Jon Favreau Compares the Scale of Star Wars: The Mandalorian to the Original Trilogy

The Mandalorian is a little over two months out from its debut, bringing the first official live-action television series into the Star Wars universe. While the franchise has expanded into new styles and scopes since the original films debuted, The Mandalorian is expected to evoke nostalgia in an interesting way. While speaking at Variety's Entertainment and Technology summit, series creator Jon Favreau spoke about how the medium of television actually helped The Mandalorian feel more in line with the storytelling of the original trilogy, which the events of the series are set shortly after.

"For Star Wars, the question was how do we make it feel like Stars Wars, how can I tell a story set in this particular time…what's this gritty world?" Favreau explained. "The original Star Wars movies were a bit more intimate, character-driven. In many ways, this follows the structure of a television show in that we don't have an endless budget and it's served by the scale of the original films which isn't the big, huge blockbuster movies you see on the big screen all the time. We are using technology that makes best use of that scale and part of what we're exploring is using game engine, real-time rendering."

This echoes a comment that both Favreau and Taika Waititi, who directed one of The Mandalorian's episodes and voices IG-11 on the series, made earlier this year.

"Since I wrote most of [The Mandalorian], I wrote it to fit within our volume, and in trying to keep the scale of it like the first Star Wars film, which was a relatively low-budget affair, even though the effects were spectacular," Favreau shared at a panel appearance earlier this year.

"Star Wars is very different to Marvel style," Waititi, who previously directed Marvel's Thor: Ragnarok, explained back in February. "They know that the tone of the first films really should be kind of adhered to. That's what the fans like and you can't really disrespect it, I guess is a nicer way of saying, 'Can't put too many jokes in.' There's a bit, definitely, my tone is in there, the dialogue and stuff like that."

The Mandalorian will follow its titular bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) as he travels the outer reaches of the lawless galaxy, surviving as a mercenary-for-hire. The cast of the series also includes Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Nick Nolte, Omid Abtahi, Emily Swallow, and Werner Herzog. Directors on the series will include Waititi, Rick Famuyiwa, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Dave Filoni.

The Mandalorian will premiere on November 12th on Disney+.