On the promotional trail for his new Netflix film We Can Be Heroes – starring Pedro Pascal – Robert Rodriguez discussed his last-minute gig as director on The Mandalorian and his thrill at setting foot on a set that so strongly evoked his childhood.
“I’m friends with Jon Favreau and he needed a last-minute replacement for a director, and so I said, ‘Sure, I’ll come play in the Star Wars universe!’ What a dream. And it’s fulfilled all my… it’s beyond my expectations, I mean, it was SO fun, you can’t imagine what it’s like to walk on a set that has the classic look of The Empire Strikes Back feel and look. It’s right after that era, right after the Return of the Jedi. It’s that era. So you really feel like you just walked into your childhood.
“All of a sudden you go up and touch things and go, ‘That’s the thing that Han Solo talked into when he shot the machine and told the stormtroopers not to come up’. I was like, ‘Wow, I thought I recognised that!’ It’s just a really strange, exhilarating experience to be in your childhood sets for real. And getting to make action! It’s really cool… The visual language is so embedded in our heads. So I have one of those [selfies] ‘Look, it’s me next to a control panel, isn’t that cool?’. It was so fun.”
Given his status as a ‘last-minute replacement’, you have to wonder who he was replacing. Perhaps the slot opened when Deborah Chow was moved onto the Kenobi series, but whatever the reasoning we were delivered a stunning episode which we will discuss on this week’s episode of Making Tracks.
