With The Mandalorian, The Future Of Star Wars Is Here

It’s just as we expected: The Mandalorian is going to be a cinematic adventure optimized for your television.


Was there ever another alternative for the opening live-action television series set in the Star Wars universe? Hailing from Jon Favreau — the very mind beyond Iron Man, Elf, and this summer's The Lion King — and with guidance from Dave Filoni — who cut his teeth crafting animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels right alongside George Lucas himself — an early glimpse at scattered scenes from the series confirmed that come November 12, we’ll have something worthy of filling that Game of Thrones-shaped hole in our hearts.


Attendees of a recent Los Angeles press conference, MTV News included, were able to watch the 27-minute preview under the condition that all potential spoilers remain unspoken. (Truth be told, even if I wanted to share any spoilers, I couldn’t. The scenes were strategically strung with each other to avoid any major reveals.) After the most thrilling half-hour I’ve personally experienced since D23, Favreau, Filoni, and stars Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, and Carl Weathers came out to talk about this massive undertaking.


Here’s what we can share about The Mandalorian ahead of its rather anticipated debut: The decorating harkens back to a pre-DVR time that nowadays we only experience second-hand through period pieces and major TV events, like Game of Thrones; any time families would gather ‘round their television set for their weekly can’t-miss serials, “with cliffhangers, adventure,” Favreau said.


“It has a lot of the qualities and the beauty of a film, however the novelization of serialized storytelling,” he added. “To me, that's where it really widened up a lot of freedom and possibility, where we don't feel that we're repeating or copying anything else that people have experienced with Star Wars.”


Based on the footage screened, The Mandalorian does feel like a fully new experience for fans, along with, super familiar. As a TV series debuting new episodes each week, there will certainly be more possibilities for extended storytelling and side-plots, more deeply introducing us to the incoming characters whom we haven’t spent our entire lives with. (As instead of, mention, Rogue One, which operated within a recognizable framework, yet with characters we may only get to know over the course of the film’s 2 hours and 13 minutes.) At the same time, this show looks just like the movies we love, with all of the hi-tech vehicles, varied lifeforms, and stunning otherworldly landscapes we look to Star Wars to supply.


What they’re doing, case in point, is all according to the Master Plan. Per Filoni, it’s been a longtime dream for Lucas to steer the franchise toward this format — any time technology would let for television to look precisely as good as movies. “Even Once I worked with him on Clone Wars, he would talk about the future being streaming, the future being episodic, serialized Star Wars,” Filoni said.


Unlike the original films, The Mandalorian advantages from a crew with over four decades of love for the space opera, where each person brings something critical to the table, and each person has something to learn. Favreau compared the “collaborative environment” to the neighborhood men coming with each other to paint Tom Sawyer’s fence (minus the trickery, obviously. Filoni, as an example, brings to set all he learned during his years-long apprenticeship with Lucas, once he also steps into live-action for the very first time. For Favreau, the opposite was true: This show he created is the opening Star Wars story he’s really sunk his teeth into, if he brings plenty of experience turning beloved properties into live-action events that can be appreciated by all levels of fans.


“It reminds me of whenever we were beginning with Iron Man,” Favreau mentioned, recalling the fledgling Marvel Cinematic Universe he helped to launch, once the early team was still figuring out how to coherently bring to life a global revered by several, and fully foreign to others; once they first determined to appease the diehards over the masses. Certainly, the approach worked. His main takeaway: “Never lose touch with the people who've put in the time and who cared.”


Keeping with that ethos, Favreau and Filoni developed a new story with new characters, that each person will get to know at the same time without consideration of their previous involvement with Star Wars, and that rewards lifelong fans with nods to the larger universe, “whether it’s humorously, like creating a reference to Life Day, or a reference to a prop that has been appreciated by a core order after awhile, just putting those little Easter eggs in; or big movements in the story that mirror storylines in either the Legends or in canon that people have known and had,” Favreau said.


That inclusive approach makes The Mandalorian chock full of childlike wonder. Pascal called it a “super pinch-me moment” (“Quote me exactly,” he mentioned. “Super pinch-me moment.”) Any time whenever he first saw himself because the titular Mandalorian. Carano echoed the awe, joking (or not joking?) That she did her own stunts because didn’t wish to be able to see anyone else in her Cara Dune costume. “Actually, my starting day on set, I was on a blurrg. So, I was up on this big thing and I was just like, ‘OK, this is it. This is my life now,’” she mentioned. Weathers, whose role as Greef Carga grew significantly soon after he signed onto the project, earnestly called it “one of the greatest things that's happened in all of the years I have been involved in entertainment and it's cool. It's very cool.” Weathers, a showbiz veteran since 1975, will also be sitting in the director’s chair for Season 2 — adding to the impressive Season 1 directors roster, which includes Filoni, Rick Famuyiwa, Deborah Chow, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Taika Waititi.


although we’re guaranteed to get everything we love, The Mandalorian isn’t taking us into a new era of Star Wars without taking some risks; some days, risk can be crucial to growth. We’re not privy to what those risks might be — “We’re wrapping Christmas presents!” Favreau mentioned in response to a spoiler request — all of the creators are asking is for an open mind.


“No matter where you're coming from or what your background in Star Wars, you know that what we're doing ... We've really deliberated over it and spoke it and thought it through,” Favreau mentioned. “And so, if we depart in any way, we know we are — although it's with a plan.”