Each film in the endless
Star Wars
saga
was accompanied by new creatures.
And generally, from the remote days of the cloying Ewoks in
Return of the Jedi
or the unbearable Jar Jar Binks of
The Phantom Menace
, they pricked bone with fans, who yearned for the creatures of the former, the strange charm of all beings. Galactics concentrating on the Mos Eisley Cantina scene.
Very few bugs entered the collective imagination with the same weight as Chewbacca, R2D2 or C3PO, rather they looked like puppets destined to sell
merchandise
.
Until Baby Yoda and
The Mandalorian arrived
, whose second season started this Friday on Disney +.
The series created by Jon Favreau, a veteran of the Marvel factory, which belongs to Disney, represented a great surprise because where it seemed that only copies of copies of copies could be made, suddenly an original idea emerged that, however, was tremendously close to the primeval trilogy, a mix of
western
, medieval knight stories, lasers and galactic voyages.
The eight chapters of the first season sent us to a very distant galaxy in the middle of confinement - it premiered in Spain in March - and this second starts when he plans a second confinement.
Disney is entrusted to 'streaming'
Although it maintained the impossible mixture of genres of the saga that George Lucas created in 1977, with which he changed the history of cinema because he inaugurated a new relationship of the spectators with the films,
The Mandalorian
focuses mainly on one of the scenes of that strange combination: the old West, with an undoubtedly twilight tone.
The first chapter of this second season is also a
pure
western
with a dusty town, a tired and heroic sheriff - played by the great Timoty Olyphant, the protagonist of
Justified
-, the dwellers of the sands turned into Apaches, a room with shots of a strange phosphorite blue liquid — galactic poetic license — and a stranger whose arrival heralds trouble, accompanied by a green bug with big ears that, although at the moment it has no name, is known as Baby Yoda, who travels in a floating basket.
The protagonist of the series is the Mandalorian of the title, a relentless galactic bounty hunter who belongs to a cryptic cult and who wears armor that the knights of King Arthur already wanted for themselves.
Like so many heroes despite himself, an inexhaustible archetype of the
western
, at the beginning of the first season he ceases to be a villain and becomes the savior of the strange creature (whose extirpation is well known by all fans of the saga), which they had commissioned him to deliver the last malefic representatives of the defunct empire.
In this second, he prepares to travel the corners of the Galaxy again to search for other members of the species to which the creature belongs and leave it safe with his own.
The hero who was not destined to be and an impossible search in endless landscapes are a combination that has given many moments of glory to classic cinema and that
The Mandalorian
knows how to fully exploit.
The actor behind the helmet - the Mandalorians can never be discovered - is the Chilean Pedro Pascal who, with an implacable voice, manages to bring all the possible nuances to his character only with words.
However, the interpreter himself acknowledged in a recent interview with
Good Morning America
that he had been eaten by film toast: “I'm winning a lot of points with the children of my friends and my nephews because I have the
Mandalorian
toys before anyone else
.
Baby Yoda is fabulous and the details are incredible: the movement of his ears, his peach green skin.
It's incredible what Industrial Light and Magic has done with this doll. "
There is no doubt that the series offers many discoveries: to sign great actors for small roles such as Werner Herzog, Nick Nolte, Giancarlo Esposito or Taika Waititi;
spectacular settings, an impeccable design of each one of the creatures, even the moment in which it passes is exciting for fans of the Skywalker family: at the end of the original trilogy, when the empire has apparently been defeated and the bandits multiply and local conflicts amid the power vacuum.
But, above all, his success rests on Baby Yoda.
It is not just about how well it is done and the great idea of creating a small Yoda, a 50-year-old baby who does not speak, but who is perfectly understood - as happened with R2D2 or Chewbacca -;
but of the mystery that it entails: Where does it come from?
What was he doing in that lost town where we found him in the first season?
Why is it so important to the empire?
And, above all, will he be able to control his powers in this second season?
The success of
The Mandalorian
, of which eight chapters of this second season will be released that ends on December 18, clearly shows where the paths of fiction circulate and says a lot about current cinema (it does not matter that it is issued by chapters because its bill is undoubtedly cinematographic): the star is a doll and has been released on television without sparing means.
And, every Friday at 09.00 in the morning (Spanish peninsular time), thousands of people will be aware of the adventures of strange creatures that seek their place in a very distant galaxy.
