Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is finally here, and I won’t gild the lily on this one. It’s probably about what you were expecting. After seeing the initial trailer, my reaction was that it looked ‘fine’. Fine as in it was passable, mediocre, not evoking any kind of excitement or dour proclamation of doom. What you see is what you get. After finally seeing the movie, I can say that my opinion has changed. The movie has problems. Yes, there were a few moments that made me chuckle and aww at Grogu’s precociousness, but The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t raise my Star Wars hackles like the first two seasons of the show, or more recently like Andor and Maul: Shadow Lord. That’s the issue with this movie. It, like a lot of our peers and ourselves have said and predicted, is just a truncated season 4 barely dolled up as a movie. Let’s unpack this thing. Spoilers will be minimal or avoided.
The opening card sets the stage: Mando (Pedro Pascal) is now in cahoots with the New Republic, hunting down the Imperial remnant. For about a third of the movie. The rest of the movie is Mando and Grogu fighting a war with the Hutts. Yes, Mando and Grogu share their moments, and it was nice to see what Rotta the Hutt’s been up to. We even see Zeb (Steve Blum) from Rebels. Good times. There’s a daring rescue, blaster fire galore, and the New Republic saves the day, like it always does. Nothing game changing or controversial. This is the movie. Safe.
Excuse me? After all the rigmarole of the show spinning threads of Palpatine’s projects, Mandalorian religion and politics, Thrawn, and the founding of The First Order? I’m not sure if this is Lucasfilm’s overreaction to the criticism of The Mandalorian devolving from an Eastwoodian bounty hunter in the galactic fringe into becoming the guiding light of the franchise, and setting the galactic stage. I’m all for a side adventure, but what we got was not executed well enough to warrant a movie. But I digress. Let’s talk about what worked first.
The Mandalorian theme is legendary, and the original score pulls its weight throughout. The movie is chock full of references to the original Star Wars movie, the prequels, and even the 1980s toy line. Color me shocked when I saw the Imperial INT-4 interceptor of my youth being used on screen. One of the strengths of the show that translated just fine was Mando and Grogu’s familial relationship. It’s probably the highlight of this movie. Grogu’s adorability is as marketable as ever, as the audience at the screening I attended still gave the gremlin appropriate responses to his antics. The bounty hunter Embo of Clone Wars fame plays an important part and was nice to see. Also, I have never seen that many Hutts in one place on the big screen. And Hutt combat? It’s a thing. I mean, I know in the lore they packed a punch during their glory days of yore, but wow.
So what doesn’t work? There’s quite a lot.
This horse is dead, but it bears repeating. This movie is just half of season 4. It wants to go into galactic complexity. The bones are there. In their efforts to play this as safely as possible, they clip its narrative wings, which lead to pacing issues. Things that seem supremely important are forgotten after the movie plays around with that set piece when we move to the next one. There’s even one scene where Mando returns to his homestead on Nevarro, and there’s not even a statue of Carl Weathers’ character or memorial in the city of Nevarro. What a wasted opportunity for a nod and a reference.
There were some great visuals and I love me some good concept art translated onto screen, but we don’t need to linger on the flora and fauna for so long. Especially when Grogu needs to save someone important to him when it’s implied there’s a time limit. Which leads me to the most egregious problem of the movie: the combat.
I felt Din Djarin was never in any danger at all until the plot contrived it. Fights that should have looked epic were just boring to me. The Empire was a joke, the mobsters were a joke, the fauna attacking Din were a joke. The Hutts’ droid army was a joke. There was even a moment where a character of immense weight crushes an opponent to death, but when the same character crushes Din, there’s not even a broken bone. He takes a direct hit by a mallet to the head—no concussion, no disorientation. Mando’s Beskar keeps him going until the plot says he can’t. There are even moments where some opponents were polite enough not to hit his exposed areas until he covers up. At least Darth Maul had the courtesy to take painful wounds and struggle in his fights despite the plot armor in his show.
This movie has other problems, but this last one I’ll touch on is important. It’s not a movie to go fresh into. There is definitely homework involved. Is it a calculated move by Disney, perhaps, to draw interest in the show? If it is, it’s a terrible plan.
Is this the end of The Mandalorian and Grogu’s adventures? With some fixes, I hope not.
If your kids like shallow fights, explosions, and cute green Baby Yoda doing cute things they’ll probably enjoy it, but their mileage will vary. Is it something I would recommend? Well…
My wife said it best. We should have just waited for this to drop on Disney Plus.
*****
English (US) · 