From the first scene of Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian, the Western influences on the first live-action Star Wars TV series were obvious. Series creator Jon Favreau wasn’t shy about these influences either leading up to the release of the series. To make it even more obvious, the fifth episode is literally titled “The Gunslinger.” All that influential baggage in the open, one fan took it to a logical conclusion, editing footage of The Mandalorian into a new trailer in the style of old spaghetti western trailers from the 1970s. Watch it for yourself in the player above!
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Put together by YouTuber kingkida, the clever edit features many hallmarks of films and trailers of the era. Beginning with the iconic “Prevues of Coming Attractions” stinger as made famous in modern day by Quentin Tarantino, the fan trailer flips back and forth between Italian subtitles for the English lines and English subtitles for the Italian captions to the footage. Also included are two iconic Spaghetti Western musical cues including the “A Firstful of Dollars Suite” from the film of the same name and “The Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, both composed by Ennio Morricone.
“(He)’s your iconically cool, flawed, mysterious, loner gunslinger that harkens to the best of the samurai movies and the westerns,” Pascal said about the character. “In talking to Jon I asked what I should be looking at. I know he loves movies, I love movies. ‘What would you like me to watch?’ I asked him. He immediately brought up Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo… He’s very samurai, Clint (Eastwood), and me. Just wedge me into those two iconic characters.”
Series executive producer and director for “The Gunslinger” Dave Filoni told IGN how important that sort of pulp Western mindset was to the series overall, saying: “When you’re dealing with Western tropes like Mandalorian does, which obviously is something that influenced George to make Star Wars, we’re all coming back around to the same ideas and influences. And I think as much as Star Wars, there were definitely Westerns that you watch and study just to get the right feeling for a gunslinger like Mando.”
The second season of The Mandalorian has already been confirmed by Favreau, with the showrunner announcing after the season finale that the next batch of episodes will premiere in the fall of 2020.
We’re going to have to wait just a little while to see what happens to Din Djarin, Cara Dune, Greef Karga, and Baby Yoda, but at least we know when we can expect to see them all again. In the meantime, Disney+ is releasing brand new episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars to keep the adventure going.
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