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Go behind the scenes of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu with writer/director Jon Favreau and more.
Creaturette: Lucasfilm Ltd.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
Directed by Jon Favreau
Rated PG-13
Forced 22 May 2026
#StarWars • #IMAX • #Mandalorian • #Grogu

Taken as nothing more than a fun jaunt, The Mandalorian and Grogu gives fans an enjoyable ride.

Prologue: A Galaxy Divided

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu circus-style poster

It is a dark and uncertain time for STAR WARS fans.

The DISNEY EMPIRE has toyed with them, overloading them with streaming TV SHOWS of varying quality, dismantling a GALACTIC STARCRUISER and dumbing-down the once glorious destination of BATUU. Pandering is a concern, particularly after the POWERS THAT BE jettisoned THE CREATOR’S own drafts for the third trilogy in the SKYWALKER SAGA.

Over time, that strategy has only grown more insulting as it’s become clear the new TRUSTEES never had a roadmap for some of the most beloved characters in cinema. THE RISE OF SKYWALKER concluded the decades-long saga without a single living SKYWALKER. Anxiety after being left LOST in space troubles the dedicated and increasingly divisive FANDOM.

As the galaxy awaits THE NEW ONE and a resurgence in the SCHWARTZ, the time is now for the FORCE to finally reawaken and be taken seriously. The fate of the entire galaxy rests with the big-screen transition of a MANDALORIAN and his little pal, GROGU. Should they fail, there is one last hope: RYAN GOSLING’S unspeakably handsome shoulders….

The Sound of Music

Can a bass recorder drown out a trumpet?

That kinda sums up the situation. John Williams redefined movie scores with his magnificent symphonic suites throughout all nine episodes of the Skywalker saga. Now, Ludwig Goransson has found a whole new sound for the Mandalorian streaming series.

Does the sonic shift work in the transition to the big screen?

Sorta. The music’s atmospheric and there are some nifty riffs, particularly during the end credits.

But Mando and Grogu have a lot of baggage to overcome. The streaming series itself was a major push from large-scale theatrical releases to the small screen, a response attributed in part to the challenges of the pandemic and theatre closures but also a fairly crass commercial ploy to drive up subscriptions for the launch of Disney+. Now that whole strategy from the tumultuous Bob Chapek / Bob Iger era has reached a critical mass along with loads of “content” criticism that’s fueled discontent in the fandom. So, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical of a new transition that essentially reverses course and brings Mando to the big screen. This is, after all, the first Star Wars theatrical release since Solo stirred up all sorts of behind-the-scenes drama in 2018 and The Rise of Skywalker disappointed large swathes of the fanbase in 2019.

The good news is The Mandalorian and Grogu is 132 minutes of good-natured Star Wars entertainment. The bad news is it plays like a condensed fourth season and it doesn’t really amount to much in the grand scheme of the Star Wars narrative.

Long Live the Empire

There’s never a sense that much is at stake during this adventure, which revolves around Mando and Grogu being sent off on a new bounty hunt which offers some standard twists and turns.

It’s fun to watch an opening mission involving feel-good, throwback action with AT-ATs (All Terrain Armored Transports) on a perilous, snowy mountainside along with a much more nimble AT-RT (All Terrain Reconnaissance Transport), but it’s a balancing act of excitement for some cool IMAX-scale visuals and a sense of strategic, manipulative nostalgia that brings back elements of The Empire Strikes Back.

As Mando and Grogu seek out their bounty, they’re charged with unraveling the mystery behind one Lord Janu, also known as Commander Coyne and, curiously, played by actor Jonny Coyne. Some claim he’s dead already and nobody knows what he looks like (unfortunately, that “look” turns out to be a little too much like Dr. Evil with his bald head and gray suit).

Key intel can be gained by rescuing Rotta the Hutt, Jabba the Hutt’s son who’s eager to move out from under his deceased father’s enormous shadow and vile reputation as a gangster. It’s feared Rotta is being held as a slave put in service as a gladiator in a form of mixed martial arts that plays out in an arena that closely mimics Dejarik, the famous chess-like game played between C-3PO and Chewbacca on the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars: A New Hope. Rotta has one match to go before free agency, or so he thinks.

Nothing – including the motivations behind Rotta’s aunt and uncle – should be taken at face value.

Galactic Expansion

The best aspect of seeing The Mandalorian and Grogu in theatres is the IMAX experience, with its shifting aspect ratios. While the story is a little skimpy, at least the presentation is bigger, particularly when the scope expands out to a larger IMAX picture (yes, “size matters it does”).

Several characters also help carry the movie. Front and center is Grogu, whose tiny stature belies his impact, particularly as his relationship with Mando grows even tighter. Grogu also teams up with a group of tiny Anzellan engineers, which in turn serves up a hefty portion of the movie’s humor.

The crossover introduction of characters from Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, such as Cad Bane and Zeb Orrelios, helps expand the cinematic universe, but neither character is given much screen time.

It’s also fun to see – or, rather, hear – Martin Scorsese perform a voiceover cameo as a nervous CGI four-armed food truck vendor. (Surely there will be action figures of varying scale.) There’s also a cameo by newly promoted Lucasfilm lead, Dave Filoni, and Sigourney Weaver crosses over from Alien and Avatar in a small role that nonetheless sets the action in motion.

So, there’s plenty to enjoy… um, from a certain point of view. But it’s a fan-based entertainment value that’s not likely to expand the fanbase and it’s certainly not the blockbuster storytelling of yore. What this serves is basically comfort food for the shaken, directionless fandom and perhaps a new hope for bigger, better things to come under Lucasfilm’s new order.

Is This the Way?

Ultimately, the biggest surprise about Mandalorian and Grogu is the lack of surprises.

Given the screenplay’s co-written by Mandalorian series creator Jon Favreau, Filoni and Noah Kloor (who also wrote for Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett), it’s disappointing there’s no real heft to the story or a sense of anything being at stake, it’s also rather disheartening the movie doesn’t really tee up expectations for what’s next, other than the assumption — as with the streaming series — there’ll be another episode.

And, with it already being made clear Shawn Levy’s Starfighter (to be released next year) is intended to be a standalone adventure, there’s now a cinematic disconnection to contend with. Part of what made the Marvel Cinematic Universe so successful for so long was its intricate networking of characters across headlining movies and even across studios (ensnaring Sony’s Spider-Man series in the overarching narrative web). But even that collapsed under the weight of too much churn across streaming series and theatrical movies that devolved a creative force into nothing more than “content.” (There’s a certain irony in Martin Scorsese doing his voiceover cameo in this movie. Read his essay in Harper’s Magazine.)

The Skywalker saga gave the universe a grounding and a focus, until it was thrown into utter nonsense during the sequel trilogy (Episodes VII-IX). Even Solo – at least as rebuilt by Ron Howard after the questionable firing of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – became more intriguing as it started to set the stage for an identifiable narrative path forward.

Here, there are themes and ideas that get passed over too quickly. There’s an angle about the old protecting the young, then the young protecting the old. Aside from Grogu’s infantile use of the Force, there isn’t much mysticism, either. A bayou-like bug-styled character leans into some southern healing recipes that edges toward a voodoo mystique, but it disappears as quickly as it appears.

There’s also an element that’s been in the Star Wars universe all along, which is at its core a story of basic humanity winning over technology. There’s a wisp of that here, but in this tense age of AI and data centers taking over the world (THE WORLD!), it seems to be a timely angle to pursue in this galaxy far, far away.

For now, it’s a galaxy full of colorful characters still looking to find their way.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.