The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal should not be entrusted with even your tiniest franchise secrets
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“This is a pretty amazing time to be you,” is how Jimmy Fallon started his interview with Pedro Pascal on Thursday’s Tonight Show. That might sound like some typical Fallon-esque smoke-blowing, but, man, Pedro Pascal might be the only person really coming out of this godforsaken year of 2020 better than when he started. Already a standout actor in everything from Game Of Thrones (screw you, The Mountain) to Narcos, Pascal is now top-billing in both the Star Wars and DC Comics onscreen universes. “As you say it, it makes me sweat,” joked the effortlessly cool Pascal, appearing virtually from wherever deservedly ascendant big stars hang out these days.
But, seriously, Pedro’s doing fine, with the season finale of the wildly successful Baby Yoda delivery device The Madalorian dropping this very day, and the sequel to the only decent DCU movie, Wonder Woman 1984, hitting (a few) big screens and (a whole lot more) HBO Max littler screens on Christmas Day. In that one, Pascal is playing—someone he refuses to name to Fallon. (It’s billionaire industrialist Maxwell Lord, who fans of the Giffen-DeMatteis Justice League remember quite fondly, Supergirl fans might remember was played by another guy, and fans of a certain underdog DC hero remember with burning hatred.) Still, as Pascal revealed with only the coolest tinge of embarrassment, he wasn’t always so tight-lipped about his top-secret role, or the plot details of the tentpole movie from a very secretive mega-corporation.
And, sure, you might want to blame the cocktails at the getting-to-know-you London mixer co-star Wonder Woman co-star Kristen Wiig threw for breaching Pascal’s NDA. But, as Pascal confessed, he’d already happily talked the ear off of his rideshare driver on his way there. To be fair to The Mandalorian star (and emergency stand-in Walton Goggins), Lord’s comics-convoluted history is extensive enough to require some explanation. (It’s unknown if Wonder Woman 1984 will include Max’s cyborg-bodied Lord Havok phase, but, yeah, probably not.) To be less fair to himself, Pascal conceded that he only realized how hard he’d screwed up the whole company secrets thing once a pair of Wiig’s very best friends informed him that Wiig herself hadn’t told her most cherished pals a single, blessed thing. Whoops.
Still, Pascal—who jumped at the chance to play an entire, high-profile season of television hiding his moneymaker in a metal bucket—is unlikely to face many repercussions. (Disney already knows he’s not big with the secret-keeping.) Plus, he did tell Fallon that he managed to keep his big yapper shut about that whole Baby Yoda thing to an extent that even he was impressed. Of course, that’s Disney we’re talking about and—while there is no way to prove this—the heads of any all all Disney franchise leakers are stored in hyper-cold cryogenic punishment-freeze in Cinderella’s Castle. But we kid the overlords of some 75 percent of our childhoods. Pascal did give some hints about the tight, Death Star-style ship over at Disney security HQ, telling Fallon that his attempt to heist the tiniest single piece of under-wraps Mandalorian Lego merch found him at the receiving end of a next-day phone call. Jabba’s got nothing on Disney.
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It’s billionaire industrialist Maxwell Lord, who fans of the Giffen-DeMatteis Justice League remember quite fondly, Supergirlfans might remember was played by another guy, and fans of a certain underdog DC hero remember with burning hatred.He also was not a villain when he first appeared and had nothing to do with Wonder Woman.But then Geoff Johns does what Geoff Johns does and retconned it that he was evil the whole time and proceeded to shoot Ted Kord in the head……and than Wonder Woman snapped his neck.
I hate Bendis and Millar more, but…God, Geoff Johns sucks.
Yup. Honestly, this is a huge symbol of how Johns and, generally, leadership at DC at the time are absolutely uncomfortable with nuance or 3-dimenionality. Maxwell Lord as an amoral force for good was an interesting character. Maxwell Lord as an eeeeeevil megalomaniac was…Lex Luther. And a few hundred other characters. Boring, and a waste.
god, i miss max lord. i hope one day they get rid of that weird evil doppelganger and bring him back
Hope they never cast him in a franchise movie with Tom Holland then.
Tom Holland is Baby Yoda
Would watch.
Can the human body withstand that level of adorable?
Mark Ruffalo had his fair share of leaks for avengers too. Luckily there were so many characters in avengers they could keep things from them.
“[Wonder Woman was the] only decent DCU movie”I guess if you don’t count Shazam as part of DCU, then okay.
Our very own AV Club gave it a B-, which is above average and henceforth “decent”.https://film.avclub.com/shazam-zaps-an-old-fashioned-superhero-into-a-blockbus-1833471014Edit: Oh look, Aquaman too…https://film.avclub.com/like-its-hero-aquaman-is-big-cheesy-and-fun-1831004837
I really wish they’d been able to release Shazam around Christmas. It was such a fun, family, Christmas movie. I liked it, but all the Christmas theming made it feel weird in the spring when it came out.
I’m not going to argue for Batman vs Superman, since even admitting you like that movie can get you burned at the stake, but Aquaman was a seriously fun ride as well.
There’s a good movie buried somewhere in Batman vs. Superman. As is, it’s a mess, but an interesting mess.
I also loved Aquaman.Which surprised me because it’s fucking Aquaman. And yet it was pretty great.
What amazed me about Aquaman was that they took the power everyone treats as a joke and made it his most powerful move. For that alone it deserves to be respected.
Are we just going to pretend Vinnie Chase didn’t prime the pump for America to love Aquaman back in 2000whatever?
Aquaman is a superhero whos powers/skillset deserves respect but somehow hes clowned on. He can easily chill in the Marianas Trench (1000x+ atmospheric pressure) and the obvious super human durability and strength that comes with it. He has also decked superman and sent him flying, is bullet proof, and can brush off falling from orbit.
Yet somehow hes michael phelps with a big fork that can talk to fishes.
SuperFriends did him dirty, what can I say?
There was an octopus playing the drums!! That is an automatic A+
What did people even like about Wonder Woman? Everyone seems to have decided it’s ‘the good DC movie’ but I don’t really get why. Kinda understand giving it points for managing to make a female-lead movie far quicker than Marvel managed, but beyond that it was still pretty dreary, and Gadot wasn’t a compelling enough screen presence to carry a movie.
Well, having watched the Mando finale, I know there’s at least one secret he kept quiet. Wow!
I think there’s a good chance nobody on the set knew what the final thing turned out to be. I don’t even think the characters know about it, now that I think of it.
Agreed since there is no hints that its Luke outside of cgi, its possible none of the cast knew. Wouldnt expect the cast to guess it was luke from the hilt and even if they caught it they could have assumed someone else had lukes hilt
I heard rumours that the cast had limited scripts for the last act. Nobody seemed to directly interact with Luke, he mostly stands on the other side of the room to the rest of the cast. A shame really, it should have been Kyle Katarn.
Of course, that’s Disney we’re talking about and—while there is no way
to prove this—the heads of any all all Disney franchise leakers are
stored in hyper-cold cryogenic punishment-freeze in Cinderella’s Castle.
But we kid the overlords of some 75 percent of our childhoods.I can tell what you’re getting at here but it reads like three sentences are having an orgy 🙂
This whole piece is written like a weird, excitable ramble. I think he got drunk and said something about his role in Wonder Woman? But who the fuck can tell? I mean – “you might want to blame the cocktails at the getting-to-know-you London mixer co-star Wonder Woman co-star Kristen Wiig threw for breaching Pascal’s NDA” -?!
Not this interview but in another interview this week he said his Mando voice is basically is his bedroom voice and now watching The Mandalorian is a completely different experience…
I think I’m gettin’ the vapors…
I wonder how many Ubers Tom Holland has taken.