The Mandalorian

A missed opportunity to become the galaxy’s first spaghetti western

It’s no secret that George Lucas took inspiration for Star Wars from the Saturday spaghetti westerns that he watched in cinemas growing up.

Gunsmoke and The Rifleman are two examples that I grew up with, and still watch to this day. So what makes these shows such a success? And what inspiration can be taken from them?

To begin when you look at these shows and others from their time, you see the traditional good guy versus bad guy trope.

You also had an ethical and family friendly show that everyone could watch and enjoy. Unlike in modern times, television networks back then had ethical and moral standards that they abode by.

You also had a different story each week, which helped maintain the appeal of the shows to a diverse audience, which in turn helped to maintain the ratings.

Each episode though different usually saw the hero in dire situations, facing some bad guy(s) out to do wrong. They would have to develop a plan to beat them, and restore the order and the peace of the town.

That is what Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, and many other shows of that era were about: portraying family values taught through morality and virtue.

So we can see that at the time, what was considered normal for a spaghetti western, is the exception and not the norm in today’s television and movie industry.

Today the studios and writers rely upon attempts to recycle past time favorites, in an effort to recreate them for modern audiences.

Their goal however, isn’t making family friendly and wholesome entertainment; It is entirely profit driven, at the sacrifice of creativity and originality.

So how do these lessons from the early days of television apply to The Mandalorian? To begin, let’s look at a scene from Chapter One of the very first season.

In the very beginning of the very first episode, we see this unknown Mandalorian walk up to an arctic village, and stand in the doorway of a far away galactic saloon.

He sizes up the occupants before making his way to the bar, where an epic showdown ensues. This one scene could have carried the entire series into greatness.

It was a direct call back to those old time spaghetti westerns, as well as to the scenes from A New Hope. In that one moment, we had the atmosphere and the setting that Star Wars was known for.

There were other scenes throughout the series that still captured the essence of the lone gunslinger, but Lucasfilm had other ideas, which forever ruined this series, without most people even realizing it.

The Mandalorian had the potential to become a truly unique series within the Star Wars franchise, with their very own galactic gunslinger spaghetti western set in space!

That opportunity however, was dismissed in favor of profit, and pleasing the fans. So where did the show go south?

From the very beginning, The Mandalorian was condemned to failure, when it introduced a little green booger named Grogu.

Rather than have a different story each week, with a different bad guy, Lucasfilm made the same mistake that it always does, by trying to weave a common plot into all of It’s shows.

Rather than allow The Mandalorian to stand on his own two feet, he became an intergalactic baby sitter. It was the most detracting aspect of the entire series.

There was no need for them to tie-in this series to anything, but they chose to do so anyway. In doing this they limited the potential of the show, by controlling what the fans and viewers were drawn to.

Grogu is nothing more than a fifty thousand dollar marketing tool to get you to buy his merchandise; plain and simple.

His actions every week in the series were quite frankly embarrassing, and a cause for me personally to unsubscribe from Disney Plus.

And there lies the problem with the Disney-era Star Wars franchise. It’s no longer about telling a story; it’s all marketed to become a profit driven platform for the company.

If The Mandalorian had followed the model of those old spaghetti westerns, we would have seen our anti hero go up against a different bad guy every week.

The episodes would stand on their own, with no connection to the larger Star Wars universe. It would have been an episodic journey that sought to differentiate and invent, rather than to conform.

Unfortunately no such creative liberties were taken with this series, or any other produced by Lucasfilm under the Disney regime. Instead, we were left with a confusing and weird approach to story telling.

The Mandalorian had all of the potential to become great, by ignoring fan service, and seeking to follow the old dusty trail of storytelling from a bygone era.

So you can see how their attempts and efforts to build a continuous plot thread across thousands of years has resulted in many missed opportunities.

Not every thing within Star Wars has to be told; not every missing piece needs to be found; Sometimes it’s best to allow ambiguity It’s place in a story, and leave the rest to the imagination of the viewers.