The Mandalorian: The Return

 "Mandalorians are stronger together."

And so the season ends. Din Djarin gets an epic heroic quest to do, and shower himself in honour from all, with thev rather adorable help of R5, the honourable help of his lady liege Bo-Katan, and the rather awesome help of soon-to-be-Din Grogu, exemplar of how every fighter needs a magic user in the party to provide magical protection. This is the way.

This is an awesome finale. Yes, as has been discussed, this season has turned the focus somewhat away from Din Djaron and towards Bo-Katan and Mandalore. Yet the ending swerves decisively away from that, and why should a show called "The Mandalorian" not focus on such things?

Moff Gideon, I trust, is gone for good. He was a great villain, not least because Giancarlo Esposito (watch Breaking Bad and The Boys!) is an actor of the very first rank who needs to do some classical theatre very soon. He excels at morally flawed yet brilliant and charismatic figures. Prospero? Mark Antony? Coriolanus...? 

Anyway, this is both a dsuperb finale, destroying the Darksabre yet leaving Mandalore united and with hope, wheras Din Djarin and Din Grogu, shrouded in honour, unofficially set of to help the New Republic police the Outer Rim.

This is the way. This is how to cap an excellent season.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 23- The Spies

 "Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes."

Oh my. This is how you do a penultimate episode.

It's simple, really. Two sets of plans are made to retake Mandalore. The first by the united tribes of trad and rad Mandalorians under Bo-Katan, the second by Moff Gideon, finally revealed... and appearing in a splendid scene of imperial realpolitik that both references and rubbishes Grand Admiral Thrawn from the '90s Timothy Zahn books.

The Mandalorians' return to their home planet has an epic tale and feels like an ancient saga in how the events unfold. There are great character moments. Bo-Katan relating her surrender and betrayal by Gideon as Mandalore fell. Din Djarin declaring that he serves her not because of her royal blood but because of her character. That awesome, Michael Moorcock-like sand ship that evokes The Dragon in the Sword. How all seems hopeless at the end, like a film I need not mention. The heroic sacrifice of noble Paz Viszla.

And yes, IG-12, piloted by Grogu. The perfect comic relief to leaven this bread. Bring on the finale.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 21- The Pirate

 "Bo-Katan walks both worlds..."

Wow. The Mandalorian gets better and better. This season is on fire.

The plot is simple, time-honoured, life-affirming Western stuff. Greef Kargo's decent, hard-working community are attacked by pirates, overrun, and become refugees. The New Republic won't help because of bureaucracy, or rather the understandable realities and limits of power. So it falls to the Mandalorians, who successfully fight off the pirates and are rewarded with land of their own. Simple.

Except it's not about the plot, it's about the nuances and little things. The Salacious Crumbs pointing out the ambush. The fact we all knowdamn well what Kargo is doing when he bends down to the R2 unit. The fact that the New Republic colonel who refuses help is portrayed not as a stupid pen-pushing staff officer but as a reasonable man with competing, impossible priorities who is, while we may not like it, probably making the right decision. The subtle plotting of G68. Paz's unextectedly supportive speech.

And so, after some awesome action sequences, the Mandalorians have some security. And the Armourer- I live her- bonds further with an increasingly spiritual Bo-katan and bids her remove her helmet(!) and go forth to recruit others so Mandalore may be retaken. And if that bombshell wasn't enough... we learn that Moff Gideon was sprung... by Mandalorians???!!!

Wow. Just wow,.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 20- The Foundling

 "But it was real!"

Before I gush about this wonderful bit of telly, let me first gush about geekier matters. Carl Weathers, that septugenarian movie star, directs, and superbly, for the second time. Even cooler is that we get a flashback to Grogu's youth and how he's the only Jedi youngling saved from the massacre by a rather cool and heroic Jedi, played by... Ahmed Best, who now has a place in the Star Wars mythos that isn't Jar Jar Binks!

Grogu gets a special piece of armour from the armourer, and is taken on as a foundling, winning a rather cool little duel. It's all at once extremely cute and nicely revealing about aspects of Mandalorian cultutre.

The tribe bonds over the taking of a foundling by a kind of pterodactyl thing. Mando is great as ever, yet it is Bo-Katan who is the star this episode. She covers herself in glory in rescuing the foundling, and is praised by the armourer, who she seems to accept as a mother figure. Bo-Katan's arc is fascinating: she utters the words "This is the way!" Is she losing faith in her doubts? She has seen the Mythosaur...

This is mythic, beautifully crafted telly.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 17- The Apostate

 "Now that's using your head..."

Oh, I've missed The Mandalorian. It may not be particularly deep or philosophical, intelligent though it is: it's a western, and deals with the inherent themes that arise from the mythology of the Old West which are, yes, by no means shallow. The Old West is every bit as evocative and worthy of art as any mythology, and admired as such everywhere in the world except for its native United States. And this episode reinforces that, balancing character, plot, wit and action.

The arc is set up. After last season, the Mandalorian has a hopeless task to redeem himself for removing is helmet, alongside Grogu, now his apprentice. He must bathe in the Living Waters below the Mines of Mandalore that probably don't exist, presumably as a season-long quest. There seems to be little hope. Even Bo-Katan has given up, yet Mando has achieved the impossible.

We meet Grief Kargo again, who has made a decent, honest success of his town. He's pleased to see Mando, and is keen to enlist this potentially useful citizen as landed gentry or at least sheriff; pirates look increasingly menacing, and seem set to loom rather large this season.

It's all such fun, with a giant crocodile and trees full of Salacious Crumbs; tiny little droidsmiths; a proper gunfight. I loved Andor with a passion, but there's room for this too.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 12- The Siege

"I lost everyone." 

The Mandalorian just keeps getting better. This episode has everything: action, humour, strong characters whom by now we've come to know well, and hints at even more stuff going on arc-wise.

At first it looks as though this is going to be another story of the week as Mando has to stay on Nevarro while his ship is repaired, so we can see how Cara Dune (now the sheriff of this frontier town) and Greef Karga (the mayor) are getting on and Mando has to join them in a mission to fill out the episode. I wouldn't have objected much- the mission is cool, to one remaining Imperial base left on the planet, with lots of action and lots of humour, including Baby Yoda using the Force to steal some sweets from another kid. Nevertheless, it seems at first as though all this is a story of the week in order to kill time entertainingly before we visit the Jedi mentioned last episode.

Except there's a lot more going on than that as the base is more than it seems. Mando discovers that rumours of Moff Gideon's death have been much exaggerated, and we uncover the fact that Baby Yoda's blood was being used in some bizarre blood transfusion experiments. These are big revelations, and there's also a subtle undercurrent of the New Republic trying to push their authority a little closer to the Outer Rim frontier- this Space Western is almost starting to echo Deadwood at times.

The final revelation, though, is that Cara is from Alderaan. Everything and everyone she knew is gone, which seems partly to explain how she has become what she is. Ouch. This is such good telly.

And yes, I blogged a Star Wars related post on May the 4th. Yay me.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 8- Redemption

“He just killed an officer for interrupting him. So this may take a while.“

Wow. Now that’s what I call a bit good. This finale is a thing of beauty and, seeing now how it all fits together, it elevates the previous seven episodes into a cohesive whole. I can see why The Mandalorian has received such acclaim, and I concur wholeheartedly.

So yes, we begin with Mando, Cara and Greef completely surrounded by Imperial troops under new big bad Moff Gideon, and Imperial scout troops have Baby Yoda. It’s a bleak cliffhanger. But I love how things immediately turned into an unexpected direction. So it’s a comedy scene between two scout troopers that tells us what Gideon is like, and his habit of executing subordinates for petty reasons. But his speech to our protagonists is hugely revealing- our Mando has a name (Din Djarin) and is not a native of Mandalor but a foundling, and at last we see the full flashback of how he came to be adopted by his new culture. This adds an awful lot of depth and hints at the ending.

All this dialogue is fun (what is this “Mind Flayer”?), but even more fun is Taika Waititi who, when he’s not brilliantly directing this episode, is perfect as the reprogrammed IG-11, the most badass nanny in the world (eat that, Poppins), who rescues the kid and then the gang, all while being staggeringly cool. It’s neat that a droid that originally tried to kill the Child should be its saviour, and indeed die in a way justifying the episode title- but let’s not get too far ahead.

Mando appears to be the one facing a heroic death, but no- he's saved by IG-11. And, as said awesome droid is not technically alive, we get to see his face, in the same episode we learn his name. And we find the other Mandalorians to have been devastated, the only apparent survivor being the armourer. She shows hersef to be badass when the Imps arrive later, of course, but for now she makes clear what we've probably realised- Baby Yoda is a foundling and, unless Mando can return it to its home (and there was an ancient war with the Jedi?), it's his son, to be raised in the tradition. This is the Way. Cool.

That escape through a river of lava with a ferry droid has no business not being a reference to the River Styx and, sure enough, when they emerge IG-88 blows his way to Hades, along with a load of Imps, to save the others. He is, in spire of everything, a hero. And Mando, in spite of everything, truly mourns this droid. This is cleverly crafted drama.

We end with Greef hiring Cara but, for now, Mando has some Jedi family history to research. I bloody can't wait. I can't praise this series enough.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 7- The Reckoning

"Tea?"

This penultimate episode does nothing to stop me seeing this excellent as pretty much a Western in terms of plot, themes, characters and archetype- you could pretty much take away all the robots and spaceships and tell this whole story, flabby middle episodes and all, in the American West. This is, of course, no bad thing, and is a big part of why this genre series doesn't come across as mere fan fiction- there's lots of fan service here and there, of course, and rightly so, but fan service doesn't drive the plot so much as the notion that a Mandalorian's gotta do what a Mandalorian's gotta do.

So when Mando gets that message from Greef that he can come back and have all forgiven by the Guild if he kills his former employer, an ex-Imperial type who has the place swarming with Stormtroopers. Only here is it made clear that we are not too many years after Return of the Jedi- is this Imperial remnant a harbinger of the First Order?

Our Ugnaught friend gets a name- Kuill- and a backstory- he's moral and dignified, earning his freedom from centuries of slavery by the skill of his hands, and gently repairing IG-11 as a harmless protective and domestic droid in an extended flashback evoking parenthood. This, of course, makes us like him. So they kill him, the bastards.

It's also nice to see Cara- a person Mando respects, and perhaps almost a friend. It's also nice that Greef admits and abandons his proposed double cross after Baby Yoda heals him- this sort of thing gives the characters depth and agency, and makes them feel like people rather than plot functions. Greef May have been an antagonist but he is, in his way, an honourable man. Although I love the fact that the whole load of them are ambushed right after the line “Nothing can go wrong”.

Then things get intense. There are hordes of Stormtroopers, some of them those cool scouts with their speeder bikes, and Werner Herzog is simply superb- I love how he’s a genuinely ideological Imperial, believing the Empire brings order and not chaos (like Rome) and genuinely puzzled as to why Mandalor had to resist.

And, if things weren’t intense enough, we end with our gang all captured as a big TIE fighter lands and out comes the Big Bad, one Moff Gideon. More please. This is awesome.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 6- The Prisoner

“A lady never tells...”

This is the third episode in a row which puts the plot to one side in favour of a story of the week. I’m sure we’re all getting rather impatient by now, but at least this episode is a cut above the previous two, and has Richard Ayoade as a rather arrogant droid and a rather complex double crossing heist plot which feels, again, like something out of a Western.

Our man Mando used to run away with a rather interesting gang, played here by a nice little variety of character actors. Perhaps the most interesting of these is Xian, a rather flirtatious Twi’lek (why do no other Twi’leks look quite like Bib Fortuna did, with two proper gnarly tentacles rather than straight pointy ones?), but you can tell from the start that there’s no honour amongst these thieves, which makes them very different from Mando. Things go entertainingly wrong throughout with some superb directing throughout, with this episode again being shot like a horror film.

Meanwhile the smarmy droid has his own agenda with baby Yoda, but it’s never a good idea to try and shoot a toddler who is strong in the ways of the Force. This is one tough childminding gig. Mando certainly has guts.

We get clever plot twists, flirting, X Wing fighters and a gripping story. Fine. But can we get back to the arc now, please?

The Mandalorian: Chapter 3- The Sin

“This is the Way!”

This series is getting deeper and even more interesting. On the surface this is an episode of our (anti-?) hero delivering baby Yoda to his famous German film director employer with his Stormtrooper bodyguards, using his Beskar payment to have a new and swankier suit of armour made, but after a crisis of conscience finally deciding to rescue the child from what seems like potential vivisection- and getting unexpected help for I revealed reasons from loads of other Mandalorians. That’s it. That’s the plot.

Except there’s a lot more to it than that, some of it very subtle character development and some of it equally subtle world building. And, like previous episodes, it’s beautifully shot.

The scene in the armoury drops all sorts of fascinating hints about Mandalorian culture, and "the Way"-  a fastidious code of honour and the need to  provide some (very expensive) Beskar for the needs of "foundlings". There are hints that the Empire, although now very much defunct, is disliked for what it has done to reduce Mandalorian numbers. There are also hints that his Ugnaught friend of recent episodes was unknowingly helping an enemy.

And so our protagonist gets some new armour, equipped with "Whistling birds" and visits Greef Kargo for another job. Time to move on from Baby Yoda, right? After all, he's been paid and it's against the bounty hunter code to enquire further, right?

Except he decides to rescue the child- and his fellow Mandalorians, we know not why, must agree with his reasons as he eventually receives their help in numbers and, as dialogue confirms, risk of unpleasant consequences. Is this linked to their commitment to "foundlings", including baby Yoda now?

Our protagonist fights both his recent employer and Greef, his source of new jobs. He must be pretty damn committed to this kid. And again our central character is fascinating- always helmeted, taciturn, but ethical and conflicted. This is excellent stuff.

The Mandalorian: Chapter 1- The Mandalorian

“Is it true that you guys never take off your helmets?"

It's here, at last. Disney Plus has reached the UK which, aside from a bunch of Star Wars films I need to belatedly blog, means the arrival of a certain acclaimed series, the title of which my inner voice always renders in the tune of The Pixies' "My Veloria(n)". And yes, you're welcome to that earworm.

I recall surprisingly little of Mandalorians. I know Boba Fett well from the original trilogy, and I recall that, at some point in the prequels (which I'll be blogging soon), he gets retconned as a clone with a Kiwi accent. That's it. I'm a Star Wars fan, but not an uber-hardcore one.

But I'm enough of a fan to notice all the many Easter Eggs, from the wipes between scenes taken from Akira Kurosawa via George Lucas to Salacious Crumb in a cage via all the many familiar alien races and tech- and an environment that, despite the preponderance of CGI,  just feels like Star Wars- starting with the hive of scum and villainy in which we first meet our eponymous Mandalorian, acquiring and delivering his quarry to an employer who turns out to be played by none other than Carl Weathers, the first of two legendary septuagenarians to appear in this first episode.

It's both brave and interesting to have an amoral bounty hunter protagonist who isn't particularly talkative, and whose depths as a character will be left to unfold slowly- and that's even before we get to the fact that, like Judge Dredd, he never removes his helmet.

The tone isn't unrelentingly grim and gritty, though- this is Star Wars. So we get the mystery of who is the Mandalorian's new employer and his hired former Imperial Stormtroopers- said employer played, bizarrely by auteur Bavarian director Werner Herzog- and his elliptically discussed target. We get Taika Waititi as IG-11, a superbly animated CGI version of IG-88 from all our Kenner plastic figure childhoods. We get the physical comedy of our protagonist trying to ride a Blurgg- a female one, of course, as he males are always eaten during mating.

Intriguingly, too, we get some back story- our hero is paid in Biskar, a substance which he gives to a Mandalorian woman who seems to be an armourer for unspecified but perhaps ritual purposes that hint at a forgotten history and culture, no doubt to be explored further. We even get teasing flashbacks.

We end with a sadly much-spoiled revelation that the target is a cute baby Yoda. This may be thirty-eight minutes of pure fan service, with the carbonite and the land speeders, but it's bloody good fan service. I'm already hooked.

Predator (1987)

"If it bleeds, we can kill it!"

The fact that this film is so good didn't surprise me; I knew that, ever since I hired out the video in the late '80s. I haven't seen it for, well, twenty years, though. And this time I was flabbergasted by Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance. As a departure from the norm he's actually called upon to act rather than just be Arnie. And he pulls it off superbly, anchoring the film successfully through his acting, not just through his physical presence. It's a shame he hasn't been called upon to do that more often.

The film is excellent all-round, though. The suspense; the brilliant design of the creature, its face being revealed towards the end to great effect; a claustrophobic rainforest setting; and most of all a credible and nuanced set of three-dimensional characters to get picked off one by one.

The film is fairly long, but justifies its running time through characterisation, suspense and a superb final duel between Dutch and the creature. The fact that we have only vague glimpses of the creature in the first part of the film makes the reveal so much more effective. What a shame the film doesn't have too happy an ending: after that mushroom cloud Dutch will end up with cancer, methinks.