By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 4 seconds ago
Right now, something unthinkable has happened: the latest blockbuster Star Wars movie is getting trounced at the box office by a pair of low-budget horror movies (Obsession and Backrooms). It was already bad enough when The Mandalorian and Grogu earned less in its opening weekend than Solo, making it the weakest opening for a live-action film in the franchise’s entire history. But then its box office dropped by over 69 percent in its second weekend, with audiences overwhelmingly deciding they’d rather see possessed girls and haunted spaces than Baby Yoda. For diehard sci-fi fans, this left only one real hope: that the next Star Wars movie will be much more successful.
That next movie is Star Wars: Starfighter, which has a stacked cast of major Hollywood names like Ryan Gosling, Amy Adams, Mia Goth, and Matt Smith. Those big names might be enough to put butts in theaters, and audiences seem generally excited to see a movie that takes a new approach to the franchise. However, the box office for Starfighter is likely to dwindle once moviegoers realize that it has the same basic plot as The Mandalorian and Grogu: namely, a stern pilot bonding with a Force-sensitive child whom he must protect.
It Was The Best Of Yodas, It Was The Worst Of Yodas
In some ways, the best thing about The Mandalorian and Grogu was also the worst thing. The film is a spinoff of The Mandalorian, the biggest breakout Star Wars show on Disney+. The series has plenty for franchise diehards to love, including a protagonist who looked like Boba Fett and a plot that revealed more of what happened after the events of Return of the Jedi. But what made mainstream audiences really fall in love with this new show was the growing father/son relationship between the titular stoic warrior and a little Baby Yoda. Whether someone knew their X-Wing from a TIE Fighter, this cute pairing made the show worth watching.
Unfortunately, you can only get so much mileage out of cutesy critters. Hype for The Mandalorian had already dwindled after its lackluster third season. Furthermore, everyone’s collective mania for all things Baby Yoda had already died out years before The Mandalorian and Grogu came out. Even the movie’s biggest fans agree that it was just like a few episodes stapled together into a film, and that’s a problem: mainstream audiences wanted more than just the reheated leftovers of a show that came out seven years ago, but all this new movie could offer everyone was more of the same.
The Next Star Wars Film Is Already Doomed
How does the failure of The Mandalorian and Grogu potentially doom Starfighter? Disney has done their best to keep the details of this new movie secret, but it has long been rumored that the core plot involves Ryan Gosling playing a pilot who must escort Flynn Gray’s Force-sensitive character to safety. Recently, X user @FivesWalker leaked more alleged details about the movie, claiming that (and beware possible spoilers, kids!) Amy Adams’s character is Force-sensitive and gets killed early on, instructing her Force-sensitive son (played by Gray) to find his uncle (played by Gosling). The grumpy pilot uncle must then protect the kiddo from Mia Goth’s Force-wielding mercenary and Matt Smith’s conniving warlord.
Some of this sounds interesting, and with this much talent, the movie is likely to have some great performances. But at its core, Starfighter is going to have the same plot as The Mandalorian and Grogu: a gruff pilot must protect a Force-sensitive child from mysterious bad guys. That was also the core plot of The Mandalorian, which focused heavily on how villains wanted to capture Grogu for their own nefarious purposes. Plus, @FivesWalker claims that while the uncle and nephew “don’t exactly get along at first,” they eventually bond “in classic Star Wars fashion.”
The Mandalorian and Grogu was the first new Star Wars film in seven years, and it failed because it didn’t offer audiences anything new. Now, Starfighter is meant to take this franchise in a brand-new direction, but it sounds like this movie will also shamelessly copy the core narrative of The Mandalorian. Sadly, it has become increasingly clear that the writers, directors, and producers of this venerable sci-fi franchise are simply incapable of coming up with new ideas. Given that Dave Filoni, the king of recycling old ideas and characters, is now the man in charge of Star Wars, the current state of the franchise can best be summed up by C-3PO: “We’re doomed!”
