Directed by Jon Favreau — Screenplay by Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Noah Kloor.
Now, don’t get me wrong. For someone who, after the release of George Lucas’ prequel trilogy, once (and for a while there) was worried he would never get to see another movie set in that faraway galaxy, getting to see a new Star Wars movie in theaters is probably always going to feel like a treat. But I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever been looking forward to a live-action Star Wars theatrical release less than here with The Mandalorian and Grogu. This is coming from someone who has seen every single episode of the Disney+ show it spun off from, who loved the first two seasons of the series, and who enjoys the titular duo a great deal. But despite that and the seven-year wait between this and the last theatrically released Star Wars film (J. J. Abrams’ critically panned The Rise of Skywalker), and even though last year’s second season of Andor was a miracle of intelligent and political storytelling that rivals the best films in the franchise, something about this next big release just feels off. Maybe it’s just because of the disappointing third season of the show, but it could also be the ill-judged marketing campaign (what with the faux-beer commercial as their Super Bowl ad). I have long sensed that the main problem is that the studio and the storytellers have, through three seasons, trained audiences to expect these stories on a streaming service, and even though this is an expensive Star Wars story that you’re putting the next ‘chapter’ of on the big screen, it doesn’t change the fact that people are going to view this as a TV-movie because of its origin on the streaming service. Nevertheless, I was hopeful that this would still be an enjoyable moviegoing experience. Having now seen it, I can say that, as a fan of this universe and these characters, I enjoyed seeing them on another adventure fine enough, but I was largely underwhelmed by what I was presented with, and I am really concerned about what this film may mean for the future of the franchise.
Set some time after the events of The Mandalorian: Season Three, Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu follows Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (played by Pedro Pascal, Brendan Wayne, and Lateef Crowder) and his foundling Grogu, as they work to complete missions for the New Republic and stop Imperial officials. Following a successful mission in the opening scenes, Ward (played by Sigourney Weaver), a representative of the New Republic, tasks Din Djarin with completing a mission for the so-called Hutt Twins, a set of Hutt siblings who are essentially powerful crime lords. The twins claim that they are willing to provide the New Republic with the whereabouts of a mysterious target of theirs, if Din Djarin can rescue, capture, and bring Jabba the Hutt’s son Rotta to the twins. Djarin reluctantly accepts the mission, which will take him to a faraway planet where Rotta is used in gladiatorial battles by another crime lord.
When Disney decided to make spin-offs distinct from the Episodic Skywalker saga (the original, prequel, and sequel trilogies), they also decided to keep the iconic opening crawl of set-up text for the episodic films only. Nevertheless, this film does technically open with on-screen text setting up what the state of the galaxy is at the start of the film. It is one of many choices made here to make the film accessible to moviegoers who don’t follow the galaxy far, far away religiously. Although trying to make it accessible to all audiences is an admirable and smart choice, given the extensive ‘homework’ one needs to get through to understand every detail, it also feels like the storytellers overcorrected here. In an attempt to make this easy to jump into for every moviegoer (even though this film essentially took the place of a fourth season), they’ve diluted the world to such an extent that the film not only tries to stand alone but feels entirely inconsequential. Only a select few characters from the show appear, and, bafflingly, it has no real surprises up its sleeves. Every move it makes is predictable if you’re Star Wars literate.
The one thing that the film simply cannot escape is that it feels like they’ve put a round peg into a square hole. Sure, a round peg fits into a square hole, but it doesn’t fill out the space. Similarly, while this is a serviceable Star Wars story that technically fits into the ongoing narrative, the film feels partially empty, and the structure they’ve chosen for it is not the ideal fit for the story they’re telling. The Mandalorian and Grogu really just feels like the storytellers have repurposed the story meant for a season of television, shrunk it down, and stitched it together to fit into a single movie. The placement and frequency of the set pieces, missions, plot developments, and so on all make the multiple events in the film feel incredibly episodic in a way that is distracting. There’s even a moment in the second half of the film, when the pace grinds to a halt, where it really feels like they’ve switched over to a Grogu-centric episode. Of course, because you cannot have an entire season of television fit into the 132-minute runtime of the film, they have to make choices as to what they should cut, and that’s when you come back to it feeling partially empty. Even though there are, on paper, relatively emotional scenes between Din Djarin and his foundling, the great character scenes that made you fall in love with the titular duo in the show are mostly absent in the film.
One of its big problems is that Pedro Pascal is barely in the film. In the show, Pascal has turned in great work whenever Din Djarin isn’t wearing a helmet, but there are really only a very small handful of scenes here where we see Pascal. Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder do great work as the on-set doubles for Pascal as Din Djarin whenever the character is wearing a helmet, but the film is missing that connection that Pascal has been able to tap into on the show from time to time. It also doesn’t help that Sigourney Weaver is wasted in a role that is basically just a glorified cameo, and you can’t really tell that it is Jeremy Allen White who voices Rotta the Hutt. That said, Martin Scorsese’s voice cameo as an alien shopkeeper is absolutely delightful and was a highlight of the film for me. So, no, it isn’t all bad. In fact, I think it should be said that even though the film never reaches the highs of any of the episodic Star Wars films (including The Rise of Skywalker), it doesn’t ever fall to the lowest lows of the franchise (again, including The Rise of Skywalker).
Perhaps my favorite thing about The Mandalorian and Grogu was the use of puppetry and animatronics — i.e., the creature effects — that made Grogu such a likable and cute creation in the show and has the same effect in the movie. The use of multiple Anzellans — the alien species best known for the tiny mechanic named Babu Frik in The Rise of Skywalker — was also another creature effects highlight. Together, the Anzellans and Grogu earn the biggest laughs and the widest smiles. The practical creature effects are so good that the heavy use of computer-generated aliens and beasts in the film feels like a particularly bad choice. It is especially distracting when it comes to the Hutts. The Jabba the Hutt creation for Return of the Jedi was so good and so disgusting that he’s become the most iconic alien crime lord in all of cinema, and the computer-generated Hutts in this film feel like such a major step down in quality (this is a nitpick, but it also frustrated me that they often speak English — or basic, as they say in Star Wars — rather than Huttese from start to finish).
Although I think there are some structural challenges because of the episodic action, I do think the action consistently looks solid here (yes, even though it sometimes features overuse of CGI). The space cowboy bounty hunter imagery that they perfected in the show is on display here in plenty of solid-looking action scenes, and there are some entertaining set-pieces, including one involving a menacing snake-like creature. There are some pretty neat Easter eggs here and there, and I thought the planet that Scorsese’s shopkeeper was on had a pretty cool Blade Runner-esque design. I also just think the film, like the show, sounds extraordinary. I am specifically talking about Ludwig Göransson’s instantly iconic theme from the series, which sounds fantastic in a movie theater, and there are some new compositions or remixes here that I really dug.
As I sat in the movie theater and the closing credits came up on the big screen, I was let down in a way that none of the other Star Wars films had let me down before. Although nothing in Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu is offensively bad or anything like that, it is the middle-of-the-road, nothing-new-under-the-sun feeling that this film gives you that is so underwhelming. Even the worst Star Wars films in the past have reached out for magic and majesty in terms of set pieces, invention, or character work. They don’t always grasp that magic je ne sais quoi that the best Star Wars films capture, but at least you can tell that there are moments in which they reach out for it. In the case of The Mandalorian and Grogu, however, we’re presented with a film that feels like multiple episodes of the streaming show stitched together to fit into the mold of a movie, but while it is technically functional and relatively pleasant for fans of the show, the goings-on in the film don’t advance the overarching story in meaningful ways, and are almost entirely inconsequential, predictable, and unremarkable. Star Wars used to always inspire big reactions, so it is extremely damning that the reaction that feels most appropriate with this film is a shrug.
5 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
