The Mandalorian: 10 Times The Show Referenced Classic Movies

While Star Wars is certainly its own thing, it’s the result of George Lucas combining various disparate influences. He was inspired by westerns, samurai movies, pulpy space serials — and he threw them all into a blender and made a galaxy far, far away smoothie. Jon Favreau said that his goal with helming The Mandalorian was not to look to previous Star Wars works for inspiration but to look to the movies that inspired George Lucas for inspiration.

Many fans have noted The Mandalorian’s references to Kurosawa, one of the primary influences on Lucas’ conception of the saga, but there are homages to plenty of movies in the Disney+ hit.

10 Lone Wolf And Cub (1972)

The influence of Lone Wolf and Cub can be seen in The Mandalorian’s central premise. In the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series (and subsequent film adaptation), a ronin goes on adventures with a small child in tow.

Masterless samurai warriors and Mandalorians have a lot in common. The kid in Lone Wolf and Cub doesn’t have any mystical powers or a taste for unfertilized eggs, but the influence is clear as day.

9 For A Few Dollars More (1965)

Sergio Leone pioneered the spaghetti western with his Dollars trilogy, comprised of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The influence of Clint Eastwood’s performance as the Man with No Name can be seen in Pedro Pascal’s subdued portrayal of Mando.

But The Mandalorian’s most direct reference to the Dollars trilogy is For a Few Dollars More, whose plot point of a good bounty hunter and an evil bounty hunter teaming up and eventually double-crossing each other influenced Mando and IG-11’s dynamic in the pilot episode.

8 E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

When the Mandalorian first meets the Child, they both hold out their hands and touch their fingertips together. This is taken right from Steven Spielberg’s box office hit E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

It’s not a straight homage, though, because Spielberg used a closeup for this shot in E.T., whereas Dave Filoni used a long shot in The Mandalorian.

7 Yojimbo (1961)

According to Pedro Pascal, Jon Favreau told him to familiarize himself with the Kurosawa masterpiece Yojimbo, whose tale of a lone warrior playing bad guys against each other has since inspired countless copycats, including A Fistful of Dollars.

To a lesser extent, the character was also influenced by Sanjuro, a companion piece to Yojimbo with a more lighthearted, comedic approach to its premise.

6 The Wild Bunch (1969)

During a shootout in the first episode of The Mandalorian, Mando finds himself outnumbered and gets behind a giant laser turret to start tearing through the bad guys.

This is a fun riff on the Battle of Bloody Porch sequence from Sam Peckinpah’s western epic The Wild Bunch, notoriously one of the most violent movies ever made.

5 Rio Bravo (1959)

Howard Hawks’ western Rio Bravo culminates in an iconic shootout, but it’s more famous as a hangout movie. For most of the film, the central trio sits around waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

The comic interplay between the characters was a huge influence on the dialogue in the early Star Wars movies, and that influence can be seen in The Mandalorian, too.

4 Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989)

When Mando is hanging off the side of a moving Sandcrawler in “Chapter 2: The Child,” the Jawas try to knock him off by ramming the vehicle into a giant rock.

This is taken straight from the climactic chase scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which Indy hangs off a moving tank by his satchel strap as the Nazis try to smear him against a rock.

3 Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973)

The Wild Bunch isn’t the only Sam Peckinpah western to be referenced in The Mandalorian. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid heavily influenced Mando’s relationship with Greef Karga, played by Carl Weathers.

At the beginning of the series, Karga got Mando work. Then, when Mando went rogue to rescue Grogu from the Client, Karga became his enemy. Now, they’re on good terms again. This frenemy dynamic calls back to the titular duo in Peckinpah’s revisionist gem.

2 Seven Samurai (1954)

Akira Kurosawa’s action-packed epic masterpiece Seven Samurai has influenced countless movies about a grizzled hero assembling a team to protect a village full of innocent people from an ambush by the bad guys.

This premise is reflected in “Chapter 4: Sanctuary,” although instead of a team of seven, the only people defending the village are Mando and Cara Dune.

1 The Searchers (1956)

John Ford’s The Searchers is one of the quintessential westerns. John Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, whose gruff demeanor and dark side began to challenge the western genre’s typically clean-cut heroes. He ventures onto the frontier to save his niece from her abductors.

Mando’s backstory of his family being wiped out in the Clone Wars has parallels with Ethan’s military background, which Ford uses to feed into The Searchers’ themes of the unceasing nature of violence in the Old West (also reflected in The Mandalorian’s return of the Empire).

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Ben Sherlock
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Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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