Disney combines the familiarity of its hit TV series with the expense of a cinema ticket with The Mandalorian And Grogu. Our review: Over six years on, here it is: the first new Star Wars movie since 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker. It says a great deal about the state of one of the world’s ... The Mandalorian And Grogu review | Star Wars for shareholders
Disney combines the familiarity of its hit TV series with the expense of a cinema ticket with The Mandalorian And Grogu. Our review:
Over six years on, here it is: the first new Star Wars movie since 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker. It says a great deal about the state of one of the world’s most recognisable film series – one that changed how movies looked and sounded in 1977 – that what we get after that interminable wait is essentially a TV spin-off.
Echoing Holiday On The Buses, One Foot In The Algarve and The Inbetweeners Movie, this is The Mandalorian Goes Large – a feature-length episode of the hit Disney+ TV show that offers more of what you loved, but slightly bigger.
After Lucasfilm’s Star Wars sequels inadvertently kickstarted a cottage industry of angry YouTube videos calling for outgoing Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy’s resignation (or worse), The Mandalorian And Grogu feels like an attempt to make the least divisive entry possible. It’s right there in the title: it’s the guy in the helmet and that cute baby Yoda. Please, come and watch our movie.
Stop yelling at us.
A glaringly brief opening crawl lays out the basics: we’re in that post-Return Of The Jedi period where the Empire has fallen. What was the Rebellion has formed the New Republic. Facially-obscured Bounty Hunter Din Djarin (or Mando, as everyone calls him) now serves as a mercenary for the new order, hunting down the last few Empire war criminals dotted around the galaxy. Along for the ride, of course, is the Force-enabled alien child Grogu, still a cute physical puppet augmented with a dash of CGI.
After a snowy opening sequence reintroduces Pedro Pascal’s helmeted gunslinger to the uninitiated, along comes Sigourney Weaver with a new mission: hunt down another ex-Empire war criminal whose identity and whereabouts are unknown. That sluglike crime family, the Hutts, may have information on the target, but before they’ll give it up, they need someone to rescue their kidnapped nephew, Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allan White), son of Jabba. Mando’s quest takes him on a whirlwind tour of locations and combat opportunities, from a Blade Runner-esque planet of neon signs and gladiatorial arenas to the swampy outer reaches of Nal Hutta.
Between set-pieces, Grogu steps in to provide some cutesy interludes, while composer Ludwig Göransson underscores everything with a soundtrack which veers from traditional strings to jarringly insistent electronica.
Taken on its own terms as a feature-length TV spin-off, The Mandalorian And Grogu is staggeringly acceptable. There’s plenty of action, much of it taking place in contained arenas or rooms where characters fight until a means of escape presents itself. There are ships and droids that hark back to everything from George Lucas’s prequels to the budget-priced toys Kenner sold in the 1980s. Screenwriters Jon Favreau (who also directs), Noah Kloor and Dave Filoni (who cameos, complete with hat) serve up not one but four Babu Friks (okay, okay: Anzellans).
Yet all this design, artistry and money – some 4,000 people worked on The Mandalorian And Grogu in some capacity – is tethered to an ellipsis where the story should be. Mando and Grogu move from planet to planet, initially attempting to complete a mission which crumbles to dust the second it’s exposed to light. After that, one scene replaces the other with little in the way of dramatic cause and effect. There isn’t one clear, overarching villain, no clear character arcs for the leads. No real stakes are established; there isn’t a ticking clock or some deathly ‘or else’ if Mando fails to complete his assigned tasks.
Even by the bar set by The Mandalorian’s compact TV episodes, or a typical action videogame, which this film frequently resembles, the storytelling feels thin. Rotta’s first dialogue scene gives voice actor Jeremy Allan White the thankless task of describing his character’s backstory. He’s lived for too long in the shadow of his ruthless father, Jabba, and is happier now as a galactic MMA fighter. Rotta says this to Mando in a moment that should feel more comic and engaging than it is (the gag being that Rota’s getting a massage from a pair of droids). Weirdly, Mando then goes off for a scene or two, comes back to the exact same place, and then Rotta lays out almost the same dialogue about his personal history again.
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Elsewhere, characters talk in the same dialogue barks you get from non-player characters in videogames – interchangeable bits like “I can’t hold them for much longer” and “What took you so long?”. Even the shots feel recycled in places: The Force Awakens did the Apocalypse Now, X-Wings silhouetted-against-a-sunset thing over a decade ago.
A few sequences at least offer flashes of artistry. Animator Phil Tippett swings in with a pair of stop-motion giant droids, and it’s the most captivating moment in the entire film. One stretch featuring Grogu is almost a separate, largely silent movie by itself, allowing the physical creature effects to breathe and giving the audience’s ears a break from the schematic dialogue.
An extended brawl in a flooded cavern is one action highlight, and has a hint of danger lacking elsewhere; perhaps because its use of real water adds a physical realism you don’t get when stunt performers are swinging punches against a digital backdrop. (The heavy use of the Volume virtual sets and Unreal 5-ish CGI is an unwelcome carry-over from The Mandalorian TV series.)
Again, though, it feels as though all this art, design and technical sophistication has been poured into a film that exists purely to fill a gap. In some respects, we’ve been here before. The Force Awakens’ job was to remind existing fans and newcomers why Star Wars was popular in the first place. Solo: A Star Wars Story was intended as a fan-pleasing franchise extension based on a much-loved legacy character and little else.
But even moreso than those films, The Mandalorian And Grogu feels like something cooked up to appease shareholders more than audiences. Perhaps most damningly, it doesn’t even have the sense of occasion of a season finale; if this were a TV episode, it would be one of those inessential ones that slips in somewhere round the middle. Star Wars is no different as a franchise after this movie than it was before it.
One of The Mandalorian And Grogu’s more thought-provoking elements may be accidental. Weaver’s character, Ward, has the Galactic Empire’s most wanted war criminals printed on playing cards, much as the George W Bush administration did during the second Iraq War in the 2000s. It raises the unsettling suggestion that Mando is working for a new superpower that may have a dark side of its own. The idea’s soon dropped, though, in favour of another fight, another trite quip, another easy laugh. (“Big tunnel, huh?” got the strongest reaction in an otherwise austere preview screening.)
We’re almost 50 years from the date when George Lucas created a global phenomenon by fusing together various odd things that he liked: hot rod racing, Flash Gordon, movies about cowboys, samurai warriors and fighter planes, Frank Herbert’s Dune.
With The Mandalorian And Grogu, Star Wars has never felt less like one weird, socially-awkward guy’s space fantasies writ large. Star Wars has for years been a corporate product, designed to sell toys and bedspreads as much as film tickets. But this latest effort is something even more depressing: an entry on a spreadsheet. A box to be ticked so that executives can move onto the next item on the list: the repetitively-titled Star Wars: Starfighter, due next year.
In that sense, it’s mission accomplished. Few will be offended by the results; even fewer are likely to remember them in a week’s time.
This is, regrettably, the way.
The Mandalorian And Grogu is in cinemas from the 22nd May 2026.
