The Mandalorian Episode 3 Director Deborah Chow On The Inspiration For THAT Scene
Spoilers ahead for Star Wars TV’s The Mandalorian, particularly for Episode 3:
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Still Here? Good.
At this point, The Mandalorian is on an insane track and that’s due in no small part to Episode 3.
Chow directed episode three — titled “The Sin” — and its explosive finale, which featured a group of hovering Mandalorian protectors in a shoot-out with a gang of bloodthirsty bounty hunters while the hero flees with a newly rescued Baby Yoda. The scene lit up social media—and her phone.
“I woke up to many, many texts and emails about it, and it’s sort of like, ‘How did everyone watch it so early in the morning?’” Chow told Vanity Fair on Friday, in a new interview for our Still Watching podcast on the Star Wars series. “It’s definitely unexpected, and I’m really happy for the show”… Chow said the episode takes a lot of inspiration from 1961’s Yojimbo — Akira Kurosawa’s classic about a nameless ronin who finds himself in a town plagued by competing crime lords. She also credits her love of Asian cinema to her late father.
“My dad was Chinese, and he was a huge movie fan, when I grew up he was watching Hong Kong action films. So it kind of gets that reference,” she said, citing John Woo’s 1992 cop-and-kid thriller Hard Boiled as another reference. “I tried to bring out a little Hard Boiled with the baby. It was kind of an amazing thing because it was like coming back to classic cinema and filmmaking. So there’s definitely a lot of my dad in that episode.”
Chow also spoke to Breznican about the fact that her work on The Mandalorian makes her the first woman and the first filmmaker of Asian heritage to direct a live-action Star Wars story:
Even when I first got this job, it didn’t even cross my mind. I don’t know what fairyland I was in, to not think this was significant. But I went through prep and it didn’t occur to me until somebody said it on one of the first days of shooting… I want it to be about the work. I want to be a good director, not a good female director, not a good Asian director. But by the same token, obviously, my career path and the representation… it is important. It is meaningful. I want to see more women directors and I want to see more directors of color.”
Deborah Chow, Director, Episode 3, The Mandalorian
As far as I am concerned, based solely on Episode 3 of The Mandalorian, Chow is the perfect person to direct the upcoming Obi-Wan series on Disney+.