Show Don’t Tell: The Mandalorian vs. The Last Jedi

A simple analysis of something that The Mandalorian did very well, that The Last Jedi often did not. Follow-up on Season 2: Note: Showing doesn’t mean you can’t use dialogue or words. You can show through dialogue the same way a novelist or poet shows through words. It’s also not always wrong to tell. The opening crawl of Star Wars is just exposition, but it’s useful because it saves time while still creating clarity. It’s often a balance of clarity, emotional impact, and efficiency. I think from the examples I used it could be easy to get the wrong idea, to think I mean that dialogue is bad, but that is absolutely not the case. Yes, the camera is what makes a movie a movie, but there aren’t hard and fast rules for this. As I alluded to, everyone has different tolerances for these kinds of things, and what knocks me out of the story could be a thing that someone else doesn’t even notice. I may make a follow-up video about The Mandalorian as a whole once the season is complete. T