Disney is gearing up to destabilize the streaming business with the November 12 launch of its own platform, Disney+. A major part of the draw for fans beyond access to classic and recently released favorites is the chance to view content exclusively created for this new venture. Among those projects, the Star Wars series The Mandalorian is one of the most highly anticipated properties.
New details about the Disney+ slate were revealed over the weekend at the company’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. Included in the presentation was the first trailer for the show starring Chilean actor Pedro Pascal as the eponymous Mandalorian, a feared bounty hunter from the same planet as fan-favorite Boba Fett.
Presented by the series director Jon Favreau with most of the cast in attendance, the preview begins with Stormtroopers’ helmets impaled on stakes as a warning for others, and then follows the Mandalorian as he travels on his ship across different planets encountering a variety of friends and foes. “Bounty-hunting is a complicated profession,” revered filmmaker Werner Herzog’s character, who plays a small part in the show, tells Pascal’s character. Through it all, we never hear his voice, much less see his face.
Given the use of lighting, like when we see the Mandalorian walk on a vast landscape at dusk, and how shootouts are shot with close-ups of the participant’s guns, classic Westerns are a likely influence on the show’s aesthetic.
On stage, everyone kept quiet about specifics of the show beyond sharing their excitement for being part of one of cinema’s most beloved sagas. Still, filmmaker Dave Filoni tried to get something out of Pascal by asking him, “What’s it like to be a part of the Star Wars galaxy, the force must be with you always?” Pascal, who was wearing a Narcos-ready floral shirt, succinctly replied, “It’s a dream come true.” Filoni humorously commented, “He gets to the point, just like a Mandalorian.”
Despite his silence in front of the D23 crowd, Pascal did tell IMDb’s On the Scene that what he loves about the Mandalorian is that “it’s a character that’s kind of built on the icons of the past that are a part of cinema history, starting with Akira Kurosawa’s movies and moving into Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name. Mandalorian is ‘man with no face.’”
The Mandalorian will be available for Disney+ subscribers to watch at launch on November 12, 2019.