Walk into any bar, on any street, in any city, on any planet and you’ll find a Star Wars fan who thinks they know what’s going wrong with the franchise and how to fix it. Their knowledge goes deep; they’ve kept up with the spinoffs, they’re familiar with the most obscure supporting characters, and they’re well-versed in the lore, even learning to live with the once-controversial introduction of the Force-demystifying midichlorians in The Phantom Menace. Despite the occasional online skirmish, these are — broadly speaking — an optimistic bunch, but the word on the street suggests they might finally be running out of patience.
The Mandalorian And Grogu will be an interesting test of that loyalty, a movie picking up from a TV show that ended three years ago. The Disney+ series was fun ride, a welcome digression into the world of Star Wars that took the form of the good old-fashioned Saturday-morning serials that few under 70 remember any more, although George Lucas certainly does. For one thing, it paid fan service to admirers of The Clone Wars, of which there are surprisingly many, and also pandered to fans tiring of the continual retconning of beloved characters (less surprisingly, there are many more of those).
TM&G walks a fine line in the narrow gap in between, rehashing old tropes as if there now a George-O-Matic device that will automatically insert hyperspace warp speeds, X-wing dogfights and annoying furry creatures that speak gobbledygook — here’s looking at you, Ewoks — into your highly personal reimagining of Anna Karenina. TMAG does that so often it feels like a new movie recorded on an old one on a battered VHS tape, now so degraded that the two images blur into one.
The creatures in this case are the Anzellans, returning, one imagines for the purposes of merch and to thwart the Star Wars fan who is initially cheered by the seemingly adult nature of the opening scenes. The crawl this time round is a little less intense that Lucas’s usual Trumpian nonsense about taxes and tariffs, instead setting up a bid to round up war criminals: Imperial fugitives being hunted down by the New Republic. This leads to an exciting scene in which The Mandalorian, a bounty hunter in the New Republic’s pay, tracks down the leader of a protection racket who is protecting some of their most wanted.
As per the serial, the Mandalorian arrives with Grogu — informally known as Baby Yoda — who provides light (ie, not-very-funny) comic relief while gurgling delightedly as his friend shoots up the leader’s henchmen with zombie knives, massive guns and curiously tiny bombs in a weirdly bloodless orgy of violence.
The Mandalorian’s nuke-first, ask-questions-later approach is a point of contention with the New Republic’s Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), who reminds him that the point is that “you catch the bad guys, and they tell us where the other bads guys are”. Nevertheless, Ward gives him a new mission, and a revamped Razor Crest to fly about in. It seems Ward’s people have been talking to the Hutts, a race of creatures that somehow survived the savage mockery of Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs (and Dom de Luise’s Pizza the Hutt). Jabba’s brother and sister say their nephew Rotta has been kidnapped and is being held captive on the planet Shakari. In return for his release, they will disclose the whereabouts of the untraceable Commander Coyne, a key figure in the Empire.
But when the Mandalorian finds Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allen White) — with help from a four-armed Ardennian shop-monkey called Hugo (Martin Scorsese) — Jabba Jr. is perfectly happy with his enslavement. Forced to fight in huge public gladiatorial battles by the mysterious Lord Janu, Rotta is convinced that he is just one fight away from his freedom, and revels in his new notoriety as a kind of intergalactic UFC fighter. Lord Janu, however, has other plans, and after the Mandalorian’s failed attempt to rescue Rotta, the two end up in a fight to the death, involving some of the deadliest creatures in the universe.
It must be said, TM&G is pretty entertaining when it’s at its simplest. Over two hours in the company of a masked man is not the big ask you might think it is, thanks to Pedro Pascal’s action doubles Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder. Jeremy Allen White also does some heavy lifting, bringing unexpected pathos to, effectively, a giant slug. The sense of peril is always very real, and some of the monsters will be a bit much for younger children, including the giant dragon that appears in a rehash of the trash compactor scene from A New Hope. This, though, doesn’t really jive with Grogu, a creature that will either melt your heart or make you wonder how it got past R&D in the first place, a clunky animatronic irritation that struggles to put a macaron in its mouth.
At the end of the day, TM&G is what it is, and the fanbase will show up for it, much like they did last time. But for how much longer? The same fans are tired of being in the limbo between the original films and the prequels, and they want to see more of the minor characters than the usual suspects (when you break it down, TM&G is basically The Wonder Years version of Bobba Fett, Jabba the Hutt and Yoda). But is the younger audience going to stay with the franchise when they’re old enough to choose movies of their own? Next year, the original Star Wars turns 50 — and it’s showing its age.
Title: The Mandalorian And GroguDirector: Jon FavreauScreenwriter: Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Noah KloorCast: Pedro Pascal, Jeremy Allen White, Brendan Wayne, Lateef Crowder, Sigourney WeaverSales: DisneyRunning time: 2 hrs 12 mins
