The Mandalorian: A Gunslinger's Odyssey

this video is sponsored by nordvpn we mandalore take everything we are and throw it into battle it's the true test of yourself a battle against death against oblivion [Music] one helmeted bounty hunter that looked unbelievably cool has spawned an entire mythology within this bigger mythology that's a good character people like the bad guys [Music] man with no name because if you think about it it still has that sort of breakdown of eastwood's straight brilliant health uh brim like that just kind of old old worthy eyes yeah poncho alive or dead it's your choice [Music] [Applause] the beautiful simplicity and really underlying complex characterizations that you get in them definitely there's a star wars vibe to any of them as long as i get the pain i always follow my job so through that i learned about the western through that i learned about samurai films i don't want to be influenced so much by star wars but i want to be influenced by the stuff that influenced george all the great myths the primitive myths the great stories have to be regenerated if they're going to have any impact fantasy has no bounds what you can do here with the new technologies is simply extraordinary [Music] it's truly an adventure a star wars venture five months out from their film's theatrical debut the crew of the very first iron man kicked off 2008 at george lucas's skywalker ranch in marin county california home of the greatest post-production facilities in the world in between reviews of the film sound mixing writer director producer and actor john favreau would tore the ranch in his spare time and rediscover every bit of the legendary sci-fi franchise that gave the ranch its name and that he loved as a kid a love that would inspire his career turned to filmmaking and his own take on marvel comics is iron man in weeks time favreau would soon also find himself right down the street at big rock ranch the headquarters of lucas's new animation division where supervising director dave filoni gave favro and his son a special glimpse at what would become george lucas's final production [Music] for generations my ancestors fought proudly as warriors against the jedi now that woman tarnishes the very name mandalorian star wars the clone wars and favro's fan favorite character pre-vizsla would only be the beginning of a beautiful creative friendship between favreau and filoni one that would leave a lasting impression for years to come even as he went off to helm the live-action remakes of jungle book and lion king two of the most innovative productions in walt disney pictures history for their use of video game engine technology and vr to shoot in a virtual environment in many ways favre embodied a bit of the pioneering spirit of george lucas someone invested in the kind of film technologies that could change the industry forever and that didn't go unnoticed by lucasfilm president kathleen kennedy who reached out to favro on september 25th 2017 as the ideal candidate to kickstart disney's new streaming platform with the first ever live-action star wars series she knew favra would flourish with the storytelling tools offered by lucasfilm all she needed was his pitch so favre looked back through not just the clone wars or the many films he already made for disney in his career but the star wars he grew up with the films he loved watching with his father and the stories that carried him through the untimely death of his mother and gave kennedy a name as synonymous with legend as it was with obscurity and now boba fett star wars villain with his laser rifle boba fett is not yet available in stores but you can get him free with four proofs of purchase from any star wars action figures [Music] not exactly boba fett's but everything that made his generation obsessed with him the bounty hunter covered head to toe in colorful armor a cool-edged killer with the walk and talk of a cowboy and the character who was an action figure before he was well a character yet for every kid with his action figure in the audience of the empire strikes back a film that told you next to nothing about boba fetts that only made him more interesting in concept artist joe johnston's original artwork boba fett was described as a super commando and only later on would george lucas coined him with the term mandalorian evil warriors defeated by the jedi knights during the clone wars or at least that's how it went writers and fans told their own stories of boba fetts and the fabled mandalorians for years to come but the biggest boom came in 2002 with the introduction of jango fett and attack of the clones followed by bioware's knights of the old republic a year later i will add your head to those of the other jedi i have killed and take yet another lightsaber for my own before long there were books comics fan films an official language even and fandalorians an entire pocket of the star wars fandom with their own colorful mandalorian armors eventually george lucas and dave flony brought these elements into the clone wars with a conflict between the pacifistic new mandalorians and tradition-bound death watch the mandalorian stories of the clone wars remain not just its highlight but some of the greatest stories ever told in the franchise for favro the legacy of boba fett and the mandalorians represented the most fascinating and untapped area of the star wars mythos in live action and having worked as an usher at his local movie theater during the opening weekend of return of the jedi as a teenager a post return to the jedi star wars galaxy seemed like the right place to explore it nearing the end of production on star wars rebels dave filoni producer cary beck and writer christopher yost were brought in to meet favreau and help take his pitch to the next level as two friends reunited the mandalorian was [Music] born more than buck rogers or flash gordon there were two elements buried deep in the stars dna that favrea wanted to pull into the foreground of the mandalorian the samurai film and the western in the time of his early career few western directors so devoutly loved the jedi jiki meaning period drama and yes that's where jedi comes from or the chanbara a sub-genre of jedi jiki meaning sword fighting more than george lucas the works of legendary director akira kurosawa like the hidden fortress or yojimbo dearly inspired his approach to narrative and framing on star wars while kurosawa's go-to collaborator toshira mafune was a blueprint for the wise and powerful ben kenobi on the other hand spaghetti westerns like sergio leones once upon a time in the west or the good the bad and the ugly influenced much of the world and grit of star wars while klinstwood's laconic man with no name was a sighted influence on jeremy bullock's mysterious boba fett he's no good to me dead favreau loved both of these genres but what most attracted him to them was more than just following in lucas's footsteps it was the reason sergio leone so ably put together what many critics would call a shot-for-shot remake of yojimbo with 1964's a fistful of dollars it was the times of relative peace and uncertain change in post-war eras that both genres depicted through japan's edo period and america's reconstruction era and it was the lens through which both genres viewed their stories in the eyes of the american cowboy and the wandering samurai cinematically the knight errants of two geographically disparate cultures where american literary fiction leading up to the 20th century romanticized the sweeping vistas manifest destiny and tough as nails outlaw's signature to the wild west especially in the tall tales of davy crockett buffalo bill cody and doc holliday the western genre itself wouldn't come to be defined until decades later with films like john ford's stagecoach and henry king's jesse james classic westerns where upstanding gunfighters often played by john wayne or henry fonda would defend the downtrodden opposed corrupt lawmen and conquer all manner of wild untamed nature on the frontier [Applause] inspired by the iconic outlaws of the western directors like kurosawa and hiroshi nagaki led a jedi jiki renaissance in japan where films like seven samurai chushangura or the tale of satochi depicted samurai not in their prime amidst japan's bloody age of civil war but after the war and during the tokugawa dynasty of wandering ronans or masterless samurai and then finally in turn samurai cinema inspired italian directors like leone and sergio korbuchi to twist the moralistic outlook of both genres into the morally muddy backdrop of the spaghetti western playing into a greater subversion of the western genre in america the revisionist western though what they depicted was rooted in reality these genres the jedi jiki and the western would flourish into mythologies for japan and for america cinematic folklore of mythic characters infused with the values of justice cunning and bravery or respect nobility and self-sacrifice the same sort of values illustrated in joseph campbell's monomyth and subsequently star wars a contemporary storytelling canvas that has only grown more mythological in spirit with each new entry into its canon for the star wars story he was about to tell favreau wanted to take all of these elements and meld them into a setting that wasn't just influenced by the western or jedi jiki mythology but was a tapestry for them [Music] a lawless outer rim where gunslingers bandits ex-soldiers and ronins alike along with all the age-old tales that follow them practically run amok the galactic civil war is over and the empire's all but finished yet the newly established republic hasn't yet secured its foothold resulting in an unruly landscape that resembles something of the edo period or reconstruction era a time as susceptible to change as it is to stagnation director of photography greg frazier and cinematographer baz idoine capture this feeling throughout the show's first season with the open stage the iconic western landscape what film critic dave kerr describes as a blank page to be written on the promise of something new [Music] there is some law to the land like the bounty hunters guild no pucks for you now get out of here but otherwise as will glean from a decaying most sizely stormtroopers cowering from the public eye a cantina run by droids or even the kuwaiki and monkey lizard once in the court of decadent huts to now the spit roast is that the natural order of things has been turned upside down there's no star wars to be nobly fought and no lukes hans or leia's in sight only a galaxy that doesn't quite know what's next on its plate yet for a few lone gun fighters it's in this chaos that they find order that the gratuity the mandalorian like the boba fett before him is a bounty hunter as cold and unforgiving as the landscape that isolates him from the show's very first frames and relentlessly efficient in his trade to quote ben kenobi he may be more machine than man few things face him and far fewer can draw their gun faster we have you four to one i like those odds from the t visor of his helmet resembling the brim of a hat to his economical use of dialogue mando immediately invokes the eastwood gunslinger of stoicism and lawlessness especially when set against a galaxy of characters favra wrote to be particularly verbose if you've never seen the fledgling mithral evacuate your thorax your lucky guy trust me he may not ride a horse but the steel gray ship he flies is no less an extension of himself mechanical durable and dangerous at the same time the real man behind the mandalorian pedro pascal was directed most explicitly to internalize mufune sanduro from yojimbo mando isn't just a gunslinger but a warrior pledged to a strict code of honor and tradition much like the samurai bushido to an underground clan of fellow mandalorians headed by the aptly named armorer this is the way mandalorians are rewarded in the glory of battle reflected in their coveted best scar armor effectively the samurai armor of star wars just as the armorers forge evokes the ancient tradition of japanese steel swordsmithing there are many edicts to the life of a mandalorian but one rule stands above all never take off your helmet to do so might be an even greater dishonor than the removal of a samurai's top knot [Music] altogether mando is favro's samurai gunslinger a figure more mythic than human utterly indiscernible from the symbol's code and tradition he sworn his everything to yet something more lurks behind the silver dome of his helmet a one-way mirror to the mind of a mystery more angular and oozing with menace than even the helmet of boba fett a quiet suggestion that perhaps mando needs disorder for it may very well keep at bay ineffable chaos a lone wolf always at motion always running from the mechanized demons of a deeply traumatic past if he ever stops to face them he'll be as helpless as the little boy he was then but if he finds order a system that insures his demons or anyone for that matter will never catch up to him he can be ruthless he can be a hunter this is the core conflict for the mandalorian as much as it was for the edo ronin or american gunfighter law versus lawlessness and order versus chaos like all the stock genre figures that surround him from the bartender to the rancher or the banditos mando is content living his life exactly as it is never breaking from the myth and never deviating from a perfectly endless loop favro on the other hand is not interested in that [Music] what favreau wants from the mandalorian is not necessarily a cunning anti-hero or a devout warrior he wants something more than that he wants mando to find something or someone that can break his cycle of control it won't be nick nolte's queel though he's but the first and wisest of many faces who will guide mando forward instead it's the one thing that he can't repel against what he can't point a gun to true to the violent lonely path that's long molded him what amanda will find is actually the very thing he's been running from all this time [Music] a little baby yoda no less helpless than the fractured child deep down inside him a fractured child he still is mando made a choice and it's going to turn his whole world upside down [Music] with the little green raisin now joined at his hip our protagonist is no more the mandalorian with no name than he is the lone wolf and cub very much of the wildly popular manga film and tv franchise of japan in the 1970s and 80s where the fearsome ronin and assassin for hire ogami ito wandered edo japan with his infant son daigoro in a baby stroller lone wolf and cub found success for a multitude of reasons but its most compelling ideas were rooted in the foil between ito and digoro the conflict that arose between pursuing vengeance and being a father in the mandalorian the foil of the child complicates everything fermando pretty much immediately he's harassed by hunters his ship is stripped apart by jawas and despite their puny disposition they practically hand his ass to him amanda was reluctant to tame the blurg but he's even more reluctant to ask for queel's help to subside his lone wolf nature the child throws mando's entire sense of order for a loop and he doesn't like it positively absurd measures will be needed to retain it and both favreau and director rick famajiwa capitalize on that in every moment of chapter two from a heated alliance with jawas to a mud caked brawl with the unmatched mud horn all the while mando is increasingly unwilling to loosen any more of his grip on the rigid order he desperately needs he'll even die in the name of it bested in honorable albeit humiliating battle by superior foe but he doesn't [Music] instead he witnesses something beyond his wildest imagination a feat capable of shattering anyone's fragile notion of the universe something that can't be unseen if there was a word to describe it whatever it was it might only be fate a force to once again suggest that the mandalorian's order is not meant to be kept but broken [Music] for one reason or another the universe has linked mando with the child he can cling to the familiar validation of his warrior ways as much as he wants he can even use its spoils to reclaim his lost order a suit of armor strong enough to hide the gaping emotional insecurities his previous suit apparently could not but by the same token he acquired this armor because of baby yoda fate might ordain it to serve another purpose contrary to his hunter ways yet entirely befitting of them to shield that little green raisin from everything he could not shield from his younger self he made a choice in sparing the child but now a different kind of choice lies before him a choice thrust upon one generation's hero to the next moreover for the galaxy trotting journey that unbeknownst to mando surely lies ahead the beginning of an odyssey like odysseus himself and the greek poet homer's epic poems mando will trek or a few souls and even fewer mandalorians have gone before through unforgiving badlands tangled swamps and frozen wastes deadly trials of cunning and bravery in the crossroads of legends to myth themselves it won't lead home fernando yet knows no such a place but it does lead somewhere and it will take a long long time to get there testing his bond with his newfound creature every step of the way how can one be a coward if one chooses this way of life this is a gunslingers odyssey [Music] this is the way this is the way [Music] [Music] i [Music] hello stranger can i help you i've been quested to watch a list of movies and shows that are only available on streaming services in other countries if i can somehow connect to those countries while maintaining a safe and reliable internet connection i can clear my watch list for good while that should be no trouble at all provided you have nordvpn nord vpn what is it only the best vpn service around allowing you to connect almost anywhere and browse the web securely while hiding your ip address from public networks what else can it do well it can stop companies from collecting all your online data and with nord cybersec technology it can block ads and dangerous malware too how could i acquire nordvpn oh it's simple go to nordvpn.com forward slash rtor and just for you stranger enter the code rtor at checkout and you'll have a huge discount on a two-year plan the link to this limited time offer is in the description below thank you i should probably keep moving my pleasure safe travels my friend camera started rolling on chapter one of huckleberry the internal code name for the mandalorian on october 1st 2018 coming after just nine months of meticulous pre-production in other words for a lucasfilm production of this caliber a very tight schedule compared to a typical star wars film the mandalorian would have half the budget but double the run time and according to lucasfilm vice president and production designer doug chang the art department had what a third of their usual time to make designs yet through both the guidance and creative partnership between favro and filoni work that should have been impossible became manageable as faro and filoni pitch story ideas for each episode flony would sketch out key visuals for the art department just as he did in his seasonal story meetings with lucas on the clone wars expediting the initial design process considerably designs were approved in only two or three rounds and occasionally right from the first iteration favre knew exactly what he wanted from every aspect of the show yet relied on every artist's work to inspire the final touches of each script a collaboration akin to lucas's directing style of the star wars saga however in front of the camera the same free-flowing style of collaboration would be a lot more difficult even with a formidable budget of 15 million per episode favreau and filoni dealt with the constraints of the tv medium sets would need to be cost efficiently built reused and repurposed wherever possible as would costumes and props from former stars productions like rogue one be reused and modified for the show even then a staggering amount of either vfx work or location shooting would be unavoidable and both could be costly favro didn't just need one of the best crews in the tv industry he needed technology that didn't exist yet technology that not only favro had worked a pioneer on the digital playgrounds of jungle book and lion king but dp greg frazier on the set of rogue one that's what led favro frazier and visual effects supervisor richard bluff after many months of experimenting to invent one of the most revolutionary film technologies over the last two decades the ilm stagecraft or as the crew called it the volume we have put together a system whereby which we can have game engine real-time render and video wall technology coming together to create a backdrop for the big beautiful world of star wars it feels like a real three-dimensional environment surrounding you because it is a three-dimensional environment [Music] because of the volume the vfx pipeline that's been traditionally used in the film industry over the last several decades was now flipped most visual effects are instead created in pre-production rather than post and implemented in epic games is unreal engine and yes it's that epic games there's still some vfx work to be done in post-production but what's there and camera at the start could be adjusted on the fly allowed actors to give better performances with their surroundings and didn't require the endless compositing of green or blue reflections from a highly reflective main character a luxury c-3po did not benefit from in the prequels well it couldn't possibly be as bad as all that in some ways the volume serves as a fitting full circle evolution to the early days of the western where the matte background once provided illusory western scenery the volume projects a photorealistic environment it's just one of the many ways the mandalorian and pretty much everyone involved in it was trying to push the tv medium forward just like the show's approach to previz or pre-visualization a commonplace practice for high budget action movies but once again not in the way pharah wanted to use it unusually favro's team of episodic directors were brought in well before their days of shooting to work with vfx and the editorial team to pre-visit the entirety of their respective episodes for taiko ati deborah chao and bryce dallas howard this process allowed them to make conscious decisions about their episodes early on producing a blueprint for each department to follow including ilm's volume for rick famaiwa motion capture and stunt work could be rehearsed well in advance and used in previz to craft the perfect action sequence and for dave filoni this process was right at home with his experience in animation where every episode was traditionally assembled first in previz and in the case of the clone wars exclusively in previz without any storyboards it's a pipeline that has more in common with animation than live action and pulled just about every department closer together in unison [Music] [Applause] this guy on a recorder i never got it recorded in the woods in the woods even ludwig gorenson frequent collaborator of ryan coogler and childish gambino the mandalorian was an opportunity to push the star wars sound forward with a genre bending score mashing the orchestral elements of john williams together with the electric guitars and spaghetti western fare of enya morikone and the influences of hip-hop it's an element that seems like it would never work in star wars but it does capturing the same sort of cross-cultural fusion anime fans might recognize from nujabes's hip-hop inspired score from samurai champloo or rza's similarly genre bending score for ghost dog the way of the samurai both projects are token demonstrations of the odd many intersections between hip-hop and samurai culture and modern media where a newer underground sound is juxtaposed with traditional japanese culture to ultimately deconstruct the dominant structures and ideas of the samurai for gorenson this type of sound challenged the dominant musical canon of star wars as much as it did the mandalorian himself always represented by a lone base recorder despite how many genre-clashing sounds surround him [Music] foreign music is one of the many ways the audience is permitted to infer the emotions of an emotionally complicated protagonist alongside the careful physical performance of pedro pascal and his two doubles grandson of western icon john wayne brendan wayne and martial artist latif crowder where even their smallest gestures mean something of a character imbued with stillness or frazier and iduan's deliberate camera composition and movement with the editorial team's attention to shot length and age-old techniques like the kushlav effect yes that one from your freshman film class to attribute emotion to a faceless character this concerted approach was invaluable and forging the bond between mando and baby yoda in the first few episodes but it's especially necessary through the middle chapters of season one as amanda was set loose on a distant frontier [Music] from kurosawa's seventh samurai or john sturgis american remake the magnificent seven if you will in sanctuary then the filoni's ode to the young and old gunslinger team up of the western particularly sam peck and paw's tv series the westerner with the gunslinger [Music] and then to an utterly star wars take on the tried and true ragtag heist plot with the prisoner [Music] in another sense mando is lost in the star wars mythology itself crossing paths with all the delightfully rubber masked figures and obscure characters often relegated to the background the rebel trooper the imperial sniper the devaronian or the shuttle bay mechanic in addition to the ugnot ig droid and battle for endor blurg he already met [Music] all the while we are never lost with mando himself despite the show's predilection for an episodic approach more akin to shows like the westerner or wanted dead or alive than the perceived drama series of the streaming age there is always an emphasis on mando he knows his life has been changed and some of his order relinquished but that won't stop him from carrying on as if it hasn't from clinging to the ordinary world he's afraid to leave even if that only confronts him with the ex-dropper and lost soul of cara dune and a local community of krill farmers who've lost their peace to clantonian raiders mando and in part dune are trying to stay in one kind of place in an environment they can control but fate just won't let them do that instead they're being pushed forward towards what isn't clear though it's certainly not more order and so they must put aside their lone wolf ways and give a community the tools to fight back [Music] even after the smoke has cleared and peace is returned to the farmers being part of a community that accommodates for his needs as much as he accommodates for theirs is not something mando's trauma permits him to have he still won't take his armor off literally and figuratively and because he never had the stability growing up he'd rather give it to the child even if doing so would only hand down his abandonment he'll get over it [Music] we all do [Music] no matter his decision mando and the child must remain on the move heading where he and the ronin gunfighters he embodies have always been welcome to go a landscape as befitting of outlaws as it is of the lonely past he longs for but manda won't quite find what he's looking for there either in the time that's passed the mercenaries that have hunted down mando only regurgitate the same detached drivel he once told his targets the shoe isn't just on mando's other foot mando is changing revealed to us in the shadows of the former selves that hound him and none may represent that better than toro calikin you can keep the money all of it i just need this job to get into the guild [Music] toro initially seems harmless if not just a bit green behind the ears however in filoni's words he understands gunslinging from pulp novels but he doesn't understand the reality of it that it's a real job toro is the mandalorian without his code of honor someone who greedily views only for personal glory and gain regardless of what it takes to achieve it he is what manda was looking for in tatooine but not what he expected the cold-blooded hunter indifferent to the universe around him inevitably toro only shows him the futility of going back to that there's no more glory in the hunt for him he has greater concerns greater responsibilities now and it's only at the wrong moment that that becomes abundantly clear [Music] you would be foolish to challenge any mandalorian but mando most of all not because he's the deadlier killer but because he's much more than that in hangar 3-5 mando decides for the first time that the child isn't to be given away and certainly not to be sold that child is his and yet that won't stop mando from trying one last time to retreat to something anything that'll restore his sense of control but mando's most desperate stop is a blurry one introduced in congested close-ups showing us how unfamiliar mando's grown with the crime world he once knew not with the optics he has now anyway and somehow this retreat might be his biggest mistake yet hello mando mando is partnered with the lowest of low lifes we've met so far as a rational selfish and delusional former gangmates even with the helmet on mando's body language around them reads of immense discomfort [Music] they haven't changed one bit from their days of running jobs but according to them neither has mando and coming from these guys that's a scary accusation but then in the republic prison we see an odd line of morality we haven't seen before ormando once disintegrated jaw was without second thought or encased his targets in carbonites with the candor of a horror movie villain he now refuses to pull the trigger to be the gunslinger mando may not realize it but he's developing a conscience a capacity for empathy he's never had before and to no one's surprise but his own it cost him even more betrayal though the underworld's no place for a conscience it's also beneath a man of mando's resilience because it'll take far more than a jail cell to keep him from his child [Music] by the end of amanda's short-lived retreat the good old days are gone despite what he might say sarcastically or not though mando has found himself in almost every predicament out of necessity to survive a brutal paycheck to paycheck lifestyle with a reticle on his head the truth that's been shown to him is irrefutable [Music] he's just not the same tough guy he used to be i told you that was a bad idea he's out of place wherever he goes and at odds with just about everyone he might have once called an ally everyone except the child to an extent he's resisted the hero's journey clutching to the ordinary at every opportunity and though it hasn't stopped him from who he's becoming it has enabled him to suppress the deepest darkest part of himself the fear that defined his lone wolf nature in the first place [Music] nevertheless the journey so far has wearied mando of some things carl weathers grief karga extends a true stomando and invites him back to the guild back to just a little bit of his lost order however the imperial remnant is also there in force and will need to be dealt with to clear his bounty for good if it's to be a battle of law versus lawlessness then mando may just need a magnificent seven of his own give or take a few members [Music] [Music] wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] production on the mandalorian's first season lasted about four months from october to february 2019. most episodes were shot concurrently including filoni chao and watiti's episode set on navarro while the last episode to be shots was actually the gunslinger all throughout the overlapping schedule each director covered second unit on another director's episode effectively the mandalorian is the product of a shared vision between several directors disguised as a purely episodic experience this directorial band of mercs as favreau described them was the basis for mando's own band of mercs in the reckoning the tough as nails heavy-hitting car dune and gentle nurturing queer might seem worlds apart in every conceivable way fermando heck they even fought for opposing sides of the war but they've all mando included walked the same rugged path in isolation adrift and without cause they've enjoyed their time out on the frontier but amanda will extend to them a bit of what he found on his own something worth fighting for they just need to take the difficult and treacherous step of counting on each other as much as they've counted on themselves [Music] in the art of the mandalorian phil sostak writes the mandalorian is both in front of and behind the camera a broadening of perspective exploring a lesser known but still vital thread in the rich fabric of star wars for the crew behind the camera the revolutionary workflow of the volume certainly broadened their perspective but it's these two chapters on navarro that allow that sentiment to fully bear fruit before the camera in qui-gon's words there's always a bigger fish and that's no less true of what awaits our heroes the hapless stormtroopers wallowing in navarro storehouses suggested early on that the imperial remnant couldn't be weaker but the startlingly formidable and very well-armed garrison reinforced to the town proves entirely otherwise the tide of the law is stronger than any part of the galaxy has led on raised in opposition to an equal tide of chaos conversely we've never traversed navarro from its interminable lava flats an open stage hidden from sight it is the backdrop of an arduous journey and a wild frontier but remember also it's the promise of something new as queel's once imposing blurgs are carried away by monsters like mice another kind of perspective broadens for grief karga molded by a world of outlaws of deception distrust and gunslinging grief receives the last thing he'd ever expect from anyone [Music] compassion the child heals him without hesitation without regard for who grief really is and just as that's left an unmissable impact on mando it'll convict grief in a similarly lasting way the miraculous kindness of a child didn't just bring these four outlaws together it may be the first and only thing to ever give grief a spine the chance to consider what amanda's been considering since he first laid eyes on the child now liberating navarro won't just be about the possibility of freedom but that's something new we've been teased from the very beginning redemption however triumphant these gunfighters hope to be favro and chow won't let them go before the offer of a vile devil's advocate a bigger fish than the client [Music] a man with no honor and no respect for his agreements or his men he is the archetypal lawman but against an unraveling outlaw like mando his villainy runs deeper the war that heralded this lawless time it never ended for him instead the past and all the trauma that goes with it that keeps people like mando on foot is his playground and it's completely under his control you have something i want you may think you have some idea what you're in possession of but you do not giancarlo esposito's moth gideon embodies everything mando could spiral into the violence he might eventually carry out to restore the sense of control he's desperately lacking the past glory he'll cling on to just to have it and the honor he'll willfully disavow to pursue such ignoble goals in the pantheon of star wars villains he shares the same refusal to let go as figures like vader or maul and commando he cuts to the core of his mysterious facade where dinjarin has been reluctant to broaden his perspective gideon refuses altogether because he believes he already knows everything just as you betrayed our business arrangement i would gladly break any promise and watch you die in my hand [Music] surviving the trial of moth gideon won't just take guns which for the record it will take a lot of guns but the capacity to resist what gideon represents our heroes can't keep looking over their shoulder they have to find the means to look forward the means to accept what they can't control and the duty thrust upon them grief found it in finally showing his spine kara finds it in fighting imperials and queel finds it in engineering something not for war but for good for denjarin the means to look forward is right in front of him as much as it is behind him and whether it was an astromech a battle droid a protocultroid or an ig unit he's met each and every one of them with the same hostility reinforced by his past and for a man who's predicated his entire survival on moving fast enough to avoid a confrontation with it ig 11's reprogramming hardly strikes him any differently as he's resisted the uncertain implications of change in his own life mando stubbornly refuses the same of a droid to accept otherwise would be to upheave the whole foundation of his being it would be as if he died that very day do it do what just get it all but on a day every bit as fiery and bleak as then where his fate was first sealed behind two mandalorian chest plate shaped doors din opens them he lets his guard down and instead of it scaring him [Music] it heals him face to face with his own mortal enemy then begins to see himself mando spent years trading his humanity to embody the very thing he feared most the only thing he could become to ensure he would never hurt that much again but then came the little guy and all the chaos that came with him the child as dins means to look forward and the duty thrust upon him is to be his father [Music] this is the way a father someone capable of defending the defenseless looking after their needs and leading them to their people how does anyone prepare themselves for that in these regards ig 11 not only reflects who mando's been but who he now needs to be what are you doing self sacrificing willing to plunge himself into harm's way at a moment's notice for if a machine can change so can din jaren all he needs to do is finally accept the nudge of fate and move forward [Music] our heroes survived gideon's trial because they adapted the age of lawlessness won't be forever and times are bound to change but that doesn't mean the empire has to come with that change there is a balance out there somewhere between order and chaos grief and kara might find theirs on navarro but amanda will need to venture so much farther to find his as den pays his respects to the cowboy that first showed him the way a new chapter begins and what has become a never-ending journey no matter how weary he is with the trail behind him the mandalorian looks to the horizon wider than ever before and keeps going so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i won't get to get what i'm after [Music] [Applause] pre-production on huckleberry season two had fired up even before the end of season one's production in january of 2019 with a much better grasp of the volume favro and filoni based much more of their story around pushing its limits physically technically and narratively the volume was rebuilt and reconfigured both for lower light scenarios and more dynamic backdrops pharaoh falloni and famihiwa kept their scripts simple and gave season two's directors new and old more hands-on freedom than ever the difference right from the first episode is unquestionably felt though the mandalorian was still rooted to its grounded western feel the mythic spectacle it would soon bring to the tv screen would be larger than life favro's first round in the mandalorian director chair would be to tell its tallest tale yet after crossing paths and throwing hands with the star wars cyclops mando ventures beyond the tatooine we know to the forgotten town of moss palgo straight out of high plains drifter partnered with timothy oliphant's cobb vance the marshal derived from the marshals of western filmography like henry fonda's simon frye these two knights in somewhat shining armor unite the indigenous tuscans and people of moss pelgo to slay a fearsome dragon while vanth himself is an intersection between many star wars legends fett's armor anakin's podracer and chuck wendig's aftermath novel the krait dragon is practically a legend to the star wars canon itself as idawin's imagery invokes lawrence of arabia dune and even a bit of jaws while favro delivers arguably the single most thrilling set piece in star wars since the trench run a battle that cements the glory of the mandalorian himself [Music] as mando rides off into the sunset the definitive visual of the western chapter 9 certifies the rich and mystical backdrop of the mandalorian where western eastern and star wars myth come to life and endure forever except it doesn't ah chapter nine opened with mando's stepping foot where we've never seen him before a darker dangerous civilized world the antithesis to the open stage wherein the law has already run its course later on amanda will find himself not in outlaw havens but places like trask corvus and under greece renovation navarro well-oiled communities that have moved on or tried to move on with the times and though the new republic's foothold is still but a shadow of their former government even they will exert oversight where there was once chaos the empire's prior feud over navarro was an omen and the opening scene of chapter nine only solidifies it the wild west is ending the storybook landscape where the embellished myths of gunslingers and samurai like could roam is beginning to close and the myth itself is dwindling and part of why it's dwindling is tied to why it was initially thriving the parallel between a post-war star wars galaxy in both reconstruction america and edo japan [Music] entering the 1960s and 70s the american culture that once embraced the cowboy the idealized self-image of america's free-thinking gun-toting justice was starting to grow out of the western as the u.s became further and further embroiled in a morally muddy cold war one that would come to redefine how many americans saw their government and themselves the image of the cowboy changed they were no longer the ringo kid or wyatt earp but butch cassidy and the sundance kid they were the wild bunch they were the stranger they were all a dying breed living on the very edge of america's progressive era either unwanted by society or trapped in one that couldn't be saved technology modernization and lawful reform stamped them out as much as it stamped out the wild frontier as such most westerns set during this period and in tragedy and after more than 50 years of defining redefining reinventing and remaking the western over and over audiences largely lost interest in the cowboy samurai cinema never died out in quite the same way but it did lose its prominence and for some of the same reasons overexposure aging stars of the genre the decline of the japanese film industry and the changing self-image of japan an image again defined by modernization as japanese society was reeling further and further from world war ii and becoming increasingly tied to western trade through the cold war invariably films like karakiri samurai assassin or lady snowblood were either set in the waning days of the ido era or critiqued the feudal traditions the japanese self-image was growing further and further from many westerns have been made since the 70s and today like unforgiven or 310 to yuma as have samurai films like the twilight samurai and lee sang the second's remake of unforgiven but not without heavily referencing or commenting on the cinematic periods that precede them in the mandalorian a similar unraveling of myth is taking place in spite of every evidence to the contrary like the gunfighter or ronin mandalorians are becoming fewer and farther between the first one mando does encounter isn't a mandalorian at all it's cobb vance who practically pawned phet's legendary besgar from tatooine's unscrupulous dumpster divers and despite the sacred creed significance mando associates with the armor vanth also makes a compelling argument for why he's earned it not for attack but for defending his people cobb vanth challenges din's mandalorian identity the most integral deeply rooted part of his internal sense of order even more so than his past trauma mando has already sacrificed a lot of that order to look after the child but to ask a mandalorian to sacrifice being mandalorian that's too much in fact he'll double down on it conveyed not in the lone base recorder gorenson usually plays mando's theme on but the strong and confident sound of the electric guitar for as mando descends on a more civilized and industrialized galaxy finding the strength to keep everything he holds dear close to the chest matters more than ever [Music] but again mando is but one man and a clan of two and he's bound for worse than getting globbed off a speeder by bandits the only way to ensure his survival is to keep following the everlusive force of fate to take risks and surrender boundaries he never has before and even then survival is not assured as mando states early on i'm not leaving my fate up to chance yet taking that kind of chance is his best and only option when he goes to tatooine in search of a true mandalorian fate then gave him vanth and after hitchhiking it back to mos eisley taking a chance is quite literally his only option once again i'll tell you where to find some mandalorians that's what you wanted right to mando fate is now but one more thing to be fought one more thing trying to strip him of his armor or his foundling so he turns his nose up at it leaving the task of transporting misty roses frog lady to be ridiculous and beneath him not unlike mando's stint with a jawas back in chapter 2. unsurprisingly it's not long before he's reminded how well that went for him last time because the galaxy is rapidly changing and mando can't outrun fate any more than he can outrun the law i don't know where he thinks he's going in that thing just as mando's razor crest is an extension of himself the means by which this ancient hunk of steel can outrun the order clamping down on it is pushed to the limit whether it's real imagined or something strangely in between director peyton reed drops dan jarren into something of a star wars nightmare where our only company in a cave colder than hoth are two characters costumed head to toe and a puppet as the bleak odds of survival set in by the second mando is faced by his worst fear the thought of losing all he keeps close to the chest the creed has always taught him that only the strongest should survive the elements thrown at them if need be only his clan of two should survive but it's not enough to believe that and it's not enough to sleep the nightmare away either wake up mandalorian jin's identity is challenged again and in the voice of the thing he used to fear before it made him stronger before mando vowed to be self-sacrificing but maybe now that mantra doesn't just apply to protecting the child maybe it applies everywhere for if he's not willing to defend the last of frog ladies ancestral line why should he deserve to defend the child or his fading creed i thought honoring one's word was a part of the mandalorian code [Music] i guess those are just stories for children mando can remain beneath the ice be as cold and isolating as the wayward killer he once was and die in shame with his mythic creed or he can confront his fear and put himself on the line to allow someone to survive because very soon you will have to choose whether to put everything at risk or be consumed by fear reed crushes mando as far into the corner as he'll go by way of the most spider-crammed fever dream ever envisioned for star wars firing at the speed of the trigger finger and fighting within inches of his life to defend frog lady and the child mando veers towards oblivion the edge of extinction for two dying breeds and says no no matter how ancient his ways he won't die beneath the ice he won't die the cold-blooded machine he once was he won't be the last mandalorian [Applause] because the nightmare is over for facing his fears fate seemingly rewards mando with republic salvation his good deeds earned him mercy almost as if to tell him he's on the right path the old razor crest is reliable enough to make it to space but like mando its days have never been more numbered come up here i need your hands and though amanda escaped his nightmare he'll have to face all his fears all over again on trask by now mando is wearing at the seams the crest has been pummeled about as much as any ship can be mando's armor does little to protect him and the only warriors who are capable of rescuing him the mandalorians he's been dying to find will be the last people he'd ever call mandalorian i was hoping that [Music] no one obstructs mando's sense of identity more than katy sakhof's bokeh tan and her night owls lifelong mandalorians who to the myths of the clone wars and rebels might just be more mandalorian than din himself or din once felt empowered to be part of a proud spanning creed he's now a wayward zealot abducted by a cult and effectively sheltered to the outside world from behind a suit of armor mando might push back try to unhear what he's heard but he won't succeed again fate gave him what he asked for but not what he wanted next to them he's effectively a polished relic a stranger [Music] is it not enough to follow the creed to belong to something that gives you purpose and meaning only for it to be undercut everywhere you turn should din not fight to protect what mandalorian means to him maybe then again he does need bogotan mando's quest could end here he could pretend the night owls aren't mandalorian and maintain the increasingly fragile order that his creed brings him or he could open his mind director bryce styles howard's mandalorian action is cutthroat and filled with character from the choreography to the framing even to sackoff's body language and to gorenson's synthblown score there's a surgical precision to the way the night owls fight like a well-oiled machine one more adapted to the times than the fossil failing to keep up with them though they are newer and faster some of their tactics might border on dishonor bogotan wields fear like a weapon like a mandalorian batman using it to further her goals and her goals alone even to the point that she's willing to violate her agreements mando can accept that she's mandalorian but he won't stand to believe that she can't have a bit more chivalry though on the contrary mando is the myth out of time this is the way more antiquated and isolated in his beliefs than anyone else [Music] there's no reason for bokeh tan to listen to him any more than there's a reason for mano to accept who she is so aldin may not have a say in what does or doesn't make a mandalorian he does have a say in what kind of mandalorian he will be [Applause] someone willing to take on their fears and put everything on the line not because of what he'll gain but what it'll give others take the found lane to the city of caledon on the forest planet of corvus there you'll find ahsoka tano tell her you were sent by bogotan and thank you she packed my bags [Music] this is [Music] then [Music] mont calamari unbelievable [Music] from one dried up town to another sea salty dock everywhere mando goes the faces and names he's crossed are settling into their own kind of order tomas palgo or navarro mando is the one giving the gift of that order fertilizing the soil for the roots of change to grow but just as everyone is finding their own order adapting their own code for the times mando is losing his even after bending to the forces of change and opening his mind as far as any person reasonably can the circumstances thrust upon him demand more with every stop he has less and less to give but still finds himself forced to risk everything all over again for as important as this quest is to him he'd never show it but it's plain to see in our own reflection on mando's hollow exterior he's tired [Music] the mythical wild west really is ending and with it all the myths at once held true amanda was but a gunslinger whose time has tragically run short his only options now are to die with the myth his creed code and armor embody or find some way to move forward again incidentally fate has armed him with almost everything he needs to refine the way everything except the two people who can put all the pieces together if there's anybody in the whole galaxy who knows the power of perseverance it's gotta be ahsoka tano [Music] down in 1971 dr no director terence young teamed up with french producer robert dorfman to shoot the first ever self-proclaimed east meets west spaghetti western red sun in which western movie star charles bronson teamed up with samurai cinema icon to share mufune to recover an ancient samurai weapon that will restore honor to mifune's kuroda red sun was one of the last big blockbusters in the golden age of westerns and a long overdue intercultural and cinematic celebration of two mythological heroes that have always been more alike than different 50 years later star wars had a red sun of its own in chapter 13 the jedi where two sworn enemies the jedi sorceress and mandalorian super commando come toe to toe on the wooded foothills of corvus [Music] where the western myth has run dry across most of the galaxy corvus stands as an unwavering bastion of the jedi geeky mythology it proliferates every inch of the planet but every aspect of the episode as well the iconic landscape of burnt tree stalks the slow and focused camera movements the constant wind the feudal lord the feudal peasants gorenson's understated score and even the predominantly asian cast if we didn't know ahsoka she might as well be the resident ronan of any and every samurai tale feuding the same dynamics of power over and over again like she's on the stage of a play filonian idawin's imagery often frames her as if she's one with nature one with the old world at odds with modernization while mando of course paces back and forth against it at the same time from what the star wars mythos has to say about ahsoka she's anything but living in the past in fact ahsoka is a survivor someone who's adapted their code from one period of change to the next all to stay on the righteous path she has the compassion and selflessness of a jedi but none of the dogma or inflexibility that blinded the creed she once swore allegiance to and though she spent much of her life wondering it's never been to run from her fears but to follow her destiny the ultimate manifestation of fate mando has long looked for ahsoka so the child can finally have a home but thematically man has been led here because of what exactly she will illuminate for him the potential of a jedi's power her devotion to the mystical force and sees into perspective will all surely expand mando's awareness of the universe even further however ahsoka's greatest power and what din greatly stands to gain from coming here is her innate ability to listen grogo and i can feel each other's thoughts [Music] kroger maddow would have always needed a jedi to know the child's name grogu but only through a person like ahsoka could mando fully understand what it means to look after him only through a lens as open as hers could mando understand that it's never been about what he wants for grogu so much as it's about what grogu needs for the one reason or another that they found each other the two have formed a lasting bond heartfully evoked in the imagery of a dad and his kid playing catch good job good job kid it's a beautiful thing and it fills mando with fatherly pride but there is a duality to it should either of the two ever be faced with the fear of losing each other that bond could become possessive like anakin skywalker who tried to control his attachments those who brought order to anakin's tumultuous life for fear of losing them and of all things ahsoka knows she might know that most of all beyond the force and the dynamics of connection with others it embellishes this duality can apply to any kind of connection to material objects to rigid beliefs or even to an outdated creed it's a foreign philosophy to mando's salt of the ways but it gives pause nonetheless to not only be honorable and self-sacrificing but to be at all times compassionate and open-minded the greatest lesson mando has learned so far so while ahsoka may be reluctant to train grogu she is willing to cut him a deal [Music] to see just how much manda was willing to sacrifice to save the people of kaladin the staging ground for the ultimate samurai movie battle in star wars where felony invokes kurosawa's rich filmography more than any other mandalorian episode has while ahsoka battles the magistrate's machines and then the magistrate herself played by bruce lee's goddaughter diana lee inosanto flony and editor andrew eisen cross cut to mando's tent stool with tombstones michael bean in the courtyard in a sense yo jimbo is happening in one room while leone's remake a fistful of dollars is in the other it's brilliant infuses the western and jedi geeky mythologies into one story it is red sun but it's also the siege of mandalore of star wars legend a prophetic battle where two age-old enemies unite before it ends a mandalorian's intervention has restored order to one more place while mando himself has yet again only lost more of his mando's faded encounter with ahsoka was never to assure him how he can finish his honorable quest nor the audience how myth and tradition can survive the times but how to make the most of his fatherly duty ahsoka knows grogu is part of mando's destiny not hers and so she points him not in the direction of the mandalorian path he wants to follow but the path he should follow the path that grogu needs to follow go to the planet tython place kroger on the seeing stone at the top of the mountain then what then grogo may choose his path mando may have not appreciated it before but now knowing grogu better than he ever has he finally will now the responsibility of being a father matters more than anything even devotion to his creed should he be forced to choose between the two but with that if the day ever comes where grogu's true path diverges from mando's he must be prepared to accept that to not be possessive of their bond but to willingly let go it might be the hardest thing anyone can accept especially for someone who's already let go of so many things since starting this journey and especially for a parent thankfully mando isn't alone in that journey though he's not quite reassured then again there aren't many jedi left jedi or mandalorian both are dying breeds perhaps destined to be slowly swept away by the times by a galaxy that doesn't need them anymore the jedi jiki mythology may thrive on corvus as much as the western thrived on tatooine but how long before the day it doesn't when perhaps the red sun will set while there's no way to know for sure ahsoka proves that there might be a way to outlast it mando must adapt and with that his path leads to tython an ancient site of jedi tradition already forgotten by time maybe in walking the ruins of the past he will find the key to the future [Music] faithfully while grogu will decide his future on the jedi seeing stone director robert rodriguez will force denjarin to decide his in the scarred face of tamara morrison's boba fett you can't get more ancient than the original mandalorian with no name the blueprint from whom all this mythology has sprawled and yet he might have more in common with ahsoka than any other mandalorian we've met fitting to the context of favre's commentary on myth boba has moved on from most of his monikers the ruthless no disintegration's bounty hunter of the original trilogy died in the pit of carcoon audiences wouldn't know the full story until boba's spin-off series a year later but even in this series rodriguez permits us to glean a boba fett born anew let's all put down our weapons have a chat there's no need for bloodshed a man who is merciful open-minded and bound to a code of his own alongside cobb vanth and bocatan he tempers din's notions of what a mandalorian can be as far as they can go for boba has already endured the odyssey mandozan already chewed out by fate and already pushed to adapt beyond his limits den may scoff at his demands but as he'll soon discover boba is no fading mercenary he is the son of jango fett an all but name a mandalorian if mando is a gunslinger boba needs to be a barbarian in the tragedy rodriguez serves up a fet who lives up to the violent legend where the night owls showed mando precision oba shows him might though both found the fighting spirit necessary to outlast the order of the empire maf gideon ii has found a way of his own to outlast the band of mercs that outmatched him on navarro an evil mando is all too familiar with and every outland ronin will grow desperate to avoid the human inside was the final weakness to be solved if the boot of modernization has manifested itself as anything in the mandalorian it's gideon's dark troopers remorseless unfeeling killing machines like any relic of the past there's little mando can do but watch watch as his son is ripped from the path he sacrificed so much to put him on and watch as the fragile steel he's fought tooth and nail to preserve is [Music] obliterated even after serving him with wall-to-wall punishment all season favre and filoni still had the audacity to put dinjarin through the tragedy the day his worst fears finally came true and was whittled down to nothing nothing but his armor and the best gar spear fate once gave him the armor to protect grogu now fate's not only given him the holy weapon for a chivalrous rescue mission but the two knights who would be willing to help him but fate sometimes steps in to rescue the wretched for as cruel as din's punishment has been it's only after hitting his absolute lowest point here in the ruins of tython that mando finally finds the necessary means to reforge his creed a new code malleable to everything he's been through everyone he's met and who he needs to be to rescue grogu from the empire's clutches as the final leg of the mandalorian's odyssey begins he'll just need to find the courage to decide what that code will be perhaps there will be no new age mandalore no great mandalorian crusade perhaps your people fought their last battle at malachor 5 and you have been dying ever since a quiet death that will last centuries hunted by the thought of being the last of the mandalorians with nothing to offer but a debt of gratitude mando assembles a fellowship comprised of allies and individuals motivated by selflessness and honor with their help dan will chart a path directly to the heart of mafiddine star cruiser and take back rogue but before he can do that he'll need the imperial expertise of someone truly unorthodox you know for a second i thought you're this other guy [Music] writer and director rick famous brings bill burr's worst for wear migs mayfield back into the fold for the penultimate chapter of mando's journey a soldier turned gunfighter whose days of riding horses and robbing banks are pretty much over next to the high likes of boba fett fennec shand and the mandalorian he is effectively a nobody with no purpose to serve but the advancement of our hero's quest but therein lies the kind of unique perspective that comes with mayfeld's lowly disposition as someone whose life was ruled by order before losing it all in mayfeld's eyes mando is merely one fall away from the exact same spot he's been to the other side of mando's fears scarred by chaos but enlightened in a way mando yet has not he took his armor off long ago and relinquished his insecurities and with the optics that accompany that comes the kind of insight mando is hesitant to hear i'm just saying somewhere someone in this galaxy is ruling and others are being ruled i mean look at your race do you really think all those people that died in wars fought by mandalorians actually had a choice so are they any different than the empire look i'm just saying we're all the same mayfeld believes that no matter what creed once swears an oath to or the emperor one pledges fealty to everyone is fundamentally an individual bound to a code that runs more personal than any law or order it's a dose of reality mando isn't quite ready to accept even if his definition of mandalorian has been stretched dizzyingly far he may not hear it but silently he will open his eyes looking on at the survivors of tragedy on morak the survivor that is mayfield and the image that literally reflects back on him in the same armor the security the feeling of invulnerability that order can bring is rather false order like the empires only benefits those with the privilege to push it on others while the chaos allotted by the lawless galaxy is a futile response the watch may have none of the dastardly intentions of the empire but in the right situation as mayfield puts it the creed nor even its most sacred rules can account for what den needs to do for a father rescuing his son but as they have since the beginning the empire won't let mando slip before offering one last devil's advocate delivered in a bone-chilling performance by richard blake in a galaxy prone to constant change constant chaos and no apparent force to defend the future why forgo order when that's exactly what's needed to survive why reject the empire when they bring the comforting stability that allows one to feel safe because even if you're not you'll still have died in the name of a worthy cause entire city gone in moments along with everybody in it you lost our whole division that day man i was like five ten thousand people yep all heroes of the empire yeah from the right angle where leaders like valen hess moth gideon or arguably the armorer preside there might be no greater cause worth dying for but ask the former stormtrooper how it feels to be so expendable ask him how afraid and traumatized that made him and how the empire ultimately used that to control him excused as a sacrifice for the greater good ask him if the alternative was any better for the fighters of burn and khan see boys everybody thinks they want freedom but what they really want is order to the empire the answer will be resistance if the cowboy is going out then it's going out guns blazing mayfield draws a line of his own against evil in the mud of morack he may have seemed as self-interested as any other pirate or scoundrel before but if he knew he had the chance to prevent untold devastation the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people in the inadvertent passage of guilt and trauma to the next division of stormtroopers at the next burning con he would never be able to live with himself eventually there has to come a time when the outlaw stops running and takes a stand instead we all need to sleep at night mando may have no greater aims than rescuing grogu from the empire but the lesson mayfeld teaches him applies all the same absolute order is frightening and chaos creates a world of distrust but somewhere in the chaotic uncertain middle between law and lawlessness might be a way of life that frees you a code in touch with the past yet malleable to the future driven by compassion and honor and altogether balanced den may not know exactly what that looks like but he now knows what it mustn't be enough both of you no matter how set in their beliefs bokeh tan boba fetts and denjarin have been the time of civil unrest between mandalorians must come to an end fractured by the coming and going of order and tradition well well before the era of the lawless galaxy the last of the mandalorians were written a death sentence on the night of a thousand tears if they don't learn from the past and continue resorting to gatekeeping tribalism or outdated tradition their final passage will be written by the empire in their blood the mandalorians not only need to take a stand they need to do as so many others have and finally move forward to broaden their definition of mandalorian as din has learned to do again no one not even the aerospoketan knows exactly what that looks like but they're willing to try and that'll have to be enough because where they're going the jaws of the lion's den where the erasure of myth has never run higher moving forward together has alike never mattered more only then might they finally know if the legacy of the mandalorians will deserve to live on in the present or perish forever [Music] the fellowship's rescue mission begins as a one-way trip paving the way for the lone wolf represented once more by the base recorder to find his missing cub as he did in the icy caves of maldocreace director peyton reads slowly but surely crushes our heroes into a corner by way of the most terrifying robots you've seen since wallace and gromit orenson's music becomes violent and mechanical it's the exact opposite of john williams orchestra melodies the inelegant sound of modernization pounding away with unhindered force and repetition until nothing remains of the past fermando it's a losing battle against his cracked reflection armored and soulless the thing that's stronger than him and shows no restraint his traditional hunter tools do next to nothing and ingenuity alone only gets him so far [Music] if the dark troopers were one jaw clamping down on mando moth gideon is the other what he may lack in brawn or fighting strength he has as he's always had an edge in manipulation the mandalorian's mythological excalibur the darksaber a powerful artifact that if wielded could unite all mandalorians rests between gideon's fingertips not because the mythos of the weapon means anything to him at all but because it gives him control over bogotan thoroughly blinded by the painful past incurred by the weapon though it means less to him than saving grogu gideon knows all too well what mando might really be looking for this child is extremely gifted and has been blessed with rare properties that have the potential to bring order back to the galaxy but mando is done looking for order and he's done answering to his fears all that still matters to him is keeping the child safe [Music] and he'll draw a fierce line in the sand before anyone says otherwise wielding the reforged best scar of mandalorian armor dinger and fights a battle not of mandalorian glory but of protecting grogu gideon fights with zero grace and zero mastery yet is hell-bent on taking mando straight to his grave mando puts his life on the line one last time and survives and yet gideon still wins because din wields the darksaber not bogetan where it was won by rite of combat and mandaloring tradition bokotan and din have ignored tradition before but the darksaber will be the linchpin that decides just how convicted either of them truly are in their code if gideon is successful and this is but one more rule to divide and isolate the mandalorians he might crush them for good and if he's not someone or something else is bound to do it instead the wild west is over the time of gunslingers and samurai of tradition and myth is soon to be no more the changing times and a sure devastation that will sweep away everything from the past will drag every cowboy and outlaw down with it all the same the myth is destined to fade into oblivion or maybe it's destined for something else entirely where fate may have once resigned myth to the grave fate was demanding something else entirely all along a myth powerful enough to strike fear into those who would dare erase it a legend someone capable of giving others hope that the myth is not gone for good it is very much alive and waiting to be embraced [Music] the myth will be faced with hardship with change neglect and even erasure not every part of it will outlast that hardship but like the balance mando has learned to cultivate the myth can evolve [Music] it can change with the times and be the hope every generation needs in their own battle of good and evil it can even save you [Music] all you have to do is open the door [Music] are you a jedi i am his name is luke skywalker a jedi like his father before him but more importantly a friend when these gunfighters needed one the most this is it this is what the mandalorian was quested to find a journey brokered by fate to the edge of oblivion prophesized in mandalorian ballad but for din it can no longer be as glamorous as that fate took everything from him his stability his belongings his very way of life and gave him so so much more his friends a newfound perspective and his son grogu the child who turned his life upside down the little green raisin that taught him to stop running from the past to look beyond himself and to grow the creature that taught him how to be human [Music] and now with the end of his journey comes the difficult choice nay even every star wars hero must face but every mom and dad in the world as well letting go don't be afraid nothing could be more terrifying but there's no better way to be free with just a few small steps grogu passes from one myth to another an amazing cross-generational moment where something new is welcomed with open arms into the fold of something symbolic and iconic into the pantheon of star wars legend but more so the open arms of myth that can inspire and move us to be human all the same [Music] may the force be with you the future of myth hangs in the balance and will be determined by those called upon by fate to lead others onward that future might remain uncertain as ever but in the here and now there is a certainty and a beauty to the legend of the mandalorian who learned to take his armor off a gunslinger's odyssey or no matter how cold guarded selfish and heartless anyone can be the journey to become compassionate open-minded self-sacrificing and vulnerable lies ahead of us all all we have to do is take the journey this is the way [Music] after 10 15 hours of sheer bliss you're rewarded with a baby but it's not a baby it's a little old man dipped in 40 way don't you see it's like gandhi and churchill had a child you know what i'm saying and they handed him to me we made contact father son son father he looked me right in the eye and pissed all over me and i realize i'm a father now slow down you crazy child you're so ambitious for juvenile but then if you're so smart tell me why you're still so afraid [Music] to do and only so many hours in a day [Music] the mandalorian first premiered on november 12 2019 and ended its first season on december 27th just one day shy of a thousand-mile road trip that for my family and i was months in the making literal hours after watching dinjar and blast off into the unknown would my mom and i be doing the exact same thing albeit in a car that was way lamer than the razor crest all the way down the u.s eastern seaboard to my tentative new home in central florida the start of an all-new chapter in my life where all the tense relationships broken dreams and traumatic baggage i had come to associate with my home state would be far behind me and though this was the start of a new chapter and a journey it wouldn't be the one i anticipated right as i got a new job settled into my new college connected with relatives and started making friends the kova 19 pandemic was declared by the end of that march i lost almost everything i had found for myself in florida and found myself back behind the wheel of my lamer crest to drive a thousand miles back to my parents in pennsylvania back to the job i was ready to leave behind back to the room that felt more like a protective bunker than a space of comfort and back to the people and places i was ready to leave behind the rest of the year was spent as it likely was for so many of us adapting to the circumstances fighting my time until i could hop back in a car and return to my real home in florida before i knew it the mandalorian was back for its second season and continued the journey of dinjarin months after my own journey was cut short what followed for the next eight weeks would strike me to the core a story of tragically relatable proportions as din was whipped from one unexpected scenario to the next culminating in an indelible moment of acceptance and growth just as i was beginning to realize that despite the many turns my year had taken i was finally right where i needed to be all along that despite all the things i tried to run from before being forced to confront them head on ultimately allowed me to heal and despite whatever opportunities i lost in florida i ended up finding so many more over the next year and a half in pa and i don't think i could have found any of it without the mandalorian as the things they carried author tim o'brien puts it stories can save us then after all our other needs are met stories are the thing we need most in the world it's fascinating and perhaps a bit silly that star wars a franchise first and foremost for children manages to be that story for me time and time again but it's also not by mistake when george lucas finished his fourth draft of star wars in 1976 he wanted to tell a story that applied the timeless ideas of joseph campbell's monomyth to a distant but relatable space opera setting where childhood fantasy and age-old mythology bled together in a cross-cultural sandbox he believed as campbell believed of cultures all over the world that we all have a destiny we can ignore it if we choose but if we don't and we follow it instead we'll discover whatever generation gets the privilege to discover for themselves a battle between fear and hope the lifelong choice to be selfish or selfless and giving something back to the greater whole of the universe it's a grand adventure and for most of us it will be but not in the way we might expect following your destiny isn't always blowing up death stars or learning the ways of the force sometimes it's as down to earth as starting a business building a home going on a life-changing road trip and especially raising a child and whether or not a spiritual force is truly guiding us to set that child on the right path the very journey of doing so is long and winding one that will teach us lessons and change us in ways we can't possibly anticipate forever to my mind that's ultimately what's made the mandalorian the global phenomenon and one of the biggest tv shows of all time that it is it is the perpetual mystery of its lead character the rule of cool the familiar and appealing mythology well ingrained into our cultural psyche and the world stop and cuteness of baby yoda but most of all it's the unmistakable humanity that emerges in every single adventure even if nary a human face can be spotted it's when you have to drop your kid off at daycare when you're working two jobs and barely making enough to get by when the group project is going worse than you could even imagine or when your car gets broken into breaks down or pretty much any car trouble you could possibly ever have and of course it's when your kid goes off to college and embarks on the journey to adulthood that you took all over again because even if i've never been a parent guardian or all that much of a mentor in my young life i do know what it's like to be so roughed up by the world that i closed my mind and my heart so that nothing could hurt me ever again but when the day finally came where i had the courage to let go of my fear and let go of the coldness inside me the beautiful privilege to feel again was magic unto itself to now look back on that journey on the four times i've moved in the last two years i find the same reassurance and genuine hope that many of us including john favreau himself whose son started college on the heels of season two's production have readily projected right onto the faceless silver-plated guardian of the mandalorian for if we can believe in the possibility of change for someone like din who's to say we all can't change for the better as well i guess inside of all of us there's that hero that's on that journey and in search of and the connection to father and to the father at large the greater father you know it's all part of like why it works and why we care it's not about x wings it's not about the things we decorate star wars in it's important it's part of the genius of it but we soulfully react like we don't just want an action movie we want to feel uplifted and star wars is an adventure that makes you feel good what i like about it is it is really saying there is a lot of hope out there that we fundamentally want to be good people that we can all be driven to do terrible things but that we can persevere uh through selfless actions with the cutting edge tools and technology afforded by 45 odd years of innovation from george lucas and beyond favreau filoni and the galaxy-sized casting crew of the mandalorian weaved a myth that is as much a product of the westerns jedi jiki and star wars that comes before it as it is of the kinds of storytelling the world needs to hear today star wars remains a worldwide obsession and an inspiration for the storytellers of tomorrow but it's also greatly evolved from what it once was and despite that evolution the myths our world most gravitates towards today are not always those set in a galaxy far far away as they were for the audiences of 1977. today many of us look to myths like superheroes men and women are cut above the rest capable of taking on the massive unsolvable issues our globalized culture can't always solve for itself some might be tired of superheroes or see their popularity to the detriment of stories and myths they've pushed into the past but as the person responsible for the single most important entry in the superhero genre the kickoff film to the highest grossing movie franchise of all time john favreau knows a thing or two about the evolution of myth the myth is designed for the kids that are coming of age we enjoy the stories as adults but really storytelling is about imparting the wisdom of the previous generations onto the children who are becoming adults and and giving them a context for how to behave and and how to learn the lessons of the past without without making mistakes on their own i mean that's the hope is that you could teach them how to avoid all the hardship but yet garner all the wisdom though the past will always be set in stone the story of the human race in the present and the future is always in motion and for every generation inspired to peer into the myths of the past comes the opportunity to evaluate what can be learned as much as what should be left behind the western was a great american genre the superhero flick of its days as much as they are the western of today but many westerns also romanticized the emotionally damaged loner glorified racism against native americans featured only men in leadership roles and cemented the gun as an immovable symbol of patriotic freedom all ideas that leave an unmissable shadow on american culture today of course what should and shouldn't outlast the past is something us stupid little humans might never agree on but if there is any constant i dare say we should it's the very inevitability of change the change in jarn experiences in his own life in his own time that change is scary and not always good but for din resisting the change and believing he had every answer to the universe right from the start might have been worse for him than the change that was bad as we all set off on our own hero's journey where who we are and what we return with will be more than what we leave behind us finding the courage to face change head on and if need be to adapt with it is as important for us as it was for the riders of the dwindling open stage the last of the samurai and the generation that raised you into being if the popularity of the mandalorian let alone disney's bottom dollar alone is any indication star wars is bound to be around for a while and heck the mandalorian story isn't even over yet while favreau and filoni continued to explore a galaxy sandwiched between two trilogies over 30 years apart the team of filmmakers they've disseminated across lucasfilm from deborah chow to taikawa td are poised to shape the star wars mythology in ways we might not be able to imagine yet it is certainly an exciting time to be a star wars fan and i can't wait to talk with you all about it again [Music] [Music] and i'm seeing all of this and i'm like what do you want me to do who am i gonna what do you want me to audition for the bug or the robot and he's like you're the mandalorian [Applause] you're staring at just a blue screen so tell us about working together and just using your imagination well you need a little bit of that yes because we're not actually in a real ship you only got something actually you don't even have a handle i don't think right there we are all that came in later but anyway you got to sort of go like this should i try that again george but then i thought about clint eastwood i always thought what would clintus would do [Music] and he'd do nothing [Applause] what a revelation when they realize that the mandalorians are all new yorkers [Music] hello everyone uh welcome to the end of what has been a very long video uh the length of which i hope to never surpass with another video knock on wood uh your reward is this secret video message i guess um what can i say guys thank you thank you a hundred times over for uh supporting this video for watching it all the way through to the end uh it really does mean a lot uh to to you know have something to say and then have an audience who wants to hear what you have to say it's not something i take for granted at all um this video was four months in the making took me over 300 hours to do there were ups and downs the whole way through there were points where i didn't know if the video would uh quite come together in certain areas or if i'd have to compromise in some significant way but where we've landed by the end is something i'm very proud of and my sincerest hope is that uh you know you've had a good time with this video and you connected with it in some way whether you're someone who's watched me for the tenth time or this is your first time watching me that you've had a two hours well spent that being said you probably saw it on the screen a minute or two ago but we are now on patreon which is very exciting uh something i wanted to do for a while now i just didn't want to do it until it was the right time but it is now i think uh you can go in the description below and find the link or you can go to patreon.com forward slash our tour presents and there are three different tiers with different rewards associated with them uh one thing i can tell you one highlight of the patreon that i'm looking forward to recording over the next few weeks are a series of behind the scenes commentaries for all of my previous videos that includes the cloners videos that includes the last of this video that includes this video and that'll include any videos i do in the future they'll be behind the scenes commentary for i believe the middle tier i know behind the scenes commentary for a youtube video doesn't sound like the most exciting thing in the world uh which i would probably agree with that but uh you know as i said before these videos take many months to make and uh with this video especially uh there are a few stories to tell that i would love to share with you all over on patreon so consider supporting me there uh any donations i receive will go towards uh some more far-off projects but most chiefly any support i receive on patreon will go towards the next video which of course is on mass effect 3. i've kept you guys waiting long enough for that video and i apologize this video had to come first and uh what i'll tell you is this actually um before i even wrote the script for this video i actually wrote the script for the mass factory video i'm gonna revisit it sometime in the next two weeks and probably end up changing some things here and there you know that happens when you haven't touched something in a while you revisit it later on you go hmm you know i might edit that or edit that um but what that should hopefully mean is that uh the the process of putting the video out has been expedited greatly by having a almost ready to go script uh that that really that literally cuts the process of putting it out in half uh so instead of having to wait three or four months like the wait for this video was it will be one or two months so that's what i'm hoping and things could always go wrong but um yeah so support that project over on patreon and uh if nothing else take this video as a demonstration of what you can expect um it it will be it's gonna be awesome it's it's gonna be a really fun time so guys um without all that being said thank you so much for watching one last time follow me on twitter at parks harmon follow me on instagram's parksharman uh you can follow me on twitch twitch.tv forward slash saitor instead of artor uh i think this week uh i actually recently picked up the uh ucs lego mos eisley cantina uh and i'm thinking i might build it on twitch it might be really fun to do uh so you know feel free to follow tune in we can have fun building legos together or you know more i'm the one building the legos but uh we'll have fun talking about it while i'm building it sorry uh and uh other than that thank you to all the content creators um who had music that i used in this video uh your talents brought something to this project that i could not have done on my own it really does mean a lot uh and as well thank you nordvpn for sponsoring this video one last time those guys are great uh you can check out that offer in the description below once more uh but yeah thank you all for watching one last time and i'll be seeing you all next time adios [Music] you

Channel: ArTorr

Views: 570,052

Keywords: Mandalorian, Mandalorian Season 3, Star Wars Explained, Star Wars Theory, Baby Yoda, Grogu, Mandalorian The Gunslinger, Mandalorian Chapter 16, Mandalorian Boba Fett, Bo Katan, Mando Documentary, Mando Video Essay, Mandalorian Review, Mandalorian Explained, Mandalorian Lego, Razor Crest, Mandalorian Season 2, Mandalorian Game, Mandalorian Western, Mandalorian Cosplay, Mandalorian Interview, Mandalorian Release date, Mandalorian Meme, Mandalorian Reaction, Andor Trailer

Id: 7JUG_tZQ59w

Length: 127min 0sec (7620 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022