The Mandalorian problem: does new Disney+ Star Wars show, with its movie-quality production, spell the end for cinema?
- The Star Wars universe now has its own live-action TV series on Disney+, with each episode reportedly costing US$15 million to make
- That the show is arguably indecipherable from the films in terms of production quality hints at as many cons as there are pros
The distinction between movies and television has always seemed obvious.
For one, movies tell a self-contained story (at least, they did before the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and television tells a story over multiple instalments.
But, of course, that’s not what most people are actually debating. They’re generally discussing the quality of production, storytelling and acting. The better a TV show is in this regard, the more likely it is to be referred to as a multi-episode “movie”.
Though many have come close, no show has really achieved a level of quality that fits that designation. No show until, perhaps, The Mandalorian.
Yes, it looks that good.
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The show follows a bounty hunter as he pursues a particularly intriguing target. To say more would be to enter spoiler territory, so just know it’s full of everything you expect from a Star Wars tale.
One US reviewer wrote that the show is “visually intriguing, amusingly adventurous and light on its feet, a space-Western comfortable with the tropes of cinema culture and common reference points”.
Thanks in part to all of that, it looks and feels like a feature film.
It doesn’t hurt that it stars names such as Pedro Pascal, Nick Nolte, Taika Waititi and Werner Herzog. But it also features production values on par with any Star Wars movie that’s come out in the past few years.
And that’s a big deal. Television has been trying to reach this point for some time.
Game of Thrones came close, after bumping up the budget for each episode from around US$6 million to a reported US$15 million for the final season.
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Each one of those supersize episodes ran around 80 minutes or so, and while they were visually stunning at times, ultimately they wouldn’t stack up against most things you’d see on the silver screen.
“The Battle of Winterfell”, one of the show’s most important episodes, was so dark that fans complained they couldn’t see it. An errant Starbucks cup appeared in another episode.
The Mandalorian boasts a similar budget, reportedly costing US$15 million per episode. But the pilot episode, the only one now available on Disney+, clocks in at 40 minutes – half the length of those GoT epics.
Throwing money at a TV show isn’t all that’s required, of course.
If it were, then The Morning Show on Apple TV+, which reportedly also costs US$15 million an episode, would be just as good. Instead, it’s fine-to-enjoyable at best.
It helps, then, that The Mandalorian is directed by film veteran Jon Favreau, who has directed such hits as Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and the live-action remakes of The Lion King and The Jungle Book.
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That the show is arguably indecipherable from the films in terms of production, acting, sound and more raises some interesting questions. It will continue to air weekly through December, being doled out like the TV shows of old, likely meant to get fans excited for the next big-screen instalment of the series, The Rise of Skywalker, to be released on December 20.
But as we all know, not doing things is always easier than doing things. If fans get accustomed to feature-film-quality production from their television shows, and if they enjoy watching them curled up on the couch at home, who’s to say they’ll be willing to drop upwards of US$10 for a movie ticket?
