By all accounts, The Mandalorian and Grogu should be an exciting return for Star Wars to the big screen. Given everyone and everything involved, it should be a surefire hit both at the box office and critical/audience reception. Proven creators, an award worthy score, loveable characters and a giant galaxy far, far away should be a recipe for success. And yet, The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives with a wimper instead of a bang, struggling to launch into lightspeed and hovering in a meandering, forgettable safe mode of neutrality.
This is calculated studio risk aversion at its worse, forcibly condensing a very clearly intended episodic season into an overly long clusterfuck feature film. Mandalorian and Grogu feels terrified to do anything even remotely interesting, fearing the dreaded internet incel fanboys on twitter. We saw what transpired when they caved to those minority demands – we got an abomination in the form of The Rise of Skywalker. So rather than kick the hornets nest and try for something fresh and forward thinking, Dave Filoni and John Favreau opt to not engage with anything at all. It leaves Mandalorian and Grogu in the worst place imaginable: the middle ground of not necessarily being bad so much as just disappointing all around.
A Heavy Dose of Empty Calories
Being a heavy dose of empty calories is worse than being atrocious. At least when something is awful we have something to talk about. With The Mandalorian and Grogu being the ultimate nothing burger of Star Wars cinema, we’re left with very little to unpack or discuss. There’s just nothing here worth discussing, a whole studio machine running on autopilot and assuming audiences won’t actually notice there’s no reason for this to exist in the form that it’s presented.
It’s an aggressively fine, a spaghetti western space romp incapable of shedding its episodic origins and stakelessly slogs forward with less than average side quest. Mandalorian and Grogu lands somewhere near the bottom middle; not the best or worst, just under the most average entries and that somehow feels the more insulting than an unmitigated disaster.
There are some strengths that make it somewhat worthwhile. I’ll get into those in a second (so it’s not all doom and gloom) but we need to talk about a major elephant in the proverbial Star Wars room: Dave Filoni. Most fans probably rejoiced when a real nerd gained immense control over the direction of the franchise. Filoni has done some great things for the galaxy, but The Mandalorian and Grogu is proof that he is drunk with power and not in a good way. There’s a combative insistence in everything he’s done since taking over, as if he feels slighted that his animated work isn’t the bright star of the franchise and constantly feels the need to justify them to us.
Not a Film, Just a Bunch of Leo Pointing Memes
The thing is, they WERE well received, with almost all of them – Clone Wars, Rebels, even The Mandalorian at the start – being universally acclaimed and beloved to this day. So I’m not entirely sure why he feels compelled to cram all of those characters into every new addition to the world, The Mandalorian and Grogu included. Everything, regardless of their necessity to the story at hand to come out after the conclusions of those shows includes a character or characters from his stable.
Embo, Zeb, and Rotta (to name a few) are all shoehorned in for no other reason than for Filoni to shout at us and say, “See?! See how cool MY characters are?! WITNESS ME!” That’s an exaggeration, but the sentiment is the same and the eye rolls at giving HIMSELF two cameos in Mandalorian and Grogu still stand. We don’t need any more Leo Pointing Memes at the center of Star Wars, and Mandalorian and Grogu lacks so much of everything else that in the end, it’s all we’re left with to do.
The Score and Puppet Work are Top Notch
There are few good things here, first and foremost Ludwig Göransson’s immaculate score. The Oscar winning composer continues to show his wide array of musical talents, with no two scores ever sounding the same. He’s able to remix his own Mandalorian theme in unique ways, and injects an 80s electro synth pop score that feels more adventurous than the adventure at hand. Göransson simply does not miss, and I am so serious when I say he should be nominated again for his work here. It’s not really a good sign for the film when the score is the most exciting thing there is to experience.
The stop motion and puppetry work from Tippet Studios remains elite, and provides The Mandalorian and Grogu with some really excellent, tactile visuals. I can’t say the same for the abysmal IMAX framing, which is a whole different issue we simple don’t have time to get into right now. Tippet gives Mandalorian and Grogu the spark of creativity missing from everything around it, and makes it impossible to deny how good they are at this. The Grogu puppet in particular is excellent, with the film at its most interesting when it’s just cute little baby Yoda stumbling around the forest interacting with the Anzellans and other puppet creatures. If all of Mandalorian and Grogu had as much care and drive as the score and puppet work, the film would actually be worth the ride.
Final Thoughts
I wish there was more to love than the score and puppetry, but Mandalorian and Grogu is just a very long, boring, safe, forgettable, meaningless space romp, not good enough to be remembered but not bad enough to be panned. It just exists, stuck in a misused format with its Star Wars heart ripped out and replaced with carefully curated content metrics. After 7 years away from the big screen, leaving us on the read receipt of their worst entry to date, The Mandalorian and Grogu is not the return that was promised. We deserve better, and if this is as good as they’re willing to give us then I’m sad to say I don’t want it.
I’ll say this though: Rotta Beefcake Hutt is my new body type. He has a physique that says ya, I workout but I will also Jabba the Hell out of a mountain of chilli cheese fries. Rotta is how I’m tryna be this summer. Gain Goals.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
