With The Mandalorian just weeks away from its release on the new Disney+ streaming service, it was announced on social media that a new trailer would be dropping last night. Living in the UK, I knew that it wouldn’t be up before I had to call it a night, but the first thing I did when waking up was to grab my phone and watch the trailer on YouTube. Safe to say I wasn’t disappointed.
I feel like I say this about every live action Star Wars trailer, but this looks fantastic! This is the first time Lucasfilm has done a live action series and it doesn’t look like they are doing things by half, this would not look out of place on the big screen! Meanwhile the music continues to feel original while still managing to sound like it belongs within the same galaxy as the movies and animated shows. I also love how, much like with the trailers for The Rise of Skywalker, it is much more like a teaser as it does not appear to be giving much away relating to the plot of the show.
Starting with the voiceover throughout the trailer, this is from Werner Herzog’s character. I get the feeling that it is not on speech, but instead an amalgamation of his lines form one scene or perhaps a couple of scenes. As such, when looking at what he says I have broken it down into each individual line, so as not to assume that it directly follows on from the last thing he said:
“Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? … It is a shame that your people suffered … But bounty hunting is a complicated profession … They said you were coming … They said you were the best in the parsec … Would you agree? … Mandalorian … Look outside … They are waiting for you.”
Steven Weintraub of Collider commented after seeing 27 minutes of footage that “one scene answered a question that I don’t think has ever been explained/shown in any Star Wars movie” and with this series being set 3 years after Return of the Jedi, the lines from Herzog’s character make me wonder if this is why the Mandalorians were not seen fighting in the Galactic Civil War. The use of the word “revolution” makes me think that Herzog is not on about the Rebellion as a whole, but something on a more local scale, while the comment about The Mandalorian’s people suffering makes me think that we will find out more about what happened on Mandalore after the clans rose up against the Empire (as seen in Rebels). We also got our first line of dialogue from Pedro Pascal as the titular Mandalorian at the end of this trailer and I am really interested to see how much the character speaks considering they have cast such a big name actor but have so far not shown his character without his helmet on.
While there are some shots that are familiar from the first trailer, there is also plenty of new footage to get excited about too. We get to see the Mandalorian in a number of fights – one against Trandoshans where he uses the end of his rifle to shock one of his opponents, a bit more footage from the fight with a Quarren in a bar and a fight with some stormtroopers who open fire on him the moment that he steps out of a building. It looks like he will be a somewhat ruthless fighter who is not afraid to kill, rather than what we have seen in the animated shows where the younger audience has limited the amount of killing we can see. It’s interesting to note that The Mandalorian appears to be backed up by Greef Carga in the fight with the stormtroopers. Though Carl Weathers has been heavily involved thought the promotion of this show, I thought that this was more due to the strength of his name and that his role as head of a bounty hunter guild would see him play less of an active role. We’ve seen The Mandalorian with IG-11 in the last trailer and now with Cara Dune, Greef and Kuiil all having close interactions with the character, I wonder if he is going to have a small group on the Razor Crest or if he will just be temporarily allying himself with some of these characters when the need arises.
Perhaps some of the most interesting shots from the trailer come in the second half, where we see a young child wearing red reaching out, before seeing a pair of adults also in red carrying what I assume to be the same child through a battleground, with B2 super battle droids behind them, while a HMP droid gunship also appears to be flying over the battle. Given we have seen these droids in the Resistance season 2 trailer, it is possible that there are still some of these droids being used after the Civil War, but I like a theory I’ve heard from Mollie Damon of Star Wars Explained that this could actually be a flashback to The Mandalorian as a child being saved by and taken in by a Mandalorian after his parents are killed in the Clone Wars. There have been suggestions that The Mandalorian will be given a job that affects him in some way that he ends up going against his employer. The first trailer had a shot of a woman and child in water embracing in a protective manner and looking out in fear. This led me to believe that the job will in some way relate to them. This same woman appears in a shot of this trailer apparently about to remove The Mandalorian’s helmet. This adds to Mollie’s theory for me as I think that this woman may be someone he knew as a child, which would explain why he chooses to protect the pair rather than continue with his job.
The trailer ends with a couple of fantastic action shots: IG-11 taking out enemies all around him, Cara fighting in what appears to be an alleyway, Bill Burr’s character duel-wielding blaster pistols while a mechanical contraption on his back fires a 3rd blaster over his shoulder and The Mandalorian attached to Moff Gideon’s (who appears to be the main antagonist of the series) TIE and using a jetpack to shoot himself onto the top of the ship, before the final shot of The Mandalorian raising his rifle to aim. This looks like we’re going to have plenty of action sequences and I can’t wait!
The only issue… I’ll have to wait. Living in the UK, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting Disney+ until sometime in 2020, so it looks like I’m going to have to find some other way to watch the show, or try (and likely fail) to avoid spoilers for months.
What do you think of this trailer? Any predictions?
Thanks for reading. May the Force be with you…
The Canon Padawan 