If The Mandalorian and Grogu seems to be made for children, that is because, first and foremost, it is.
Star Wars creator George Lucas always intended the films to work that way, says director Jon Favreau, and he has kept the idea close through six years of traversing the galaxy with the title characters.
“When I started working on Mandalorian, George Lucas and I had a long talk,” Favreau tells The National. “One thing he said to me was: ‘Remember, Jon, the real audience for all stories and all myths is the kids that are coming of age,’ because he’s really a [US mythologist] Joseph Campbell adherent.
“We enjoy these stories as adults, but really, storytelling is about imparting the wisdom of the previous generations on to the children who are becoming adults. These stories are really there to teach life lessons, because we don’t have the same rites of passage that people used to have, and that’s why these stories are valuable.”
Since the Mandalorian series debuted on Disney+ in 2019, Lucas's advice has stayed with Favreau through its three seasons. It remains the guiding light of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the series' cinema continuation and the first Star Wars feature film in nearly seven years.
In the process, the idea has become more personal, too, helping Favreau to grapple with his own feelings. This is something he has been working through in much of his work, he has realised, from Chef to his Marvel films, and now The Mandalorian.
“You do start to see patterns emerge,” he says. “I think that the father-son relationship is a big part of it.”
Favreau, 59, was raised primarily by his father after his mother died when he was 12. After he became a parent himself, new struggles arose that only became obvious as he wrote for the series, which follows a bounty hunter and his adopted son.
“In season two, Grogu goes off to study with Luke Skywalker, and that was happening about the time my oldest was going off to college for the first time,” Favreau says. “We experience a whole spectrum of emotions as parents.”
That emotional chord pangs through The Mandalorian and Grogu even louder. The Mandalorian, also known as Din Djarin, is still a protector to Grogu, but the film gives Grogu greater agency, showing him as more independent, capable and confident in the Force. While he was once just the child being carried through the story, he now fends for himself more – which Din must come to terms with.
The connection has helped the series resonate beyond the traditional Star Wars audience, both to children and their parents, in different ways.
“The generation that grew up watching Star Wars for the first time in theatres like me are now parents,” Favreau says. “These fairy tales, these fantasies become metaphors in a way for our mundane lives, but presented on the big screen.”
The film earned about $165 million worldwide in the first few days, according to Variety.
While the TV show's enduring popularity made the film's reception inevitable, moving the characters from streaming to cinemas required a different approach.
“When you do a fourth season of a show, you assume everybody’s seen what came before,” Favreau says. “When you’re bringing Star Wars to the theatre for the first time in a long time, there’s the anticipation that you may be inviting new viewers in.”
So the film was built as a stand-alone story, allowing audiences familiar with the characters – even casually – to enter the story without years of franchise knowledge.
“As long as you understood who these two were, we were going to drop you into a new adventure,” he says.
The move to cinemas also allowed the production to work on a larger scale over a longer period than television.
“All of a sudden, now we have three years to make a movie,” Favreau says. “We could build sets.”
Even so, he says, scale and technology alone are not what keeps the franchise alive across generations.
“What’s enduring about this, and why it’s lasted 50 years, isn’t just the lightsabres and the visual effects,” he says. “It’s also the mythic stories at the core that George Lucas imbued his stories with.”
The Mandalorian and Grogu is in cinemas now across the Middle East
