Why Lang From The Mandalorian Looks So Familiar
The new episode of The Mandalorian, "Chapter 13: The Jedi," brought with it many new revelations about everything from The Child to the state of the universe, and introduced quite a few new characters along the way, including the long-awaited Ahsoka Tano, played by Rosario Dawson.
Landing on the forest planet of Corvus, Mando (Pedro Pascal) knows he has to find Ahsoka in order to learn more about The Child and his past. Along the way, Mando meets Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto), also known as the Magistrate, who hires him to take care of the Jedi problem on the planet — meaning Ahsoka. But Mando needs something from Ahsoka, so as expected, the Magistrate's plan doesn't really go her way.
At the Magistrate's side is another new character named Lang, her sidekick of sorts, played by Michael Biehn. For younger fans, this might be the first time seeing this actor, but for older audiences, Biehn is a very familiar face. Don't remember exactly where he's from? Check out his extensive résumé full of iconic, heroic roles in plenty of well-known action franchises from the '80s and beyond.
Michael Biehn played Kyle Reese in The Terminator
Biehn starred in quite a few great TV shows over the years, like The Runaways and The Magnificent Seven — the television series, not the movie. But Biehn's arguably most recognized for a few very important roles in huge action films like The Terminator from 1984.
Starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, Biehn plays Kyle Reese, the protagonist of the first film who travels to the past to protect Sarah Connor (Hamilton) from the Terminator. Reese plays a very important role for the franchise as a whole, as he falls in love with Sarah and they have a child together named John Connor, the key reason he must protect Sarah in the first place. Reese is a soldier in the future, sent back to protect John because he will supposedly grow up to become a savior for the human race in the post-apocalyptic future in which humans are fighting a war against self-aware killing machines. The Terminator, played by Schwarzenegger, is a very technologically advanced cyborg assassin that follows Reese to the past to stop John from even being born.
Biehn reprises his role in the sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, in one scene in Sarah's dream. Though it did not appear in the theatrical release, the scene was restored to the film in extended versions.
Biehn starred as Corporal Hicks in Aliens
After starring in The Terminator, Biehn joined another great franchise in the Alien sequel, Aliens. The sequel came out in 1986 after the first film's enormous success. In it, Biehn's Corporal Hicks joins Sigourney Weaver in her fight against aliens. He is sent with others, including the sole survivor of Alien, Ellen Ripley (Weaver), to investigate the colony Hadley's Hope. They find a community devastated by a growing population of Xenomorph aliens that have infested the area and killed many of its inhabitants. Leading his squad through the fight, Hicks manages to survive the battle, getting out with Ripley and a young girl named Rebecca "Newt" Jorden (Carrie Henn).
Biehn briefly returns as Hicks at the beginning of Alien 3, but is quickly killed off. Ridley Scott directed the first Alien film, while The Terminator director James Cameron took the helm for Aliens. But for the third film, Alien 3, David Fincher joined as the director late in the game. The creative team's choice to kill Biehn's character so early on in the movie has been criticized by fans as well as Cameron, who called the decision "dumb" and "a huge slap in the face to fans."
Michael Biehn brought Johnny Ringo to life in Tombstone
In 1993, Biehn jumped into the Western genre with the movie Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Bill Paxton, and many other familiar faces. Set in the 1880s, the plot is loosely based on events that occurred in the town of Tombstone, Arizona, with the Earp family and their crew. These famous events include the shootout at the O.K. Corral in 1881 between the Earp brothers and the Clanton-McLaury gang, as well as Wyatt Earp's 1882 Vendetta Ride, in which Earp and the others went around killing everyone they thought was involved in the death of his brother, Morgan.
In Tombstone, Biehn plays Johnny Ringo, a member of the antagonist group in the film called the Clanton Gang, also known as the Cowboys. He is also the nemesis of Doc Holliday (Kilmer), the right hand man of Wyatt Earp (Russell). They have quite a few duels in the movie, with the third resulting in Ringo's demise. This event did not actually happen in real life, and the actual cause of Ringo's death is still debated. At one point, Earp claimed to have murdered Ringo himself, but this claim remains unproven.
Tombstone did really well when released, helping to revive the more modern Western genre and holding a 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a credit to Biehn's staying power that he's making an impact on a show like The Mandalorian all these years after his major Hollywood heyday.