By Patrick Lugo
Eighteen days after May the 4th, the original popular TV show from a galaxy far, far away hits theaters. True fans of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu caught 25 minutes from the two-hour-and-twelve-minute movie during Disney’s “Star Wars Day” hype fan event which took place in IMAX theaters around the nation and included behind-the-scenes extras and giveaways. There was then the LA premiere at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on the 14th. Now, as of May 22nd, 2026, everyone else can get caught up on the adventures of Baby Yoda and its Boba-Daddy.
For those who haven’t been watching, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu takes place after the events of season 3 of the Disney+ series. That show, The Mandalorian (2019 - 2023) was the first live-action series from an old movie franchise with roots right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Star Wars. This wasn’t their first foray into television, who can forget that Holiday Special? However, it’s arguably their most successful television series. The Mandalorian takes place five years after the events of Return of the Jedi (1983), probably its greatest appeal, and it featured a new Boba-fett type character. These tales of a ‘lone bounty hunter and the child he must protect’ are essentially Star Wars skinned over the plots of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s seminal samurai manga Lone Wolf & Cub (1970 - 1976). That manga series forged its own run of samurai movies, seven over the course of 1972 through to 1980, with an eighth striking Japanese theaters in 1993. An English recut of the first two films was released to the American market in 1980, retitled Shogun Assassin.
If we discount the meta-connections to those eight samurai films, The Mandalorian makes for a twenty-four episode prologue to a movie determined to win back fans and get them in theater seats. Fortunately, you won’t have to have seen a single episode to get into this movie. Starring Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Martin Scorsese, and Jeremy Allen White, this movie has series creator Jon Favreau returning to the director’s seat. We haven’t seen a Favreau directed episode since the premiere of season 2 in October of 2020, nor have we seen a movie of his since the CGI “live action” adaptation of Disney’s The Lion King (2019). Coincidentally, this is the first Star Wars theatrical release since Star Wars, episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). So, no pressure, really.
The Other Mandalorian
We recently saw Pedro Pascal portray Marvel’s Mr. Fantastic in FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (2025). With the Mandalorian, Pedro was able to develop a character from the inside out, spending almost the entirety of the role behind his iconic helmet. Defining the character of Din Djarin (dɪn ˈdʒɑːrɪn), a.k.a. the Mandalorian (or ‘Mando’ to his friends) relied almost exclusively on his voice and body language. But Pascal was not alone in crafting the Mandalorian’s movements. Enter Lateef Crowder dos Santos.
Born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in 1970, Lateef’s family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was four. As a means of maintaining a connection to his heritage he began a lifetime of training in Capoeira, a family tradition. In combination with his competitive gymnastics, it wasn’t long before Lateef joined one of the Bay Area’s online-shorts stunt collectives Zero Gravity. It would be on the set of TITLE PENDING (2001) where he would work with fellow Bay Area capoeirista and martial artist Larry Leong who we never mentioned during our coverage of Pirates of the Caribbean: Beyond World’s End (2007). It’s been a handful of years since Leong uploaded anything to his YouTube channel @EscoZG, but it’s a fantastic time-capsule for the work local martial artists were putting in during those early aughts.
Zero Gravity and KFM go back a ways. Our very own Gene Ching had this to say about them - “They were loosely connected to my former school, USA. Omei Kung Fu, way back when Shifu Tony Chen was still overseeing it. Both Tiffany Reyes and Lianne Leong did some product modelling for MartialArtsMart/Tiger Claw. But I never met Lateef. I first became aware of him in The Protector and didn’t even know he was with ZG until one of my Kung Fu sibs told me.”
Lateef has been extraordinarily busy over the past 20+ years. After making a huge splash onto the big screen with his epic fight against Tony Jaa in The Protector (2007), he’s played a fighting role in 27 movies since. Many of which we covered here on KFM, during the before times. While Ninja Cheerleaders (2008) received only the briefest mention on our forum, it would be the film adaptation of the video game Tekken (2009) that would capture the excitement of forum members of yore. In 2010, KFM covered The Book of Eli (2010) starring Denzel Washington though Lateef’s role in it was miniscule comparatively. Then came Mortal Kombat: Rebirth where he portrayed Baraka. In 2011, he would also do stunts in Sucker Punch, which I recently tried to rewatch [ugh; we had such high hopes for that movie until we saw it]. Lateef played opposite Micheal Jai White in Falcon Rising (2015) and would later have twin roles as a fight-goon but also as body-double for Callan Mulvey who played Batman villain KGBeast. That was in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), another stinker but at least had that one cool fight scene. Finally in 2019, he found the role for which we discuss him today, the Mandalorian who does the fights.
And fight he does. It’s an acknowledgment of Lateef’s hard work that he’s listed third in the movie’s opening credits and that’s already after an explosive cold open. It’s not just cantina shootouts and landspeeder chases that keep a steady pace of action over the course of this movie’s fairly spartan plot.
KFM readers will get a kick out of the melee action that includes some gladiatorial pit fighting, double axes, energized pole arms and a wide range of sci-fi blades. When our Mandalorian isn’t plowing through Snowtroopers in one-take fight sequences the whole movie drifts from one Star Wars dressed genre to another: western, military, samurai and fantasy with plenty of monsters. The younglings will enjoy the abundant comedy and slice-of-life, all kept from lagging by the next action sequence. It’s a feat that the movie remains engaging considering how much screen acting is focused on droids and puppets. So, it's up to Lateef and Pedro to anchor this movie with very human swagger.
Pedro’s always been lucky with body-doubles. Thinking back to his final appearance on HBO’s Game of Thrones (Season 4, Episode 8, June 2014), it was this show which brought the Chilean actor to American audiences. Helped in this by wushu champion and Stormtrooper FN-2199, Liang Yang, long before he became a perennial subject of KFM movie reviews. Another Bay Area martial artist whose body-doubled for Pedro more recently is San Jose born Muay Thai and TKD trained Stuntman Gabriel Rios who handled Pedro’s fights in Freaky Tales (2024) - a fun Bay Area set movie taking place in the late 80’s and includes some, let’s say… Ninja Action, that I won’t spoil for you.
This is the Way
Last year at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, we caught up with veteran stunt-performer and friend of KFM Eric Jacobus. He’s the author of If These Fists Could Talk and founder of Stunt People, during his presentation on The Anthropology of Kung Fu, he had some things to say about Lateef. It was during a section examining the fight-choreography in Tom-Yum-Goong a.k.a. aforementioned The Protector.
“Lateef's also from the indie action community. He was part of a Bay Area team called Zero Gravity. There were some of the best in the world. We were totally intimidated by them. Lateef is The Mandalorian. He's all over the place. If you look, you'll see him everywhere if you watch American action.” - Eric Jacobus
During that convention there was another moment of alignment with The Force. After a panel discussing the influence of Filipino martial artists on movies and comics, I had the chance to reconnect with none other than Diana Lee Inosanto. In a galaxy far, far away, she portrayed Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth in an episode of The Mandalorian and a couple of other franchise series. A long time ago I was able to get Diana onto the cover of the October 1997 issue of World of Martial Arts magazine and I finally got the chance to tell her so. We’ve all come a long way since.
Catch the movie, it’s a fun one.
Author:
Patrick Lugo is a freelance author, illustrator & comic creator who consults on comic Crowdfunding campaigns when not running one of his own. His acclaimed graphic novel series A Tiger’s Tale vols. 1 & 2 can be purchased at ATiger’sTale.com, as well as his newest comic UNDEAD KUNGFU GHOST KILLER #1. He was once Senior Graphic Artist for Kung Fu Tai Chi.
Thread:
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