The Mandalorian Spoiler Thread

Who would you pick as an enemy? If the enemy were bounty hunters, then the character would know at the start of the episode that he couldn't leave the child, and we wouldn't have time to explore the character's growth moment. I get the impression we'll be seeing more storm troopers soon. The audience would need more time to set up rebellion soldiers as an enemy. I think a local group makes the most sense, although I suppose it could've been a planet he already had ties to, but they really want to play it slow on this character's reveal.

 

I knew right away it was going to be a "Seven Samurai" sort of episode. Seems fine, considering Kurosawa's impact on Star Wars.

 

I think Seven Samurai predates that show as well. The basic plot is villagers beset by a group of thugs from the mountains near the village. They send some of their fellow villagers out to hire people to help. The seven samurai are hired, come back, teach the villagers to fight so they can defend themselves when the next attack comes (and of course the samurai help too). It's basically the exact same plot. Seven Samurai was adapted as the western The Magnificent Seven for U.S. audiences.

Kurosawa, who directed Seven Samurai, was an influence on George Lucas. Lucas has talked about the influence The Hidden Fortress had on him. That starred Toshiro Mifune, who was also in Seven Samurai.

Given all of the above, I figured the Mandalorian episode was probably a conscious nod to Kurosawa and his influence on Star Wars.

 

Just after I posted, I found this article: 'The Mandalorian' star Pedro Pascal channeled Han Solo and Clint Eastwood for Disney+

The guy playing the Mandalorian talks about the influence:

“The character is very much built on the iconic presence of the Man With No Name in the Sergio Leone movies, played by Clint Eastwood, [and] the lone samurai in Akira Kurosawa,” he said. “It’s aesthetically and very, very much narratively built in that kind of iconic lone gunslinger/sword-wielder.”

He mentions Sergio Leone's movies, as well as Kurosawa, but it is worth noting that Leone's "Man with No Name" films were directly taken from Kurosawa. "Fistfull of Dollars" is a remake (that can be tracked scene by scene) of Kurosawa's film "Yojimbo" (incidentally, starring Mifune again). Kurosawa actually sued over Yojimbo/Fistfull of Dollars and won.

Not that this is a critique of any of the films--I like them all, and everything has inspiration (though Leone walked too close to the line between inspiration and ripoff). Kurosawa himself pointed to American writer Dashiell Hammett as an inspiration for Yojimbo.

It does, however, make it seem likely to me that the writers on The Mandalorian were going with a Kurosawa homage.