Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Mandalorian’ On Disney+, The First Live-Action ‘Star Wars’ Series

Welcome to Disney+ Day! It’s the first day Disney’s massive streaming service is live, and the first day everyone can see the first live-action Star Wars series. It’s about a yet-as-named Mandalorian, who, like his people, is an expert bounty hunter. But you’ll be surprised what his latest “asset” is. Read on for more…

THE MANDALORIAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A bounty hunter points a fob towards an outpost on a snowy planet. When the fob beeps, he walks towards it.

The Gist: At a cantina, The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) saves a guy named Mythrol (Horatio Sanz) from bad guys after his glands. He takes on four guys and dispatches them without much hassle. Mythrol thinks he’s been saved, but then the Mandalorian shows him a puck with his image coming out of it. He’s the Mandalorian’s bounty. As he tries to find some escape in the Mandalorian’s ship, the Mandalorian freezes him in carbonite. The man means business.

The Mandalorian presents his bounties to Greef Carga (Carl Weathers); he tries to pay him in Imperial credits, but the Mandalorian points out that “The Empire is gone,” which puts this a few years after the Rebel forces destroyed the second Death Star. Carga offers him a big payday but with no puck; he needs to meet The Client (Werner Herzog) face to face.

He meets The Client and a young doctor named Pershing (Omid Abtahi) at an Empire hideout. The Client knows the reputation of the Mandalorian and is willing to pay a high bounty: Beskar, a very strong iron Mandalorians used in their armor until the Empire stole their reserves. The Client offers him a brick of  it as an incentive. He has no puck; the target is 50 years old and can only be found via beacon. Before he leaves to get the “asset”, he takes the beskar to a Mandalorian blacksmith and has a shoulder plate made from it, giving the excess to the foundlings in the community. The Mandalorian flashes back to how he became a foundling, which likely is one of the reasons that he’s driven to be a ruthless man of few words.

When he shows up on the planet where the asset is, he’s immediately attacked by a couple of angry blurrgs. He’s saved by an Ugnaught named Kuiil (Nick Nolte), who claims a) he’s never met a Mandalorian before and b) only he can help the Mandalorian get to where his target is. “Kuiil has spoken,” he says at the end of his statements. He trains the Mandalorian to ride a blurrg, and they go to the fortress where the target is.

The Mandalorian finds that a bounty droid named IG-11 (Taika Waititi) has gotten there first; he convinces the droid that they should work together, as they become trapped and outnumbered. He even convinces the IG-11 from self-destructing when it thinks its trapped. With the help of a laser cannon, they manage to escape harm and they find the asset. It’s a baby. But what species has 50-year-old babies?

Our Take: The Mandalorian is the first live-action Star Wars series and it’s a good way to bring that universe down to TV scale. The show was created by Jon Favreau, and he’s an executive producer with Dave Filoni, Colin Wilson and Kathleen Kennedy. We know how much trust Disney has in Favreau, as he’s directed numerous MCU films as well as The Lion King remake. He’s made sure that the show isn’t trying to be a movie set for TV, but a real TV series.

Yes, there’s a scale to it, as it’s shot in a widescreen format more suited to a movie theater, and the CGI would look good on the big screen as well as your TV screen. But the soundtrack is more modern, not a sweeping John Williams score, and the show centers around The Mandalorian; he is in almost every scene of the first episode.

The jury is still out on the story. We don’t get a ton of background on who The Mandalorian is —we don’t even know his name yet— and how he fits in with his fellow Mandalorians. We don’t get a ton of Mandalorian lore in the first episode, or any information on why they’re such expert bounty hunters. Remember, our only exposure to Mandalorians to this point is Boba Fett, and he was revealed to not even be a real Mandalorian. So if we’re going to get into The Mandalorian as a series, the main Mandalorian needs to have a bit more depth to him, even if we never see his face.

One other thing; despite the presence of funny actors like Sanz and Brian Posehn, who plays a doomed speeder driver, the first episode takes itself a touch too seriously. It tries to be funny in spots, like when the Mandalorian learns to ride a blurrg, but it falls flat. Still, there’s plenty there there to latch onto, especially what we see at the end (let’s just say the baby is green with pointy ears).

What Age Group Is This For?: Like all Star Wars titles, kids as young as 6 or 7 can watch, though there are intense battles and bloodless deaths. Early on, one of the Mandalorian’s victims gets cut in half by a door that opens like a lens aperture. But we just see his feet hit the floor and have to assume the rest.

Parting Shot: When the IG-11 wants to kill the “asset”, the Mandalorian shoots the droid. Then we see him reach out to the baby with his finger.

Sleeper Star: We haven’t seen Giancarlo Esposito or Ming-Na Wen yet, so it’s hard to classify any breakouts until we see more characters. But we were happy to see Herzog as The Client; he’s just menacing enough to creep us out.

Most Pilot-y Line: We were surprised that the first episode was only 39 minutes. We get that this is a continuing story, but it’s also going to come out once per week, starting with the third episode (the second one comes out on 11/15). So why tease us with such a short first episode?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Mandalorian needs a bit more depth, given its a series and not a movie. But it’s off to a good start with a first episode full of great action and VFX.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Mandalorian On Disney+