but by this point in its history (as I read it), the Empire came about and started their Great Purge ... which is probably how it landed with the Empire, and now with Moff Gideon.
Which means once Mando figures out just WHAT weapon Gideon has, he'll probably be gunning for it - it's a symbol of Mandalore, after all.
And to wrap it all up - don't tell me the cast didn't have a good few giggles over 'Mandalorian isn't a race - it's a Creed' when Carl Weathers was around. The guy played Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies, there HAD to have been some laughs at that coincidence!
So until season 2, everybody. Keep warm by checking all those Baby Yoda memes.
I have spoken.
xx
*images and video not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment