All photographs used per the official Star Wars website.
November of 2019 was big for Disney. Disney released Disney+ at the start of the Streaming Wars, the home of all Disney-related content from Marvel to Star Wars and more. Alongside its release was the first-ever Star Wars live-action show, The Mandalorian.
It was released to critical acclaim and was enjoyed by all fans of Star Wars, even the ones who had critiqued the recent sequel trilogy. The show told the story of a Mandalorian bounty hunter taking care of “the Child,” later revealed to be named Grogu. It was a unique cross of the western and sci-fi genres, and was a breath of fresh air for the saga, telling a story that did not have much effect on the greater galaxy.
With season 2, the quality dipped a bit; however, it was still great to watch and even brought the return of Luke Skywalker. Then came The Book of Boba Fett, a glorified season 2.5 of The Mandalorian, while The Mandalorian season three, the “Mandoverse,” officially fell into mediocrity and was plain bad at points.
The Mandalorian and Grogu picks up right after the ending of season 3, as the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu are working together alongside the New Republic to arrest and stop all remnants of the Empire. Going in, I was nervous — this was a franchise I had grown up loving, and this was its return to the big screen after releasing exclusively TV shows for the last near-decade. The opening was inspiring. I loved every second of it, and it gave me hope that the rest of the movie would follow suit. We see the Mandalorian at his best here, being a bounty hunter. We even got to see the return of beloved Rebels character, Zeb Orrelios.
However, that would stand to be one of the few highlights of this movie.
With a star-studded cast that included Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allan White, and even Martin Scorsese for a few scenes, I would have expected this movie to at least be more intriguing. Weaver was used for what felt like a total of five minutes, a complete waste of such an amazing actor. White was present, playing Rotta the Hutt, Jabba the Hutt’s son, but in voice only and his performance left much to be desired. Martin Scorsese was also only a voice for two scenes. And we get to see Pascal’s facial acting for 10 minutes, as he wears a helmet for the majority of the movie like in the original show.
As for the actual story of the film, it almost felt like there wasn’t any. This entire movie basically felt like a few episodes of The Mandalorian put together. There was barely any character development here — any bits that did occur felt like something we had already seen from the previous three seasons of the show. Overall, The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t add to the Star Wars lore significantly despite clearly trying to establish itself as an important cog in the overall franchise.
Something that has always been Star Wars’ strong suit, even during the shaky sequels and prequels, is its visuals. Production staff would manage to pull some of the most beautiful shots you would see in modern cinema, regardless of how bad the film was. But even that wasn’t here; once again, it just felt like the show. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few acceptable spots but, overall, a majority of the movie looked ugly.
I do want to at least highlight the good things about the film. For one, the action scenes were fantastic, especially the hand-to-hand combat we get from the Mandalorian. This was easily where the film was at its best and most entertaining.
There were also some great set pieces, but those can only go so far when the VFX is this rough. Naturally, the absolute best aspect of the film was the score from Ludwig Göransson, a composer who has worked on almost countless projects over the last 10-15 years — including in the Disney Star Wars era — and is easily still at the top of his craft.
This film is on pace to be the worst-performing Star Wars movie under Disney, and rightfully so; it left much to be desired, to say the least, and ultimately brought nothing new to the table.
What makes this worse is that in a time of political uncertainty in the United States, Star Wars takes an apolitical stance and doesn’t touch on pressing topics we saw tackled in its Andor TV series, my favorite Star Wars project since Rogue One. With that in consideration, there were still some highs here that worked for me. But they need to understand that the audience is grown now, and Star Wars should not simply be a “dumb and fun kids action movie.”
Fans and critics like myself ask for a deeper meaning to these projects and for there to be a clear purpose to the movie. I hope this is a lesson and mistake the studio learns from moving forward. While Disney Star Wars hasn’t been the best at the time, there were still some silver linings in hindsight. The Force Awakens to me was about an 8/10; it was entertaining and provided a story that felt like the start of something moving. I have even come around to The Last Jedi in recent years, and would go as far as to say it’s about a 6.5/10. To cap off that trilogy, we saw The Rise of Skywalker, which stands as the second-worst Star Wars film to me at a 2.5/10. I can at least give The Mandalorian and Grogu the credit of being better than that.
I rate Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu a 5 out of 1o.
