Disney has Learned the Wrong Lessons from The Mandalorian
By: Eric Pierce
Tags: Star Wars, Movies, Pop Culture, Television, Film

Yesterday, Disney announced more Star Wars and MCU content than you can shake a gaffi stick at, a veritable avalanche that will bury us in Jedi and Superheroes for the next several years.

So much content. Some people may lament all the goodies; I am not such a person. I am there for all of it. But to mix pop culture metaphors, my Spidey senses are tingling something fierce.

New Star Wars. Image: Disney

This graphic is only part of the galactic map and doesn’t include previously announced projects such as Rian Johnson’s trilogy or Taika Waititi’s film, or future seasons of The Mandalorian. Such is the embarrassment of riches that I honestly feel like I am forgetting something. For those of us that lived through the lean, post-Return of the Jedi years (“The dark times”, he said with a distant, haunted expression), present day Star Wars is almost too good to be true.

Almost.

The Mandalorian is the best Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back. Full stop. It’s so good that I’m not sure if its not actually the best Star Wars ever. Season two is nearly perfect, and not just because they cast Timothy Olyphant as a frontier sheriff and threw Boba Fett’s armor on his languid frame, all so he and Mando could dogpile on a krayt dragon.

But for all its galaxy-spanning wonders and its grit and grime and Baby Yoda’s stupidly ridiculous cuteness (sorry but Grogu is a terrible name), I’ve been a bit troubled ever since the end of the season two premier. As long rumored, Boba Fett, the original badass in Mandalorian armor, had survived his time in the Sarlaac. And it seemed he was going to play a part in the coming story.

Last week, the tease was finally payed off, and man was it glorious. But it also confirmed my misgivings. Disney-era Star Wars has a propensity for circling back, as though the only stories worth telling in the galaxy far, far away all concern the same 20 or so characters. As someone who grew up with them, the Original Trilogy (yes, capitalized) is akin to sacred texts, so I understand the reverence and the desire to revisit or reference. But dammit I’m tired of everything connecting back to Skywalkers or someone they knew.

The announcement I am most excited for is Acolyte, which predates the Saga by hundreds of years and concerns dark side adepts. And therefore probably won’t have anything to do with Skywalkers. The rest of the announcements are all guaranteed to tie into the existing narrative directly or obliquely, coloring in corners for the sake of completeness and ignoring all the blank places still on the map. Yes, I’m excited to see Ahsoka do her thing. And I’ve been a Rogue Squadron fan since the books in the late 90's. But overall, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a little too familiar.

The Mandalorian feels fresh because the principal characters are nobody we’ve ever heard of, and the places they go are (mostly) ones we’ve never seen. It’s new! The cameos have been fun because they haven’t upstaged the story of Mando and the Child. It’s fan service done right.

Which, ironically, brings me to the Obi-Wan series.

I’m not impervious to manipulation. I’ve followed Star Wars for 40 years and still respond to all the old cues with a Pavlovian intensity I might find disturbing were I not so distracted by the lights and sounds. This stuff moves me, there’s no other way around it. People may cry looking at great art, I choke up when the disembodied spirit of a frog-man materializes 30-some years after I last saw him and starts dispensing wisdom again.

The scene in The Last Jedi that murdered me. Image: Lucasfilm

So while it flies in the face of everything I just said, I have been really looking forward to the Obi-Wan series. Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan was one of the few redeeming qualities from the otherwise lifeless Prequels. I was anxious to see him reprise the role, this time with well-written material. And, too, I was curious just what he’d gotten up to in the 20 years between the end of the Prequels and the beginning of the original films. So curious, in fact, that I spent 1200 words trying to figure it out for myself.

I was hoping for an Old Man Logan type story, wherein the old warrior is dragged into a conflict he’d rather avoid. But I would’ve been just as happy to get a quiet character study, sans lightsabers and the Force, of a man trapped between failure and destiny. Hell, gimme a Gran Torino-esque tale wherein he befriends Tusken Raider neighbors but it ends in tragedy.

I wanted something different.

Instead, we’re getting Obi-Wan vs Darth Vader, round 2.

Dear lord, why?

To what possible purpose? Having Obi-Wan and Vader fight again will in no way improve either of the trilogies book-ending this series. In fact, I would argue it lessens the impact of their final reunion aboard the Death Star — it’s so much more powerful that nearly 20 years passed since they’d last seen each other. Shoehorning in this second go-around feels like an unnecessary intermission in a well-told tale.

And that’s just the stakes. The bigger issue, one that always comes up with modern Star Wars (again, because it keeps circling around itself… I am sorely tempted to make a toilet reference), is simple: we already know how it ends. The fight will end inconclusively. Both survive to fight another day.

Again, I ask why.

The answer, of course, is fan service. Hayden Christensen, the actor who portrayed Anakin’s fall, is coming back to put on Vader’s black ensemble. Christensen’s acting in the Prequels was… how to put this… bad. Horrendously awful. Cringeworthy. But he wasn’t helped at all by the writing — dialogue has never George Lucas’ strong suit. Given good scripts by good writers, I’m sure he’ll do great. He unfairly took a lot of the blame for the Prequels, and I’m happy he’ll have the opportunity to do something with Star Wars again.

Then again, how much of Christensen will we actually see? Apart from awkward flashbacks, or brief glimpses in his hydro-spa, we’ll only ever see him in full regalia. He doesn’t even voice the character. He’s basically a stunt man.

Remember this unmasking? Image: Lucasfilm

Putting Vader in the Obi-Wan series automatically makes it less than it could be, and that has nothing to do with Christensen. It closes off all other avenues and says an Obi-Wan story must involve Vader, which is both shortsighted and stupid. Not to mention, we’ve already seen it twice before.

As long as these stories are constrained by what we already know, they will be less than they can be. Disney seems determined to stick close to what has already been established. It’s a safe strategy, if boring and predictable.

I hope I’m wrong. Disney’s track record with Star Wars tells me I’m not.