Before the clones attack, I’ve been a fan of Star Wars literally all my life, penning a passionate defence of Return of the Jedi and the Ewoks. So it genuinely pains me that, after a seven-year itch waiting for a new movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu sinks even deeper into the Sarlacc pit of pointlessness.
Fans should be critical, just like us paid professionals, despite what the united stans of ‘social’ media who have fully turned to the Dark Side would have you believe.
If you genuinely love a universe like the galaxy far, far away that George Lucas gifted us, it stands to reason you should want it to soar. And that means being able to admit when new offerings are a crashing bore.
The Mandalorian and Grogu – quick links
Father figure
The Mouse House took over Star Wars in 2012, debuting its first live-action TV show, The Mandalorian, on Disney+ seven years later.
Given that Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 epic, The Hidden Fortress, was a key influence on Lucas while writing 1977’s Star Wars, I was intrigued to hear that actor-turned-director Jon Favreau would lean into another cult Japanese hit, Kazuo Koike’s celebrated manga series, Lone Wolf and Cub. It follows a warrior who vows to avenge his murdered wife with their newborn babe in tow.
But from the outset, Favreau shaved off the edges. Set five years after the fall of the Empire, The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal as laser blast-happy Din Djarin, a Mandalorian bounty hunter.
Favreau dispenses with the mum murder – all the rage in Disney stories – perhaps reckoning it was too like the one that claimed Luke’s Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. Mando (as he’s usually called) picks up a gig from a shady, Imperial-adjacent client, only to discover, at the end of the first ep, that his acquired target, Grogu, is an infant from the same species as Jedi master Yoda. Going back on his word, he saves the green cutie, gradually becoming a doting father figure while still shooting to kill for hire.
Fun enough,The Mandalorian’s short episode-of-the-week meandering never quite proved its worth in the grand scheme of the New Republic, a touch too treacly for me and running out of steam by Season 3.
But surely if it’s making the lightspeed jump to the big screen, they’d have to earn that space? As Natalie Portman’s much-memed Padmé Amidala would say: Right, RIGHT?
Tragically, The Mandalorian and Grogu does not.
For love or money
I’ve always defended Star Wars’ right to appeal to all ages. Nor do I begrudge the sprawling franchise mercenarily going after the galaxy’s merchandise-hungry dollars, a phenomenon since the originals.
I had stacks of action figures as a kid, stuffed into mum’s attic when I moved to Australia until such time as she trashed them without warning (she says ‘use it or lose it’). As I write, there’s a Lego AT-ST training its guns at me from the windowsill behind my computer. Boba Fett stands guard by my TV.
But three series and a film later, the burbling, gurgling ‘Baby Yoda’ still feels like a retrofitted Christmas present and not much else.
Nothing feels fresh in The Mandalorian and Grogu. Mando goes after a rogue Imperial agent, in an AT-AT driven opening sequence that essentially rinses and repeats the snow battle from Empire and the much-maligned, though more fun than this, Solo.
When Grogu uses the force, it often feels as silly as when big pants Yoda parkoured through a lightsabre battle in Attack of the Clones.
At least in the TV series The Mandalorian, it was established that his power came at a great cost, leaving him physically drained and in danger. Heck, even Yoda got fatally puffed out after extricating Luke’s X-Wing from a Dagobah bog.
But by the time we rejoin the buddies in The Mandalorian and Grogu, the latter’s an untouchable wizard who can get the pair out of any scrape.
Watch the trailer
Paint by numbers
So does the film dig deeper into Pascal’s helmeted antihero? Nope. There’s nothing new on that front at all. The story is as dispensable as the show’s filler episodes, certainly smaller in scale than its season finales.
Alien and Avatar star Sigourney Weaver is roped for a phone-in role – good for her, hope she got paid a wad – as the latest rebel commander, Din’s handler Colonel Ward. She tasks the pair with going after another Nazi analogue. First, they must rescue the late Jaba the Hutt’s roided-up son Rotta (voiced by The Bear star Jeremy Allen White) in exchange for info.
Rotta is at least interesting, with the apple having fallen very far from his father’s tree. Director Favreau and his co-writers Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor wisely avoid getting too bogged down in backstory – Rotta has shown up in The Clone Wars animated movie and series. But opting to render him in CGI, rather than the original’s puppetry, robs real weight, an inherent flaw since the prequels.
Looking very cheap and far from cheerful while no doubt costing a fortune, The Mandalorian and Grogu fails to progress the show’s story, evolve its characters, or even spin an interesting, if disconnected romp.
Bumbling along doing nothing much at all, it even squanders a Martin Scorsese cameo on yet another forgettable digital character akin to Jar-Jar Binks.
Same old new worlds
Rogue One and especially its prequel show, the ground-level, light sabre-free Andor, remain the high bar, post-originals. They expanded the universe in ways that connect to the saga’s scuzzy core, while being free to do their own distinct thing. Andor creator Tony Gilroy got that Andor had to bring back the real as much as possible to truly ground the fantasy.
That’s out the window in The Mandalorian and Grogu, which mostly dispenses with sets in favour of pixels, shooting on Industrial Light & Magic’s digital soundstage, The Volume. Saving money costs credibility, not to mention jobs.
When some old-school animatronics are used in rendering a quartet of diminutive engineers, the Anzellans, it’s a brief burst of life, the only moment I smiled in an otherwise turgid movie that marks the true nadir of the Star Wars universe.
Much like Disney flogged the Marvel movies to death, attempting to restart their heart by recalling Robert Downey Jr, Star Wars is running on fumes, having spread the universe far too thin.
Even the ghastly The Rise of Skywalker had some discernible stakes, however misguided Palpatine’s callback was. Two days on, I’ve already forgotten that The Mandalorian and Grogu exists. If this is the best they can come up with after seven years, it might be time to give the sagasome much-needed rest.
