According to the Hollywood Reporter, Star Wars has ambushed the internet once again with another trailer of The Mandalorian, the upcoming TV show that will be airing exclusively on Disney+, which follows the titular character on his missions in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. The trailer doesn’t reveal much story, similarly to the trailer before it, but much like children peeking into their birthday presents sealed in Disney wrapping paper, slight glimpses into Favreau’s darker take of the Star Wars mythology are enough to cause excitement. The trailer opens with a scene that wouldn’t look out of place in a horror movie, showing the severed heads (or just helmets) of Stormtroopers sitting on spikes, and goes on to show snippets of The Mandalorian in action while giving us a very brief, almost cautious tour into his universe, a universe that’s very Star Wars familiar but in a new way.
Like Rogue One, The Mandalorian seems stripped of the glitz, glamour and flash, and presents a part of the galaxy where everyone and everything has dirt on them. Jon Favreau once said, “I love the idea of the darker, freakier side of Star Wars, the Mad Max aspect of Star Wars.” The trailer shows that’s exactly the type of aesthetic Favreau had gone for, giving a sort of makeover to the Star Wars Universe that exemplifies its ugliness instead of its beauty.
The Mandalorian shares its DNA with Boba Fett, who made his theatrical debut in Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back and has been a permanent fixture in pop culture since. Despite his limited, nonspeaking appearances in the original trilogy, the character had thrived under the imagination of fans. His legacy continued through the now noncanon Star Wars Expanded Universe books and comics, which served in maximizing his popularity. The mythology of the character was also expanded upon in the movie Attack Of The Clones, and the CGI animated cartoon show spun off from that film, Cartoon Network’s The Clone Wars, both exploring the origins of the character.
There had even been rumblings of a movie in the works, and in 2018 Hollywood Reporter had revealed James Mangold was in the running to direct a Boba Fett film. The Mandalorian finds itself a product of evolution from the ideas Boba Fett has inspired, and Werner Herzog, who will be playing a villain in The Mandalorian, may have put it best when he said, “They’re waiting for you.”
Producers of the show, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, have surrounded themselves with an all star team in an attempt to ensure the show meets decades’ worth of expectations. Pedro Pascal will be donning The Mandalorian’s suit for the series, and will be accompanied by veteran actor Carl Weathers, Gina Carrano and Giancarlo Esposito. Hollywood heavyweights such as Rick Famuyiwa who directed Dope, Taika Waititi and Bryce Dallas Howard will be directing certain episodes of the new franchise, adding their own influence and voices into the Star Wars canon. The Mandalorian is set to take place five years after Return Of The Jedi, but twenty five years before The Force Awakens, giving Favreau a very wide gap to fit his own stories in.
The Mandalorian is set to debut on the Disney+ on November 12th.