The Mandalorian is one of the biggest series in the world. It has been a major hit for Disney+ and probably the biggest and most popular piece of the Star Wars franchise since the release of The Force Awakens. It has generated massive amounts of fans new and old, and audiences are eagerly anticipating the series’ return for season 3 on March 1, 2023.
The Mandalorian, like the rest of Star Wars, pulls from a rich pool of different film genres to tell its stories; Star Wars itself was partly inspired by the Kurosawa samurai film The Hidden Fortress. While the franchise has the visual elements most audiences associate with science fiction, the themes of the films have always been more fantasy based. It in many ways draws from both, being both science fiction and fantasy. The Mandalorian continues this trend but tends to embrace the genre conventions of a western.
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Yet even though The Mandalorian uses the style of a western, does that make it a western? Take a look and find out if it can be classified as one.
What Is Genre and What Is a Western?
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Genre is an interesting concept because it is ever evolving, yet people tend to know what it is based on the hallmarks. Some stories change genre as time goes on. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was originally classified as a horror story but is now considered by many to be the first science fiction story, in a sense it created a whole new genre of storytelling. Genres help an audience understand a story, and set a certain type of expectation for what to expect. The western is one of the most iconic and easily identifiable genres. Even if someone hasn’t seen a western, they likely know what to expect from one.
The western genre tends to be associated with particular visual signifiers and thematic elements. They typically take place in the frontier, usually America, and feature sparely populated and dangerous environments as well as a sense of lawlessness with a battle between law officials, criminals, and gunslingers. Most people associate certain visual elements like horses, wide open skies, cowboy hats, and shootouts with westerns. While The Mandalorian may not have the obvious visual signifiers, it does feature them in more subtle ways.
The Mandalorian Is a Type of Western
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While The Mandalorian might not fit the traditional look of what audiences expect from a western, the western genre clearly has an influence over the story. The Mandalorian features a gunslinger-type character, taking on dangerous jobs for money and typically hunting down other outlaws. Instead of riding into new towns on a horse, he flies to new planets on his ship. Instead of the American frontier, the Mandalorian himself is generally exploring planets in the Outer Rim that are away from the jurisdiction of the New Republic.
Throughout the series, there is a reference to the New Republic’s lack of presence on these planets leading to various factions vying for control of power including the remnants of the Galactic Empire and various other criminals. The Mandalorian character is very much molded after Clint Eastwood’s character The Man with No Name from Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
The Mandalorian would be classified as a space western, a science fiction set story that uses the themes and conventions of a western. Common examples tend to include Cowboy Beboop, Firefly, and Star Wars itself. George Lucas based his classic 1977 film on both westerns and samurai films (the two genres have a great deal of overlap, as seen in remaking the samurai film Seven Samurai as the American western The Magnificent Seven). Both The Mandalorian and Star Wars feature many western elements to them, which makes them part western, part science fiction but also unique to themselves: they are Star Wars.
Star Wars Is a Genre Unto Itself
The Mandalorian is very much a space western, but that is very much a product of being a Star Wars series. Star Wars is both a franchise, but also a brand, and a genre. Audiences expect certain elements from a Star Wars project, and much of an entry’s popularity can be tracked by how much it does or does not subvert the expectations of what audiences want from Star Wars. Lightsabers, spaceships that go to lightspeed and make sounds in space, certain aliens, and other elements are expected from a Star Wars story and set it apart from other science fiction properties like Star Trek or Doctor Who.
The Mandalorian wears its western influences proudly, but it also homages a wide variety of other genres and films. The first episode of season 2 is the most western of them all, featuring a desert planet and a small town dealing with a threat, but it also features a scene that is clearly paying homage to Iron Man (the episode was directed by Iron Man filmmaker Jon Favreau). Other episodes reference the works of Akira Kurosawa, the 1977 William Friedkin film Sorcerer, and even horror movies. The Mandalorian is a space western, but it is more than that. It is many different genres at once.
