Yes, I know his actual name is Din Djarin. But while I’ve gradually gotten used to saying “Grogu,” 1) no one really calls Mando by his given name, and 2) he doesn’t introduce himself that way. So we’ll stick with the Mandalorian/Mando (some spoilers.)
In his introduction, the Mandalorian is immediately presented to us as a stone-cold badass, laying waste to some smartmouthed fools in a bar and capturing his bounty with the ominous warning, “I can bring you in hot, or I can bring you in cold.” His adherence to the code of his people means that, extremely-lethal competence aside, he cuts an imposing figure. His face is forever shrouded behind the blank glare of his beskar helmet, his quietly self-assured voice processed through the helmet’s vocoder. Everything about him says “don’t eff with this guy.”
But one thing I love about Mando is that it doesn’t take long to show us the cracks in his armor (metaphorically speaking – that beskar is nothing to mess with.) While he’s generally pretty unbeatable, he’s far from untouchable, and his impressive weaponry/fighting prowess is married to a high level of determination in the face of unfavorable odds. I like that he gets knocked down, that he doesn’t know how to ride a blurrg and doesn’t always anticipate when someone will betray him. With his armor, coupled with the unreadability of his hidden facial expressions, there’s a temptation to mythologize him, but the show doesn’t play coy with his fallability. For all that his look and vibe are designed to make fanboys wet themselves with excitement, at the end of the day, he’s just a guy in full beskar doing his best to stay alive from one job to the next. He’s incredibly good at what he does, but he’s not superhuman.
I always really appreciate how well his personality comes through beneath the helmet. Kudos to Pedro Pascal (as well as the stunt doubles who also inhabit the armor) – Mando is made to be inscrutably, unspeakably cool, but the performance tells us who he is through his vocal inflections and body language. He’s a wary guy, always reading situations/people and prepared to draw one of the many weapons in his arsenal the second he needs to, and he doesn’t let his guard down easily. He’s also frequently exasperated: by the trouble that inevitably follows him around, by the ambitions of unscrupulous people who try to get one over on him, and by Grogu’s frequent mischief, which teaches him that bounty-hunting is a cakewalk compared to raising a 50-year-old toddler while on the run. And of course, while he erects a very noticeable wall between himself and others, the show finds him gradually acquiring family, friends, and allies. Grogu is the first to crack his stoic veneer, but over time, he comes to value/respect plenty of others who help him on his ultimate mission to protect Grogu and keep him safe (including a droid, which, for Mando, is a huge deal.)
I didn’t include Mando back when I wrote up my Top Five examples of non-toxic masculinity, but I find him very refreshening as a male action/genre lead. While he may not be as overt in his feminism as Ben Wyatt or as in touch with his emotions as the Fab Five, I love that he’s a sci-fi extension of a lone gunslinger archetype who’s not toxic and/or sexist. He knows exactly how good of a warrior he is, and other men sometimes try to bait him into a pissing contest, but on the occasions that he fights back, it’s to get them out of way, not stemming from any urge to prove his masculinity. Likewise, he allies himself to plenty of badass women (Cara, Fennec, Bo-Katan, etc.) without ever feeling the need to assert himself over them. There’s no jockeying for dominance, no need to run the show – they work together, each taking the lead at various times. And just the fact that his central plot is about developing a deep paternal love for Grogu is so massive. Whether he’s sighing over Grogu getting them both into trouble, moving Heaven and Earth to keep Grogu safe from those who would hurt him, or just being quietly affectionate during a private moment between them, I adore Mando’s love for his young charge/surrogate son.
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Since it appears that Tony Leung Chiu-wai is managing to avoid most of the press stuff for Shang-Chi (Hong Kong’s quarantine rules are pretty strict, so I don’t blame him for not coming to LA,) I’m instead on the lookout for other people from the production talking about him during their own interviews. Here, director Destin Daniel Cretton talks a little about what it meant to have Leung in the movie – I love that he says, “As soon as Tony came on, we knew the type of movie we were making and the type of character that we had to create in order to make that character worthy of an actor like Tony.” For so many years, I haven’t known anyone IRL who’s a fan of his like I am, so it’s gratifying to hear the folks behind a big Hollywood production (a Marvel film, no less!) clearly loving and appreciating his talent. It makes me excited to think of all the people who are about to see him in action for the first time – we’re getting so close!
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