The Mandalorian and Grogu Film: A Disappointing Star Wars Entry

Hopes were arguably high for The Mandalorian and Grogu, director Jon Favreau’s big-screen offshoot of the popular Disney+ series The Mandalorian. After all, there hasn’t been a new film in the Star Wars franchise since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker wrapped up the three trilogies that make up the so-called “Skywalker Saga.”

The new film is … fine. It’s an average Star Wars outing, and it will give families a solid Memorial Day Weekend entertainment option. It’s just not the spectacular home run that might have helped launch the flagging franchise into an exciting new era, and diehard Star Wars fans hoping for more are probably going to be disappointed.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

Grogu (fka “Baby Yoda”) won viewers’ hearts from the moment he first appeared onscreen in the first season of The Mandalorian, and the relationship between the little green creature and his father-figure bounty hunter, the titular Mandalorian, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), has only gotten stronger. With the 2023 Hollywood strikes delaying production on season 4 of the series, Favreau got the green light to make this spinoff film.

Mando and Grogu (as his apprentice) are hunting down the scattered remnants of Imperial warlords on behalf of the New Republic, taking orders from Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward, a former pilot with the Rebel Alliance. These missions tend to get messy, with Mando being Mando. Ward really wants the warlords alive to get useful intelligence from them, but they understandably don’t like to come quietly, so sometimes, well, they die with their henchmen. Can’t be helped.

After Mando takes out his latest target, a disappointed Ward offers him a new mission: tracking down Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White), son of the late Jabba, on behalf of the Hutt Twins, who took over Jabba’s criminal enterprise. In turn, the twins will provide crucial information on the whereabouts of an elusive Empire warlord named Coin. Mando accepts, mostly because Ward offers him a newly refurbished Razor Crest-like ship, just like his old one that blew up at the end of S2.

A paint-by-numbers plot

Rotta, it turns out, has become a fan-favorite gladiator on the planet Shakari and doesn’t want to go back home to Nal Hutta, as he’s convinced the Twins will have him killed to cement their power. Complications ensue, and things start to get messy. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Hutt Twins, as Mando soon learns to his peril.

The various trailers were thin on plot details, and it’s now clear why: There isn’t much of a plot. Favreau has said that he came up with a new story rather than the one he’d planned for The Mandalorian S4 because of the switch from a streaming series to a theatrical film, but things still feel pretty episodic. The film is largely comprised of a series of side missions in service to the larger arc. There’s some space travel, a fight scene with a cute Grogu moment, a victory, and another cute Grogu moment, then it’s on to the next mission. Rinse and repeat.

It’s all very well-trodden ground with familiar beats happening at the expected times; even the fight scenes are kinda meh. The dialogue in Star Wars films has always been notoriously wooden and uninspired, and The Mandalorian and Grogu is no exception. Good actors can salvage such lines, and Pascal is a very good actor, but it’s much harder when your character wears a helmet the entire time and can’t really emote.

Otherwise, we’ve mostly got stunt-casting as fan service. We love Weaver, but she’s utterly wasted here. It’s nice to see Embo the bounty hunter from The Clone Wars in his live-action debut, and the return of Zeb Orrelios (voice by Steve Blum), plus the Hutt family characters from The Book of Boba Fett. But casual moviegoers will neither know their history nor care. Bonus: look closely in the climactic battle scene and you’ll spot several directors of Mandalorian episodes and Lucasfilm President and CCO Dave Filoni, the latter reprising his role as Trapper Wolf, a New Republic X-wing pilot.

All that said, there’s no denying that Grogu’s antics are pretty cute, and the little green puppet pretty much carries the entire film. (Grogu partnering with the tiny Anzellans to rescue a kidnapped Mando is tailor-made for merchandising.) The strongest segment is the quietest: Mando collapses from a poisonous bite from a Dragonsnake in the Nal Hutta swamps, sacrificing himself so Grogu can escape. Grogu sticks around instead, building a shelter, finding food, and nursing his father figure back to health. It’s a key turning point in their relationship and the only genuine emotional beat in the entire film.

I don’t know if we’ll ever get that postponed fourth season of The Mandalorian. Box office projections indicate that The Mandalorian and Grogu is tracking even lower than 2018’s Solo, although things might pick up over the holiday weekend. If so, the character dynamics will likely change considerably. And hopefully the series can recover some of that Star Wars magic that is sadly so absent here.