Before the weekend hit, everyone around the world was finally given a proper first look at the upcoming live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian, coming to Disney+ when the streaming service launches in November. The first teaser trailer introduced us to the bounty hunter with no name, and it set the stage for a much more grim, gritty series set in the Star Wars universe.
Even though this is just our first glimpse at The Mandalorian, there are plenty of details to dissect and call attention to, especially when it comes to the vibe of this particular trailer and the introduction of several key characters. So let’s dive into our The Mandalorian trailer breakdown.
This is quite the ominous image to start off the trailer, but it immediately tells us what kind of world we’re living in at this point in the Star Wars timeline. This series takes place after Return of the Jedi, the Empire has fallen. These Stormtrooper helmets faded and laying in the sand show us that these troopers are not as feared as they once were.
Aside from that, this shot also has a classic western feel to it because we see The Mandalorian walking through this dusty setting, his armor clanging, not unlike the spurs of the cowboys of the old west.
But back to the Stormtroopers, it seems to be that people are now threatening these former soldiers of the Empire. These helmets spiked onto spears, one with a clear crack and blood on it, seem to send a message that any remnants of the Empire won’t be tolerated here, wherever this may be.
The Mandalorian’s ship, the Razorcrest, soars over a forest. It’s lush with trees and rivers. Could this be somewhere we’ve been to before like Endor or Takodana?
This appears to be where the Mandalorian is walking through in that first shot of the trailer. It feels like an industrial version of Mos Eisley spaceport. It’s a bit dirtier, maybe a bit more dangerous. Mando has landed his ship here, and there’s another next to him, though we’re not sure who it belongs to.
These are the pucks that are used to give bounty hunters their jobs. It has all the information they need on their bounty in order to get it done. We saw these in the footage from Star Wars Celebration, but the jobs weren’t satisfying enough for the Mandalorian.
Here’s the man giving out the jobs: Greef Carga, the leader of the bounty hunters guild. He hands out jobs to various bounty hunters, and it’s a business, so he has to have enough for the other bounty hunters besides the Mandalorian. He’s also the one who has a job that’s a little more dangerous (as we learned in the Star Wars Celebration footage), and there’s no puck for it.
These kind of shots are impressing me. Establishing shots serve a practical purpose, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be stunning. This one in particular is incredible. The Mandalorian’s ship flies over these desert rocks, looking almost like he’s been shrunken down to a microscopic size on the surface of someone’s skin. It’s a gorgeous shot.
This appears to be a shot of The Mandalorian arriving wherever he happened to be flying to in that previous shot above the forest. Is there a bounty here?
Here’s Haywire star Gina Carano, as Cara Dune, a former Shock Trooper who is now a mercenary. We don’t know much about her character except that she’s a formidable opponent for The Mandalorian when they had a little scuffle in the footage from Star Wars Celebration.
It wouldn’t be Star Wars without aliens and creatures. Here we have an ugnaught, the scavengers from Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, riding a new sort of creature. There also appears to be a dead one next to him. Is The Mandalorian responsible for that? Is that ugnaught going to be pissed?
We’ve seen more than a few Twi’leks in the Star Wars saga, and here’s one more who seems to have some attitude. She’s winking at someone off-screen, though we’re not sure who. She’s likely a bounty hunter of some kind, though we’re not sure if she’s on good terms with the Mandalorian or not. In the background, you can see a bald guy with a gun holster strapped to his body. That’s comedian Bill Burr, someone we saw wielding dual pistols in the footage from Star Wars Celebration.
Here’s another shot that’s just visually appealing, and it feels pulled straight out of a classic western. The Mandalorian is just walking by himself through a desert as the sun sets. He’s truly a sci-fi cowboy.
With all the greenery and water we saw from that forest shot, we’re wondering if these people are being threatened by The Mandalorian or if they just happen to be nearby when he’s pulling off a job. Surely Mando is intimidating in that armor, and you never know when a bounty hunter is going to turn his gun on you. But perhaps they’re just innocent bystanders.
The Death Troopers from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story make a return. This battalion is armed with flamethrowers, and as we saw in footage from Star Wars Celebration, they’re about to torch a structure in order to get someone to come out.
Here’s another shot that’s straight out of the western handbook. The Mandalorian sits with his trigger finger on one of his laser pistols as someone looks on in the background. We’re not sure who that is, but they might not have a good day after this encounter.
Another foe who will inevitably come across The Mandalorian is Moff Gideon, played by Giancarlo Esposito. With no Empire to control him, he’s become a sort of warlord, and he still commands a group of his own Deathtroopers. The Empire may be gone, but the dangerous people they employed are still out for power.
This is the first proper look we get at The Mandalorian and his helmet. It stands out from Boba Fett’s helmet by being more metallic and not having an antenna on the side. It’s actually a little more menacing in this style.
At night there’s some kind of action sequence involving this speeder bike. However, this speeder bike isn’t the same one we saw on display at Star Wars Celebration. Preceding this shot, there’s some kind of light flare shot into the sky, and it’s difficult to discern what’s happening.
Even though the Empire is gone, it looks like some of their equipment is still out there creating havoc. An AT-ST walker is blasting and stomping through this dark, misty area. It looks like this is either an old battlefield or maybe this is just an assembly of defensive objects like the Czech Hedgehogs used on beaches during World War II. But it looks like they might not keep Imperial walkers at bay.
Back to some bounty hunter action, The Mandalorian knocks down a door, this time accompanied by another bounty hunter. While many fans were thinking this was IG-88 from The Empire Strikes Back, it has been revealed that this is IG-11, voiced by Taika Waititi. These two must be on good terms with each other if they’re working together, but alliances between bounty hunters usually only last as long as it’s convenient.
In space, The Mandalorian gets pursued by another ship and takes a laser blast, so not all of the action will take place on the ground.
However, there will be plenty of action on the ground as well, and it will involve some serious firepower. At some point, The Mandalorian gets ahold of a big turret and starts taking down bad guys on rooftops.
He’s again joined by IG-11, and since he’s a droid bounty hunter, he can swivel his body and shoot precisely at the same time. How are there not more droid bounty hunters? We’re not sure who they’re fighting, but maybe these two are who Moff Gideon and his Deathtroopers were trying to burn out.
There are still Imperial Stormtroopers kicking around the galaxy, but it’s clear they’ve seen better days. They’re not as pure white and clean cut as they used to be when the Empire was in its glory days. Instead, their armor is dirty, and these are Stormtroopers who are working for Werner Herzog’s character (as seen in Star Wars Celebration footage). It would seem Stormtroopers have become hired guns in the wake of the Empire’s destruction.
The Mandalorian doesn’t care though. He’s not scared of these former henchman of the Empire. He has no problem drawing on them despite being outnumbered. This comes from a scene we saw at Star Wars Celebration too, though it doesn’t have the cool dialogue from that scene. In fact, it’s crazy that pretty much this entire trailer has zero dialogue except for one line from Werner Herzog’s character at the end.
Our hero isn’t always so quick to get the drawn on his enemies though. Here he gets apprehended by some individuals in a cantina, but he doesn’t stay held up for long.
The Mandalorian busts out of this group hold, slams one of the aliens faces into the bar, and as one tries to make their escape, he uses his grappling hook gauntlet to tie them up at the feet.
As he pulls him back, it looks like he quickdraws to take a shot and keep him from getting up. But The Mandalorian has gone for something a little more brutal in this situation.
Instead of blasting the alien bounty in question, The Mandalorian has blasted the door switch, causing the spiraling metal door to close on the bounty.
It looks like bounty hunters still like freezing their bounties in carbonite to deliver. This one got handcuffed before being tossed in the carbon freezing chamber. They didn’t even take off his cool leather jacket beforehand.
During this last bit we get that single line of dialogue from Werner Herzog, whose character name we unfortunately still don’t know. Herzog says in that perfectly menacing way, “Bounty hunting is a complicated profession, don’t you agree?”
While we don’t get a response from The Mandalorian, that doesn’t mean we won’t hear him talk in the series. Pedro Pascal gets some great lines based on the footage we saw at Star Wars Celebration, and we’ll likely hear some of them whenever the next trailer for the series arrives.
The Mandalorian premieres on Disney+ on November 12, 2019.
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