The Mandalorian and Grogu was quite literally an afterthought, and it shows. It was pitched after the 2023 Hollywood writer’s strike delayed production of The Mandalorian’s fourth season, even though director and writer Jon Favreau had already completed the scripts for that season. So Favreau had to go back to the drawing board to create a whole new adventure for his two characters, one that didn’t lean too much on prior knowledge of the TV series, and that could tell a self-contained story in a few hours.
The result is a space adventure that feels surprisingly low-stakes for a Star Wars film. Following the end of The Mandalorian’s third season, the armor-clad Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his tiny green ward are now working for the New Republic to find previous Imperial commanders, and ultimately bring them to justice. In an almost video game-like setup, Djarin is tasked with hunting down a mysterious Imperial, but doing so also involves finding the kidnapped son of Jabba the Hutt. It may as well be a fetch quest.
It’s a construction that works fine if you’re trying to map out a few episodes of a serialized TV show someone can throw on while folding the laundry. But it feels particularly disappointing when you’re in an IMAX theater, expecting to recreate the highs of Star Wars at its best. Sure, there are some visceral thrills seeing Dinn Djarin taking down Imperials and their AT-ATs single-handedly. But, unfortunately, we’ve also seen him do that on TV. The Mandalorian and Grogu simply offers nothing new.
While Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni (who is also now the head of Lucasfilm and everything Star Wars) have pitched this film as a standalone adventure, it’s also awfully unfriendly to people who haven’t seen The Mandalorian. We get no explanation of who Din Djarin actually is, or why he feels obligated to tote around a green alien baby. We know they’re partnered up, but Grogu’s significance is never touched on. And there are characters who play a large role in the film, like Djarin’s co-pilot Zeb, who don’t even get named until the very end. (Anime fans take note: Zeb is voiced by the iconic voice actor Steve Blum, so there’s a certain kick from hearing the voice of Spike Spiegel play another space bounty hunter.)
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The film also expects the audience to already be enamored with Grogu, the tiny Yoda-like adorable Force-powered creature who still babbles like a baby and eats everything in sight. If you’re not down for his antics, which at times border on the cartoonish, this film may be especially grating. But if you’re partial to Grogu, there’s a large chunk of the movie where he’s left to fend for himself, and it shows that he’s at least matured somewhat from the series.
To be clear, though, The Mandalorian and Grogu isn’t a bad film. It’s more entertaining than Solo, a movie I think most people have completely forgotten about, and it’s not nearly as disappointing as The Rise of Skywalker. It’s a fun space romp that’s entertaining enough to hold your attention during the hot summer months. But it offers nothing more than The Mandalorian already did on TV screens. I could see more ambitious Star Wars series like Andor and the excellent-but-unloved The Acolyte surviving the big screen move without much effort, but The Mandalorian and Grogu still feels limited by its small scale origins.
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