The Mandalorian


 I am as old as Star Wars. The first movie came out the year I was born and those three movies had such a big impact on me that it's almost impossible to say. I remember going to watch the trilogy at a drive in. I remember one of the first times we ever rented a VCR was to have a Star Wars marathon during New Years. But as I grew older, Star Wars kind of faded into the background. The first part of this process was connected to the prequels. I did not like them at the time, although to be honest I only watched the first one when it came out, which was admittedly a mistake because the third one is actually quite good. Then the sequels, I kind of felt that I had to watch them just as a sort of loyalty to the franchise. I was disappointed with them for reasons I will not mention here, if you haven't seen them you don't know what I'm talking about, and if you have seen them you know quite well what I'm talking about. But this series rekindled that love I had for the whole universe of Star Wars. It has great special effects and the acting is amazing. It's amazing because the main character is able to portray so much emotion and his face is literally covered by a mask. The mask is not a really emotive mask because if you have a crazy mask you can become like a crazy character. The mask is a very boring and generic mask, and Pedro Pascal is able to emote in that mask. The other great thing about the series is of course is Grogu.  He (I'm assuming his gender, do yodas even have genders?) manages to be an incredible character. Katy Sackhoff gives this great anecdote about working with Grogu. The puppet is controlled by three people who are not in the scene, but they have kind of a mic where they can listen to the action and they can react appropriately. So Katy during one of her breaks she starts talking to the Grogu puppet and asks him oh sir you're always so calm and peaceful what's your secret are you ever angry and at that moment the puppet makes this furious expression which I find just great because basically the magic of the Mandalorian is connected to the magic of Star Wars obviously and the magic of Muppets and I love Muppets. Muppets are another thing from my childhood that I think will really live on. Apart from the things that I mentioned - the great acting, the great special effects the really cute puppet, I think one of the best things about the Mandalorian is that it is a story set in the Star Wars universe, but it very rarely talks about the Skywalkers and I know what you're going to say and this is a little bit of a spoiler but yeah Luke Skywalker is in the series, but the story is not about him at all-it's like he is a tangential character that does have some effect on the way the plot moves.  It's not like the nine major Star Wars movies, where he or his family like his dad or his nephew are the important people in the story. No, this is a Star Wars story where the Skywalkers are on the periphery, and I really like that because one thing that I think Star Wars has had problems with doing is creating a believable universe. So for example, in Star Trek you can create new characters, I mean people don't like doing that because of money, but you create a new ship you can create a new alien race and all of that is believable within the story within the universe of Star Trek.  I think what they're doing with the Disney plus series is they're really trying to expand that universe and make it more open, and I think that's great, at least for a casual Star Wars fan like me. Eventually someday I'm going to go back and consume all of that media that I missed like the Clone Wars and all of that stuff to get up to date on my Star Wars lore but if you're not if you're like me, and you're not a Star Wars expert you can still watch this series and enjoy it. It's really, really great, highly recommend it. 

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