Why Werner Herzog’s Participation in ‘The Mandalorian’ is a Monumental Casting Coup

When the inevitable Werner Herzog action figure is released, I expect it to include the following accessories and features: a blaster modeled after the gun he threatened Klaus Kinski with, a wound from an insignificant bullet, and existential psychotraumatic grip.

These would sell like hotcakes to those of us who both encase Star Wars in eternally worshipful and referential nostalgic amber and became aware of the relentlessness of time and pain and the futility of humanity and unrealized dreams while watching the hoariest and most avant-garde of Herzog’s directorial efforts, from Aguirre, the Wrath of God to Grizzly Man. We are legion, no doubt.

And we are in great ecstasy watching The Mandalorian, the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV series, which anchored the recent supercharged launch of the Disney+ streaming service. It casts Herzog as a space mob boss-type — think more Don Corleone, less Jabba the Hutt — known only as The Client, who has four tough-ass stormtroopers hanging on his every whim, and gives Pedro Pascal’s titular, silver-helmeted bounty hunter a plum, dangerous gig. The plot renders Herzog a key component of its dramatic hinge, as it should be. He delivers the heft with a deeply furrowed glower, and we feel it in our marrow.

The Client, of course, talks exactly like Herzog, in that instantly identifiable, idiosyncratic, intently articulate intonation, delivering the type of steely, dread-drenched, multi-layered, gravely philosophical dialogue we expect. Show creator/writer Jon Favreau surely wrote such things specifically for his venerable cast member: “It is good to restore the natural order of things after a period of such disarray. Don’t you agree?” he asks the Mandalorian, and we who have watched the dancing-chicken sequence from Stroszek over and over again with biblical rapture while anxiously strangling our Boba Fett stuffies no doubt wet ourselves with glee.

This, of course, is Favreau understanding that he has a true heavyweight on his roster; he feeds the alpha wolf accordingly. And yet, despite making gruelingly artful dramas like Every Man for Himself and God Against All and brutal documentaries such as death-row rumination Into the Abyss, Herzog has not become a box-office stud or household name. Perhaps you know him peripherally, as the German guy who once said mildly insane things about chickens that became meme-worthy on social media, which Herzog surely believes to be vile, base, created by God in anger, a place where there is no harmony and only screeching in pain, a place of overwhelming and collective murder. And he’d be right.

Maybe you recognize Herzog from his highest-profile gig, playing the bad guy in Jack Reacher — the bad guy with one mottled eye who grimly monologues about gnawing his own frostbitten fingers off in a Siberian gulag, natch. Maybe you saw his brilliant cameo on Parks and Recreation. Maybe you’ve heard his voiceover work on The Simpsons, Metalocalypse or Rick and Morty. Most likely, you never saw him tackle significant roles in the Harmony Korine films Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely, because if you had, you already know Herzog is a hero, and I can tell you nothing.

Herzog’s true calling is as a poet-philosopher-filmmaker, but that doesn’t stop him from reportedly turning down plenty of acting roles, and accepting only the ones that are home runs for his limited thespian range — ones that need a character to bore holes into the back of the room with a penetrating stare, or intimidate other characters until they become inky puddles of liquid uncertainty.

This is in contrast to the man himself, who, per my limited face-to-face experience, is a sweetheart of a human with shockingly soft hands. My meeting him was an unlikely circumstance, but it happened, and upon learning I had traveled some distance to be in the same room with him and a print of his masterpiece Fitzcarraldo on my birthday, Herzog gave me a gift: a hug. The man who once said, “I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder,” wrapped me in his arms, and I gently placed my chin on his shoulder. And he was warm.

I’ve since bragged endlessly that Herzog hugged me once. Now I can also say I’ve hugged someone from Star Wars, which marks the collision of my preadolescent and adult selves, my heart ablaze with the great warmth of apocalyptic fire. It means every time I watch a Herzog film further asserting the futility of existence and the inevitability of mortality, the blankness of eternity seems a fraction less icy, for I am as fulfilled as one can be here in this relentless void.

Anyway. Herzog has been upfront about why he, an artist of great integrity who has admittedly never seen a Star Wars film, agreed to involve himself with such an unabashedly mainstream media franchise: for the dough. He said he used his paycheck to finance his new Japan-set drama Family Romance, LLC, which debuted at Cannes this year. But neither is his participation an exercise in cognitive dissonance. In addition to the aforementioned pop-cultural dabblings, Herzog has spoken many times of his fascination with Keeping up with the Kardashians and pro wrestling, saying, “The poet must not close his eyes” to the “vulgar” things in the world around him.

Not that he sees Star Wars as vulgar — not anymore, at least. At a recent premiere of The Mandalorian, Herzog was effusive about Favreau’s work, calling it true cinema. He also reaffirmed what we already know about Star Wars: it’s a new, great, vast mythology. Of course, in classic Herzog fashion, he referenced “antiquity” and Greek mythology while saying the world the show renders is “full of fantasy and fever dreams.” My fever dream is that he’s in it at all, that I may one day be able to wrap my fanboy fingers around a Herzog action figure and create custom Herzog-Star Wars fantasies on my basement floor, that I may clutch it to my heart when I’m wheeled into the crematory and turned to dust.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Mandalorian on Disney+