The Mandalorian and Grogu
The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fun but overlong episode of the Disney+ show dressed up for a theatrical release.
The history of beloved television franchises making the jump to the multiplex is not a tidy one. For every Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me that uses the theatrical format to genuinely expand what the property could be, there are a dozen films that are just very long episodes of the show they came from, dressed up with a bigger budget and an intermission worth of runtime. Lucasfilm is betting that The Mandalorian and Grogu can be something more than that. It is not quite more than an overlong episode, but also isn't a complete miss.
Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), the helmeted bounty hunter known as The Mandalorian, and his foundling ward Grogu are pulled back into galactic conflict when a network of scattered Imperial warlords begins consolidating power in the Outer Rim, raising the spectre of the remnant forces that will one day coalesce into the First Order. The trail leads them across a series of planets, through old allies and new complications, including an extended detour involving the Anzellans (the tiny, shrieking engineers introduced in The Rise of Skywalker and brought back in season three) and Rotta the Hutt, Jabba's surviving son who was rescued by Anakin and Ahsoka in the animated movie The Clone Wars, whose scenes play like the film briefly remembering it is also aimed at children. Jeremy Allen White, Steven Blum, and Sigourney Weaver also star.
What the film does well, it does as well as any other Star Wars movie. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni clearly had a larger production budget than any single season of the Disney+ show, and it shows in the world-building. Several of the environments here are cinematic in a way the series never quite managed, and there are action sequences that earn their theatrical framing. When the film is moving and focused, it holds.
That said, the Anzellans and the Rotta subplots represent the real tonal whiplash. The goofiness is not inherently the problem; Star Wars has always had room for it and leaned into it at times, but there are stretches here where the film drifts into broad comedy for long enough that you lose the dramatic thread entirely. It reads less like intentional tonal control and more like a B-story that nobody wanted to cut because it padded the runtime over two hours.
The more significant issue is structural, and it sits at the level of franchise strategy rather than filmmaking. Lucasfilm has been building toward Heir to the Empire, the theatrical event designed to bring the New Republic era to its reckoning with a resurgent Imperial threat led by Grand Admiral Thrawn. A substantial portion of this film is nominally about tracking those Imperial warlords, establishing the pieces. And yet when the credits roll, almost none of those pieces have actually moved. The film does the work of a two-parter in the middle of season three and calls it a theatrical release. That is not necessarily a dealbreaker; but it does mean that if you go in expecting something that advances the larger story in a meaningful way, you will leave with the mild frustration of someone who just watched a very expensive prologue.
At the end of the day, The Mandalorian and Grogu is a pleasant enough time at the cinema. It is fun, it looks great in places, and the central dynamic between Pascal and Grogu remains one of the more charming things Lucasfilm has produced in the post-Return of the Jedi era. Hopefully, when Heir to the Empire actually arrives, this will read as necessary groundwork rather than wheel-spinning. Right now it reads as both.
★ ★ ★
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