When the credits rolled at the end of Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed it. While I consider myself a massive Star Wars nerd and a fan of the original Disney+ live-action series that spawned Baby Yoda and his armor-clad dad, I wasn’t sold on these two being given a big movie. But you know what, Mando and Grogu is a campy, sometimes weird, often fun, and mostly good Star Wars movie that doesn’t get bogged down in cameos or franchise upkeep.
That said, I’m not sure this is the Star Wars movie the series needed at this moment. But I’m happy we got it anyway.
Out now in theaters, Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu is set shortly after the events of the final episode of the original Mando show. Grogu and his former-bounty-hunter dad are now going around the galaxy and taking down Imperial Warlords who are trying to revive the Empire after it was defeated by the Rebellion and replaced by the struggling New Republic. After an action-packed opening showing Mando and Grogu taking down a warlord, the movie’s real plot kicks in. The two need to help some Hutts out by saving their nephew, Jabba’s hulked-up pitfigther son Rotta, from a criminal. In exchange, the Hutts will give up a hard-to-find Imperial Warlord that the New Republic is hunting. Pretty quickly, plans change, and Mando and Grogu end up getting on the wrong side of the Hutts and into a lot of trouble.
It’s a fairly simple story that, thankfully, doesn’t intersect with six other Star Wars characters or plotlines in some desperate attempt to make this movie more important than what it is: a side story about a cute little bugger and his cool dad on an adventure together. There’s no scene where Luke Skywalker shows up, or Yoda’s Force Ghost pops in, or an early version of Snoke appears. Also not included: A single lightsaber, Jedi (unless you count Grogu), or Sith. This is a first for a Star Wars movie. Even Solo had to sneak in Darth Maul at the end.
Rotta, however, is a big part of this movie that doesn’t work for me. In small doses, I can mostly deal with Jeremy Allen White’s shredded Hutt character looking to be a good person. But extended scenes with him and his big Jabba-looking head, speaking English (or Galactic Basic) instead of Huttese and saying lines like: “Do you know how hard it is to be your own man when your dad is Jabba the Hutt?” made me question how much I was enjoying the film. Luckily for me, he vanishes from the movie after the second act and doesn’t return until the very end. I like weird Star Wars, but Rotta is a…difficult hang.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu is at its best when it focuses on its namesake characters and their bond. Mando now trusts Grogu more to handle himself, and Grogu now has more confidence in his abilities, letting him take charge and save the day a few times during the film. The second half of the movie mostly takes place on Nal Hutta, a gorgeous and very alien swamp world that looks like it was ripped right off of Ralph McQuarrie’s easel. And this is easily when the movie is firing on all cylinders as the two have to work together and rely on each other to get out of a deadly situation.
Even if the core relationship between Grogu and Mando didn’t work for me, I’d still have walked out of this film mostly happy to have seen it because it contains a lot of great action scenes. This is about as close as Star Wars has gotten to being a John Wick film. Mando is quick to pull out his blasters and knives and do some close-quarters ass-kickin’, and all of it looks great. I can’t wait to watch these fights on YouTube over the next few years whenever I want to see something cool. Though with how quick he is to fight and kill, it does make his lines about violence being a last resort ring a bit hollow. Come on, Mando, you gotta stop blasting people for me to buy that!
What I enjoyed the most about The Mandalorian & Grogu is how tactile a lot of this movie feels. There are a lot of puppets in this movie, beyond Grogu, and they all look a bit janky and wonderful. There are people in alien costumes, lots of real sets, and even a sequence later in the film that features robots created with stop-motion animation, and it rules. Star Wars is at its best when it’s campy and janky, but also focused on telling a simple story of found family coming together, with the help of some weird little guys, to fight back against evil. Grogu might be tiny, but he can still save the day. This is a lesson Yoda was trying to teach people back in the 80s. “Size matters not,” remember?
All that said, after seven years without a new Star Wars movie, I’m not sure The Mandalorian & Grogu is what Lucasfilm should have prioritized.
The franchise desperately needs to move forward. To start a big new saga. To find a new center to build around. Side stories, while fun for Star Wars nerds like myself, will always feel inconsequential and lacking compared to the big episodic installments that drove millions of people, importantly non-fans, to theaters. I’m not convinced that this latest spin-off film will be a hit at the box office. But that’s Disney’s problem to figure out.
Personally, I’m quite happy with the first new Star Wars movie released in nearly a decade. It’s got everything I want from a theatrical Star Wars adventure, weird puppets and all.
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