Last year, "The Mandalorian" turned out to be a scream for Star Wars fans.
Not only did the heat detonate the whole network, but also won a number of firsts -
The first work produced by Disney+, the first live-action American drama launched in 42 years since the advent of Star Wars, and the most popular streaming original science fiction drama in 2020.
A year later, the show launched its second season, which immediately became a popular drama on the Internet.
Not long after the start of the broadcast, this season scored a 9.6 points of Douban super high rating, whether it is popularity, word of mouth or plot, it is in line with the first season, and the texture is comparable to the movie.
Let everyone be amazed!
Since George Lucas launched Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977, Star Wars has long since become the "first IP in the universe" that has influenced generations and is one of the important representatives of American pop culture.
The film and television works that pay tribute to it have been endless.
Since its inception, it has launched nine main films, two film spin-offs, one animated film and three animated series.
These works are intertwined and together constitute a vast "Star Wars universe".
Although the Star Wars IP is very classic, it still brings many problems to it by excessive consumption feelings.
For Disney, Star Wars is a treasure and a sharp blade, and once it is not properly made, it may be bloodied by the dog scolded by Star Wars fans. For example, the "Ranger Solo" launched the year before was tragically hit the street, not only did not make money, but also let Disney lose a lot.
Today, although all 9 canons have been completed, the story of Star Wars is still continuing.
And if Disney wants to make the Star Wars series new, it is bound to work the outside.
Only in this way can Star Wars successfully break the circle and absorb more viewers into the pit.
And this "Mandalorian" is a very good circle-breaking work.
While The Mandalorian is based on the Star Wars universe, it tells a whole new story, is very friendly to new audiences, and has no threshold for watching the show.
Its time set after the fall of the Empire, before the rise of the First Order (i.e. between Star Wars Episode III: Return of the Jedi and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens).
At this time, the Empire had just fallen, new dark forces had not yet been established, and the galaxy was in a stage of chaos.
The male protagonist, the Mandalorian, walks in the chaotic world as the guardian of order.
The Mandalorians originated from the planet Mandalorian and are an ancient race in the Milky Way, known as the "Galactic Spartans".
They advocate force, and are brave and good at war, good at arming themselves with equipment, often wearing T-shaped eye-protecting helmets, wearing alloy armor, equipped with various weapons such as flamethrowers, grappling hook chains, missiles and jetpacks, like a "walking arsenal".
Even jedi knights with the blessing of the Force often take them for granted—
They developed Mandalorian iron (also known as "besca metal") into armor to defend against lightsabers.
The male protagonist in the play is not a Mandalorian himself, but a human orphan raised by a Mandalorian.
He looked very mysterious, not only wearing a mask on his head, but also without a name. It wasn't until the final episode of the first season that he revealed his true face and announced his real name (Dean Jarron).
Pedro Pascal, who played the "Red Viper" in "Game of Thrones", perfectly interpreted the role in the play.
If you make a list of characters who "can impress the audience without showing their faces", he will definitely be on the list.
The story told by "The Mandalorian" is actually not complicated —
The male protagonist is a taciturn bounty hunter with a mysterious background. He is a member of the "Mandalorians". During one operation, he accidentally found a foreign baby with a special identity. The remnants of the Empire wanted to experiment and dissect the baby. At the crucial moment, he saved the baby and embarked on a journey of death with him.
Like Han Solo in Star Wars, the Mandalorian has a distinct "anti-hero" setting:
Originally a smuggler, Han Solo became a hero of the rebels by joining the revolution; the Mandalorians were cold-blooded bounty hunters, doing the dangerous business of licking blood from the knife edge, wandering in the gray area, and finally being inspired by Meng Wa to become the messenger of justice.
The story of Star Wars revolves around the confrontation between the forces of the "Galactic Republic" and the "Galactic Empire". The core of its plot is like a family feud in classical drama.
Compared with Star Wars, the story of "The Mandalorian" looks more like a "space Western", realistic, wild and rough.
The male protagonist has a chivalrous calm charm, and the barren planet landscape also coincides with the sparse vegetation of the western world.
In the first season, the Mandalorians tame the Bulleg beast, like the horse training scene of the Western cowboy.
Even the Mandalorian shooting homage to classic Italian Westerns.
The cute baby that the male protagonist encounters belongs to the same race as Master Yoda in Star Wars, with green skin, big eyes, and long ears.
Like Master Yoda, this cute baby has two characteristics: one is slow growth (obviously 50 years old, still a baby); the other is that it has a strong Force.
Since there was no name, the audience affectionately called him "Baby Yoda".
In addition, there are also fans on the extranet who have speculated that this Yoda baby may be the baby of Master Yoda and Yader (who appeared in Star Wars Prequel 1: The Phantom Menace).
The appearance of Yoda Baby has given this drama a lot of warm colors.
In the process of getting along, the Mandalorians let down their defenses and became a grandfather, taking good care of him.
If nothing else, just because of this cute baby, it is so cute!
The first season of the story revolves around the escape of the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda, during which the Mandalorians are hunted down by bounty hunters and remnants of the Empire.
The story of the second season mainly revolves around the Mandalorian taking Yoda's baby to find the clan.
The relationship between The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda is a bit like Leon and Matilda in This Killer Isn't Too Cold, Uncle and Xiaomi in LoneLy Agent, and Hound and Arya in Game of Thrones.
This kind of "killer (agent) + cute baby" setting can always bring unexpected and wonderful effects to the audience.
At the end of the first season, the writers left a huge suspense -
The arch-villain, Moff Gideon, escapes with a dark sword.
The Dark Sword was forged by Tal Vizla of the Jedi Order, the first Mandalorian to join the Jedi Order.
Prior to this, Dark Sword had only appeared in the Animated Series of the Star Wars series – The Clone Wars, The Power of Destiny, and Rise of the Rebels.
How it fell into the hands of Governor Gideon is still difficult to know.
Frankly, the first episode of the second season seems to be more or less watered.
As the Douban short commentary said, the common water injection trick used by Hollywood screenwriters is to ignore the main line and temporarily lead to another branch line to deliberately delay the time.
The first episode continues the tried-and-true routine of the previous season in terms of plot - the Mandalorian arrives somewhere, helps the civilians in that place mediate conflicts, surrounds and suppresses bullies, and then unconsciously tells the full episode plot.
To help Baby Yoda find his people, the Mandalorians must contact other Mandalorians to form a network of information and gain favorable intelligence.
To this end, the Mandalorian first discovered the whereabouts of other Mandalorians through a black market minions — another Mandalorian lived in Mosperg, Tatooine (the home star of the Skywalker family).
In Mosperg, the Mandalorian meets a man in Mandalorian armor, but this person is not a Mandalorian, but a counterfeit.
The other side is the local sheriff, who has been working hard to maintain local law and order, helping the local residents to resist the Kretroën.
Out of racial will, the Mandalorians demanded that the other side hand over their armor, and the other side was willing to hand over the armor, but asked the Mandalorian to help him destroy the Kreth dragon first. Because only in this way can the town be exchanged for tranquility.
But the Kreit Dragon was huge, and to destroy this giant beast, it was obviously not enough for the two of them alone.
So, by summoning, they united the Tuskens and the townspeople to join the hunt.
The main story line of the first episode revolves around this hunt.
Like the first season, the second season is preceded by a subtitle in each episode.
The first episode, titled "The Marshal", means that the episode will revolve around the sheriff's defense of the town.
The second episode, titled "The Passengers," means that it will revolve around a Mandalorian escorting passengers.
In the second episode, the Mandalorian is once again informed of the whereabouts of the other Mandalorians, and the contact person will take the Mandalorian to find them.
In exchange, the Mandalorians had to grant the contact two requests: first, to transport the Frogman (the Liaison's Lady) and her eggs to their destination safely, otherwise the Frogman's race would be on the verge of extinction; second, it would not be able to turn on the Hyperspace Engine and could only travel at sub-light speeds (equivalent to turtle speed), which meant that the safety of the trip would be greatly reduced.
Because of this, not long after the ship flew, the Mandalorians were closely watched by the soldiers of the New Republic because of the previous season's big fuss in the Prison of the New Republic.
During the escape, the Mandalorian falls into the ice cave, opens the adventure mode, and fights the alien spider in the case of "dragging the family with the mouth"...
At present, there are two major points of interest in the second episode that deserve the attention of the audience.
The first point is the classic reproduction of the lines.
Although "The Mandalorian" is in the same vein as Star Wars, the "May the force be with you" in the canon has never appeared in the play.
In its place is the Mandalorian code of conduct: "This is the way."
It wasn't until the second episode entered the New Republic Star Zone that "May the Force Be with You" finally came late and appeared in the show for the first time.
The second point is that Baby Yoda is transformed into a bear child again.
Baby Yoda has always had a bad habit of eating haphazardly.
In the first season, he swallowed a frog alive in front of the Mandalorians.
This season, he repeated the same mistakes, and successively ate frog eggs, spider embryos and other dark dishes.
emmm... As far as it feels, it is still quite unsettling.
In addition to pleasing new audiences, The Mandalorian is also very friendly to star wars fans.
Various emotional tributes can be seen everywhere in the play.
Whether it is the first season or the second season, we can see a lot of alien races and alien monsters that are familiar or unfamiliar.
Among them, the alien race with the highest appearance rate is probably the Jawa people.
The Jawa are the most famous scavenger race in the Star Wars series, driving desert tracked cars and scavenging everywhere.
In A New Hope, it was they who captured R2-D2 and sold it to Luke to follow the story.
In addition, the monsters that appear in the play are also quite eye-catching.
The first season features walruses, Bleggers, and mud horned monsters; the second season has bansa beasts and krete dragons.
They come together to fill and extend the Star Wars universe.
It is worth mentioning that the first episode buried a surprising Easter egg at the end of the episode - Boba Fett.
Boba Fett stands in the sunset of Tatooine's twins, and the nostalgia is ready to come out.
Old movie fans see here, it is a second climax!
So at the end of the article, I would like to focus on the popular character in Star Wars.
Boba Fett is not only a legendary supporting character in the Star Wars series, but also the "strongest bounty hunter" in the galaxy.
Although Boba Fett calls himself a Mandalorian, his true identity is actually a clone of jango Fett, a bounty hunter.
His father, Jango, died under the sword of the Jedi Master Wendu during the battle on the planet Gionosis.
In the first season, the Mandalorians teamed up with the bounty robot IG-11 to eliminate the Nictos.
This side-by-side scene actually pays tribute to the scene where Boba Fett and IG-88 stand side by side in "The Empire Strikes Back".
Boba Fett first appeared in Star Wars Episode II: The Empire Strikes Back, when he was employed by Darth Vader as a bounty hunter.
In the course of his battle against the Jedi, he showed great professional strength: successfully tracking the Millennium Falcon, capturing Han Solo and his party, ambushing Skywalker, and so on.
However, in Star Wars Episode III: Return of the Jedi, the character is unexpectedly terminated —
Han Solo accidentally triggers Boba's rocket backpack, which slammed into the sidewall of the spacecraft and then fell into the mouth of a sandworm and was devoured by it.
Due to the caught off guard of the downline, there has been an endless discussion over the years about whether Boba is alive or dead.
This time, he appeared again in "The Mandalorian", which will undoubtedly draw a perfect end to his "life and death struggle".
In fact, for Disney, choosing the Mandalorian as the protagonist is more or less a risky move.
After all, most of the Mandalorians who appeared in the Star Wars movies before were villains.
And there are even fewer descriptions of its race and culture.
The emergence of "Mandalorian" not only fills this gap in the Star Wars universe, but also brings a lot of surprises and freshness to the Star Wars IP.
Whether you've seen Star Wars or not, The Mandalorian will bring you a refreshing viewing experience.
It can take you to relive the classics and take you to witness the legend.
If you want to appreciate the charm of Star Wars and be discouraged by the variety of positive transmissions, then this drama will definitely be a good choice!