How The Mandalorian Breaks TV's Cardinal Rule

this video is brought to you by pedal [Music] hey wisecrack michael here to talk about everyone's favorite bounty hunter turned world's greatest stepdad the mandalorian now despite making one of the year's best shows its creators break a fundamental rule of visual storytelling show your character's freaking faces but is this rule-bending what makes the mandalorian so engaging in the first place let's find out in this wisecrack edition on star wars and masked emotions spoilers ahead for all things star wars and the mcu and before we get into it i want to give a shout out to this video sponsor pedal pedal is a credit card company that wants to help you succeed financially the pedal 1 card was designed to help you build credit many credit card companies base your credit limit or credit worthiness on your credit score but if you haven't established a credit score yet it can be hard to get approved for the card you need instead of a credit score pedal uses your banking history to create a 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close-ups were incredibly effective in silent film which didn't have dialogue just soundtracks full of jaunty piano and some on-screen descriptions to help establish exactly why a character was angry that day [Music] facial expressions filled the emotional gap epitomized by the performances in the 1928 film the passion of joan of arc and this train kept rolling into the era of talkies with close-ups of actors faces becoming increasingly prevalent in the 30s and 40s just think about some of the iconic scenes from classics like citizen kane in casablanca where the camera lingers on an expressive face rather than resorting to dialogue film theorist bayla belaz describes these shots as the very instant in which the general is transformed into the particular and this isn't just a remnant of classic cinema recent decades have witnessed an increased reliance on close-ups in both film and tv at the most pivotal moment of the entirety of the mcu's decade long run we are close on robert downey jr's face right before the snap heard around the galaxy while he says very little his expression conveys years of struggle and growth all leading to a moment where this character was able to sacrifice his life for those he loves it's also why if i may indulge in a tangent nicolas cage had to fight director robert biermann to wear sunglasses in the wisecrack hall of fame worthy vampire's kiss biermann complained the glasses would shut out the audience a fair concern when your famous actor's face is your best cinematic asset i'm calling the police police albert i'm here to call it truce man look as usual cage prevailed gloriously all that to say seeing the faces of actors matters a lot in terms of how we experience cinema philosophers like amy copeland have even noted that we are able to catch the emotions of a film character through contagion and in catching these emotions we're sort of fusing our own emotions with those of the character which makes it all the more impressive and honestly kind of confusing that a show like the mandalorian is able to convey so much emotion when its protagonist is wearing a mask for all but about 90 seconds in the first two seasons we feel like we know when mando is angry or scared or sad or happy without ever gazing upon pedro pascal's gorgeous face and even though we technically see the face of the show's co-lead grogu who i still refer to as baby yoda sue me his face moves about as much as the friend that thought the edible gummies were normal gummies and spends the entire run time of super troopers convinced they are trapped in their body with no way out oh and baby yoda can't talk so between two lead characters we have one with a visible face and one who communicates in a discernible language now the whole man in the iron mask thing isn't new to the larger star wars universe in the first film a new hope two of the first characters we meet are c-3po and r2d2 neither of whom have the ability to bat their lashes or do the duckface thing that dominated the early days of selfie culture but in both cases we are immediately emotionally connected with these characters with c-3po conveying a genuine anxiety will be destroyed for sure this is madness and r2d2 embodying a reckless and adventurous spirit [Music] there'll be no escape for the princess this time but for a character like darth vader the mask is the point the hidden face makes him more mysterious and accessible and daunting like nicholas cage's iconic character peter lowe and vampire's kiss that goddamn contract is somewhere else goddamn files sorry i couldn't help myself so how is star wars consistently able to break a fundamental principle of compelling filmmaking and still create an emotional connection with its audience we might be able to see how if we get back to the roots of star wars by considering one of george lucas essential influences akira kurosawa a japanese director who earned international acclaim in the mid 20th century for films like ikiru seven samurai and his macbeth adaptation throne of blood his film hidden fortress was a direct inspiration for the original star wars film and george lucas actually helped kurosawa get his films financed in the latter part of his career and while that might be no secret to star wars fans what is even more interesting is one of karasawa's influences a form of theater that was really into covering the faces of its lead actors no is a style of traditional japanese dance-based theater in which some actors wear traditional masks and the non-mask wearing actors give extremely subtle and restrained performances it's all very on broadway since the mask wearing actors have stagnant facial expressions they are unable to communicate their moral leanings or emotional states in a traditional fashion this places more emphasis on the subtleties of their physical movements and leads the audience to find universal themes and emotions in the actor's minimalist performances it's a real less is more scenario [Music] node's influence on kurosawa is especially evident in throne of blood which would go on to influence lucas's work on the prequels specifically where the director used aspects of no theater to make complex emotions visible in new ways rather than relying on the expressive performance as commonly seen in film he does this through employing the japanese aesthetic category of jugen which describes an often theatrically inspired emotion that transcends singular movements or scenes the use of mask and minimal facial expressions and unmasked actors help create this aesthetic as their more minimal and controlled movements inspire the imagination of the audience making them active parts of the performance jugen isn't something that the actors do rather it describes what the audience feels while watching a performance we can see this in throne of blood in a scene where washizu has a breaking bad moment when he kills an assassin to cover up his own deeds and is immediately hit with the weight of his decision which of course isn't too far off from this star wars scene in which anakin helps palpatine kill mace windu and seals this fate as one of the bad guys in both cases the audience feels the enormity of what's just happened and knows it won't end well obviously kurosawa uses no categories like ugan to elicit a response from an audience watching on a screen but for know itself the aim was to create these types of responses in a theatrical setting the principles of no can help us better understand why we find mando's growing love and commitment to grogu so compelling without ever seeing his face we see him go from indifferent to the child as he drops him out to be experimented on by some very unchill looking dudes too curious about what the hell baby yoda actually is to being disappointed in him for eating a frog woman's unfertilized eggs to expressing a deep love and care for him while not masked baby yoda also conveys emotion through minimal facial activity and bodily movements the artist also known as grogu might just be one of the best examples of no in star wars because as a specialist puppet he relies on muted gestures to express any and all emotions much like his potential dad or grandpa or uncle or cousin yoda we can see the inspiration for these characters in kurosawa's throne of blood and in particular the spirit in the forest and it's likely not a coincidence that the spider's web forest in the film looks a whole lot like yoda's adopted home planet of dagobah take the scene where baby yoda uses his powers to save his new daddy from death by mudhorn while the tiny green puppet does little more than scrunch its face up a little bit a tremendous amount of care is communicated this is one of the first times we realized that the little guy loves mando and doesn't want to watch him get murdered and throughout the series we see baby yoda gaze at mando in a way that shows us the deep bond forming between them okay here we go there are countless examples of emotions that are quite literally masked in the original star wars trilogy take the pivotal moment where our guy darth has to choose between serving his master palpatine or saving the life of his son luke it's an intense scene and you can really feel the conflict in darth's dark mechanical heart even though he's masked the entire time this gets at another important aspect of no theater since the masks are stagnant unlike the kind seen in the 90s jim carrey classic the mask the actors don't move a lot in moving less these actors are able to say more when the audience is caught up in quiet and stillness little movements can have a big impact a related no concept is hana which describes the sensations that an actor awakes in a spectator in which an actor's art blooms like a flower and while blooming flowers and genocidal sith lords might not have a lot in common it's incredible that after three films of being a space fascist were able to feel empathy for darth's emotional growth this makes vader's actions all the more powerful when he throws his master into the reactor of the death star which you know would obviously kill someone and make it impossible for him to come back six films later in a pivotal role that retroactively makes the previous two films more or less meaningless but i digress you can compare the mature masked vader in the original trilogy to the brooding over emotive anakin in the prequel trilogy some of the former performance feels more emotionally intense and expressive even though he's in a robot suit while the latter performance full of both verbal and physical expressiveness feels far less impactful this all might help us understand why the mandalorian is so damn compelling while hypothetically the most recent star wars trilogy made us consider a global moratorium on the production of any star wars related content mando and grogu's adventures through the outer rim have restored our faith in star wars one might say that they've offered us a new hope and this is why the influence of no is so crucial by creating limits on facial and bodily movements it places a heightened emphasis on subtle forms of expression and imbue small things with big meanings we can think of no as adding a sort of special flavor to film which is why jugen an aspect of no can be thought of as the umami of emotion when used well it can pull an extra layer of feeling from the audience and have you spending weeks wondering if mando is ever going to see grogo again and praying that he doesn't end up at luke's jedi academy when ben becomes kylo ren no theater helps us get why the show is so good it succeeds not because of how much it shows but because of how little and rather than making the show feel hollow and cold this restraint and use of metal masks makes little things so much more powerful now some of this might be complicated by the fact that mando eventually does take his helmet off in the final moments of season 2 leading us to wonder if they'll spend parts of season 3 showing his face in the outer rims various dive bars but even if he does lose the mask we would bet that the influence of no will remain palpable whether in the minimal movements and dialogue of key characters or by his growing gang of new mandalorian friends but what do you think wisecrack can a japanese theater tradition help us better appreciate the performance of masked characters in the star wars cinematic universe or would everyone be better off if these guys drop the helmets and use their eyes to express some emotion let us know what you think in the comments thanks to our patrons for all your support be sure to hit that subscribe button like you're firing up your mandalorian jet pack and ring that bell like you're calling some jedi's from the peak of force mountain and as always thanks for watching later [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Wisecrack

Views: 215,899

Rating: 4.9045687 out of 5

Keywords: star wars, the mandalorian, baby yoda, boba fett, return of the jedi, gina carano, pedro pascal, george lucas, akira kurosawa, bo katan, luke skywalker mandalorian, r2d2 scream, disney plus, darth vader, clone wars, revenge of the sith, anakin skywalker, star wars the mandalorian, star wars akira kurosawa, wisecrack, philosophy, psychology, video essays, show me the meaning, what went wrong, deep or dumb, wisecrack edition, film analysis, wisecrack michael burns

Id: zQqNefkqsn8

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021