Perhaps its just that Disney didnt want to scar the psyches of a generation of children here to see cute Grogu and that nice guy they look up to/wish he was THEIR dad (Mando), with Richard Brake glaring meaningfully out the teevee and smiling that I'LL KILL YOU! smile instead of Esposito. Thatd give any kid nightmares, real talk. It almost gives me nightmares.
Which all leads back to one of my foundation premises: our need for R-rated Star Wars content. Im sorry, this is the adult themed content we deserve as SW fans.
The original
Star Wars was a curious blend. An homage to the hokey 1930s sci-fi serials made specifically for children, yet with a gruesome edge: the smouldering remains of Owen and Beru or Ponda Baba's severed arm.
Lucas did it again, with Spielberg, in
The Temple of Doom. Childish silliness with some gruesome scenes mixed in. The flayed human skins are still shocking to me in the context of that film.
Disney throws some scenes in, but they don't dwell on them. I think it was in
The Bad Batch that Fennec was throwing a civilian off their speeder at height, to expected death.
To decode The Mandalorian...
Richard Brake's Valin Hess was about as evil as you can get...
He would've made a great main villain with that degree of menace. But, as you wrote, maybe that was too much for the scope of Disney's plans. As such he was despatched very quickly.
He was Disney's very overt reminder that the Empire were conceived as space Nazis. Which is safer than the original subtext of anti-Vietnam War Lucas seeing them as also embodying evil empires closer to home.
Moff Gideon possessed a more subtle menace. Being darker skinned brought an element of inclusiveness to the Empire, and by association to evil. It implies that evil is everywhere, and not confined to stereotypical beliefs.
Good and evil are inherent qualities, not limited to the outer ones embodied by Valin Hess. It breaks down rigid social and racial barriers, in the same manner that Marx advised that the workers of the world had more common with each other than with the other classes of their own nations.
Morality is a golden ideal, and it goes far beyond borders and race, because it's an individual quality.
It also reminds of the time when you could tell a villainous character on screen because they were physically disfigured. Though you can go back to the original
King Kong to see a level of enlightenment. The 'beast' was essentially good. The final lines spelling it out, "It was beauty killed the beast."
Most series and films made now are highly self-conscious, and walking a tightrope in order to portray the correct message, while also trying to stay close to their subject. Some Star Wars entries have done it better than others, but I think
The Mandalorian hit the right balance.
