Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

PG-13 for a lot of Star Wars-y violence.  Like, Mando rips through guys, but it's all stuff that I --even as a pacifist! --dismiss pretty easily.  Heck, the more violent it got, the more I cheered.  Maybe The Mandalorian and Grogu highlighted the fact that I'm not a pacifist.  I especially love that the filmmakers found excuses to make the bad guys the Empire, despite the fact that this all takes place after Return of the Jedi. I'm also obliged to point out that Star Wars tends to include quasi-scary monsters, which younger audiences may not care for.  Still, very family-friendly Star Wars.  

DIRECTOR:  Jon Favreau

This is just an excuse to talk about the entire concept of The Mandalorian, right?  Like, we all know that I'm writing about the movie.  But considering that this is a film blog, I don't really have opportunities to talk about the show.  Can I say something completely blasphemous?  I really like the Disney era of Star Wars.  I know!  Like, I haven't been this much of a Star Wars nut since I was really little.  I actually prided myself on being a Star Trek fan (which I still hold arbitrary loyalty to).  But the Disney stuff, for the most part, really got me back on board with being a Star Wars nut.  

I know that there are a handful of people who tuned out then.  Okay, I'll be talking about both.  Because I do have thoughts on The Mandalorian and Grogu and maybe I'll lean harder that way.  After all, The Mandalorian as a TV show is remarkably fun for me, especially as a Kurosawa fan.   But I'm an Andor guy through-and-through.  I'm going to get something unfair out of the way first:  This was a perfect viewing experience.  Sometimes I have to power through some of these blogs trying to set aside that I watched a movie in less-than-ideal conditions.  Quite the opposite here.  I love going to the movies, especially during the summer when it comes to popcorn cinema.  For a long time there, I felt like I wasn't really granted opportunities to get back to an actual movie theater because I just have too many kids.  But now some of those kids are growing up and I desperately want to re-bond with them while they are old.

Cue my twelve-year-old son.  Henry had a Star Wars phase when we used to watch Star Wars: Rebels together when he was a tiny little man.  He got mildly obsessed with Rebels and Rebels alone.  Now, I tried getting him into other Star Wars stuff.  (Again, that Andor is going to be a hard sell for any other member of the family but me.) It's not that they actively dislike Star Wars.  I just noticed that Gen Alpha's (and younger Gen Z's) attention spans are pretty darned rough.  Not to sound like the oldest man in the world, but it's them darned reels.  They can't pay attention to movies.  (You think I'm shaking my cane to the sky.  Students literally told me that watching movies is a burden because they're too long.)   But Henry really wanted to see The Mandalorian and Grogu with me because his cousins said it was funny.  So I went to see a really fun Star Wars movie with my only son and he really had a good time with me, so the movie already seems like a 10.

But I know it isn't a 10.  I'm in a precarious situation.  I liked the movie a lot.  I am going to buy this movie when it hits physical media (again, I'm an old man who shouts at clouds).  I'll probably watch it a few times.  It might even inspire me to do a rewatch of the series.  But I also know that this is a deeply flawed film.  I know that others actively dislike this movie.  I see the way that the trolls on the Internet swarm this movie, relishing that the movie might not be making the box office that Disney product needs to make.  I don't know why they hate the fact that new Star Wars is being made, but that's the way things are playing out.  So the precarious position I'm talking about is the fact that I automatically want to defend this movie because I hate trolls while having to acknowledge that there's something wrong with it.

The best place I can come from when it comes to that is the fact that none of the bad things in this movie are necessarily red flags for me.  There isn't one real dealbreaker in this movie.  The problem that I have is that The Mandalorian and Grogu, appropriately, is just the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated movie, Rotta the Hutt and all.  More accurately, it's a live-action version of The Clone Wars TV show in its prime.  It's not quite movie quality, but it's pretty darned good.  What this all means is that Dave Filoni has his mitts all over this movie.  I like The Clone Wars TV show.  It's a very good show that brought a lot of very good Star Wars stuff to the forefront, especially in light of an era that didn't do much for me.  (Side Note:  I just disparaged trolls about wanting to slag Disney Star Wars, claiming that they shouldn't be complaining that they are getting Star Wars content.  I hated the prequels when they came out.  I still don't like them. But honest-to-Pete, I'm really glad that the Prequels have found their audiences.  I don't agree that they are great, but we got some cool Star Wars stuff out of that era.) 

Both The Clone Wars movie and The Mandalorian and Grogu don't feel like they take any big swings.  I'll go even further when it comes to The Mandalorian and Grogu.  I don't feel like you really need to see the movie to continue with the show.  As a guy who just absorbs way too much media, I'm often confronted by film spinoffs of TV shows that I like.  Often, these movies change the dynamic of the show.  They are incredibly risky and make the show different when we come back.  The best example I can think of is The X-Files: Fight the Future.  That movie was required reading for when The X-Files came back.  I love the movie, Fight the Future.  It felt like it took an obsession of mine and pulled out the stops.  The scope and scale of the film made it feel like you had to see this movie on the big screen.  The downside was, when The X-Files came back as a TV show, the movie had done too much heavy lifting and the show had a hard time finding its voice after that.

With The Mandalorian and Grogu, nothing here really mattered.  This all felt like a bit of a side story for Mando.  The Mandalorian, as a show, has a really big world that its already played with.  We have gotten some really good stories, often ones that affect the characters personally.  There are stakes that really come into play by the time we hit a season finale.  But both Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau really went out of their way to make The Mandalorian and Grogu a story that newcomers to these characters would have no trouble picking up what is going on.  Yeah, we got some name drops (Some real Glubs, if you know what I mean.) We got Rotta the Hutt and Zeb. That's a real Filoni thing.  I don't mind.  But you don't have to know that Rotta the Hutt was in The Clone Wars and Zeb just seems like a sidekick in this movie.  They are almost archetypes rather than real characters.

This is where my most damning commentary falls in.  Listen, I love The Bear.  I think that show is great.  (I even enjoy it despite thinking that it should have ended after two seasons.)  I don't know why it bothers me as much as it does, but Jeremy Allen White is not great in this.  I mean, how could you be great, especially if you are Jeremy Allen White?  A lot of the casting of this is about the name that's trending right now.  But Rotta the Hutt isn't a necessarily great character.  Did I want him to be okay at the end of the movie?  Yeah.  Totally.  I like that he and little Grogu were friends.  That was pretty cute. But the dialogue in the movie for Rotta the Hutt was such a sledgehammer of character exposition.  Yes, you hated your dad.  That doesn't have the be the subject of every conversation that you have in this movie.  And the performance is just really stilted because these lines about family are coming out of a ripped slug.  

And the thing that I hate to write the most out of this whole blog is that I believe that there's someone out there who could have delivered those lines more convincingly.  See, because I never questioned the performance of the actor who played Jabba the Hutt.  Never did.  Jabba was always just Jabba.  Rotta was Jeremy Allen White saying some silly stuff about family.  This is coming from a guy who is invested in the story.  I wanted this to be an excellent performance and I was not impressed.  Jeremy Allen White is an incredible actor. His role as Rotta the Hutt left something to be desired.

So I wish that this was one of the greats.  It's really unfair to the movie because I think that that Star Wars needs to have fun adventures times.  (If my kids read this, tha isn't an Adventure Time reference.) It's slightly unfair that every Star Wars movies needs to have stakes.  From a positive point of view, this movie made me care about the gangster end of Star Wars, something I always found slightly burdensome.  (Okay, I liked Star Wars: Outlaws a lot.) But sometimes I just want a small Star Wars movie.  I had fun with my kid.  I had fun at the movies.  But, yeah, it's imperfect.  And I suppose that's okay.