Josh Reviews The Mandalorian and Grogu

Star Wars returns to the big screens (seven years after the disappointing The Rise of Skywalker) with The Mandalorian and Grogu, which picks up after the three seasons of The Mandalorian on Disney+ and presents a new, stand-alone adventure.  The film was directed by Jon Favreau, and written by Mr. Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Noah Kloor.

Set after season three of The Mandalorian TV show, The Mandalorian and Grogu takes place in the years after Return of The Jedi but before The Force Awakens.  The Empire has been defeated and The New Republic set up in its place.  And yet, remnants of the Empire still exist.  As the movie opens, the titular Mandalorian, with “Baby Yoda” — real name: Grogu — along with him, has been hired by the New Republic to track down an Imperial warlord and bring him to justice.  When one potential source of information winds up killed, Mando must turn to the unsavory Hutt gangsters for a lead.  With Jabba the Hutt dead (killed by Leia in ROTJ), a pair of twin Hutts now rules their criminal empire.  (We met these twins, briefly, in The Book of Boba Fett, but you don’t need to know that.)  Mando agrees to do the twins a favor in exchange for the location of the imperial warlord, but of course, the twins aren’t being altogether on the level…

I had a great time watching The Mandalorian and Grogu in a movie theater.  The film was almost exactly what I’d expected.  The blessing and the curse of this movie is that it’s pretty much a long episode of the TV show.  (Actually, it feels like four episodes stuck together.  More on this below.)  So don’t go in expecting anything that feels earth-shatteringly new.  This isn’t an epic story with entire galaxy at stake.  This is a relatively small-scale story, made for a budget that is still large (reportedly around 165 million dollars), but small in scale relative to the Sequel Trilogy films or other big modern blockbusters.  I know some are complaining online that this movie is too small and insignificant, and/or that this is “just like the show”.  But if you enjoyed the show, as I did, then I am quite confident you’ll enjoy this movie!  The look and tone of the movie is perfectly in line with the show.  We get some great action and a lot of terrific practical effects and creature work.  The story is straightforward.  It’s a fun popcorn movie.  Do I wish for more in a new Star Wars movie?  Yes, I do!  But it was clear from when this was first announced what this movie was going to be.  And it delivers on that.  If you go in with your expectations set accordingly, you’ll have fun.

At its best, The Mandalorian TV show told relatively simple, straightforward stories.  (This was particularly the case in its earlier seasons.)  This movie captures that.  This is a simple story.  There are some twists and turns to keep things interesting, but a particularly sophisticated narrative, this is not.  There are not a lot of characters in this movie (actually, for a big-screen movie, there’s a shockingly small group of characters) and not all that much dialogue.  The visuals carry much of the story.  That was the case with the original 1977 Star Wars, so it’s a solid approach for a new Star Wars film, and it (mostly) works for me here.

The film’s weaknesses are its episodic structure, and the lack of depth to most of the characters.  The film has a somewhat janky, start-and-stop structure, that feels very much like they strung several episodes of the show together.  That feels weird as a movie.  I also was disappointed that, other than Rotta the Hutt, all the other characters were pretty flat, without much character development.  I know that the original Star Wars made use of simple good and evil character archetypes, so there’s history for that in this franchise.  But I really wanted to get to better know Zeb, and Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward, and even some of the villains.  More on this below.

OK, there will be some SPOILERS ahead, so beware!!

Let’s dig in!!

Despite the relatively small scale and budget, I think this film looks terrific.  There are a lot of fantastic action sequences: Mando taking on three Imperial Walkers in the snow; Mando and Rotta the Hutt vs the monsters in the arena; Mando & Zeb in aerial combat with Imperial ships; Mando vs. the huge droids in the twins’ palace; the X-Wing attack in the climax; and lots more.  I was happy that we got a lot of sequences of Mando in gunfights and/or hand-to-hand combat, and also some great spaceship dogfights.  A great Star Wars movie should have both.  (Though there are no lightsaber fights in this movie!  That’s relatively unique for a Star Wars movie.)

I loved how much practical effect work there was in this film, particularly with all the alien creatures.  There is Grogu himself, of course, who continues to be absolutely adorable and beautifully brought to life.  Grogu has always been clearly a puppet, with the limitations of a puppet (in terms of range of movement), but that’s never been a negative.  In fact, it’s a positive!  Just as was the case in the original Yoda, and so many other classic creatures from cinema (like E.T.), the incredible care in the design of the puppet plus the skill of the puppeteers allows us to fall in love with this puppet!  I think these creatures being practical creations, that really are on stage with the actors, helps sell the overall effect.  (We just saw this with Rocky in Project Hail Mary!!)  I love that the film involves a group of four little Babu Frik alien engineers!!  (Yes, I know they’re really called Antellans.)  Those guys were very funny; their look plus their Minion-like gibberish/baby-talk dialogue worked to great comedic effect.  I loved the stop-motion animation look that the Hutt twins’ giant android guards had in their movements!  That made me smile.

I love how many alien creatures there are in this movie!!  There are very few normal humans around, which is great.  I liked the way many the filmmakers incorporated a combination of practical effects and CGI to bring these creatures to life.  For example, Rotta the Hutt.  When I first saw Rotta the Hutt in the trailers for this film, I thought he looked dumb.  A buff Hutt, with hugely muscled arms??  I rolled my eyes.  But I thought Rotta looked terrific in the film, and he was by far my favorite new character.  The Hutt twins looked terrific as well.  Back when we first got a CGI Hutt — that would be Jabba in the Star Wars Special Edition, circa 1997 — it looked awful.  Future releases of Star Wars updated the CGI on Jabba, but I never felt the CGI effects could match the look of the original, practical Jabba from Return of the Jedi.  But here, finally, I felt they really nailed the look of all the Hutts.  I thought the animation in Rotta’s face was particularly excellent.

And how about all those incredible monsters in the arena, fighting Mando and Rotta?  I loved that this fight gave us a “real life” version of the holo-chess monsters from the Original Star Wars!!  (From the “let the Wookee win” scene on the Millennium Falcon.  And yes, I know that in-universe this game is called Dejarik.)  What a clever idea!!  I loved that we got to see a recreation of the finishing move (when one monster lifts another over its head, and then slams it to the ground) when R2 beat Chewie in the game.  I really dug the design of all these weird new scary monsters.  (Far better than the monsters in the arena from Attack of the Clones!)

The CGI version of Zeb from Rebels debuted in season three of The Mandalorian.  I was shocked that they then didn’t use Zeb in Ahsoka season one, but I guess they were saving him for here.  I love Zeb, and he looks great in CGI, being incorporated into this live-action film.  It’s a pleasure to hear Steve Blum once again voicing this great character!  (I really hope Zeb is a part of Ahsoka season two — I want to see him reunited with his Rebels friends.)  I like the idea of Zeb’s being partnered up with Mando.  I wish there was more of a relationship developed between the two characters, and I wish Zeb didn’t drop out of the second half of the film (before reappearing again at the very end).

As I’d mentioned above, there aren’t many characters in this film.  There’s Mando, of course, brought to life by Pedro Pascal, Brendan Wayne, and Lateef Crowder.  (I was pleased to see Mr. Wayne & Mr. Crowder get prominent billing in the film’s credits; I suspect that they played Mando for much of the film.)  I’m glad the filmmakers worked in some classic Mando lines (“I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold”; “this is the way”), and a lot of great Mando fighting.  I wish Mando hadn’t gotten captured TWICE in the film, but oh well.  We get to see Mando unmasked for a few minutes of the film.  It’s nice to see Pedro Pascal’s face on-screen, but I’m tired of the whole business of Mando’s not being supposed to show his face.  (I’d hoped that after Mando’s encounters with Bo Katan in seasons two and three of the show that he’d be able to move past that dumb, fanatical creed.)  There’s not too much of an arc for Mando in the film; just a little bit of acceptance that he won’t be around to guide Grogu forever.  I’d have loved to have seen more character development, but on the other hand I don’t object to their preserving Mando as an unchanging heroic archetype.

After Mando and Grogu, Rotta the Hutt is the next most important character, and definitely my favorite new character in the film.  I loved this character; he’s by far the most nuanced character in the film.  I loved the surprise of getting to see a strong, sweet, good-hearted Hutt!!  I loved that he spoke English (or “Basic” in the Star Wars universe)!  It was interesting to hear Rotta talk about his struggles to get out from under the shadow of his evil and hated father.  Hard-core Star Wars fans know that we’ve actually met Rotta the Hutt before — he was the baby Hutt, nicknamed “Stinky”, who Anakin & Ahsoka rescued in the original animated Clone Wars film, that was released theatrically before the start of the run of the Clone Wars animated series!  That’s why there’s a joke in the film, in which the Hutt twins show a hologram of Rotta as a baby, looking a lot like he did in that animated Clone Wars film.  It’s a fun piece of Star Wars continuity to get to see a grown-up Rotta here.  And I’m so glad he turned out well, and that Anakin and Ahsoka didn’t save the life of someone who became a villain.  Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) does a great job as the voice of Rotta!

Sigourney Weaver plays the face of the New Republic in the film, as Colonel Ward, who seems to be in charge of the squadron of X-Wing pilots we’ve seen before on The Mandalorian TV show.  I love Sigourney Weaver, and she’s great in all her scenes.  I liked getting to see her piloting an X-Wing in combat at the end.  But there’s not much of a character here.

I loved Martin Scorsese as the voice of an alien running a food-stand; what an unexpected and yet perfect choice!  I quite liked the look of that alien; who was of the same race as Rio Durant from Solo.  (That was a nice piece of connectivity.)

So what doesn’t work in the film?  I think a main weakness, as I’d mentioned above, is that the film has a very strange structure.  There’s a first half that comes to an end when Mando and Grogu go back to their home on Nevarro.  Then the film has to get started all over again, for a second half that gives us a different story, in which Mando gets captured, and Grogu and the Babu Friks have to rescue him.  I know that this movie started as a planned fourth season of The Mandalorian TV show.  In interviews, both Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have said they started from scratch when they decided to make a Mandalorian movie instead.  But this film really feels to me like four episodes of the TV show strung together.  You can see the episode endings: the cliffhanger when Mando gets gassed and wakes up in the arena; the happy ending when Mando and Grogo go back to their house on Nevarro; the cliffhanger when Mando gets poisoned and it looks like Grogu and the Babu Friks have left him; and the happy ending at the end of the movie.

This gives the movie a very strange start-and-stop feeling to me, which is part of why this isn’t working as a movie experience for some viewers.  For me, I was very surprised they didn’t find a better way to bridge the two halves of the movie.  Having Mando and Grogu to back to Nevarro felt like a big mistake to me.  It brought the momentum of the film to a complete stop!  I liked seeing Nevarro again (though we don’t get to see any of the familiar faces from there; part of that is because Carl Weathers, who’d played Greef Karga, has sadly passed away), and their house that we saw at the end of The Mandalorian season three.  It was nice to feel that connection to where we’d left off on the TV show.  But couldn’t they have found a way in which Mando, Grogu, Zeb and Rotta had to stay on the run for the whole movie?  You could still have Rotta and Mando get captured and brought back to the Twins, which would bring us into the third act, but do so in a way that better maintains the flow the story.

I did, though, enjoy the time the film took with Grogu on his own, after Mando had been poisoned.  It’s weird for an action-adventure movie to stop, so late in the movie, for that type of long, quiet sequence.  But I did enjoy all of that, from the comedy of Grogu’s using the Force to accidentally but repeatedly bang Mando’s head, to seeing Grogu meditating (the way Luke taught him).  I also liked the alien fisherman, voiced by Stephen McKinley Henderson (Lady Bird, Dune, Civil War, A Man on the Inside).

I was also disappointed the characters all felt pretty flat and one-dimensional to me.  I respect that they stuck to the TV show’s formula of action/adventure without too much dialogue.  But this would have been a stronger film, in my opinion, with a few more dialogue scenes in which we could have gotten deeper into the characters.  I’d have loved to have known more about Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward.  What did she do in the Rebellion?  What is she doing now?  How does she feel about the status of the New Republic and their clean-up fights against the Imperial Remnant?  Zeb is in a lot of the first half of the film, but if you haven’t seen Rebels, you wouldn’t know anything about him.  (Weirdly, they don’t even say his name until deep into the movie.)  I wish Zeb had more to actually do in the film.  I wish we’d gotten some character moments for him, more chances to see what an awesome hero he was on Rebels.  Why isn’t the Imperial Warlord Coin – whose capture is Mando’s whole mission — more of a presence in the film?  I’d have liked to have gotten more of a sense of his being a threat and a danger to the burgeoning New Republic.  Or how about the bounty hunter Embo, who’s a major villain in the second half of the film?  Here’s another character whose name I don’t think ever gets spoken.  He looks cool, but I’d have loved to have gotten more information on who this guy is.  Does he have a prior relationship with Mando?  Were they comrades or rivals?  Speaking of backstory: we see Rotta’s look of amazement, towards the end of the film, when Grogu uses the Force; wouldn’t it have been interesting had he had some dialogue about knowing two Jedi, who saved his life when he was a kid?  I think some moments like that would have enriched the film.

Other notes:

• This was the first Star Wars movie to have opening credits!!  It worked for me.  But I think Disney made a mistake in deciding that only “Skywalker saga” films should have an opening crawl.  To me, a Star Wars movie should always have an opening crawl!!  They had to give us an opening screen with text to fill in some backstory.  I wish that had come in the form of a crawl!!
• I was thrilled that Ludwig Göransson returned to score the film!  He’d composed the music for the TV show, including the iconic theme music, which I loved getting to hear in this movie.
• How did gassing Mando work as a way to incapacitate him?  He has no way to seal his helmet?  (I know he has to breathe, but surely he could seal the helmet for a brief period of time, right?)
• I liked seeing Dave Filoni and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee back in cameos as Trapper Wolf and Carson Teva, two X-Wing pilots we’d seen on The Mandalorian.
• I liked that the Hutt twins also had a monstrous creature kept under a trap-door in their palace, just like Jabba and his Sarlacc.  I liked the look of the giant water creature the twins were keeping!
• It felt right to see Mando finally back in a Razor Crest ship.
• I liked getting to finally see the Hutt’s home moon, Nar Shadda, in live action!  I first encountered this planet in the comic book Star Wars: Dark Empire, from back in 1991!!  Back in the day, that was the first expansion of Star Wars beyond the Original Trilogy that I’d ever encountered!!  I loved that comic book, written by Tom Veitch and illustrated by Cam Kennedy.  That comic is strongly imprinted on my brain; it’s not part of the canon of modern Star Wars under Disney, but I love seeing aspects of the comic incorporated into new Star Wars stories.  The look of the moon is different here, but I liked the design of the broccoli-like trees and the vegetation-encrusted palace of the Hutt twins.
• The design of Rotta the Hutt and his set-up of being a warrior in an arena strongly reminded me of Grakkus the Hutt from Marvel’s Star Wars comic books.  So much so that I thought at first they were the same character.  I have to suspect the Mandalorian team borrowed some of their ideas for Rotta from these comics.
• I loved seeing the way Rotta fought and moved!  And I loved when he fought the twins at the end!  Getting to see Hutts really move around and fight was super cool.  (It’s great that modern visual effects allows us to see Hutts in motion.)

The Mandalorian and Grogu isn’t perfect, but it’s a fun new Star Wars movie!  Don’t miss seeing it on the big screen!

Please don’t forget that I have a brand new comic book, SIGNAL FIRES, and it’s available for order NOW!

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