The Mandalorian Remains A Better Tech Demo Than TV Series

If you haven’t seen the fourth episode of Disney Gallery/Star Wars: The Mandalorian, titled ‘Technology’, you should. Its about how movies will be made in the future. Especially big budget movies like Star Wars. You see, like the Prequel Trilogy, very little of The Mandalorian is filmed on location. While there is a physical set with objects to interact with, much of this series is filmed in front of the next generation equivalent of a green screen. Functioning as showcase for that technology is interesting thing The Mandalorian does as it actively avoids being anything greater.

You may be shocked to hear this, but there is no overarching plot progression in this episode. There isn’t any plot at all in this episode. There are no characters. Things just happen as a suit of armor ambles around various types of deserts accompanied by a cute puppet. Technically, they’re joined by a frog woman this time, but she’s just an excuse to Mando one (entirely theoretical) step closer to finding more Mandos. She has no personality other than “Gotta fertilize these eggs before I die.”

As mentioned at the top, this episode once again functions as proof Jon Favreau and his team know how to make cool tech. Sometimes that manifests itself in a $5 million remote-control puppet that serves as the show’s mascot. Others, its an almost mindboggling number of giant ice spiders crawling out of a very-fake-but-real-looking ice cave. The entire environment and spiders look almost too real. I’m far from being scared of spiders but the way they move is kind of freaky and the animators on this show are maybe too good at replicating that.

Later in the episode, Mando remembers he has a flamethrower attached to his arm and decides to light up his eight-legged foes. The way the spiders immolate and squirm as they die makes it so you can almost smell the flesh as it burns. It’s so well done that it manages the rare feat of being both the highlight and lowlight of the episode.

I only wish this much thought and expertise went into the writing and plotting of this series. The talent is there. Jon Favreau wrote and directed the previous episode while Peyton Reed directed this one from a Favreau script. An episode of television starring Pedro Pascal with those two as the creative leads should be exciting and memorable. Instead, we get a boring tech demo for Thor: Love and Thunder. And yet another desert planet. Can we stop with that? Please.

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