It is not easy to review The Mandalorian. The spoilers are everywhere in reviews and articles and photos on the show, but not here. I think it is important to share the basic plot up to a certain point, but not spoil the important parts of the endings! This extends to The Mandalorian’s real name which was revealed in the season one finale. Why? One, it is good to maintain the mystique of the title like The Man With No Name. Two, his name is not mentioned yet in season two. Three, it is good to keep up the familiarity of his nickname with the reviews. This extends to the many spoilers that I would like to reveal, but think that this would take away from readers’ enjoyment even after everyone has seen the episodes. Does spoilers somehow win points? I think it takes away from the mystery of the series and Star Wars. The secret of Baby Yoda was kept and I think led to The Mandalorian’s explosive popularity. I think there is more such secrets ahead and don’t want to take anything away from them.
The other challenge of The Mandalorian is available photos. There is of course posters that can be used in a few episodes. I realized that this is why I didn’t review the rest of last season! I imagined that I would encounter the same problem when the number of posters would run out. Of course, a little thinking made me realize that I could use photos of toys, so a shopping trip to World of Disney would provide some pics. There is still a few posters left, but of characters that were not in the fifth episode of the second season! We have three more episodes left and hopefully there will reviews for all of them. The problem with photos is proper photo credit for live action shows and movies. It may have been possible to use an old Boba Fett figure and others last season, but I disappointingly didn’t think of it. Now there are figures for The Mandalorian. The part that seems to be missing from other reviews that some don’t cover extensive SW knowledge. Also, the influences behind The Mandalorian. Key to this is Lone Wolf and Cub or Kozure Ōkami. It was a samurai manga created by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima that started in 1970 and it ran for six years.
The manga followed disgraced samurai, Ogami Ittō, and his son, Daigorō. It was published by First Comics in 1987 and then as graphics novels by Dark Horse in 2000. The ominbus editions started in 2013 with volume 1 coming in at 712 pages. There are six Lone Wolf and Cub films starting with Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972) directed by Kenji Misumi and starring Tomisaburo Wakayama as the samurai Lone Wolf and Akhiro Tomikawa as his son. I’m familiar with the manga, but have not read every volume. Still, it is apparent that viewers understand the series, it is Lone Wolf AND Cub. We will explore Baby Yoda’s past and his understanding of the Force, but we may only have him leave at the end of the series. Their story is just the doorway to the rest of the SW universe. This extends to the chambara genre, films by Akira Kurosawa, such as Seven Samurai (1954) and especially Hidden Fortress (1958) which was a strong influence on Star Wars. The movie had two peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, leading to the rest of the story which is counterparts to the droids. George Lucas said in an interview in the documentary, The Making of Star Wars (1977), “Hidden Fortress was an influence on Star Wars right from the beginning.”
There is also the classic Flash Gordon serials that were inspired by the Alex Raymond comic strips beloved by George Lucas. The 1980 movie might be well known, but it all started with Raymond’s strip in January 1934. His epic run lasted until 1943 when the comic strip was continued by other writers and artists. The brilliance of Raymond’s work is that he had worlds of imagination and beauty, alien creatures and people, and adventure that is still yet to be properly captured by other mediums. It was collected with a first volume in Flash Gordon: On the Planet Mongo (2012) by Titan Books. The first Flash Gordon serial was released only two years after the start of the comic strip. Flash Gordon (1936) was directed and co-written by Frederick Stephani and featured the legendary Buster Crabbe as Flash. The other media adapations include a television series starring Steve Holland and The New Adventures of Flash Gordon animated series. This led to an animated show that teamed Flash with other heroes in Defenders of the Earth and a recent live action series. Flash Gordon appeared in comic book form with Dell’s Four Color #10 (1942), numerous publishers over the years, including Dynamite Entertainment with Flash Gordon: Kings Cross.
Star Wars also emerged from sci fi novels including E.E. Doc’s Lensman series. The Lensman started with Triplanetary which started in Amazing Stories and published in book form in 1948. We have two peoples, the Arisians and the Eddorians, the Arisians hope to work with two human families to create a weapon to fight this war. We have in Dune (1965), the centuries long project to create the Kwitsatz Haderach. Frank Herbert’s novel is of course influential in the desert planet of Tatooine and the spice smuggling of Han Solo. The two families include Kimball Kinnison and Claire MacDougal. The Arisians have helped humanity establish colonies across the solar system and they face the pirate, Gray Roger, who is part of the amphibious Nevians. There is the discovery of the inertialess drive that moves at lightspeed. We find that the alien races have mental powers like the Jedi. The Lens increases that power like the Kaiburr Crystal that was in the Legends novel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1978). There are six books in the series finishing with Children of the Lens in 1954. Six stories like the Original and Sequel Trilogies? There was an anime film, Lensman (1984), and a series Galactic Patrol Lensman.
We can also see some of A Princess of Mars (1917) by Edgar Rice Burroughs with its banths, lionlike Martian creatures, Jeddaks, the title of Martian leaders, Princess Leia’s outfit as Jabba’s prisoner is the standard clothes for Dejah Thoris, and the Geonosis arena of Attack of the Clones (2002) is like the Thark arena. It was of course realized on film in John Carter (2012). Lastly, Westerns give the gunslinger Mandalorian, a former bounty hunter getting a drink from cantinas are in classic Westerns. The vistas, the towns, and gunfighters are strong parts of Westerns. The foremost of Western directors is John Ford. Check out Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). We also have the Western threat of Native American tribes, which is interesting since we had a sophisticated understanding of such tribes with the Star Wars equivalent of Tusken Raiders in “Chapter 9: The Marshall.” This also reminds me of Dances with Wolves (1990). The lone gunfighters is really seen in the Spagehetti Westerns of Sergio Leone including A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1967). There is also Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952), and of course The Magnificent Seven (1960) based on Seven Samurai. So the question is all of these influences if you blended them together, would you get Star Wars? No, it is all through George Lucas’ creativity, his work on THX-1138 (1971), and his interests. The point is that anyone who works on Star Wars should have all of these as primers before working on Star Wars projects.
#TheMandalorian, #LoneWolfandCub, #FlashGordon, #Lensman
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