THE MANDALORIAN REFUSES TO TAKE FLIGHT.

The first season of Disney’s The Mandalorian left me wholly unimpressed, and cynical. It was indicative of everything I have bemoaned about Disney, and everything I feared would happen since they bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas back in 2012. This season of the Mandalorian got significantly better for me, but ultimately still never fully left the ground, due to a myriad of issues around story and originality that plague an interesting idea and concept Matthew Zoller-Sietz spoke about in a piece on a “CERTAIN CHARACTER REINTRODUCTION” I link later on here. Where the first seemed lost in a ditch of multiple identities and seemed happy with repetitious cliché’s - underwhelming in just about every facet you could possibly think of - the second season really nailed down what it wanted to be and began expounding upon it by adding better storytelling and more of its best actors. Still, even after some improvements that made the show I think the show could and should do a lot more in some specific places, and that many of its problems are a combination of the flaws of Disney's philosophical approach as a production conpany.

What’s funny about this whole idea, especially once I started digging into how I felt - was that many of the problems I have with this show have to do with much of the same things that I found it clearly improved upon. When it comes to many of the facets that have to do with a great television show or a great film it still underwhelmed even while it got better. Save for the Ashoka episode “The Jedi” I found a lot of the cinematography to be bland. The direction was skilled and tight especially the Rick Fukuyama directed episodes, but never blew my mind. In a world where Marvel and John Wick exist as permanent examples of supremely well choreographed fight sequences and just how far that field has particularly advanced, The Mandalorian’s fight scenes for example seemed like paint by numbers. The ideas felt bland, stiff ( a problem with the suit?) and obvious. For instance we had seen Mando’s flare rockets many times throughout the show and yet they never do anything different but hit multiple targets. Other than a certain since of invincibility, the “Beskar” metal which made up most of his armor was never used in any way that felt fresh in the slightest, -think of Capt America’s shield (which I will get to later) - and Mando flies but never to do anything particularly interesting.

Considering Marvel is a subsidiary of Disney at this moment, I'm not understanding why they couldn't just go across the hall and bring some of those guys from the various Captain America films and have them do some of the stunt choreography for this show. The fight scenes just never connected with me. A lot of this is due to the fact that the actors felt like they were counting out, and as a consequence the fights felt too much like dances rather than actual fights. The movement, and the ideas just felt very okay. Again we're living in a world where we saw some extremely fantastic scenes, not only on film, but even on Marvel TV shows like The Punisher or especially Daredevil, ( God knows I haven't forgot those hallways or stairwell scenes) even outside of that you have something like Game of Thrones where Brienne vs. The Hound counted as maybe one of the greatest fights to ever be seen on television. For me fight scenes can be about several elements, making either a mix of all of these elements or focusing on one. There is story, there is style, obstacles, and degree of difficulty. Watch the opening to “Captain America: Civil War”, pay special attention to Cap a man with pretty much just a shield, finds all these interesting ways to use it, and strategize taking away or down opponents. He pulls a man’s gas mask down in the room full of gas as a deterrent from physical violence, (which demonstrates personality and story) he throws the shield, ricocheting it off several objects to stun an opponent then runs up and kicks him, (Obstacle) and then there’s him using Wanda as a trampoline, (Style) and this goes for all the characters, take all the interesting thing they do with Falcons wings. I have a lot of issues with the Marvel films overall, but their choreography is not one of them. It never ceases to amaze me how through nearly double-digit films as it concerns Captain America they have continued to find unique and interesting ways to use this man's one weapon, as compared to the Mandalorian who has several and can seem to find nothing particularly fun or eyebrow raising or titillating to do with any of them. I dont know whether it’s a lack of will or know how, but in a show that seem to want to plant itself in and around action it’s a rather large let-down.

The aspect of the show I may find the most trouble with was the writing, and even within that one particular aspect…dialogue/monologue/exposition. When it comes to plot and pacing, I found the Mandalorian to actually be pretty damn good, but when it came to dialogue that's where I found it to be incredibly weak. Admittedly dialogue is my favorite aspect of writing, and so many of my favorite films and TV shows are marked by it. In fact in my opinion a film or TV show having any number of quotable lines or bits of dialogue is very important to the legacy of a show or film. I don't think you can think of any show that is highly regarded to me television or film history that doesn't have a large amount quotes, or an important philosophy delivered by exposition. Things that you remember that people said to the another person or something somebody said in a monologue. Yet here we are in season 2 of the Mandalorian and I couldn't tell you one thing that sticks with me. I think it's important at this juncture to say that taglines are not the same as quotes. “This is the way” is not important to me because it's not really conversational, it is more like something you repeat in a way that resembles a slogan. The most important aspect of this being that it is intentional and is repeated over and over again as a way to almost push it into the audience's memory rather than something that just lands with the audience purely by means of delivery or its weight, and is almost never or rarely repeated. When I think of great dialogue I think of the opening scene in “Inglorious Bastards”, the conversation between Hannibal and Clarice in prison in “Silence of the Lambs”, or Cirian Hinds as Finn McGovern in Sam Mendes “Road to Perdition” giving a speech at the wake that compares Paul Newman's John Rooney to God. I think of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the Big Sleep going back and forth in numerous scenes but especially the one in the beginning were Bacall is sitting at the window sill. I think about Game of Thrones, (and there's a number of dialogues there) and the line “Power is Power” not just because of its surgical delivery by actor Lena Headey, but the context provided by and in “Little Finger” and Cersei's discussion about power…

This bit of dialogue not only moves plot along, or informs us of character, it informs conflict through the funnel of the former two. We learn just that much more about what threatens Cersei, where Little Finger’s vulnerability lies, as well as get a philosophical pov in class, sex, and power which deepens the conflict. Moments like this serve to make the more obvious conflict all that much more juicier because the stakes involved in the conflict feel weightier, stronger, more reinforced by steel than paper. It's the minor conflicts like this that almost act as a sort of training for the larger and more violent conflicts so that the constant repetition of these minor afflictions that don't actually involve violence train our minds to be prepared for it. By the time the actual violence arrives it barely has to hit, and in the words of Bruce Lee “it hits all by itself”. Dialogue and monologue empower characters, gives them vitality, they become their life stream. It's in the opening of Die Hard with Hans (The great Alan Rickman) back and forth with Takagi. This opening salvo (which ends with Hans shooting Takagi in the head) establishes who Takagi is as well as, and most importantly who Hans is, what hes willing to do, the lengths hes willing to go to get what he wants. Hans talks about Takagi's suit, says he has one himself, which tells us he likes the finer things as well. He quotes Plutarch a grecian philosopher, which implies he might be classically eduacted, and he admires Talagi's models for architecture, especially the details, which implies he is detail oriented. Again it’s very hard to find a great protagonist or villain who isn't set up very well in their opening salvo. Who doesn’t follow that up with more great quotes and small discussions, bits of exposition between themselves and other characters or other characters about them. In Game of Thrones the final moments of the first episode of the show end with brother and sister Jaimie and Cersei Lannister having intercourse, (which in and of itself is a helluva introduction) when one of the Stark boys ( Bran) climbing a tower accidentally spots them, Cersei asks Jaime to get rid of him, Jaime nonchalantly says the words “The things I do for love" and pushes the young boy to what could possibly end in death, and fade to black on the opening episode which would come to define in ways a staple of American television viewing for years to come. In director Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” series the hero Bruce Wayne/Batman and his Butler Alfred talk about Bruce Wayne's choices all the time the conclusion of which leads to Alfred eventually leaving, which tells us where their steadfast allegiances lie -Alfred to Bruce, Bruce to his idea of Justice. There is the Joker of course whom we are first introduced to by having him slam a member of an organized crime commission's head down on a pencil, and later on through exposition by Alfred we hear one of the more famous quotes to come out of Nolan’s series -“Some people just want to see the world burn”. A quote that not only tells us about the mentality of the Joker and what Batman is against, (maybe the rules at play here) but also serves as further reinforcement of Alfred's position in the trilogy as a sort of sagacious confidant. Great dialogue, monologues in and of themselves inhabit a sense of character and without them characters can become flat and unmemorable. In the case of either the Mandalorian or his enemy in the first couple of seasons Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) I can't think of any. Without this kind of writing it's hard for me just based on that outline that they gave us to really be moved in any direction by Moff Gideon when as a character he's a skeleton with no meat on it. Ultimately other than his name ( Which just rolls off the tongue so well) there's not much to Gideon. He mostly works on the pure presence Giancarlo Esposito's brings and not much else, hes great and terrible because the show suggest it but if you ask why we should believe it, the shows answer seems to be “Because we said so, now eat your food and shut up". The show clips the wings of many of its characters in the same way. In one of its best episodes - which contained Rosario Dawson as one of the characters from Mandalorian producer Dave Filoni's previous show “Clone Wars” Ahsoka Tano - a Magistrate (played by the daughter of Bruce Lee's orginal american student Dan Innosanto Diana Innosanto) once again has the bones of an extremely interesting extremely memorable character. This magistrate crucifies villagers right outside her fortress, she starves, and abuses them regularly, but why? Innosanto proves she has presence and chops, and the set up is maybe the most intriguing of any of the mini adventures Mando has been on, but the show bails out on every chance to tell us more. Even her right man (a wonderful reappearance of Michael Biehn) is a very interesting character set up, but not much is given to us either by the way of some sort of exposition, monologue, or dialogue about why this woman is the way she is, how she came to power in this city, what kind of things would make her abuse her position so. Nothing about why Michael Biehn is so loyal to her, or what any of his motivations objectives are, they're simply there to be evil and to be an obstacle and not a very good one in the way of Tano and the Mandalorians objective. Both in many of the Star Wars entries and the Marvel entries this has been a constant problem especially in Marvel's case with their villains it's one of a few reasons as to why they have such a Villain Problem they usually don't really provide enough of an interesting arc or angle, and it comes from the writing as much as anything we see visually. The Mandalorian is simply carrying on a time honored tradition of late.

The last and final part of the equation of what comes out to the Mandalorians “Just above average-ness” has to do with interactions in whom the Mandalorian interacts with, and to a much smaller extent casting. There are some great casting choices in this show, although once again it's important to say that many of these castings and these actors are failed by the previous issue I take with the show, but nonetheless actors like Timothy Olyphant Giancarlo Esposito, Ming-Na Wen, Temuera Morrison, Rosario Dawson and surprisingly Bill Burr, help liven up some of what ails the show, but then there is Gina Carano who is in far too many scenes dismantling already weak writing. Then far too much of Mandos interactions take place with alienoid creatures who barely speak, like Grogo or Baby Yoda as we have come to know him. Smaller character interactions with the main characters are important and they serve a purpose in the believability of the world as well as the stakes, or philosophy, or heart. Shows like Breaking Bad or even Curb Your Enthusiasm show the importance of small one-time interactive characters like a man whom with Larry has problem with at a shoe store in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Save for a couple of instances there are far too many cases where these kinds of smaller characters in The Mandalorian's world suffered from all of the things previously mentioned, with an added bonus of the fact that the show spends far too much time on alien characters with characters whose voices and mannerisms are extensively covered by makeup and gear, which then becomes further hampered by actors who deliver the line without any sort of strength or power. Carano in particular is devastating. The character on her face is pretty interesting, if we take what we are given about “Cara Dune", but Carano delivers every line in the same exact manner, with barely any difference or change in tone, attitude, and/or cadence. It's as hard to tell what's going on in her head as it is an Android and that is not in a good way. It's bad enough the character is already problematic, when shes not very talented except for in the shows mediocre fight sequences.. then what’s the point? Shows like “The Wire”, “Game of Thrones”, “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos” made their bones off of finding and hiring some of the most talented actors in the business many of these actors would go on to be Hollywood Darlings because of the talent they were able to exhibit in these shows. For a show largely borrowing from the western it doesnt seem to understand the improatnce of the background players. I mean Tombstone for instance used a then as yet unknown Billy Bob Thornton for a scene of all of two minutes , but it’s a great scene amd Thornton shows much of what he would become later in it. The scene establishes the wanton cruelty of the west and of the town, it also establishes Wyatt’s temperament, abilities, and complexity, all that while giving an unknown actor a chance to be seen. Save for those already on Hollywood's radar I don't see that for many of those who played in the Mandalorian and it's a shame because there are some good actors on the show, but if it's not bad casting, then it's bad writing, and if not that it’s being trapped in makeup with none of either, or being stuck delivering lines across from Carano. I want to reiterate that though I’ve deep dived into what keeps the Mandalorian from excellence, that this show is still a good show, and that I like it because I do. It's obvious to me why it's so many people like it as well. Mando is charismatic, and they’ve captured some of the magic of the “Man with No Name" series, but my issue with this show, is the same issue I've been holding with Disney material since they bought Star Wars and Marvel from Lucas, and its that they dont seem to see any value beyond the page they found. They never seem to want to aim higher and it shows. They're quite willing to just put a bunch of content on an assembly line and shove it out with very little concern as to the quality. That matters to me because many of these shows, these actors, these writers deserve a platform from which they can really show their talents rather than just becoming nameless entities connected to and in-service of a brand that gets alnost all the credit and leaves the rest over to its chosen ones like Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Kevin Feige. Much like the decision to reinsert a certain character back into the story Disney seems adamant about keeping it's material from reaching its greatest heights bye bolting it down to the ground with criminally conservative and commercially cynical and cyclical thinking that leaves the material mostly (save for a few exceptions) feeling extremely uninspiring and mostly somewhere in the spectrum of average. The Mandalorian, even with a story and a general and overall idea that gives plenty of room to be one of the best shows currently running, has yet to avoid that trap.